Free Google Website Tools Webmasters Should Know About

If you have a website, there are a number of free tools available for webmasters through Google that are absolutely indispensable in helping you increase your website's visibility and traffic. The Google search engine is one of the most popularly used search tools on the Internet. You can find these tools by going to Google.com and then clicking on business Ranking high in the results for keyword phrases that relate to your products or service is going to increase your traffic and increase your sales. Google provides a number of free tools that help you see exactly how well your website is doing and show you what you need to improve, what pages are not ranking and what is working for you.

Though Google offers a number of different tools for a small fee, for the purposes of this article, we will focus on Google Webmaster Tools. This free service let's you know a number of pieces of valuable information about your website. First, you have to verify that you own the site by adding a specified meta tag to the header of your home page or upload an HTML file. Once you do this, you will be better equipped to optimize your site.

Google Webmaster Tools: Diagnostics

Googlebot is the web crawler that searches the Internet to find relevant pages that match up with the search terms people enter on Google's search engine. The diagnostics section focuses on what Googlebot comes up with when it crawls your site as well as your site's mechanics.

Web Crawl-This shows you if there are any errors or problems that Googlebot encounters when it crawls your site.

Content Analysis-Problems with your site's meta tags, meta titles and descriptive information will show up here.

Mobile Crawl-Problems and errors on pages designed for mobile phone viewing are found here.

Google Webmaster Tools: Statistics

This set of tools focuses on the traffic that is coming to your site and how it is getting there.

Top Search Queries - Find out which keyword terms people are using that generate your site in the results list, the percentage of clicks you got when pages from your site were shown, and what number on the list pages of your site appear in the Google search engine.

Crawl Stats-this shows you a bar graph of how your pages are faring in PageRank as rated when crawled by Google's Googlebot. They are shown as ranking high, medium, low or not yet assigned.

Subscriber Stats-If you have subscriber feeds like RSS or Atom available on your site, this will show you how many subscribers you have to those feeds.

What Googlebot Sees-this shows you what phrases and content are used in external links to your site. It helps if these phrases are related to the content, products and services on your site to help generate the appropriate traffic.

Index Stats-this tool lets you see what pages have links to your site and how your pages are indexed by Google.

Google Webmaster Tools: Links

Pages with External Links-Here you will see which pages on your website have inbound links coming from other websites.

Pages with Internal Links-here you can find out which of your pages have links pointing to them from other pages on your site.

Sitelinks-This shows you which of your links may appear directly in Google's search results.

Google Webmaster Tools: Tools

There are a number of other tools that you can utilize free of charge as well. For example, you can submit a site map with all the pages on your site to expedite the process of including every page in your site on Google's search engine. You can also:

Analyze robots.txt

Generate robots.txt

Set Geographic Target

Enhanced Image Search

Manage Site Verification

Set Crawl Rate

Set Preferred Domain

Remove URLs

Before you invest in any pricey ranking tools or analytic software, check out what Google has to offer for free!

Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate for ApolloHosting.com. She brings years of experience as a small business consultant to helping prospective clients understand the ways in which a website may benefit them both personally and professionally. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting [http://www.apollohosting.com], ecommerce hosting [http://www.apollohosting.com/e-commerce], vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.

Why Local Businesses Should Use Google AdWords?

Local businesses should make it a point to use the power of Google AdWords especially in driving traffic that converts. Your local business will earn the visibility you need for your business to generate more leads and then monetize from these leads as you convert them to sales.

AdWords is a form of advertisement developed by Google that enables you to promote your business online to increase your internet presence and drive the necessary traffic to your website. In order to do this, your website must first be optimized with sufficient useful and relevant content and abides by the terms of service of Google.

What AdWords can do is to attract highly targeted traffic to your site especially when you learn how to fully customize your AdWords campaign to be location-specific. These days, online users have already started to learn how to use technology to their advantage and are starting to look for their solution within their specific location.

