How To Write A Meta Description That Gets Click-Throughs.

I feel sorry for meta descriptions.
Google has long held that meta descriptions do not impact search engine rankings. From a 2007 post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

It's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t affect your ranking within search results.

Google reiterated this point yet again in 2009 in a post stating that the meta keywords tag was not used as a ranking signal:

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Thus, people have long neglected meta descriptions, pushing them to the back burner or delegating their creation to the lowly intern. Once written, meta descriptions are scarcely given a second glance or further consideration.
Meta descriptions get short shrift because well-written descriptions won’t help your site rank.
Or will they?

Optimized Meta Descriptions ARE Important For SEO

I can make the case that meta descriptions are important for SEO. I’m taking some time to explain this, because my goal in this article is to help you write killer meta descriptions. Once you realize that meta descriptions do have an impact on search ranking, it may inspire you to write better meta descriptions.
The relationship between the meta description and search engine rankings can be described in four points:

1. The content in a meta description does not factor into the search ranking algorithm.
2. User behavior is factored into the search algorithm.
3. Specifically, click-through rate (CTR) is part of the algorithmic ranking process.
4. The meta description is the most important feature for improving click-through rate from search results pages.

1. The content in a meta description does not influence the search algorithm.
As far as we know – and we’re trusting Google on this one – their search engine ranking algorithm does not consider meta descriptions as a factor. Thus, from a strict algorithmic perspective, it’s not necessary to put your most important keywords in the meta description.

2. User behavior is factored in the search algorithm.
There are hundreds of algorithmic factors involved in ranking a site. It’s easy to forget that Google analyzes user behavior on a site as part of their ongoing ranking process.
But it does. As reflected in Google Analytics, Google is actively measuring user behavior – even demographic information – and factoring that into search results.
Think about this on the broadest level: location-based search. Search results based on location is a user-dependent metric. A user in South Carolina who types “weather” in Google is going to get this result, even if she’s not logged in to her Google account:

A user in Anchorage Alaska will see a very different result:

That much is obvious (and pretty basic).
But the algorithm is way more advanced than that. Not only does it factor user information/location, but it measures user behavior in the subsequent rank of a particular website.

3. Specifically, click-through rate (CTR) is part of the algorithmic ranking process.
Dr. Pete Meyers of Moz wrote an article back in 2012 that is still very relevant. His point in the article was that Google uses two user metrics in search ranking.
Those two metrics are: (1) search engine results page (SERP) click-through rate and (2) dwell time. Here’s how he explained it:

The first metric I think Google makes broad use of is direct Click-Through Rate (CTR) from the SERPs themselves. Whether or not a result gets clicked on is one of Google’s and Bing’s first clues about whether any given result is a good match to a query. We know Google and Bing both have this data, because they directly report it to us.

Indeed, both Google and Bing seem to make use of this metric, since both data points are available in their reporting platforms:

Bing Webmaster Tools (Image from Moz)

Meyers summed it up perfectly: “Relevant results drive more clicks.”
This is a key point, and it goes to prove my final point:
4. The meta description is the most important feature for improving click-through rate from search results pages
Google considers user behavior, specifically the click-through rate. So, how can we improve CTRs on our SERP entries?
By writing killer meta descriptions.
And the more people who click through those SERP entries, the better our site will rank in Google.
Take a look at an average SERP. Apart from Knowledge Graph information and rich snippets, there are three main features in a SERP entry: the page title, the page URL, and the page description.
All three of these factor into a user’s decision to click through. Of these three, the meta description takes up the most space — a full two lines. It has the most amount of information, and thus gets viewed longer and read more.
It follows that a great meta description actually does improve click-through, and thus site ranking. Sure enough, that makes the meta description an SEO factor after all!
But it’s one of those “fuzzy” SEO factors due to its indirect impact. Furthermore, improving meta descriptions doesn’t require SEO finesse as much as it does writing skill, which brings me to the main point of this article: how do you write a meta descriptions that get click-throughs?

