Do you ever wonder what Google knows about your site? Maybe you have a new site and wonder IF Google knows about your site.

To help answer these questions, Google provides a great resource called Google Webmaster Tools. These tools let you see what Google knows about your site. They also help you tell them about your site. And like most Google tools, it’s completely free.

These tools also provide a great set of resources for existing sites. They show which pages are indexed, your highest ranked keywords, where your traffic comes from, and much more.

In this session we will look at how to use Google Webmaster Tools to submit site information to Google. In the next session we’ll look at some of the reports and insights Google can provide on a mature site.

To start the submission process we generate a sitemap. A sitemap is a specially formatted file that lists all the pages on your site. Our demonstration site is based on WordPress, so we will use a free plugin to generate this file.

If we don’t have a sitemap, then whenever we launch a new site, we have to wait for Google to discover it on their own, and then hope they actually find all the inside pages.

But first we have to register our site with Google Webmaster Tools tell them we exist. Here is how:

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