Statistics have also shown that most of the search engine population is composed of local searchers and it is the local searchers who have the penchant for buying products or services online. If you want to capture this population, you must be able to learn how to use Google AdWords to your greatest advantage.

One important aspect in the use of AdWords is the identification of the right keywords. You have to know what your target market will use to search for their solution that your business can offer. In order to appear in the prime position of search engine results and local business listings, you have to make sure that you are using the right keywords and that these keywords contain the location of your business.

Google AdWords increases the popularity and search-ability of your local business. With proper use and implementation, you can attract your target market, increase your local presence online, and steadily build your internet credibility and exposure. You can get the highest volumes of traffic at the least possible costs when you know the ins and outs in launching your AdWords campaign. If you haven't, start using the AdWords platform of Google now.

Are you spending thousands of dollars on your website and you are nowhere to be "found" on Google?

If your answer is Yes, our Search Engine Marketing services may be a great fit to you. We provide PPC Management, AdWords Management, Web Analytics and SEO Services.

Why You Should Be Using Google AdWords

The purpose of Google AdWords is to provide the most effective advertising available for businesses of any size. AdWords provides a number of benefits which include:

a. Reaching people looking for your product or service

b. Allowing you to fully control your ad budget

c. Giving you the ability to easily create and edit your ads

d. The functionality which allows you to see your ads on Google within minutes of creating them

AdWords gives you unlimited access to detailed performance reports that help track the effectiveness of your online advertising campaigns. Additionally, Google provides the most knowledgeable customer service possible. You can expect a prompt response to your email questions, usually within a single business day or instantly through their online database of frequently asked questions

The key benefits of using AdWords include:

1. Control. With all the great features a Google AdWords account provides, the most beneficial is the ability to fully customize your online advertising. Google offers you many options such as; Cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so you pay only for the clicks you've received at a price you've set; Cost-per-impression (CPM) pricing on the content network for those who prefer to pay by the impression; Daily budget you set; Targeted ads you create and manage; Ad scheduling: run your ads on the days and hours you want; Performance reports 24/7 online in your account; Advertising network of sites and products for increased ad exposure.

With no monthly minimum spending limit or time commitment and only a minimal fee to set up your account, Google AdWords is the ideal marketing tool for any sized businesses.

2. Success. Google relies on it's advertisers to be successful. The more you use AdWords, the more revenue they generate. And of course, you should only continue using online advertising if you are seeing a positive return on your investment. As a result, Google provides you with cost estimations and tools to help you control pricing and continually ad features to share what makes AdWords advertising work.

3. Support. Google has done a good job of providing support to all of their advertisers. They have created an online Help Center to make sure you benefit from the tools they provide and to give you the flexibility of controlling your own account. You'll find the Help Center filled with useful program information, performance tips, and step-by-step instructions for creating and maintaining a Google AdWords account.

If you're unable to find what you need on the Google AdWords site, or via Google webmaster tools, the customer support team can provide you with the detailed answer to your questions and offer additional assistance.

For anyone interested in making money online, Google AdWords is a great place to start. This is because they are the most popular and widely used. As a result, many of the questions you might have - no matter how unique your circumstance have probably already been answered through the online resource center or when calling a Google AdWords representative.

Start today by visiting the AdWords site and opening an account. You will need to complete some basic information, but you'll be up and running in no time.

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 13 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. If you want to improve the conversion of any affiliate product you might be selling, I encourage you to check out our SEO training program.

Why You Should Register Your Site With Google Webmaster Tools

I've have more websites than the average person: 15 at the last count. It seems that whenever I have a new idea for internet marketing, I create a new website. You'd think that means I'm making tons of money, but unfortunately that hasn't happened yet.

When I first started doing this, I would diligently register my website with Google Webmaster Tools. This is a free tool that Google has. It shows you stats such as the last time your website was crawled and if there are any crawl errors (this is important to know).

But then I started getting lazy. This step got omitted more and more. I decided it didn't really matter.

But now I've changed my mind and I think it's important.