Advanced Tips For Writing Killer Meta Descriptions

So, how do you unleash a click-through-compelling meta description?

Be Descriptive. The language in your meta description should introduce the user to what the page is about. In general terms, sketch out the page’s content. If the user is going to the trouble of clicking on it, he or she wants to make sure that the page really is about what they are interested in.

Be Persuasive. Great meta descriptions involve a touch of the persuasive. To get clicks, go ahead and tug a little bit. Some SEOs advocate using a call-to-action in the description. I’m not convinced that this is necessary; I do, however, recommend that you create a meta description that invites a response, even if it doesn’t directly call for it.

Inspire Curiosity. One of the most persuasive things you can do with your meta is to spark curiosity. This is particularly true for informational queries (as opposed to transactional queries). By the time a user finishes reading your description, they should be curious about what the page will say about the topic. You need to provide just enough information to explain what the page is about but not so much that it ruins the curiosity factor.

Use The Right Words. The keywords may not matter for search engines, but they do matter for users. In order to be compelled to click, the user needs to see relevant words. These words should be associated with his or her query. The right words in the right places make the difference between a SERP entry that gets overlooked, and a SERP entry that gets a click.

Make Them The Correct Length. If you write a meta description that is too long, Google will truncate it. The standard accepted length is 156 characters long. Unlike page titles, meta description cut-offs do not seem to be pixel-based in the same way that page titles are.

Do Not Use Quotation Marks. Google will cut them off.

Conclusion

In the end, meta descriptions are still a worthy thing to focus on in your overall SEO efforts. At the very least, you shouldn’t neglect them – your meta description is the only thing standing between a search result and a visitor.
What do you do to create great meta descriptions?

7 Experts Tell You How To Generate Leads With Social Media.

Do you struggle trying to generate leads with social media?
I talked to seven experts on social media, social selling and lead generation that I deeply respect to find out the answer to one question: where are businesses owners struggling most when trying to generate leads with social media and how can they fix it?
Big thanks to Andrea Vahl, Andy Crestodina, Koka Sexton, Rebekah Radice, Donna Moritz, Paul Shapiro and Don Power for contributing their thoughts. I quite literally couldn’t have done it without them!

1. Use Conversion Pixels With Your Facebook Ads

Many business owners are missing a valuable Facebook advertising opportunity when they are not using Conversion Pixels in their ads.  If you create an ad and use a conversion pixel then you will know exactly how much it cost to get a new subscriber on your e-mail list.
A conversion pixel is basically a piece of code that you install on a web page. When you create a Facebook Ad, you “tie” the pixel to the ad so that if someone comes from the Facebook ad and arrives on the web page that has the conversion pixel Facebook then tracks a “conversion” to that ad.
When you use conversion pixels, you can split test your ads so that you are optimizing them and improving your cost per conversion.  You can target your ideal client with keywords and get them connected to your e-mail list to move them farther down your sales funnel.  It’s an extremely powerful tool that is being under-utilized!
Start learning how to use Conversion Pixels here

Andrea Vahl

Author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One For Dummies

http://www.andreavahl.com/

2. Find Traffic That Converts

Here’s the brutal truth: fans and followers from some social networks will almost never convert into paying customers. The trick is to find out which social networks drive the right kind of traffic, traffic that will convert!
Pop open Google Analytics and look at Acquisition > Social > Conversions. This report shows you how many people from which social networks are taking action.
Here’s what ours looks like:

If you really want to dig into the data, measure the total traffic that came from each network and divide it by the number of conversions. Now you’ll know the conversion rate, which is the likelihood that they’ll become customers!

Now you can see which social networks are bringing you the visitors that are likely to act. Focus on those networks. Those are the visitors who are most likely to become paying customers.

