A new tool for our SEO toolkit.
Google’s Webmaster tools are among our most practical and enjoyable working tools. Whether it’s Search Console, Analytics, Adsense, PageSpeed Insights, Tag Manager, or Optimize, our digital marketing goals are always driven by the most relevant and accurate answers received from these tools. And while there is often much debate in the office over which are our favorite (Search Console I am looking at you!) there is no doubt that all are indispensable to what we do as digital marketers.
We use them all interchangeably in the course of our daily working lives for a multitude of different reasons and purposes. Whether it’s to understand who is visiting a website, how someone is using a website or to evaluate the user experience in terms of pages visitors are engaging with – the google webmaster services are the essential weapons in our arsenal or the vital tools in our toolbox.
They provide the key metrics that help determine, analyze and evaluate the value and ranking of any given website, and they highlight where we are doing well and where improvements can be made.
So this makes us super excited to explore Google’s new Site Kit Plugin for WordPress. Released in November 2019, the plugin is already a seemingly big hit amongst website owners, developers, and those who manage websites.
Basically, the plugin brings together all of the highly useful Google Webmaster tools and integrates them into one single platform accessible from your WordPress dashboard – one-stop solution.
It’s customizable and configurable depending on your website goals. So you can modify which metrics and stats you get notified about, all from your WordPress dashboard.
Its single click integration guarantees a stress-free setup, that sees you connected in minutes. It doesn’t get much easier to use.
However it does have its kinks, and as much as we rave about how easy and seamless this new plugin is to use, we hope Google resolves these small obstacles soon.
The stats toolbar doesn’t always download as quickly as it should and some users have had issues with it working at all. Frustrating but hopefully fixable.
And while the plugin integrates with all of Google’s webmaster tools, Optimize and Tag Manager can not be accessed from the WordPress dashboard, and users still need to revert to the external websites for A/B tests and tags. So not quite as efficient as it could be.
But regardless, anything new from Google is always a reason to celebrate because we know it’s going to make what we do easier, faster, more efficient, and importantly driven by data. And in this regard their plugin for WordPress is no disappointment.
