Google Webmaster Tool (GWT)

 Google Webmaster Tools now know as Google Search Console is a web interface provided by Google free of charge for webmasters. It is widely used by the webmasters to check the status of indexing and optimization of your website for the visibility on search engine. This is an essential tool for the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of each and every site. 

As of May 20, 2015, Google rebranded Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.

( Image Source : amazeemetrics.com )

We are elaborating 9 important features you really should be using for your website for the betterment and to gain access to GWT (Google Webmaster Tools), you need to add on your website and follow the Google's instructions.

This will help in optimization of your website.  

HTML Improvements 

At Search Appearance > HTML Improvements, Google points out problems with meta descriptions, title tags and non-indexable content. You should address all of these problems.

( Image Source : amazeemetrics.com )

Sitelinks

Sitelinks are automatically generated links that may appear under your site's search results. At Search Appearance > Sitelinks you can demote unwanted links, whereby they are replaced with new ones.

Search Queries

Update (1.6.2015): This report was recently replaced by the new Search Analytics report.

Search queries, found at Search Traffic > Search Queries, give an overview of the most important keywords and disclose unused potential for your website. For each search query you get the following information:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• CTR = Clicks / Impressions
• Average position

( Image Source : Search Engine Land )

Links to Your Site

At Search Traffic > Links to Your Site you find the domains that link to your website the most. In addition, your most linked pages are listed.

You need to check regularly for external links (links from other websites that refer to your content). Bad links, e.g. from link networks, can harm your search engine rankings.

Internal Links

In Google Webmaster Tools, at Search Traffic > Internal Links, you can check if your important landing pages are well linked internally.

Mobile

At Search Traffic > Mobile Usability, your website is checked against the relevant criteria.

This is an important part of GWT and it is very important that your website is fully optimize for mobile devices as per google.

( Image Source : amazeemetrics.com )

Crawl Errors

At Crawl > Crawl Errors, Google Webmaster Tools shows not accessible pages the crawler has visited based on external or internal links. 

These are the errors comes in crawl errors at GWT and they are generated from deleted or blocked pages or from incorrect linking or indexing on many directories. Since, they have negative impact on user experience so you have to redirect these errors to suitable and / or available pages (with a 301 redirect).   

Fetch as Google

At Crawl > Fetch as Google you can test single pages by entering their URL and clicking on Fetch and Render. If the tested page is not in Google's Index, you can submit it directly at this point (Button Submit to Index).

Sitemaps

At Crawl > Sitemaps you can submit and validate your sitemaps.

Sitemap is an important factor for any website to get indexed on search engine. For Google sitemap.xml has to be submitted in GWT to get the visibility on google search engine.

For more info click here