The main reason for this change of heart came about when I created one particular new website. Google crawled my site pretty quickly and my home page was indexed within days.

But weeks went by without the other content pages showing up. When I typed in site: and my site in Google, it showed that only the home page, privacy policy, and contact us pages were there.

I patiently waited for Google to find the rest of my pages. I had a site map, both for the visitor and an xml version for bots. But after a few more weeks-nothing.

So finally I registered the site with the Google webmaster tool. And I discovered something very interesting.

Google was, in fact, crawling my site on a regular basis. But my site was generating crawl errors!

The crawl errors page of the tool led me to discover a problem in my htaccess file. It turns out I was accidentally hiding all of my pages from the Google bot except for the home page, privacy, and contact us.

I had copied the htaccess from another site that needed the code in it. But for my new website, it had an adverse effect.

So after that experience, I'll always register my website with the webmaster tool.

Now I'm not sure that registering the site map makes a difference as far as getting indexed goes.

On another new website, I noticed only one page on one of my new websites got indexed. So I made sure I registered the site map with the webmaster tool, hoping that would help Google find the rest of my pages.

But a few days later, it didn't seem to make a difference. The additional pages still were not indexed.

Regardless, the tool is still very valuable. For instance, you can find out when Google last crawled your site, how many pages are indexed, and if there are any crawl errors.

It also tells you some basic analytics information such as which are the top keywords that were used to find your site, and also a list of external sites that link to yours.

As far as which pages are indexed, that's an area that the tool is lacking, in my opinion. It tells you how many pages are indexed, but not which ones.

But overall, the webmaster tool gives you some very helpful analytics. More importantly, it alerts you quickly to crawl errors that may be preventing your site from being indexed.

Louis Banalty has quite a few websites that are registered with Google's webmaster tool. He also has a website with wood pellets for sale and information on pellet stove pellets.

Tools That Every Website Owner Should Be Using Right Now

Google not only has the most popular search engine, but they also have dozens of really useful and completely free utilities. If you are responsible for the success of a website, then there are two Google tools that you should absolutely be using right now.

Google Analytics

The first tool, Google Analytics, lets you get valuable information about the web traffic coming to your web site. Create a new Google account, if you do not already have one. After that, login to Google Analytics and click the Add Website Profile link. You can monitor multiple web sites at once, but you must be able to paste code into the web pages in order to prove ownership. This prevents you from being able to access site statistics for web sites that do not belong to you (such as your competitors).

You will need to paste the code Google Analytics provides into all of your web pages. The code should be pasted at the top of the document, within the tag. After adding a new web site profile, you will need to wait at least one day before you can start viewing data. Once the data is available and your tracking code has been confirmed, you should see a green checkmark next to the web site profile name.

When you click the web site profile name, you will be brought to the Dashboard page. This gives you a quick overview of your web site. You can drill down into each of the sections on the Dashboard page. Go through each one and examine the data. The more you look at this stuff, the more it is going to make sense to you. Do not be overwhelmed by what you see. After looking at this a few times, it will start making more sense.

You are most interested in the number of unique visitors. Your goal, of course, is to see this number steadily rise. If you do something that you think will increase traffic to your site, wait for a few days and then look at Google Analytics to confirm that there was an actual increase. If there was not, then you may need to change your strategy.

Google Web Master Tools

As with Google Analytics, Google's Web Master Tools will require you to verify site ownership. You do this by either pasting a Meta tag that Google provides in your main web page or by uploading an HTML file that they provide.

Once you paste the code in your index.html page or upload the HTML page they provide, you can click Verify. Once the site is verified, you will be brought to the Dashboard page. Now you can see what top search queries brought visitors to your site. This can help you identify whether you are using the right keywords.

You will also see whether there were any crawl errors. Crawl errors can occur when the search engine is attempting to read through your web site and index the content. These errors can cause you to lose valuable web traffic, so you want to make sure you immediately resolve any issues that Google identifies.

