I am a great proponent of both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, having used them both on several of my sites (including my stock photography website). I recently wrote an article on setting up Google Analytics on your Photo Website. This article will discuss how to setup Google Webmaster Tools.
But first - Why use Webmaster Tools?
Why would you want to use Google Webmaster Tools? Well, it gives you very valuable insights into how the most “influential” search engine in the world is viewing and interacting with your site (if you are interested in traffic you need to be considering this). Following are a few of the application’s offerings:
- Learn when Google last looked at your homepage.
- See if Google is experiencing errors or problems in trying to crawl your pages. Also, what kind of errors these may be and on which particular pages.
- Find out how many of your pages are in the Google search index.
- Learn which other sites link to you (important for ranking well)
- See the top Google queries from which users reached your site. Also see the top Google queries in which a page from your site appeared in the Google results.
- Do sitemap XML sitemap submission.
- View, both graphically and numerically, crawling stats such as the number of your pages crawled per day, number of kilobytes downloaded per day, time spent downloading a page – if you have a site which is growing these are important to watch.
- Opt in to Google’s Enhanced Image Search (Appear in Google Image searches – possibly good for photography sites in my opinion)
- Etc.
If you have built a photography site that, for example, uses a lot of flash and has very heavy pages, the above data may surprise you and ultimately help you identify and fix issues and drive more customers to your site (even if your site wasn't constructed this way the information you get from the tool will be very helpful).
Google Analytics vs Google Webmaster Tools
What is the difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools? In brief, Analytics lets you see how users are interacting with your site while Webmaster Tools lets you learn how Google sees your site. The tools really complement one another. A more detailed description of Google Analytics can be found in my Analytics article if you want more information.
I really feel that webmasters will benefit from having both tools operating on their website. Once you start with the two tools you will wonder how your photo site got along without them.
Installing Google Webmaster Tools
Create an Account
You must have an account with Google. It is free. If you have an account, great, if not then go to the Google homepage www.google.com and check the upper right of the page:
Click “Sign in” and either sign in if you have an existing account (bear in mind this will tie your Webmaster Tools to this account), or if you don’t have a Google account click “Create an account now” and sign up for an account. Note: (If you have installed Analytics then you do have a Google account and you do not need to sign up for another one to install Webmaster Tools.)
Sign-in & Add Your Site
Once you have an account go to:
www.google.com/webmasters/tools
and sign in using your email and password. You should see a page similar to that below:
Simply type your site URL in the box. Example: www.yourdomain.com then click the “Add Site” button.
Verify Your Site
Google will then ask you to Verify Your Site (this helps them ensure that you are the owner of the site).
Click on the “Verify your site” link to take you to the page below where you will choose a verification method from the dropdown (both options “Add a meta tag option” and “Upload an HTML file option” work equally as well). The verification step indicates to Google that you have access to your server and can edit your files (and you are therefore an “owner”).
If you choose the meta tag option:
Note: Click on the above image if the text is too small to read.
After you have added the line of code and saved your homepage, go back to this page and click the ‘Verify” button on the bottom of the page. You should get another page that has this message on it:
If you going to try to become verified using an html file it is not a dissimilar approach. You simply create an html file with a filename Google gives you – like: googleec9d264a22d3a543.html and you upload this to your site root directory, then click the “Verify” button. Personally I like the meta tag verification technique. You don’t have to create a file, you just cut and paste – but they are both pretty straightforward.
Once your photo site is verified you are done! Google will now start gathering and displaying (to you) Webmaster Tools data about your site.
Signing-in in the future
Also, when you sign in from the Google homepage in the future…
…you will go to your Google Account page and see the products you have successfully signed up for under “My Products” – you can click through to them from here (see below).
Note: If you have clicked on Webmaster Tools (above) you will be taken to a page (below) where you click on your domain name in the Webmaster Tools Dashboard to see the Webmaster Tools main menu:
Google Webmaster Tools will provide you a host of information about your photography site. Errors Google may be encountering spidering your site, top searches driving traffic to your site from Google, what your rankings are for related queries, external and internal links, etc.
Video on What Google Webmaster Tools can do for your Site
I’ve searched far and wide for a decent Google Webmaster Tools video and oddly enough they don’t seem that easy to find (Google Analytics seems easier). However I found this one (link below) and this is actually quite good, if a little laid back.
