Tag: google webmaster tools

July 23, 2012

Google Account without a Gmail Account

*UPDATE*: 9/25/2019 to reflect changes in Google’s signup process

Note that the below directions still work but you also now get here easily from a Sign In link on any Google page. Just click on “Sign In” link and on the dialog box, click “Create account”

This will take you to the screens mentioned below:

*UPDATED*: 4/29/2013 to reflect changes in Google’s signup process

Want to join Google+? Have been invited to to join a Google Hangout or edit a Google doc or spreadsheet? What do you do if you don’t already have a Google Account to access these services? If you are one of the lucky few who use an email account that is serviced by Google Apps, then you are good to go as most Google services now support Google Apps accounts. But what do you do if your email address is @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com? Well never fear, we can show you how to get a Google Account without creating a Gmail account (address).

By goint to https://accounts.google.com/newaccount (as shown below) you’ll be able to not only sign up for a new Google Account, but they make it easier than ever to do so using your existing email address.

January 26, 2011

Using Webmaster Tools to Optimize Your Site for Google

This is a GREAT video that shows you how to use Webmaster Tools to do Search Engine Optimization on your own website. Watching this is probably the best 10 minutes that a website owner can spend. Learn about:

Signing up for message forwarding to get real-time emails from Google about your site
Check out Search Queries to see items that are already ranking
Use Keywords to understand how to better target content
Reduce duplicates through HTML suggestions and URL paramter handling
Diagnose crawl errors to capture 404 traffic and reduce visitor frustration
Prioritize content by comparing internal links
Verify access through Fetch as Googlebot
Use Site Performance to improve speed of the website.

June 2, 2010

Creating Sitemap for Google Sites

So you’ve got a Google Sites website and you want to submit a sitemap to your Google (and other site engines) but how do you do it? Sure, with static sites you can go ahead and use a 3rd party system that will crawl the site and create an xml file for you but if you do that, how do place that file into your Google Sites site?

Well, you could upload it to a file cabinet page but Google comes to the rescue, as you can imagine, in that there is an automated sitemap that stays sync’ed with your website that you can submit to tools but it can kind of confusing to find it.

May 16, 2010

Incorrect Namespace Error in Google Webmaster Tools

If you are using AspDotNetStorefront, as well as possibly many other web applications, you may have noticed lately a number of errors showing up in your Google Webmaster Tools account. The error status indicates “Your Sitemap or Sitemap index file doesn’t properly declare the namespace.” or simply “Incorrect namespace” in the urlset tag.