The data displayed in the Web Master Tools reflects data collected the last time your web site was crawled. Google does not crawl your web site every day, so it is possible that the data on the dashboard will not perfectly match the data you see in Google Analytics.

To quickly determine whether your site is being indexed, type "site: yourdomainname" into a Google search box. For example, to find out if theweb site is indexed, I need to enter "site:site name" into a search box. If you do this and get back no results, then you know your site has never been indexed.

As long as your web site does not violate any of Google's rules or use deceptive practices, it will be crawled in time. However, if you can't wait or you have recently made major changes to your site, you can submit a sitemap.

You do this through the Web Master Tools by expanding Site Configuration and clicking Sitemaps. The sitemap is a text-based file that contains Extended Markup Language (XML) tags. Do not worry if you know nothing about XML. You don't have to.

There are plenty of tools available, both free and for sale, which will build this file for you. I have had success using the trial version of Inspyder Sitemap Creator 2.0 and this will work fine if you have a small website (less than 25 pages). Once installed, you can generate a sitemap in a few minutes by simply typing in the name of your web site and clicking Go.

You can choose to exclude certain files and then generate your sitemap by clicking Create Sitemap. Alternatively, you can click Create and Upload and this will upload the sitemap directly to your web site. However, before you can do this, you will need to specify the FTP settings (username, password, URL, and remote folder name) for your web server. Once the sitemap file has been uploaded to the web server, you can use the Web Master Tools to submit the sitemap.

There is a very good reason Google's main page only contains a search box and two buttons; a page like this loads very fast. This has been one of the key factors in Google's success. If you expand the Labs link in Web Master Tools and click Site performance, you will see a page which indicates how well your site is performing. It is important that you check this and make sure your pages are not rendering slowly. This can affect your Google page ranking negatively.

It is a good idea to set aside one hour a week to reviewing the data provided with Analytics and the Web Master Tools. The easiest thing to do is just make it a Sunday night or Monday morning ritual. If you are consistent with monitoring your web site and making adjustments accordingly, your site will grow.

Sara Morgan is the author of "No Limits: How I escaped the clutches or Corporate America to live the self-employed life of my dreams". As a professional web developer for the past 12 years, she knows a thing or two about web sites. She has just completed a do-it-yourself guide for non-techies that want to build their own professional looking websites for very little money. You can sign-up to download the FREE guide from her company's website at http://www.custsolutions.net.

Google AdWords - The Top 5 Reasons You Should be Using Google AdWords

If you have a product or business and are not getting the traffic that you want to through natural listings in the search engines, then maybe it's time to try paid advertising. Paid Advertising, or Pay-per-click Advertising is becoming more and more popular with business as a way to drive targeted traffic to their website.

1. If you already have an account with Google AdWords, it will only take about 10 minutes to set up a campaign and not long after that to start seeing traffic arriving at your site. Even if you haven't set an account up yet, it should only take around 15 minutes to do so. Imagine having an online ad campaign up in running in such a short space of time!

2. You are in control of the advertising process. You get to say what areas/countries that your ad will run in so you are only targeting potential customers in certain areas which is especially important if you sell physical products. Or you can choose to show your ad worldwide if you have a digital product that can be accessed by anyone.

3. With PPC (Pay per click) Advertising, you only have to pay for visitors that click on your ad to visit your site. That way you are only driving targeted traffic to your site. If they clicked on your ad, they were obviously interested enough in your product or service to find out more. No clicks means that you don't have to pay - much more effective that banner advertising that you pay whether you get clicks or not.

4. People searching for products online are usually quite computer savvy and are used to buying online. That means that they are open to buying your product.

5. You are in control of the costs. You'll always know exactly how much you are spending as you set your budget upfront. You control how much you are willing to spend, and can allocate how much you are prepared to pay for each click. That way you can control your spending and monitor your costs easily.

As you can see, using Google AdWords is very easy and quick to set up, and you remain in control of the advertising process entirely. That way you can quickly see what is working and what isn't so you can adjust your campaign accordingly. It's the fastest way to drive targeted traffic to your website.

