If you don’t already have a Google Webmaster account login, I highly recommend you do. You can sign up here or if you have a Google account for your business (say through Adwords, Analytics, Merchant Center, etc.), then you can sign up through the “My Account” area in the upper right of the screen when you are logged into your account.
By having a Google Webmaster tool, you can find many traffic opportunities, especially for SEO, not identified anywhere else…and you will get these right from the horse’s mouth!
Here is how to uncover traffic opportunities and appropriate suggestions for you to take as action steps:
- From the Dashboard, see the keyword phrases that are ranking well and then see which pages are indexed for these terms.ACTION STEPS: optimize these pages for SEO – if it is not ranked #1 in Google, you have work to do! J Also, an advanced SEO strategy is to use these pages to get other pages indexed well too.
- Under Site Configuration, click on Crawler Access – if spiders are crawling parts of your site hierarchy that you don’t want them to (e.g. Paid Search landing pages that may be duplicate pages), you can tell Google to stop. Pages with duplicate content can hurt your SEO rankings because you are competing with yourself with multiple pages. You will want to avoid this.
- Under Site Configuration, click on Sitelinks – this feature helps control what Google shows when Google’s search engine results display the “ten pack” for your business.ACTION STEPS: What can be removed?I like to tell Google to block certain areas of my site that are not critical for attracting new customers (e.g. Shipping Page, Return Policy, Privacy Policy, etc.) and parts of my site departments that not strong performers (e.g. a department page like Accessories versus a top tier department page). Maybe these are different for your online store, but the concept is the same – you can optimize these listings for your advantage. This is an underutilized technique.
- Under Site Configuration, click on Settings – there are two traffic tips for this section:ACTION STEPS:
1. You can geographically target your traffic. For instance, if you only ship within the United States, you can tell Google this to help them generate targeted traffic to you. If you sell internationally, you can select countries that you only ship to.2. The other VERY important step on this page is to tell Google your preferred domain. For instance, when sites link to you, they might use different URL structures such as: - www.YourOnlineStore.com
- http://YourOnlineStore.com
- http://www.YourOnlineStore.com
You will notice three different URLs above. To maximize the SEO benefit of sites that link to you, you will want to let Google know your preferred domain. Here is more information from Google about the preferred domain.
I prefer setting my preferred domain to be
“Display URLs as www.YourOnlineStore.com.”
- Under Your site on the web, click on Top Searches – here you will find the highest ranking search phrases and ones that are driving the most traffic…two different lists. There are actionable items on both.ACTION STEPS:
1. Download each table and identify which keywords that you will want to focus your efforts to improve their Google rankings then begin your optimization process.2. Identify keywords that are not ranking well and implement paid search efforts to make sure you are getting your share of the keyword’s traffic.3. Take a look at the actual keyword results and see which URL of yours is ranked for the keyword. If it is not the optimal URL, you can work on either optimizing the best URL or if you don’t have an ideal page on your online store for the keyword, you can create one.
- Under Your site on the web, click on Links to your site – Google is kind enough to show you the actual sites (and pages) that are linking to particular pages on your online store.ACTION STEP:
Take a look at the sites linking to your site. Are the links to you optimal…do they use good anchor tags and point to your best pages? If not, see if you can work with those sites to optimize the links to your site.Try emailing or calling the site owner. Usually, you will find that owners of active websites will adjust your link. If you find inactive (or abandoned) sites – the lights are on but no one is home – simply, move on. - Under Your site on the web, click on Keywords – this area shows the keywords Google thinks your site is all about. Even if this isn’t exactly accurate from your point of view, you can often identify keyword opportunities.ACTION STEPS:
1. When writing copy on your site, you can keep these keywords in mind to sprinkle within your page content.2. If you don’t see keywords on this list and you think Google is “missing-the-boat” about what your site is about, you can make sure to build pages and implement keyword rich copy to help Google figure out how to classify your online store. - Under Your site on the web, click on Internal Links – this feature shows pages with many internal links, which are links within your online store pointing to other internal pages.ACTION STEPS:
1. A good rule to remember regarding SEO best practices is that internal links can significantly help boost your SEO rankings for a particular page. Therefore, you can create more internal links to pages that need help indexing well. And remember to use good anchor tags when linking within your online store.2. For pages that have good internal links and are not indexing well in search engines, these pages likely need other optimization other than internal links. Look to optimize META tags, H1 copy, page copy and external links. - Under Diagnostics, click on HTML suggestions - this feature shows issues regarding HTML on your site. By fixing these, you can enjoy better SEO rankings and find more customers today.ACTION STEPS:
1. Duplicate META descriptions – whenever possible, adjust META tags within your online store to make each unique2. Long META descriptions – avoid too long descriptions3. Short META descriptions – too short META descriptions are ineffective. Good description tags can help get customers to click on your result once you are indexed in the search engines.
4. Duplicate title tags – since title tags remain an important SEO tactic, this fix is a no-brainer. It is easy, fast and effective to adjust the META Title tag!
Under Labs, click on Site Performance - this feature shows pages with slow load time. This might help you identify potential performance issues within your online store.
ACTION STEP:
If you find your online store is slow to load, this might hinder your ability to rank well. You should have your IT person (if there is one) investigate for potential issues. Perhaps your site’s code is heavy or there are unnecessary calls to dynamic content.
To investigate your site’s speed, check out the free tool, Full Page Test, at Pingdom.com.
Good luck. There’s a lot of information here. I hope it helps you drive more traffic to your online store!
Here’s to your online success,
David
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