Andy Crestodina

Author, Content Chemistry

http://www.orbitmedia.com/

3. Leverage Employees & Education

The biggest opportunity business owners are missing out on is having a healthy mix of engaging education to offset their self-serving content. Too many companies are still using social media as a broadcast channel and we see time and time again that the winners are the ones that engage their fans and followers on social networks. You’ll be surprised at how much more receptive your audience will be to your promotional content after building your credibility with educational pieces.
The importance of empowering employees to be an active voice for the company is too often overlooked – and that’s another big issue. Businesses that activate their employees with social media bring business conversations down to a human level and that’s where your buyers are living.

Koka Sexton

Global Senior Social Marketing Manager, LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/

4. Know Your Sales Process

Before you can convert social media fans and followers into paying customers, you need to know your sales process. How do you nurture your relationships and move them through the various stages of your marketing funnel?
Many businesses hop on social media without clearly identifying their process. If you want to convert the right leads, you must get clear on your process. Here are few questions to get you started:

• Where is client acquisition currently happening?
• What are your top social networks where most interaction is taking place?
• Which of your daily actions are producing the best results?
• Are the leads you’re receiving the right kind of leads?
• Are any of your leads converting? What’s the percentage?
• Have you determined how social media will support your sales process?
• Is there a Call-to-Action on all of your posts?
• Do you know what next steps you want potential customers to take and are you clearly articulating it?
• Are you testing your content, call to action and the type of posts to see what’s working and what’s not?

The key to conversion is in the nurturing and interaction. At no point should your fans or followers sit idly by, waiting for you to tell them how to take action. Guide them, share valuable information and become an important resource.

Rebekah Radice

Author, Speaker

http://rebekahradice.com/

5. Start Moving Conversations Offline

Business owners are now more familiar with the need to engage and that has resulted in many positive brand interactions, conversations and even leads as a result of their social media activities. The issue is that many of those same business owners have found their activities don’t scale and they simply don’t have the time to keep up with the demand that is required over a long period of time to cultivate new leads on social media.
It’s time to start moving conversations offline to learn more about the problems your contacts are facing. Furthering the relationship beyond the digital realm is essential for building rapport that allows you to discover their problems and position your product or service as solution that would work for them.
Don’t be afraid to ask to move a conversation offline after you’ve had a few social interactions past your initial introduction.

Don Power

Don Power Digital Marketing

http://donpower.com

6. Provide Value, Build Trust & Get Them Subscribed

Many business owners are trying to convert fans to customers without first adding value or building trust. That makes the leap from fan to paying customer large and a rare occurrence at best.
Here are 3 ways to fix the gap:

1. Be consistent with content that helps your ideal customer. Preferably on your blog or via content that drives people back to your blog. For example, an image, checklist, how-to post, infographic or slideshow not only catches attention but also can easily encourage fans to click through for more when coupled with a great call to action.
2. Have a clear path to subscribing. Include an opt-in form that offers something of high value with a magnetic offer on your website to capture email subscribers. Promoting this on social media organically and with paid ads is critical to converting fans/followers to customers.
3. Treat your email subscribers like gold. Don’t treat people like just another person on your “list”. Consistently provide awesome value via helpful content in your newsletter or email series. By the time you do offer something for sale, their decision to buy from you is easy because you’ve already built trust and credibility.

Donna Moritz

Founder, Socially Sorted

http://sociallysorted.com.au/

7. Focus On Your Goals & Keep Track

Companies that have the goal of generating leads for their business are consistently not focusing their efforts on it. First of all, unless you can create direct action on social media, you should be sending users to an owned media asset like a blog or website (and tracking this appropriately with UTM parameters and web analytics).
You should also be sending these users to specific landing pages on these assets, so you can optimize your funnel and conversions. When possible, try to create direct action on the particular social network. Twitter has lead generation cards, Google+ has interactive posts which can utilize specific call-to-actions like “Buy”, and even Facebook is testing a Buy button that works through Stripe. Focus on your goals!

Paul Shapiro

Founder, Search Wilderness

http://searchwilderness.com/

How Are You Generating Leads With Social Media?

Are you having success generating leads with social media or do you still struggle to get fans and followers that convert? Let us know about your successes or struggles in the comments below.