Now you know the reasons for using Google AdWords, why not read reviews of the Top 5 Best AdWords Guides to own.

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Google AdWords

Websites thrive on traffic. Business websites need customers. Blogs need consumers to read them and subscribe.

As a website owner, you'll probably spending a large portion of your time driving traffic to you website. There are several ways to bring traffic. You can optimize pages for the search engines. You can write articles and submit them. You can use social networking to build relationships on the internet.

One very important method of driving traffic is Google AdWords. AdWords has one important difference from all the other methods mentioned. AdWords costs money. You design an ad for your website, and then Google places your ad on their search engine results, in the paid or sponsored links section. You pay Google every time someone clicks your ad.

However, AdWords has advantages that offset the costs. Why should you use Google AdWords to drive traffic? What are the arguments for AdWords?

1) Google AdWords will start sending your website traffic immediately.

It takes time for a website to rank high enough to appear on organic search results. It takes time to write articles and submit them. It takes time to build a social network. All the other methods of driving traffic require an investment of time. These alternatives require hours of work to establish, and then may take weeks or months to show results.

AdWords will start sending traffic to your website today. As soon as you create a campaign and an ad, you can begin getting traffic.

2) Google will help you every step of the way.

Google makes a significant portion of their revenue from AdWords ads. Google makes money by you participating in AdWords and wants you to succeed. Google publishes user guides, blogs and other information to make using AdWords as easy as possible.

3) AdWords provides the information about your campaign that you need to succeed.

AdWords provides keyword research tools so you know what consumers are searching for. AdWords helps you evaluate your campaign after it is created. AdWords supplies you with the impressions, click through rates and costs of you campaign. It informs you of the Quality Score for your ads, on a scale of 1 to 10. It offers advice on how to improve the Quality Score.

4) You can control the cost of AdWords with the proper strategy.

Knowing how to obtain a good Quality Score for your ad can reduce your cost per click. A well optimized campaign can deliver traffic for just a few cents per click. The Free AdWords Strategy Guide describes step by step how to optimize your ads.

5) Anyone can obtain the top ad positions.

AdWords values quality over price. AdWords doesn't simply award the highest ad position to the highest bidder. The ad quality score is the primary factor in ad positions. That means you can advertise in highly competitive markets, using a good Quality Score to beat out other advertisers who are simply spending more. The Free AdWords Strategy Guide reveals exactly how to get a good Quality Score.

Are you over paying for your AdWords campaigns? Have you experienced any of the following problems using Google AdWords?

High cost to maintain your AdWords campaign Poor quality score affecting your bids Low Click Through Rate for your ads Minimum bid for your keywords is too high Landing pages that don't convert

Who Should Use Google AdWords Today?

Some people may not recognize the importance of Google AdWords in the internet today. But as years goes by more and more people are using this to improve their web page visibility. However, do you know who should use Google AdWords? As mentioned earlier it is helpful in the internet world therefore it goes with the saying that internet marketers as well as online business owners are the persons that will benefit most from it.

Why do you think internet marketers and online business owners need the Google AdWords campaign? If you are a newbie in the internet business, you will have a hard time understanding how this wonderful tool from Google works. It is not learned overnight and requires a lot of time studying it. It is the tool that helps business owners promotes their website in different search engines. Google is one of the most popular and commonly used search engines in the world today. Every time people will need certain information on a thing or place, they will go surf the internet to look for answers. Encyclopedias in households are not that helpful anymore since all of them are already place in the website of different dictionaries. In the event that a person wants to buy something, they would also surf the internet as their first option to see the product and the price. If you in to online business, you need to make sure that your website is properly advertise for clients to easily see it. With the use of Google AdWords, you can promote and advertise your website in the different pages as sponsored by Google.

Now, if you are still in doubt who should use Google AdWords, then you must know that online business owners, affiliate marketers and all internet marketers should use it. Get an extra help from different programs that can help you boost your online business.