Optimising your website for search engines is not a one-time task but a continuous process. You have to constantly monitor the performance of your search engine optimisation (SEO) initiatives, see how well they are working, and implement changes whenever necessary. To optimise, you need to first monitor, and that’s what Google Search Console helps you with. If you are looking for ways to improve your SEO and optimise your site for better visibility in Google Search, then the Google Search Console is one web service/tool you should use. For better clarity, let’s dive deeper into the world of Google Search Console and see how you can use it for SEO insights.
Let’s get started.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free web service powered by Google, designed specifically to support website owners, administrators, and SEO professionals in their SEO initiatives. It allows you to monitor your website’s performance in Google Search results and determine strategies that will boost your website’s overall visibility. If used right, it can be your best and most efficient SEO partner. And as it is entirely free, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use it.
From detecting technical issues that might be limiting your website’s reach to delivering insights that will help you understand your audience better, Google Search Console offers multiple functionalities.
Launched originally as Google Webmaster Tools in 2005, it was rebranded as Google Search Console in 2015. During these years, it has evolved a lot to keep pace with the changing SEO trends and cater to a broader audience beyond technical webmasters, such as marketers and content creators. Today, Google Search Console is widely used and recognised as an indispensable tool for optimising your online presence.
Here are the key areas of Google Search Console –
- Performance Report: View clicks, impressions, CTR, and rankings and other key performance metrics for keywords and pages.
- Index Coverage: Check which pages are indexed and troubleshoot errors.
- URL Inspection Tool: Test how Google sees your individual pages.
- Core Web Vitals: Assess page speed and user experience metrics.
- Links Report: Review internal and external linking data.
You can utilise all features to closely monitor your website’s performance and optimise it for better online performance.
How to Get Started with Google Search Console?
If you are ready to use Google Search Console as a part of your SEO journey, let us guide you through a step-by-step process.
Step 1: Sign up
Head over to Google Search Console and click on “start now”.
Step 2: Add Your Website
When adding your website to Google Search Console, you will have two options or property types to choose from – Domain and URL Prefix.
- Domain Property tracks all URLs across subdomains and protocols under your domain. If you wish to manage the entire website and its variations in one place, this option is the right one for you.
- URL Prefix Property tracks only the exact URL version you specify. If you wish to manage only a single section of your website, you should go for URL Prefix.
So, choose accordingly and add the required URL to get started.
Step 3: Verify Ownership
Before you begin using the tool, you will need to prove that you own the website. There are different ways to complete the verification process –
- DNS Verification: Google Search Console will give you a code (TXT record). Go to the website or platform where you purchased and registered your domain name, paste the code into the settings, and save it. Once done, go to GSC and click “verify”.
- HTML File Upload: GSC will give you a file to download, which you will have to load to your website’s root directory (the website’s main folder). Once done, go to GSC and click “verify”.
- HTML Tag: You will receive a small code (meta tag). Add this to your website’s <head> section and save it. Once done, go to GSC and click “verify”.
- Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager: If you are already using Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager, you don’t have to verify. Just link your account and click “verify” in GSC.
Once verified, you can get started.
How to Use Google Search Console for SEO Insights?
Analyse Search Performance
You can generate a complete performance report using GSC and analyse your website’s overall search performance. This report will offer all key stats like clicks, impressions, click-through rates (CTR) and the average position of your web pages. You can identify all high-performing keywords and high-impression ones with low CTR and edit your meta titles and descriptions accordingly. You can also filter by device, i.e., mobile or laptop, to better understand user behaviour.
Monitor and Optimise Indexing
With GSC’s Index Coverage Report, discover pages that are indexed well and ones that need improvement. This SEO insight can be used to fix any technical issues that might be hampering the visibility of your web pages. Upload your XML sitemap to Google Search Console; it will help Google better understand your site’s structure and index content effectively. You can constantly monitor indexing issues related to your sitemap, promptly fix them and ensure all your important pages are always discoverable.
Enhance Mobile Usability
With the steady increase in mobile web users, mobile-friendliness is a key factor in optimising your website for search engines. With the help of Google Search Console, you can identify and rectify issues that might be affecting your mobile users. You can generate a mobile usability report and detect diverse issues like small font sizes, clickable elements too close together, or content wider than the screen, enhancing the overall responsiveness of your website.
Monitor Core Web Vitals (CWV)
On Google Search Console, you can access the Core Web Vitals report and analyse the overall performance of your website across diverse devices. It measures all key metrics – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Based on the analysis, it will rank all your URLs as Good, Needs Improvement and Poor. You can use this data to begin the optimisation process and improve your site’s loading speed, interactivity and visual stability. You can enable notifications for significant changes in CWV performance and track your improvements.
Optimise Structured Data
All your structured data, like FAQs, product reviews, and how-tos, provide additional information about your webpage to search engines. If you add your structured data well, Google will better understand your content, potentially enhancing your website’s visibility. With the Enhancements Report in GSC, you can identify and fix issues related to your structured data. It will locate all types of structured data included on your website and categorise them based on their quality as Valid, Invalid and Warnings.
Each category provides detailed information about the issues found, such as missing fields or incorrect property values in the schema markup. You can use this data to fix all structured date-related problems and ensure your content is eligible for rich results.
Enhance Page Experience
Page experience determines your website’s ranking and user engagement. With Google Search Console’s Page Experience Report, you can evaluate factors like HTTPS implementation, mobile usability and Core Web Vitals compliance and ensure your site meets Google’s standards for a high-quality user experience. Once you fix the issues mentioned in the report, you can track performance or monitor improvements and accordingly devise your optimisation plans.
Track Backlink Health
If you wish to establish your website’s authority and boost your ranking, backlinks are key. You can generate a Links Report on GSC to track your top referring domains. anchor text used in backlinks and your most linked-to pages. You can also identify low-quality or spammy backlinks. All these metrics can help you refine your link-building strategy and include more high-authority backlinks to your website.
Leverage International Targeting
If you are a business targeting a global audience, Google Search Console’s International Targeting Tool can come in quite handy.
- It allows you to set a geographic target, optimise your website for that particular location and enhance visibility in country-specific Google search results.
- GSC can also help you detect missing or incorrect hreflang annotations. Hreflang tags help Google understand which language or regional version of a page should be shown to users based on their language and region.
- You can also analyse your country-wise performance, identify underperforming regions and improvise.
Address Security and Manual Actions
With Google Search Console’s Security Issues Report, you can detect diverse security-related issues like malware, phishing, or hacked content and take immediate action. Also, with the Manual Actions Report, you will be notified in a timely manner of any penalties due to guideline violations like spammy structured data or hidden content. Both of these reports will help you enhance the security quotient of your website and help deliver a secure browsing experience for users.
Begin Your Optimisation Journey with us at MMW
With this blog, we offered you great insight into Google Search Console and how it can support you in your SEO initiatives. But beyond GSC, several other tools can help you better optimise your website for search engines. As SEO experts, we are familiar with them all and can assist you in developing a fail-proof and effective SEO strategy for your business. If you are ready to streamline your optimisation initiatives and take your business to a larger audience, get in touch with us today. We will support you at each step of your SEO journey and help you derive optimum results.
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