Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last decade, you should know who Google is. Even if you have been living on the moon for the last decade, you should still know who Google is. Google is the largest search engine and online advertising company on the planet (and the moon 
). But, are you aware of all the other great things Google has to offer? For instance, Google has something called the Google Webmaster Tools. These tools are an awesome addition to any website owners arsenal. Let me explain why.
Getting to the top of the Google search results is like winning the Super Bowl. Very few teams actually have what it takes to get there, but they all have a chance. The first thing to getting there involves getting your website registered with Google to start with. To do that, you will need to submit your website to Google using their site submission page found at http://www.google.com/addurl. But, this alone isn’t enough to get your page visible in the search results. Most people only check out the first 1 or 2 pages of results from Google until they change up their keywords and search again. So, you want to get your site within the first page or so and that’s something the Google Webmaster Tools can help with.
First things first, you need to get an account with Google. You can do that by going to their site and clicking the Signup link in the top-right corner of the page. Don’t worry, it’s free. Once you’ve created an account, you will need to signup for the webmaster tools by clicking the 
link when you first log into your Google account. When you register for the tools, you will have to add your site to your tools list and verify that you are in fact the owner of the site you added. There are several ways you can do that. But, I find that the easiest way of verifying your website is by uploading an HTML file that Google gives you from the verification options. Once you upload that file, all you have to do is a click a button that says “Verify” and Google will go check to make sure that the file they gave you is accessible from your website.
After you have verified that you are the owner of the website, you can click on your site in the list and enjoy all of the many things that the Google Webmaster Tools has to offer. For example, once you click on your site, you will see a dashboard that has things like
- Search Queries: Shows what searches are used to find your site.
- Links to Your Site: Shows what other websites have links back to your site.
- Crawl Errors: Shows pages in your site that are unreachable.
- Keywords: Shows the most significant keywords on your website.
There are several other great tools in the Google Webmaster Tools. Below is a list of the tools found in the Google Webmaster Tools. So, go create yourself a Google account and use some of the tools to help get your site ready for the big time.
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