29 Warning Signs of Twitter Addiction.

Twitter is addicting and probably you are addicted to Twitter? With rising popularity, Twitter addictions in become increasingly common and there are high chances you are also a Twitter addict. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform which allows you to send messages (tweets) to your friends, relatives and followers.You can send tweets to your followers with text upto 140 characters. As Twitter has got really popular, there are people spending all day over twitter with signs of twitter addiction.

Warning signs of Twitter Addiction

You are warned that you are addicted to Twitter when You…

1. Get excited when some one follows you on Twitter.
2. Feel the end of the world when twitter gets an outage.
3. Send @ and RT in messages to your friends in emails.
4. Beg your blog readers to follow you on twitter, then beg your Twitter followers to Retweet the tweet.
5. Post more tweets than blog posts, and turn from full time blogger to full time tweeter.
6. Spend all day on twitter giving yourself the excuse that you are doing great service to your followers, and bunk going to office.
7. Tweet on Twitter more than doingoffice work.
8. Feel over the Moon and on top of the world when some one retweets your tweet
9. Keep searching for your twitter nameand your tweets in real time twitter search.
10. Keep refreshing the twitter page every second for new tweets.
11. Include your twitter profile in your Gmail signature instead of your blog
12. Print your twitter id on business cards.
13. Set Twitter as your browser home page.
14. Add notice in front of office door – “I am on Twitter, Dont disturb”.
15. Use more than 5 twitter clients.
16. Add your twitter name to Google alerts to know what others are speaking about you.
17. Blog more about twitter applications.
18. Add your status message as “Follow me on twitter” to Gtalk and yahoo messenger
19. Use Twoogle to search in Google and Twitter.
20. Keep urging your family members to get a twitter account.
21. Follow lot of people on #FollowFriday
22. Introduce yourself to new persons more as a tweeter than as a businessman.
23. Go crazy about twitter and advertise on news papers, TV and distribute pamphlets to follow you on twitter.
24. Ask your bosses wife to follow you on twitter!
25. Add your twitter id to the nameplate of your house.
26. Keep sending SMS to all your friends to follow you on twitter.
27. Ask questions about Twitter rather than job related queries during interviews.
28. Threaten your wife to get a twitter account and follow you, or warn her of divorce
29. Only wear dresses with twitter logos.

The Real Cost of Sending Bad Email.

 

Behavioral personalization is fundamentally shifting the landscape of customer communication. It’s giving marketers an unprecedented level of control over the levers that drive The Big 4: user acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of this new technology is email marketing. It’s not uncommon to see case studies reporting transformative results like100-150% increases in click thru, 10-20% decreases in churn, and 2X or 3X increases in average revenue per customer.

So what’s the real cost of sending bad email?

How much harm can it do? After all, many of us have been sending irrelevant and poorly timed emails for years, and have learned to accept relatively dismal performance as the norm. Sending an email costs fractions of a penny while developing and implementing behavioral personalization is much more pricey — right?
Wrong.
To use a battlefield analogy, sending a bad email is not a “whoops we missed” scenario that only costs you the price of the bullet. In reality, missing the shot is has a ricochet effect that can damage or destroy two critical things: your customer relationships and your bottom line. We need to start seeing failed customer communications as negative not neutral events.

Communication gone bad.

Failed communication has a negative impact on your organization because:
1. Negative Brand Perception = Decrease in Revenue
Negative experiences decrease the value of your brand. The amount of time and money a consumer will spend on your brand is correlated to the emotional value they ascribe to it.
2. Lowered Expectations = Increased Churn
One irrelevant email sets a lower expectation for the next, creating a downward spiral of decreasing engagement, which ultimately can lead to churn.
3. Irrelevant Content = Decreased Engagement
You get a finite amount of your customer’s mental bandwidth to try and engage with them. Wasting it with irrelevant content reduces your mind share and ultimately takes away from your bottom line.
4. Failed Communication = Increased Customer Acquisition Cost & inability to activate signups into repeat buyers
Those pennies spent failing to acquire new customers add up, and if you aren’t learning from your mistakes, you end up throwing good money after bad.

