The internet is a busy, ever-changing environment, with new technologies and trends emerging daily and the algorithms controlling how people find information online updating regularly. For those of us who pay close attention to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keeping up with these changes in order to make sure our clients’ sites receive the best possible search rankings is a full time job. But what about those who aren’t SEO experts? Is there anything they can do to make sure their sites stay up to date and aren’t penalized in search rankings?
Google’s new Webmasters website (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) aims to address this by providing a resource for site owners, helping them discover and address any issues their site may have that will affect their search rankings. In order to help use this resource, we wanted to share some of its highlights:
Search Console
Google has long provided some excellent website diagnostics through Webmaster Tools, and these are now available through the Webmasters website as Google Search Console. If you’ve registered your site with Google, you’ll be able to use Search Console to perform activities like finding crawl errors, registering your sitemap, testing changes to your robots.txt file, and highlighting your site’s structured data, as well as finding out plenty of other helpful information about your site.
Education and Support
While Search Console provides essential tools for monitoring and maintaining your website, the information it provides might not mean much to anyone who isn’t already well-versed in the world of SEO. The new Webmasters website helps address this by providing some great educational resources, including courses that help users understand Google search, guidelines for technical site structure and website quality, tools to test mobile-friendliness, and ways to contact Google personnel or other experts for help. They’ve even provided a nice step-by-step troubleshooting guide that site owners can use to find out what they need to do to address errors in Search Console or determine why their site isn’t ranking as high as it should in search results.
With this new, easy-to-use site, Google has given both experts and novices an essential tool for maintaining their websites. If you want to keep up with Google’s continued changes and improvements, you can follow their Webmaster Central blog. If you have any questions about how to get started using Google’s Webmasters site, please feel free to contact us to speak with a SEO expert. We’d love to help you get started!
