You have a domain name, check. You have a website, check. You wait on search engines to index website, check. You have amazing traffic, *crickets*.

The above is typical response received when conversing about search engine optimization (SEO) with potential customers.

I have noticed there are a number of different steps a customer can take in optimizing their website. One of the most overlooked steps is the use of Google Webmaster Tools.

This value-add tool provides a website owner (a.k.a. webmaster) imperative information about their website and website’s overall health as Google sees it.

In today’s post, I’ll discuss the importance of Google Webmaster Tools.  I’ll also provide a very easy step-by-step, downloadable guide explaining how to use Google Webmaster Tools to complete the following:

• verify your website
• create a sitemap file for your website
• submit a sitemap file for your website

As we all know, the key thing to search engine optimization is having search engines to crawl and index your website.

Today, we’re going to discuss the opposite: how not to allow search engines to crawl and index your website or a specific page.

Maybe you have duplicate content throughout your website that you don’t want to delete, yet you don’t want search engines to index and penalize your website.

Or have you ever wanted to have a private page not visible to search engines but make it available to users?

For instance, let’s say you want a quick and simple page guarding users from receiving content until they give their email.

This is very popular online experience for those trying to build their mailing list.  They’ll offer a free resource of some sort in exchange for your email address.