Do you have a website? Do you have a Google Webmasters account? If not, you need one!  This document outlines how to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and explains a few of the basics.

Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters and sign up for an account.

You will see the Home page.  Scroll down and click the “Add a site” button, and add your website address.  Then, under “sites” click on the domain you just created.

You will now see the dashboard.  It is an overview of several tools:  Top search queries, Crawl errors, links to your site, keywords, sitemaps – you can click “More” under any section to see more information.

When you are done exploring the dashboard, look to the left.  There are 4 main navigation sections: Site Configuration, Your site on the Web, Diagnostics, and Labs.

First, click the + sign next to Site Configuration and go to  Settings.  You can see the current crawl settings and change them here.

Now, click the + sign next to Diagnostics.  Here, you will find HTML Suggestions.  Here, you can get a good look at how many pages that are indexed have duplicate meta descriptions, duplicate title tags, etc. It’s a good idea to look at this section often and see what can be fixed when you notice new items have appeared.

Last, click the + sign next to Labs.  When you use the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool, and enter any page from your site, Googlebot will show you exactly how it sees that page.  Click on the word “Success” next to any fetched page to see the results.

Under Site Performance, you will see a performance overview of your site.  It takes several days for this page to update after it takes a reading, you may have to give it a week in between updates.  Scroll down and you will see it offers page speed suggestions for improving your website load time.

If you have any questions about the other sections in Google Webmasters that I did not discuss, submit them here!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

Because we’ve got so many clients’ websites and blogs to maintain, I’m afraid that we let our own go for a little while.  So, we are pleased to announce  that as of today, we have a whole new blog design! What do you think?  Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, the coffee cup is an RSS feed button.  I thought that was rather cute.

I also want to remind our current clients that if they would like to contribute to the blog, either by writing posts about their business and/or services, or by subscribing and commenting on our entries, all they have to do is contact me (Jessica) and request a username.  It’s that easy!  If you want to see examples of what you might do with this privilege, then check out the  blog entries written by Viktor Viktoria here in our blog!

In addition to our regular work, I have been spending quite a bit of time working on my pet project: 50 States Free Classifieds.  As you probably already know if you are a client of Green Web Design, our classifieds site is the best place to advertise your website after we have finished designing it for you.  Not only does Google look through our Classifieds site several times a day, but we promote the site in many other ways as well.  We do this so that our clients have an affordable, easy way to showcase their products and services, without having to break the bank on advertising.  We don’t just make websites, we try to help promote small and local businesses in any way that we can.  And it gets results!

Hope you all have a happy week and weekend.  I will be at home, working on the classifieds.  I am excited because i have a lot of new ideas.   Now I just need the time to implement them!

We are pleased to announce that the Meta Tag Creation and Search Engine Submission project for Electric Easel has been completed.

Since 1999, Electric Easel Design Studio has concepted, designed and produced award-winning work for some of the world’s largest companies, as well as some of its newest and smallest.

They specialize in consumer and business-to-business communications, brand development and graphics design. Their services range from concept to design and final production for integrated campaigns, traditional advertising, website development and multimedia.

We are pleased to announce that the Meta Tag Creation and Search Engine Submission project for BizTrade has been completed.

BizTrade, LLC. is an innovative, client focused business brokerage. Our services include assisting business owners in finding, negotiating, and transacting with qualified buyers as well as helping business buyers locate the right businesses to purchase.

We are pleased to announce that the Billaudelle partners meta tag creation and website submission project is completed.

Dr. Billaudelle & Partner is an international team of competent, technical translators and experts operating on four continents (including engineers, economic and financial experts, management consultants, marketing experts, etc.). Best-in-class language services are the focal point of their work.

We are pleased to announce that the Family Heritage Consulting website is completed!

Family Heritage Consulting
www.FamilyHeritageConsulting.com

Professional Genealogy Researchers located in Illinois. Ron will travel all over the midwest to track down your family roots! He has logged over 15,000 hours of research to date.

www.50StatesClassifieds.com

50 States Classifieds is a division of Green Web Design.  Post online classified ads and promote your business online at a fraction of the cost of a newspaper ad. The economical alternative to newspaper classified advertising!