After you login, the first thing you need to do is set up a profile for a site you want to validate:
Once the profile is set up, Microsoft gives you an option to include a META tag in your header or an XML file in your root directory, so Microsoft can validate you are the owner of the site. I opted for the XML file and here are the directions below:
Once you are validated, the site goes into your webmaster tools section:
By clicking on the domain, up comes a summary about the site:
You get information like last crawl date, "domain rank," the number of indexed pages, if you are blocking the crawlers, and your top five pages by rank.
Clicking over the the "profile" section gives you the ability to revalidate your site, add an XML site map and update your email address:
There is also a "Keywords" link to show you how well you rank for particular keywords. You enter in a keyword phrase into the box and click search. Then it shows you the results of that keyword phrase:
There is a simple link tool that shows you your top 10, aka your most valuable, incoming links:
Then it shows you your top links outwards to external sites:
Plus, here is the page to input your Sitemap address:
They even give you a simple tool to validate your robots.txt file:
That pretty much covers it.
The most interesting piece is the way Microsoft illustrates the importance of your domain and pages by showing green rank bars.
We had a feeling this was coming soon, in fact, I hear others have access to it already, but no one posted any screen captures yet.
Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.
