When it comes to monitoring your web presence and website health, Google Webmaster Tools (now known as Google Search Console) is the most effective tool for identifying issues with your site such as indexation and crawl errors which is ideal for SEO.
Crawl Errors
If your site has thousands of pages, it can be a difficult process monitoring the status of all the pages and quickly being able to identify issues to resolve them. Google Search Console has a Crawl Errors feature that identifies any problems that arose the last time they crawled your site.
Google provide an extensive list of all the URLs which could not be found during their last crawl, as well as redirect and server errors. This is extremely useful as you can then work your way through the list and correct all the errors whilst marking them as ‘done’.
Sitemap Status
Google Search Console also provides you with information on how many pages were submitted in your sitemap and how many of these pages have been indexed i.e. are now appearing in the search results.
As well as this, Search Console also gives you insight into any errors or warnings within your sitemap that may be causing problems. A common problem that occurs is that you have put URL’s in the sitemap that are already being blocked from being indexed by your robots.txt file.
Search Query Analysis
Download a Search Analytics report from Search Console and see how often your site appears in the search results, for which search queries and what the click through rate to your site is for each of these terms. Identifying these terms will aid you with your keyword research as you will be able to see which terms you rank on pages 3-4 that with a little optimisation could see you achieving page 1 results.
External Links
There are many tools that enable you to monitor your inbound links however these are often paid and not real-time data. Google Search Console has its own feature where you can see what sites are linking to you the most and which of your pages are the most linked to.
Need help monitoring your online presence? Get in touch with the team at In Front Digital now.