subject: Essential (and Free) Seo Tools [print this page] Google has some amazing free tools for anyone who has a website to use. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are two essential SEO tools that are FREE and are available to help one measure how their website is doing. These tools may seem a bit complex but hopefully this article can help break things down for you...
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools is a really nice app which allows you to see exactly what the Google Spiders see. It's free to use and fairly easy to setup. The hardest part of the setup process is adding a line of code on your home page for Google to verify you as the owner. Once that is all set up then you are good to go.
* There is a lot of data that can be seen but here are what I feel are the most important things to keep an eye on: Crawl Errors: This lets you know if the Google spiders had a problem when looking at your site. Major problems here can be bad so use this to find and diagnose issues.
* Internal Links: Here you can see what pages of your website are linking to other pages. Google likes it when your website has adequate navigation throughout your site.
* Links to Your Site: This shows you what websites are linking to yours. This is beneficial in seeing where traffic to your website may be coming from.
Google Analytics
Another awesome tool is Google Analytics. Analytics offers more of a performance overview of your site as opposed to Google Webmaster Tools. Google Analytics is the best way to measure your website's performance to let you know what SEO efforts may be needed or optimized.
* Google Analytics also has a lot of features. Here are the biggies: Visitors: See who is visiting your website.
* Traffic Sources: Let's you know where these people are coming from.
* Content: Let's you see what pages are they checking out when they arrive.
* Goals: You can set up goals for your site to help you measure your conversion rates.
* Keyword: What are people searching for in Google that leads them to your site?
I use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools all the time to help us optimize our client's websites for them. Having these tools is a really big asset but the secret lies in taking all this data and making sense out of it all. Feel free to comment below if you have any questions about the two tools and we will be more than happy to answer them for you.
