Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [34]
Tuesday: Use Search Engine Tools to Check Your Website
Each major search engine provides diagnostic features that allow website owners and managers to track search engine spider activity, errors, and recommendations. Years ago, this was something that only a few diagnostic or analytics programs provided and rarely in the same toolset. Now, the search engines provide wonderful technical diagnostic tools that help you troubleshoot your website’s presence in the search engines, if there are any issues. Even more impressive, many issues can be remedied prior to any ill effects being felt by losing search results, so long as someone is monitoring these tools on a regular basis.
Google Webmaster Tools
Whenever a website is having troubles being found in the search engines or having problems getting crawled, I find that in the vast majority of cases, it is an issue with the website. Programming, scripts, and changes by some well-meaning programmer can create a problem if the search engines are not considered. Once in a while, I find that the site has not done well because of some remnants of “spammy” code that was meant to trick the search engines. In cases like this, a “reconsideration request” needs to be made once the offending tactics have been removed. Only in very rare cases have I found the search engine to be the problem.
The Google Webmaster Tools are a significant resource for diagnosing, tracking and receiving important messages from Google. This toolset provided by the search engine allows site owners to view how often their site is crawled by the search engines, the pages downloaded and if there are any pages or sections that are not being found. The tools provide the health of the website by showing rankings, click-throughs, typical keywords and other tracking tools that provide a unique insight into the performance of your website.
The Google Webmaster Tools are a significant resource, and the tools and reports are being changed, updated and improved constantly. This is not a one-time log in and check-up. It should be made a monthly or quarterly check in to ensure that everything is working as intended for the search engines. While this is a Google-only toolset, you can be assured that if your site is performing well in Google, then you will most likely perform well in the others.
Although this section is not meant to be a comprehensive view of the webmaster tools from each search engine, it will focus on the most important technical diagnostics available from these tools.
Troubleshooting Errors
The crawl error report provides instant insight into the comparison between your live website and the search engine’s index. Any errors that Google receives while crawling your site will show up here. You will see a report of specific page URLs that are not being found by Google. This can be a result of added plug-ins, pages removed, new pages added, changes in programming, or any combination of odd factors (see Figure 4-3).
Figure 4-3: Google Webmaster Tools—crawl errors
If you are going through a website redesign and your site structure has changed, this report will help you find pages that have been “lost” in Google’s index. In other words, when the new site went live, Google could no longer find the old page that was copied into the index. Unless you use a redirect to tell Google where the new page location is, the page will be deleted from the server. Chapter 13 will go into much more detail about technical troubleshooting, especially for redesigning a new website. Google Webmaster Tools will be your best tool for ensuring a smooth transition between your old website and your new one, should you redesign your website.