seo
posted in search engine optimization  on 17 January 2008
by Andrew Lang 
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Google Webmaster Tools and keyword analysis

This article talks about Google Webmaster Tools. You'll need a Google account to use GWT - you can sign up to a free Google account here if you haven't already done so.

If you're already logged in, you can find Webmaster Tools from this list :- https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) helps you find out:-
  • who's linking to your website
  • how well your site is performing in Google's search results - which keywords are used the most to find your site
  • how recently Google visited your site to check out any new information you may have added
  • content analyis - check, for example, if you're using the same HTML title on more than one page (not terribly useful for search engines)
....amongst other details of your site in relation to Google.

Search analysis

The most useful facility I've found in GWT is the keyword search analysis. Look at the figures below regarding one site I manage - ticketssoldout.net:-

search analysis on Google Webmaster Tools

The keywords highlighted in red are important because you'll see the site is getting significant traffic from these keywords despite the fact they're not featuring in the top-10 search results. This tells me that there's a large volume of searchers hunting down these particular tickets and that I'd get a lot more traffic if I did go top-10 with those keyword/keyphrases. This is what you want to find when you look at these stats - performing keywords despite their low-ish ranking.

How to make these keywords rank higher

Using the above example, I could improve the ranking of these tickets by featuring them on the front-page of the site, and getting some links to the particular ticket page featuring the keyword/keyphrase in the anchor text.

Conclusion

It's important to know where the high search volume lies because once you identify the keywords that are high volume, you can target these in your optimization strategy and rank higher for them - bringing you more traffic.
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