A few weeks ago I blogged about Google Webmaster Tools Updated - The Holy Grail.
I recently began (June-July of 2007) a few niche market websites… not too specific niche’s either. Of these three project sites I started each of them has thousands upon thousands of competing sites. I still manage to place well(top 50 to 100 results) within the short-tail keywords as well as some of the more popular long tail ones. A few of which I place in the top 10. None of these websites have a Pagerank(don’t put stock in PR) but they all have one thing in common.
Google Webmaster Tools. I use these tools religiously, especially the keyword tracking tool — affectionately called “Top Search Queries” which tracks your google position for popular terms that return your website. It goes as far as 6 months back, and has been invaluable for my search engine results gaming.
If I notice that I’m in a top 50 position for certain key phrases (keyword) I’ll tend to find something to write about within that category, thereby, increasing the chance that I’ll either stay in that position, or possibly move up in rankings.
Live by this tool, unless perhaps… you have something better?
Popularity: 8% [?]
on Jan 6th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Agree - this is the best tool I’ve found for search rankings because it gives you the real (although limited to your matches) insight into the actual Google results.
I’ve written a small plugin which allows you to verify easily with Google, Yahoo and MSN webmaster tools in a simple Wordpress options form:
http://www.affiliatesonfire.com/articles/aof-seo-site-verifier-wordpress-plugin/
Feel free to try it - it’s really fairly simple but makes it easy to verify with all three tool sets.