Mastering Search Analytics

Chapter 12. Webmaster Tools—Data Direct from the Engines

SEO requires a great deal of site auditing and reviewing.

SEO ranking factors can be broken into on-site and off-site factors. Perhaps the least glamorous part of the SEO job is auditing and maintenance. As important as it is to measure success events and ROI, measuring and monitoring site health is even more critical. If you don’t know what the spiders are doing on your site, you may be completely blind to potential bottlenecks. The long tail of search is made up of search terms that are highly unpredictable. In fact, it is so unpredictable that the best way to cover it is to ensure that every inch of your content is indexed. To do this, you need to be able to track the spiders. This chapter is an overview of Webmaster Tools, which is your interface to the spiders.

Tools you will need in this chapter:

• Google and Bing Webmaster Tools

The Basics

Both Bing and Google provide webmaster accounts (as do some other search engines, such as Yandex). The webmaster account is the search engine’s conduit to you. It is through this account that you can access the information and data the engines choose to share to help you improve your search relevancy.

If you have not yet set up a webmaster account, you should do so both for Google and for Bing and familiarize yourself with the content and data in it. Covering the big two engines will ensure that your site gets maximum exposure, and you’ll find many great assets and tools in the webmaster ...