What to get from google Webmaster tools?
-
Hi everyone,
I've been doing optimization for our websites and tracking the results regularly but don't really know what the results actually mean. I heard that I need to check the traffic and organic results from Google analytics and Google webmaster tools. Everybody says something and not sure what to do?
Is there anyone clarify the SEO process for me - when to do what and why in simplest way?
Thanks in advance,
-
"I've been doing optimization for our websites and tracking the results regularly but don't really know what the results actually mean."
This is quite a broad statement. I'll take it that you already understand the important parts of the optimization process. So, the first question to address would be: What results were you trying to achieve?
If all you're going for is "more traffic," then you can simply look at Analytics and see whether or not organic traffic has noticeably risen or fallen to get a measure of your success. If your goal is more business, then you need to start looking at conversions and specific page flow within Analytics.
For instance, say you run an e-commerce site... perhaps you should look at the number of hits to the "thank you" page that users see after making a purchase. Is it getting more hits than it has in the past, and if so, does the increase in hits there correlate with your increased traffic, and does all of that together correlate with your SEO efforts? In a perfect world, things would look like this:
- Optimize your site
- Traffic noticeably increases
- Conversions noticeably increase
I'm sorry if this is all a little broad... it might help if we know exactly what "results" you'd like to track.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Discrepancy between FB PPC and Google Analytics
This question was answered in 2011 here: http://moz.com/community/q/facebook-ppc-number-of-clicks-according-to-fb-different-than-visits-in-analytics. Wanted to post it to the community to see if anyone had any new thoughts in the last 3 years. I have been running campaigns on Facebook and seeing dramatic discrepancies between Facebook and GA's numbers. For example, I ran a Facebook ad campaign for a chiropractor where FB shows 35 clicks to the website, but GA only shows 2! An attorney ran a Facbook promotion, got 4 clients who actually filled out a questionnaire online, but GA only showed 2 visitors exiting off the form completion page. Is this because the users did not have JS/cookies enabled? Something else? What is the recommended work around? Tracking URL?
Reporting & Analytics | | aj6130 -
Link Research Tools
Is anyone else here a user of Link Research Tools? I recently completed a Link Detox for my sites. However, it is saying that links from high quality press release sites are deadly and should be removed. They are also saying the same about the links from the Yellow Pages. Obviously I know these tools are automated, but does anyone know why they are showing these links as 'deadly' and should be removed? I have tried contacting LRT about this issue but am yet to receive a reply.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - When will the links go away!?
About 9 months back we thought having an extremely reputable company build our client some local citations would be a good idea. You definitely know this citation company, but I'll leave names out. Regardless, it's our mistake to cut corners. Google Webmaster Tools quickly picked up these new citations and added them to the links section. One of these citation spawned a complete mess of about 60K+ links on their network of sites through ridiculous subdomains of every state in the country and so many other domain variations. We immediately went into remove mode and had the site's webmaster take down the bad links from their site. This process took about a month for outreach. The bad links (60K+) have not been on the spam site for well over 6 months but GWT still shows them in the "links to your site" section. Majestic, Bing, and OSE only displayed the bad links for a brief time. Why is webmaster tools still showing these links after 6+ months? We typically see GWT update about every 2 weeks, a month tops. Any ideas? Could a changed robots.txt on the bad site prevent Google from updating the links displayed in GWT? We have submitted to disavow, but Google replied with "no manual penalty". We even blasted the bad site with Fiverr links, in hopes that Google would re-crawl them. No luck with anything we do. We have patiently waited for way too long. The rankings for this site got crushed on Google after these citations. How do we fix this? Should we worry about this? Any advice would really help. Thanks so much in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | zadro0 -
My Google Webmaster Search Queries are 0??!!
For the past 2 days Google Webmaster has recorded 0 search queries to my site, but traffic seems stable. Any ideas about why this is happening and what I should do about it? Or is it a Google glitch I should not be concerned about (hoping for this option)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
Setting up Google Analytics default URL
If someone has set: the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com) then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website... ... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com). How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address? Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file? _Cindy
Reporting & Analytics | | CeCeBar0 -
AW Stats vs Google Analytics
Hey Moz Community, I am looking to get opinions on the best practice for analytics/traffic analysis. From experience I know that AW Stats reads high and Google Analytics reads low for traffic for reason in this article http://www.smartz.com/blog/2009/01/23/analytic-confusion-%E2%80%93-awstats-vs-google-analytics/ It drives me a little nuts how far off both are for some pages. I have one article that shows 100 views (GA) and AW stats shows 5 times that number of views. Any suggestions or systems you recommend? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | johnshearer0 -
Track image searches on google analytics
How can i track image searches on google analytics? To filter the refferers by image.google or /imgres does not work in new google analytics (and brings an impossibly small number on old GA). also, this would not cover local google image refferers, that don't come from image.google.com. anyone knows how to find image search sources? i haven't found anything helpful in google's documentation or forums. thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | zeepartner0 -
Best SEO Analysis Tool
I'm looking for a tool that will analyze a webpage for a specific keyword phrase and deliver good recommendations as to what I can do (on page and off page) to increase the Google ranking for that keyword phrase. I'm trying IBP now, but so far the results haven't been good. Any suggestions?
Reporting & Analytics | | urbanscooters0