Customers don’t grow on trees!

Let’s say you have 1M email subscribers, 15% of which are “repeat buyers” spending $70 annually. Let’s also assume that the average cost to acquire and annually service a “repeat buyer” through paid and organic channels is $15. Your Average Customer Value (ACV) is $55 for the first year. That’s your return on investment from one customer.
The short-term consequence of a bad email is that it creates a lack of interest. A customer won’t disown you because you sent one irrelevant communication, but it decreases the relevance of your brand. Now, imagine that you send 5 emails over the course of a month, and 4 of them are not relevant or timely to the user causing the user to unsubscribe. Accepted standards indicate that a good unsubscribe rate is less than 0.5%, so let’s say 0.25% of total unsubscribes were attributed to this vicious cycle, after the course of the year, you have churned over 29,591 subscribers, of which 4,438 (15%) were “repeat buyers”. Here’s the cost:

• You spent $66,679 to acquire those 4,438 users.
• Over the course of 12 months, with an attributable 0.25% churn each month, you just lost an additional $112,497 in “recurring” revenue.

And that’s not including the cost of acquiring and then failing to activate the 25,152 users not classified as “repeat buyers”. Simple back of napkin calculations shows that the cost to acquire could be around $20,000 and opportunity cost of not activating them could be in excess of $1,000,000.
You’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $179,077) of investment and revenue. You’ve also lost access to a key channel through which you could have fostered strong relationships. Customers have lots of options online, and we know that there will be other brands waiting to claim the consumer mindshare you’ve forfeited.

Sending good email is easier or more affordable than ever before

As the technology matures, behavioral personalization is more accessible and affordable. You no longer need to hire machine learning PhDs to write algorithms, developers to integrate your different databases, or specially trained analysts to run reports… there are companies that do it for you.
We don’t need to accept poor email performance anymore. Today, marketers have access to incredibly powerful behavioral analytics that come in off-the-shelf, plug-and-play packages. The power to deliver better customer experiences and transform your performance is within reach.
How have you started to personalize your customer communications? Have you seen any immediate improvements? Share your story in the comments below.

How to Speed up Search Engine Indexing

It’s a common knowledge that nowadays users don’t only search for trusted sources of information but also for fresh content. That’s why the last couple of years, the Search engines have been working on how to speed up their indexing process. Few months ago, Google has announced the completion of their new indexing system called Caffeine which promises fresher results and faster indexation.

The truth is that comparing to the past, the indexing process has became much faster. Nevertheless lots of webmasters still face indexing problems either when they launch a new website or when they add new pages. In this article we will discuss 5 simple SEO techniques that can help you speed up the indexation of your website.

1. Add links on high traffic websites

The best thing you can do in such situations is to increase the number of links that point to your homepage or to the page that you want to index. The number of incoming links and the PageRank of the domain, affect directly both the total number of indexed pages of the website and the speed of indexation.

As a result by adding links from high traffic websites you can reduce the indexing time. This is because the more links a page receives, the greater the probabilities are to be indexed. So if you face indexing problems make sure you add your link in your blog, post a thread in a relevant forum, write press releases or articles that contain the link and submit them to several websites. Additionally social media can be handy tools in such situation, despite the fact that in most of the cases their links are nofollowed. Have in mind that even if the major search engines claim that they do not follow the nofollowed links, experiments have shown that not only they do follow them but also that they index the pages faster (Note that the fact that they follow them does not mean that they pass any link juice to them).

2. Use XML and HTML sitemaps

Theoretically Search Engines are able to extract the links of a page and follow them without needing your help. Nevertheless it is highly recommended to use XML or HTML sitemaps since it is proven that they can help the indexation process. After creating the XML sitemaps make sure you submit them to the Webmaster Consoles of the various search engines and include them in robots.txt. So make sure you keep your sitemaps up-to-date and resubmit them when you have major changes in your website.

