This is a terrific video clip which explains in a clear and simple way how you can set up and use Google Webmaster Tools to optimise your website in the eyes of Google.
In case you're not familiar with the tool, it provides you with incredibly valuable statistics about the performance of your website - including ......
- The demographics of the traffic that you're getting,
- Which pages are most popular,
- What search terms are being used to locate you
- Where you are actually ranking for different search terms with Google..
- It also alerts you if Google identify technical issues in your website structure that may be limiting your search engine ranking success (for example, duplication of title tags is frowned upon by Google)
If you are not currently using this tool, just follow the steps in the video to set up this capability. One of the early steps does require you to upload a file to your website so that Google can verify that you are the actual site owner.
Once you have verified ownership, then the video clip demonstrates how to use the different features of the "Dashboard" to obtain incredibly useful information - about things like whether you have duplication of content, or whether some of your page titles need to be improved. By addressing any issues that Webmaster Tools highlights, you will be making your site more "search engine friendly" which in turn can only help to improve the search engine ranking of your site.
Learning some simple do-it-yourself SEO for your small business website has the potential to save you a lot of money by not having to outsource to an "expert" - who will be using this tool themselves anyway.
Google Analytics
Another useful tool for providing important data about the performance of your small business website or blog, is Google Analytics.
It can provide you with a potential gold-mine of insights - however it can be a little cryptic to use and interpret the data. So here's another video that I hope you find of interest, which explains the features of Google Analytics .....
