![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/webmaster-tools.jpg\")
If you are serious about your dental practice website you will want to know that it is performing as well as possible and gaining the best possible exposure in search engines.<\/p>\nIf you are serious about your dental practice website you will want to know that it is performing as well as possible and gaining the best possible exposure in search engines.<\/p>\n
Just because a website looks pretty doesn’t necessarily mean that it is working well; in fact many websites with lots of glossy images and gimmicky widgets are functionally compromised and don’t work well in Google. We covered one of the key performance issues – page load speed – in an earlier article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Google provides two free tools which all dentists can use to monitor the performance of their websites, namely Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. It’s important to realise that whilst these tools do provide deep technical insights for experienced operators, they are also sufficiently user friendly to give an average web user high level “at a glance” insights to reassure that all is functioning correctly. All Dental Media marketing clients have direct access to both of these excellent tools. In this article we will take a closer look at some of the features of Webmaster Tools.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This free online tool provides comprehensive information about how your website is functioning “under the hood” and will flag any performance issues that need to be resolved. GWMT is set up within a standard Google account and requires validation to prove to Google that you are an authorised webmaster for the site concerned. This is a simple process and can be done a few different ways, for example uploading a validation file to your web space which Google cross-references. If you already have Analytics installed, Google can also use this for the validation process. So once you are up and running, what are the key features in GWMT that you should be monitoring?<\/p>\n As the name suggests, this is an overview page which shows simple information about your site – any crawl errors, new messages from Google, search queries and the status of your site map. You can drill further into this data from the overview page.<\/p>\n Google has become increasingly proactive about feedback for website owners and actually leaves important messages for you within GWMT. There are many different forms of message but examples include notifications about significant traffic increases to your site, security issues (if you’ve been hacked) and if Google has issued your site with any penalties. The penalty message is particularly important – if your site has dropped significantly in the rankings, you may have received a manual penalty for one or more transgressions of Google’s publishing guidelines. Typically this type of penalty is issued where poor quality SEO has been undertaken e.g. building lots of poor quality back-links, keyword stuffing or duplicating content. If you do see one of these messages, you may wish to call our search team on 01332 672548<\/strong> to seek expert guidance. Ignoring a penalty message in GWMT simply means that your website will continue to languish so please address it quickly.<\/p>\n Here you can find important information about various on-page elements of your website. There are a couple of fairly advanced features, such as structured data, which are best used by your search marketing partner<\/a> but an area all webmasters should take notice of are the html improvements which Google identifies. Here you will see feedback on key page elements e.g. page titles, which may need improvement. If you see issues reported here, please contact your designer to rectify them.<\/p>\n This section should be used in conjunction with Google Analytics to gain insights into how your dental website is performing in the search engines. You can see search query trends, average ranking position for key search terms and comprehensive information about other websites which link to your site as well as internal link data. In this section you will also see the all-important ‘manual penalty’ messages which Google has been handing out to lots of over-optimised dental websites over the last 18 months.<\/p>\n Here you can see how many of your website pages (URLs) have been indexed by Google – all pages in a well designed site should be indexed, so if you are seeing a discrepancy, then its time to speak to your designer. This section also shows Google’s interpretation of the keywords within your page content and where those keywords occur. This is useful to make sure that your content is suitably balanced and that your chosen keywords are suitably significant.<\/p>\n “Crawl” refers to the process where the Google search spider (or crawler) “reads” all of the content within your website. Good design ensures that the search spider will be able to access all of your relevant data without any problems.<\/p>\n This section of GWMT shows where crawl errors have been generated, crawl frequency and information about your sitemap. A sitemap is a file with a simple listing of all your site pages which help Google to navigate and index all of your content correctly. You should also ensure that a sitemap has been added for your site and that it is being updated regularly.<\/p>\n This is fairly self-explanatory. Google is quite adept at identifying where a site has been hacked. In this circumstance, Google could remove the site from the search index until the security breach has been fixed and any malicious content removed.<\/p>\n This section starts to cover more technical aspects but one area you may wish to examine is the tool which measures site load speed. Remember that Google awards sites which load quickly and penalises those which load slowly. You may be surprised at what you find – is the super fast mobile site that your dental designer promised really that fast? Typically not, so you may wish to ask appropriate questions based on what you find.<\/p>\n The last section which you may find of interest covers author stats. Where your search marketing partner has helped you gain authorship (more in this article here<\/a>), then GWMT will report stats for pages where your authorship profile appears. Ideally you should this trend increasing over time as you add new, author verified content, to your web properties.<\/p>\n Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) is an essential tool for helping to ensure that your dental practice website is set up and performing optimally. By addressing any performance issues highlighted in GWMT, you will improve the chances of your website appearing more prominently in Google.<\/p>\n If you would like to know more about GWMT or maybe need it set up for your practice website, please call the Dental Media web team<\/a> on 01332 672548<\/strong> and we will be pleased to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A “must have” Google tool to help manage your web presence If you are serious about your dental practice website you will want to know that it is performing as well as possible and gaining the best possible exposure in …<\/p>\nGoogle Webmaster Tools (GWMT)<\/h3>\n
The Dashboard<\/h3>\n
Site messages<\/h3>\n
Search appearance<\/h3>\n
Search traffic<\/h3>\n
Google Index<\/h3>\n
Crawl data<\/h3>\n
Security issues<\/h3>\n
Other resources<\/h3>\n
Author stats<\/h3>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n