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Google Webmaster Tools Uncovers Missed Site Opportunities
September 12, 2006
We have many clients whom we’ve helped create and submit sitemaps to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.
Simply put, a Google sitemap is a special file that resides on your server that enables you to tell Google what pages are present on your site. Once this is done, you can login to Google’s Webmaster Tools console and manage your sitemap as well as view statistics and error information about your site.
Some of the most valuable data provided by Google is under the Statistics and Query Stats tab.
Here you’ll find:
Top Search Queries – this data shows the top search queries for your site within Google’s placement results. In other words, the most popular queries where you have some presence at Google. These are highly searched-for keywords and phrases where your site shows up in Google’s natural search results. Think of this as a VISIBILITY indicator.
Top Search Query Clicks – this data shows the top search queries that sent traffic to your site. In other words, these are the most popular queries for which people actually clicked over to your site. Your site is getting clicks from these specific keywords and phrases. Think of this as a TRAFFIC indicator.
Along with the data above, Google also provides the Average Top Position of your site which is the highest position any page from your site ranked for that particular query.
While this data took us a while to digest and analyze, over the last few months we’ve been able to create some very helpful reports for clients. The secret to this data is not necessarily the data within the two groups of data above, but rather in comparing both sets of data.
For example, if a search query appears in both groups, this means the search query is both highly searched and found at Google (visibility of your site is good) AND the query is also getting clicked on (traffic is flowing from Google to your site). You may find that these queries are very important queries to your site, while others may not be. A few of our clients have been surprised by some unexpected search queries that their site is highly visible for and is also getting traffic from! The ideal situation, and a good indicator of SEO performance, in this example is to find some or all of your major keywords and phrases in this group. For us at Intrapromote, this would allow us to meet our first and second goals in an SEO and Link Building campaign: Placements (visibility) and Clickthroughs (traffic).
Perhaps the most “SEO-affecting� comparison of the two data sets is where search queries are highly visible (they are a Top Search Query) but they are not getting clicks (they are not a Top Search Query Click). We see these as potential missed opportunities IF the search query is highly relevant to your site.
For search queries where this occurs, you should ask yourself a few questions:
A. Is the keyword/phrase/query not ranking high enough on page #1 at Google to get clicks?
B. Why is the page returned by Google not getting clicks?
1. Is the page title and/or description on Google unappealing?
2. Are there on-page factors blocking higher placement?
3. What else can be done to push the page higher on page #1?
All posts by Doug Ausbury
posted by Doug Ausbury at September 12, 2006 03:43 PM
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