For many reasons including, SEO and Traffic, people add their sites to the Google webmaster tools. That’s good for all, but, there are other reasons to do that, and you will get an idea about that in this post.
Google is not only the biggest search engine but, the biggest source of quality traffic for millions of blogs and websites. So, there is no way to succeed online, especially using organic traffic and without Google, and in second place, Bing and Yahoo.
1. To find if your domain is penalized or not
This is not an option, especially, when you buy an expired domain, and you can’t find any idea about their old index history with Google. For that reason, you should add your domain name, verify it, and then, find if there is a manual action or not.
The Google webspam team takes action against spam sites all the time. And the only way to determine whether a site is penalized or not is to click the manual action tab in your Google Search Console tools account.
Lots of people buy available domains and they can’t find or know that they were expired. Then, they create amazing content and apply all the SEO best practices, and they do what every good website needs. However, the site still not be indexed, and there is no good news during days and weeks.
If you’re in that situation, then, you’re probably in the case of a penalized domain name. Of course, you should click the appropriate tab option in your google webmaster account to find the details.
If there is a manual action for any reason again the site that was owned by the previous register, then, you should correct the problem if you can, and resubmit the site for reconsideration again.
2. To monitor your search appearance
The search queries allow you to find what terms people are using to find your website and access the content. You can see the number of clicks and impressions for every keyword, and the click-through rates.
So, this is a good tool to improve your content and to see if you have to do extra work to make the search traffic better.
3. To find who is linking to your website
No other website on the web can find all your links like what Google does. The big infrastructure of Google lets them crawl every near website on the web. So, Googlebot will find every single link that points to your website and it shows it in your dashboard.
To find what are the websites that link to your content, click on the ”Search Traffic” section, and then, click ”Links to your site” as the below screenshot.
Then, you can explore the links one by one, and even, export them to your local machine, or save them as a Google document.
4. To improve your website SEO
This can be done when you click the ”HTML improvements” tab under the ”Search Appearance” section. You can find duplicate content like meta descriptions, titles, and other things that can affect your website ranking.
If you find duplicate meta descriptions, for example, and you have only one live description, then, wait a week or so until Google updates the site statistics. Correct all the issues and clear your website cache if you’re using a plugin, and everything will be fine in the end. It’s an easy tool that helps a lot.
The mobile usability feature detects every error on mobile devices. That will help you to solve problems with mobile SEO, and you will get better results with a fully optimized website for smartphones and tablets.
The best thing is that you can define your preferred domain name and that will tell Google to treat your domain with, and without the ”www”, as the same.
5. To protect your site
The Google security detection tool tells webmasters about the problems that their sites have. If the tool detects malware or any bad thing that affects your site security, you will find all the information there. Then, follow the suggestions, and apply the tips to solve those problems.
If you get the notification and you take action rapidly, your website ranking will not be affected. On the other side, if your site has security issues and you forget them for days. Your ranking will be affected as well, and that’s why using this tool is a great option that saves time, and money also.
6. Google Search Console lets you monitor the indexed pages
A technically-healthy website that has updated content should get a growing index status, and that’s of course if you add new content periodically. However, you can’t find exactly what happens in your index if you’re not using the Google webmaster.
So, you can find if your number of indexed pages is dropping or not, and that’s a good way to make your website better, by taking the right decisions at the right time.
These are not all the reasons to use the Google Search Console (previously named Webmaster Tool), but, they are the most important ones to consider. So, if you don’t have an account yet, create yours, and start applying the Google tips, and improve your website or blog content and index. Later, you will find things easier, and the traffic will be better with good content that people love and search engines index.