3. Work on your Link Structure

As we saw in previous articles, link structure is extremely important for SEO because it can affect your rankings, the PageRank distribution and the indexation. Thus if you face indexing problems check your link structure and ensure that the not-indexed pages are linked properly from webpages that are as close as possible to the root (homepage). Also make sure that your site does not have duplicate content problems that could affect both the number of pages that get indexed and the average crawl period.

A good method to achieve the faster indexation of a new page is to add a link directly from your homepage. Finally if you want to increase the number of indexed pages, make sure you have a tree-like link structure in your website and that your important pages are no more than 3 clicks away from the home page (Three-click rule).

4. Change the crawl rate

Another way to decrease the indexing time in Google is to change the crawl rate from the Google Webmaster Tools Console. Setting the crawl rate to “faster” will allow Googlebot to crawl more pages but unfortunately it will also increase the generated traffic on your server. Of course since the maximum allowed crawl rate that you can set is roughly 1 request every 3-4 seconds (actually 0.5 requests per second + 2 seconds pause between requests), this should not cause serious problems for your server.

5. Use the available tools

The major search engines provide various tools that can help you manage your website. Bing provides you with the Bing Toolbox, Google supports the Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo offers the Yahoo Site Explorer. In all the above consoles you can manage the indexation settings of your website and yoursubmitted sitemaps. Make sure that you use all of them and that you regularly monitor your websites for warnings and errors. Also resubmit or ping search engine sitemap services when you make a significant amount of changes on your website. A good tool that can help you speed up this pinging process is the Site Submitter, nevertheless it is highly recommended that you use also the official tools of every search engine.

If you follow all the above tips and you still face indexing problems then you should check whether your website is banned from the search engines, if it is developed with search engine friendly techniques, whether you have enough domain authority to index the particular amount of pages or if you have made a serious SEO mistake (for example block the search engines by using robots.txt or meta-robots etc). A good way to detect such mistakes is to use the Web SEO Analysis tool which provides detailed diagnostics.  Finally most of the major search engines have special groups and forums where you can seek for help, so make sure you visit them and post your questions.

7 Deadly Mistakes To Avoid In Google Webmaster Tools Console

The Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that allows webmasters to submit their websites & sitemapsto Google, affect their indexing process, configure how the search engine bots crawl their sites, get a list of all the errors that were detected on their pages and get valuable information, reports and statisticsabout their websites. Certainly it is a very powerful console that can help Webmasters not only optimize their websites but also control how Google accesses their sites.

Unfortunately though, even if using the basic functionalities and changing the default configuration is relatively straight forward, one should be very careful while using the advanced features. This is because some of the options can heavily affect the SEO campaign of the website and change the way that Google evaluates it. In this article we discuss the 7 most important mistakes that one can make while using the advanced features of Google Webmaster Tools and we explain how to avoid a disaster by configuring everything properly.

1. Geographic Targeting feature

The Geographic Targeting is a great feature that allows you to link your website to a particularlocation/country. It should be used only when a website targets to users from a particular country and when it does not really make sense to attract visitors from other countries.

This feature is enabled if your domain has a generic (neutral) top-level-domain such as .com, .net, .org etc while it is preconfigured if it has a country specific TLD. By pointing your site to a particular country you can achieve a significant boost on your rankings on the equivalent Country version of Google. So for example by setting the Geographic Targeting to France you can positively affect your rankings on Google.fr. Unfortunately this will also lower your rankings on the other Google Country versions. So this means that you might be able to boost your rankings on Google.fr but you can actually hurt your results on Google.com and Google.co.uk.

So don’t use this feature unless your website targets only on people from a specific country.

2. Sitemap Submission

Google allows you to submit via the Console a list of sitemaps and this will speed up drastically the indexing of your website. Even though this is a great feature for most of the webmasters, in few cases it can cause two major problems.

The first problem is that sometimes the XML sitemaps appear on Search Results, so if you don’t want your competitors to be able to see them make sure you gzip them and submit the .gz version on Google. Also obviously you shouldn’t name the files “sitemap.xml” or add their URLs on your robots.txt file.

