The world of SEO is full of useful tools, website, apps and programs – read our post on the best link building tools for example. But to uncover what’s wrong with a website – and how to fix it – you often need not look beyond Google’s very own Webmaster Tools (GWT).

Here’s 8 ways to use GWT to unpick your SEO

1. Run a Crawl Error report

This highlights all the broken links found in the most recent crawl.

Google hates broken links: they’re dead ends, and block the flow of link juice around your website. Mend these links by making sure they lead to the right page, or set up 301 redirects if not.

2. Run an HTML Suggestions Report

This is the way to find duplicate content. The report highlights pages which have matching title and description tags.

Make sure every page has unique and compelling meta data and visible content.

3. Run a Crawl stats report

This is a perfect way to find out if Google can reach all your web pages.

The report shows pages crawled, the time spent crawling and the amount of data downloaded per day.

If there is rising trend in time spent downloading a page then you might have a performance issue, caused by images, hosting or large volumes of code.

Spend time fixing these issues to decrease the amount of time it takes for Google to crawl your site.

4. Report: Your site on the web

The keywords report tells you what Google thinks are the commonest keywords are on your website. Are they keywords you’ve been focusing your SEO on? If not, then it’s time to re do your Meta data and tweak your content.

If you click on a keyword you can see all the keyword variations found on your website, and the pages that Google thinks are most associated with them.

This is the report you need to work out which pages you want to rank for which theme of keywords.

5. Search Queries report

Pure and simple: this tells you which queries your site ranks for, and which queries are getting you clicks.

Use our glossary to help you understand what Impressions, clicks CTR and average position means.

If you click on a specific search query you get a more detailed Google Analytics style detailed report on the performance over time of that keyword.

Remember: SEO is not just about ranking, it’s about users too: If you have a low CTR for a particular keyword it might mean that the title and description does not entice users to click through. Time to rewrite it!

6. Find out who links to you

The ‘Links to your site’ report helps to discover the links that really power your rankings.

‘How your data is linked’ lets you see the anchor text. And your most linked content’ let’s you see which pages have generated the most links. This is a good way to find out which articles on your blog have been most referenced. Once you know the type of content that generates links, you can create more of it.

7. Review your internal links

The Internal links report helps you understand which pages have the most links from within your site. Are you passing link juice to the most important pages? Do your utility links (Ts & Cs, Privacy etc) have too much prominence? Make sure your links highlight the best stuff you have.

8. Messages

If there is a sudden change in what Google has found on your site; or if your site has had some downtime, ‘messages’ is where Google will notify you – so make sure you check them.

That’s it

GWT does a lot more than what we’ve mentioned here, including helping you set up and manage sitelinks or submitting sitemaps (XML or video). But when it comes to finding out what’s right – and what’s wrong – with your SEO, the reports above make a great first stop.