Google Webmaster Tools provides many functions that are very useful to search engine optimisers
. It is a service provided by Google. If they approve it, then so should you. My top 5 reasons for opening a GWT account are as follows:
1. Site Troubleshooting - Every website owner should ensure that the coded in their website is not hindering its crawling and ranking. GWT allows you to gain valuable feedback from Google. They will inform you of any issues it has with your site and they will even make HTML suggestions. This is very important information and should be accessed by all.
2. Site Speed - The speed of your site has now become a ranking factor. Fast loading sites will rank higher than slow loading sites. GWT provides information on how it views the site speed of your website. The site performance option will tell you how long it takes to download a web page and how you can improve the download speed. It also compares your website to other websites so you get an idea if it is fast or slow.
3. Link Analysis- Inbound links to your website is probably the most important ranking factor there is. Any information that Google can give you about these links is important. In GWT, there are options for 'Links to Your Site' and 'Internal Links'. Both of these options will give you a very rough indication of the amount and type of links in your site. It is not accurate but it is good to be able to see what Google sees.
4. Geographic Target - If your website is solely targeting Ireland and you have a .com TLD then your website is at a disadvantage on local search engines. Most people search through local search engines like Google.ie so it is important that you level the playing field. Ideally your website should have a .ie TLD but for many reasons this option is not always available to businesses. To fix this you can set a geographic target in GWT. Google will then associate your .com website with being from Ireland.
5. Link Analysis - Links are very important for achieving high rankings. Google is notoriously shy in providing inbound link information. Typing site: and your domain into their search engine returns very few results. It is possible to view a greater number of the links Google has found through GWT. GWT also provides you with inner linking information too.