Setup Webmaster Tools for Mobile Website SEO

Part Two Chapter 08

Search

Any business owners (or webmasters) who have a website (for desktop or mobile devices) would like to get users from search engines (e.g. Google for business facing most the markets in the world, and Baidu for business facing the local Chinese market) through organic search traffic.

Google Webmaster Guidelines – To help Google to find, index, and rank your website, follow the official webmaster guidelines. Google encourages webmasters to create your websites that can help Google to find and understand your pages, and that can help users to use your pages.

  • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769

Mobile SEO Best Practices – It is a guide for optimizing websites for mobile users and/or devices. Google has been emphasizing on developing mobile-friendly websites due to mobile-first index.

Baidu Mobile SEO Guide for Beginners – I have written this beginners guide for mobile websites to prepare for Baidu SEO. The guide discusses topics including local web hosting, mobile website strategies, page speed optimization, and local SEO.

Setup Google Webmaster Tools

Create a Google Webmaster Tools account:

  • https://www.google.com/webmaster

Verify your mobile website in Google Webmaster Tools account through one of the four methods.

Method 1: HTML Verification File

  • Download a HTML verification file from Google.
  • Upload the file to the root directory of your website.
  • Verify in Google Webmaster Tools account.

Method 2: Domain Name (or Web Hosting) Provider

  • Follow the steps (of your domain name or web hosting provider) to create a DNS (Domain Name System) record which is required to prove your domain's ownership to Google.
  • Verify in Google Webmaster Tools account.

Method 3: Google Analytics Tracking Code

  • Make sure you have “Edit” permission in your Google Analytics account's web property.
  • Place the asynchronous version of Google Analytics Tracking Code onto your web pages.
  • Verify in Google Webmaster Tools account.

Method 4: Google Tag Manager

  • Make sure you have “Manage” permission for Google Tag Manager container.
  • Place the Google Tag Manager container snippet onto your web pages.
  • Verify in Google Webmaster Tools account.

Setup Webmaster Tools for Local Markets (such as China)

If your business is for a specific local market (such as China), then create the local webmaster tool accounts and verify your mobile website.

Baidu's official webmaster tool (i.e. Baidu Zhanzhang):

  • https://zhanzhang.baidu.com/

Shenma's official webmaster tool:

  • https://zhanzhang.sm.cn/

Reports in Google Webmaster Tools

In Google Webmaster Tools, go through the reports regularly.

View the user search terms which have previously triggered impressions and clicks for your mobile website. 

Search Traffic -> Search Analytics

View which domains link to your mobile website, and which are your mostly linked pages. 

Search Traffic -> Linking to Your Site

View the total number of your web pages being indexed by Google. 

Google Index -> Index Status

View Googlebot's activities in the last 90 days: pages crawled per day, kilobytes downloaded per day, and time spent downloading a page. 

Crawl -> Crawl Stats

View the crawl errors such as 404. 

Crawl -> Crawl Errors

Test the http status codes of your web pages (URLs) as Googlebot. 

Crawl -> Fetch as Google

Gordon Choi's Mobile Website Book has been available since November 2016.






Content on Gordon Choi's Mobile Website Book is licensed under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license.

Gordon Choi's Mobile Website Book

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