Webmaster Tools is an essential bit of kit for anyone wanting to improve their website’s Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO). In the following tutorial I will detail how to go about getting this set-up so you can start monitoring all kinds of data which will help you start to rise up the rankings.
If you don’t know where to start SEO can be a bit of a challenge – so it’s vital you have some direction of what needs to be improved, but also, what is working for you.
The best thing about Google Webmaster Tools is that it’s free – all you need is Google Account. Go to google.co.uk and click on “You”.
Once signed up, you’ll have a shiny new Gmail email address and some other Google applications. Next, go to google.com/webmasters/tools and sign in. From here, you want to click the “Add a Site” button.
Now you need to Verify your ownership. There are a few different ways that this can be done, but in this instance we’ll use the “HTML tag” method.
You’ll be supplied a snippet of code – simply copy this into your website’s home page <head> section (in the area before the first <body>):
Once the code has been added, click “Verify”, and your done.
I’ll follow this blog up with an in-depth look at some of the features that will help you on your quest to SEO glory!