This is the third and last part about improving search engine traffic using Google Webmaster Tools. In the last post we talked about submitting sitemaps to inform Google about the structure of your website. Now let’s see how we can use the Google Tools to further improve the ranking of our blog in the search results.

As you may know, search engines use many different variables to determine a website’s ranking in the search results - one of these variables is the keyword density. A website that contains a certain keyword in a title or multiple times in the content is considered to be a more relevant search result for this keyword than a website containing the keyword only once. So if we keep an eye on the keywords we use in our blog posts, we can affect the search results we get.

I assume you already checked out all the pages listed in the main menu of your Webmaster Tools Account. The one we are interested in now is called “Top Search Queries” and can be found in the “Statistics” menu. This page shows you the average position of your website in Google’s search results for the 20 most popular keywords. As an example: if you run a website about cars, this list tells you if and at what position your page gets listed for the keyword “Audi TT”.

So how can you use this list to improve your search results? There are many different keyword optimization philosophies and -strategies floating around the net, some more valuable than others. Whatever strategy you use, the Top Search Queries list is your instrument to track the success of your efforts.

By the way, my strategy is rather simple: I don’t care too much about the keyword density in a certain post. If I want to get a higher ranking for a certain keyword, I just blog more about this topic

My last post was a short introduction of Google Webmaster Tools. I recommend you read that post before we go into the details.

Now how can you use the Webmaster Tools to improve search engine rankings? As I mentioned in the last post, the first step is to fix the errors Google reports. You want to make sure the crawler can easily access your blog. If Google doesn’t report any errors, it’s time to tell them a bit more about your blog. The more Google knows about your blog, the better search results you will get.

For example, you want to make sure they know every single subpage of your website / blog. Most search engines index websites by following links. This means a website (or a subpage) which doesn’t receive that many links may not get indexed at all, simply because the search engines can’t find it.

The easiest way to address this problem is to submit a sitemap to the search engines. A sitemap is basically a list of all the subpages that belong to your website. In the Webmaster Tools menu, you’ll find an entry called “XML-Sitemaps”. This page tells you when Google received your last sitemap, whether it contained any errors and how many URLs of your sitemap have been indexed. Don’t expect Google to index every single subpage the same day you submit your sitemap. They take their time, and there’s nothing we can do to change this. We can’t tell them what or how fast to crawl, but we can give them a broad hint using sitemaps

I’m pretty sure most of you have heard about Google Analytics, a very powerful tracking tool. I’ve written a post about how to implement Analytics in a WordPress blog some time ago. However, only very few people seem to know about another very powerful tool Google gives us for free: Google Webmaster Tools. While Analytics allows us to track our visitors, the Webmaster Tools give us some information how the Google bot sees our webiste or blog.

Once you logged in using your Google account, the first thing to do is to claim your site. Simply type in the url of your blog, and then choose one of two options to verify that you’re the owner. For bloggers, I recommend to use the “upload” option for two reasons: You don’t have to edit your theme’s source code, and you don’t have to do it again every time you change your theme

After authenticating yourself, click on the newly added url in the dashboard. You will find an overview with some very important information. The first line tells you the last time the Google bot accessed your front page and how many of your subpages have been indexed. The lower part of the table gives you a list of errors Google encountered while crawling your site. Obviously you won’t get any good search results when Google can’t index your website, so if Google reports errors, your first step should be to fix those errors and make sure the Google bot can access and index your blog without any problems.

In my next post I will explain how to fine-tune your blog to improve your search results using the Google Webmaster Tools. However, while playing around with these tools, you’ll notice they mention sitemaps a couple of times. If you haven’t submitted any sitemaps yet, you should read this post about how to submit sitemaps automatically from your blog.

Ever imagined how it would feel when you try to log in to your blog, but it’s not there? It just disappeared witout a trace? Of course, the people working at the company that hosts your blog do everything to prevent this scenario. But system administrators are only human beings, and they too mess things up - I know that because I am one of them Hey, you could even mess it up yourself - just click the wrong button at the wrong time

What I’m trying to say is: Maybe some day in your life you could be very happy to have a (up to date!) backup of your database. But how do you get one? Some hosting providers include automated backups in their service - however, they usually charge you good money to restore that backup when something went wrong. Another option is to create a backup using your admin interface. The problem is you have to do this manually, so you probably won’t do it every day. My preferred option is the WordPress Database Backup plugin. It’s very easy to configure: Simply schedule the automated backups and choose where the plugin should send the backup file to. Choose a backup cicle that fits your blogging frequency - if you blog daily, backup daily, if you blog once a week, a weekly backup should be sufficient. Then create a Gmail account and have your backups sent there

Sometimes there are things I just don’t do although I know that I should do them as soon as possible. One of these things was adding the Digg button to my blog. Some time ago I realized that I would probably get more people to digg my posts if I would provide one of these shiny Digg buttons on my blog - this was probably one day after launching it. However, for some strange reason I didn’t add one. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know it. I didn’t even create a Digg profile for myself 

One week ago I finally joined Digg (friend me). But guess what happened? Nothing - it took me another week to add the Digg button to this blog. The only excuse for this delay would be that I’ve written a couple of exams during that time. Anyway, it’s finally here and now it’s easier than ever before to digg my posts (hint, hint ). Time will show how this changes the Digg rates of my posts - in the meantime I suggest you click that yellow button in the top right corner and see what happens