The second problem appears when you index a large number of pages (several hundred thousands) really really fast. Even though Sitemaps will help you index those pages (given that you have enough Page Rank), you are also very likely to reach a limit and raise a spam flag for your website. Don’t forget that the Panda Update targets particularly on websites with low quality content that try to index thousands of pages very fast.

So if you want to avoid exposing your site architecture be extra careful with sitemap files and if you don’t want to reach any limitation use a reasonable number of sitemaps.

3. Setting the Crawl Rate

Google gives you the ability to setup how fast or slow you want Googlebot to crawl your website. This will not only affect the crawl rate but also the number of pages that get indexed every day. If you decide that you want to change the default setting and set a custom crawl rate remember that a very high crawl rate can consume all of the bandwidth of your server and create a significant load on it while a very low crawl rate will reduce the freshness and the number of crawled pages.

For most webmasters it is recommended to let Google determine their crawl rate.

4. Crawler Access

On the Crawler Access Tab, Google gives you the opportunity to see which parts of your website are allowed to be crawled by Google. Also it gives you the opportunity to Generate a robots.txt file and request a URL Removal. These features are powerful tools in the hands of experienced users, nevertheless a misconfiguration can lead to catastrophic results affecting heavily the SEO campaign of the website. Thus it is highly recommended not to block any parts of your website unless you have a very good reason for doing it and you know exactly what you are doing.

Our suggestion is that most webmasters should not block Google from any directory and let it crawl all of their pages.

5. Parameter handling

After crawling both your Website and the external links that point to your pages, Google presents to you the most popular URL parameters that are passed to your pages. In the Parameter Handling console Google allows you to select whether a particular parameter should be “Ignored”, “Not Ignored” or “Let Google decide”.

These GET parameters can be from product Ids to Session Ids and from Google Analytics campaign parameters to page navigation variables. These parameters in many cases can lead to duplicate content issues (for example Session IDs or Google Analytics Campaign parameters), while in other cases they areessential parts of your website (product or category IDs). A misconfiguration on this console could lead to disastrous results on your SEO campaign because you can either make Google index several duplicate pages or make it drop from the index useful pages of your website.

This is why it is highly recommended to let Google decide how to handle each parameter, unless you are absolutely sure what a particular param is all about and whether it should be removed or maintained. Last but not least, I remind you that this console is not the right way to deal with duplicate content. It is highly recommended to work with your internal link structure, use 301s and Canonical URLs before trying to ignore or block particular parameters.

6. Sitelinks

As we explained several times in the past, the sitelinks are links that appear under some results in SERPs in order to help users navigate the sites easier. The sitelinks are known to attract user attention and they are algorithmically calculated based on the link structure of the website and the anchor texts that are used. Through the Google Webmaster Tools console the webmaster is able to block the Sitelinks that are not relevant, targeted or useful to the users. Failing to remove the irrelevant sitelinks or removing the wrong sitelinks can lead to low CTR on Search Engine Results and thus affect the SEO campaign.

Revisiting regularly the console and providing the appropriate feedback about each unwanted sitelink can help you get better and more targeted sitelinks on the future.

7. Change of Address

The Change of Address option is available only for domains and not for subdomains or sub directories. From this console you are able to transfer your website from a particular domain to a new one. Most of the users will never need to use this feature nevertheless if you find yourself in this situation you need to proceed with caution. Using 301 redirections and mapping the old pages to the new ones are extremely important to make the transition successful. A misconfiguration can cause a lot of problems nevertheless it is highly unlikely that someone will accidentally set up this option.

Avoid using this feature when your old domain has been banned by Google and have always in mind that changing your domain will have a huge impact on your SEO campaign.

The Google Webmaster Tools is a great service because it provides all the necessary resources to the webmasters in order to optimize, monitor and control their websites. Nevertheless caution is required while changing the standard configuration because mistakes can become very costly.