Motivity Tour: Google Webmaster Tools Integration

Spiders and Robots and Sitemaps – Oh My!

Most companies would love to have a better understanding of Google rankings, and what they can do to improve them.  If you have an inquiring mind about this subject, you’ve certainly ran across Google Webmaster Tools.  This is a great tool for diagnosing errors that can affect your search rankings and getting a handle on what the “search spiders” see when they “crawl” your site – sounds scary, I know, but in this case spiders are actually a good thing.

Google Webmaster Tools is a very useful tool for website administrators, but if not checked regularly you are not maximizing utilization and errors will be missed.

Our website optimization platform – Motivity CMS is fully integrated with Google Webmaster Tools, in addition to other Google Tools like Google Website Optimizer, Google Maps, Google Adwords and Google Analytics.  To read an overview of  how we’ve integrated with these tools, read our blog entry Motivity CMS is Now Integrated with Google Analytics and More.  Motivity provides you a quick way to check for issues identified by Webmaster Tools from within the content manager any time you’re passing through to make a quick site edit.

We’d like to share some screenshots of what the Webmaster Tools interface looks like from within Motivity – so here we go.

Website Information – the 411 on 404s.

The Website Information section on the top left tells you how the search engines have recognized your site in the following areas:

• If your site has been verified
• If your site has been indexed by the Google
• If your site has ever been crawled by the spiders
• Which geo-location area is associated with your site
• What preferred domain is selected for the site
• The speed that your current crawl rate is set

These settings can be changed by using the Settings section directly below the Information section.

Here you can select:

• The speed of the crawl rate
• The Geolocation (country) you would like to be listed in
• What your preferred domain setting is (This helps Google to display URLs according to YOUR preference – nice!)

By selecting some settings you gain some control over how Google sees your site, and more control is always a good thing.

Messages – Updates and info.

The messages area allows you receive updates from Webmaster Tools on things that you’ve recently submitted, like a “URL removal request received” notification, or confirmation if you choose a new verified owner for one of your URLs. It’s great because you can keep track of these things all in one place, instead of having to log in to a separate tool to view this information. You can even read and delete the messages in this area.

Google Sitemaps – Submit it to win it.

Google Sitemaps are what the entire Webmaster Tools were originally designed around. Using this Motivity feature, you can upload your very first sitemap if you haven’t ever done this, or if you do some site re-organization, you can submit a new sitemap. By submitting a sitemap you are helping Google to index your site more easily.  Sitemaps help tell Google where to find important information on your site – hence the “map” part.  If you haven’t created one for your site yet, you should! And then promptly submit it here!

Under the Sitemap submittal area you can see what sitemap file was submitted and when, and how many URLS were included. Pretty great, right?

Keywords – A quick view of how people found your site.

The keyword area in Motivity’s Webmaster Tools area is a rundown of the top searched keywords people use when searching for your site on Google.  This will give you some insight into how people are finding your website, and can even help you get ideas for new words to use in PPC efforts, or to incorporate into your site content.  This feature allows you to view the source of the keyword (external versus internal).  Also, this area has pagination so you can view several pages of keywords easily.

Crawl Issues – Be prepared for the bots.

How can crawl issues on my site effect my Google rankings?  Well, let’s explore that – periodically  the Googlebot will make its way through your site looking for new information to take in.  The search bot is really just trying to learn, they don’t mean any harm. Sometimes the Googlebot will get tripped up by crawl issues – and this can make the Googlebot angry.  When you anger the Googlebot, there’s only one recourse for him – he drops your rankings in Google – bad news bears.

The way to avoid this is always to make your site a place where the bot can easily maneuver around.  Providing it with a sitemap as a guide can help with this. If you have some content that you DON’T want it to find, you can put up obstacles by putting “robot.txt” files on certain URLs that you don’t want to be tracked by Google.

I know what you’re thinking, “You can’t hide from robots!” but I say to you, yes, yes you can. In all seriousness this tool helps the bot easily index your site, and that makes everyone happy.

The Crawl Issue feature in Motivity gives you the URL associated with any issue you are having in the following areas:

• HTTP errors (such as 404 errors)
• Site Maps
• URLs Not Followed
• Page Not Found
• URLs that are restricted by robots.txt (ROBOTS!)
• URLs that timed out
• Unreachable  URLs

This feature also allows you to learn when an error was detected and any relevant details.  Identifying and fixing these crawl issues will make you, and the robots, and your Google rankings much much happier.

Request a Demo

Are you intrigued by Motivity and want to learn more about what it can do for your site?  Request a demo now!

Thanks for the laughs!

That concludes the tour of the Google Webmaster Tools integration with Motivity! Thanks for joining me on this wild ride through the land of robots and spiders.   Be on the lookout for future installments of Motivity Tours through the other Google Tools we’ve integrated with.  See you then!