Do you want to see how SEO efforts are paying off for your business?
Google Search Console is a free tool that provides detailed information about site performance, security issues and errors.
What is the process? This is what we're going cover today.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a set of tools that Google offers to help you monitor your site's performance and find problems. It also helps you rank your site higher in Google. It's a powerful but complicated tool.
In 2010, we created a comprehensive beginner's guide for Google Webmaster Tools. There have been many changes to Google Webmaster Tools over the years, including a rebranding of Google Search Console.
This guide has been updated to include information about Google Search Console, how it works, the data you can find about your website, any important data that you may have forgotten about and how to monitor for potential issues that could affect your search engine rankings.
Setup Google Search Console
You will first need to set up Google Search Console if you don't have one.
Sign in to the Search Console website and sign in using your Google Account. This is the account you use for Google Analytics.
You'll see the dialogue box below the Start Now button.
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You have more options to verify your identity by selecting the URL prefix.
Next, verify that this site is yours.
This involved uploading an HTML file to your webserver or embedding code in your website's header.
If you have Google Analytics already, it will automatically verify your site and you'll see this:
You can also try these other verification options if this fails.
DNS CNAME verification is one of the newest verification options. This option was previously in Google Webmaster Tools but has been reintroduced for Google Search Console.
After your site has been verified, you can submit a sitemap.
This is a simple XML-file that tells Google Search Console which pages are on your website.
If you have one already, you can usually find it by typing in http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to see it in your browser.
Online tools such as XML Sitemaps can be used to create a sitemap if one is not already created.
You can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create a WordPress website.
After activating the plugin, go to Settings under WordPress Dashboard and click on XML Sitemap.
Your sitemap should be generated by the plugin, so you don't need to do anything else.
Your URL will be at the top of this page.
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Copy the link address, go back to Google Search Console and paste it under "Add new sitemap" in GSC.
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Search Console may take up to a few days before it starts pulling information about your site.
Wait a while, then read on to learn more about Google Search Console.
What data can you pull from Google Search Console?
After you have verified and added your website to GSC, you can view tons of information about the performance of your site in GSC.
This is a powerful tool. These are just the highlights of new types data. You should also remember to review important data every now and again.
Google Search Console Overview
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Your Overview will be the first thing you see when you visit your website within GSC.
This overview shows you the most important data in Google Search Console. Click on the appropriate links to visit certain areas, such as Search Analytics, Crawl Errors and Sitemaps.
These areas can be accessed via the menu on the left sidebar.
Search Results
You'll find Search Results in the left sidebar.
This section provides an overview of your site's position in Search Engine Results Page. It includes clicks, impressions and click-through rates. You can also see what queries your site is listed for.
You can filter the data using filters at top to sort it based on date, location, type of search and many other criteria. These data are crucial for understanding the impact of SEO efforts.
Index Coverage report
This report provides data about URLs Google tried to index for your property, as well as any issues Google encountered.
Googlebot scans the web to find words and compiles an index.
It also examines content tags and attributes such as your titles and alt texts.
This graph displays a breakdown of URLs from your site that Google has indexed and may appear in search results.
This graph will change as you add pages and subtract pages.
You don't need to worry if your number of indexed pages is lower than you think. Googlebot filters URLs it deems duplicates, non-canonical or with a no index meta tags.
A number of URLs that your robots.txt files has blocked from crawling will also be visible.
You can also use the Removal Tool to check how many URLs have been removed. This will almost always be a low number.
Sitemaps
Sitemaps were mentioned earlier so I'll briefly cover it again.
You will find information about your sitemap in GSC under Sitemaps. This includes whether or not you have one, and when it was last modified.
You might submit your sitemap if you notice that the date of your last sitemap download is not recent. This will allow you to refresh the number submitted URLs.
This will allow you to keep track of Google's reading of your sitemap, and if all pages are being viewed the way you want.
Removals
You can temporarily block pages from Google's search results by visiting Removals.
A page can be hidden for up to 90 days before it becomes unreadable.
You will need to remove a page permanently from Google's crawling.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a collection of metrics that can impact your search ranking. These metrics include speed, usability, visual stability, and usability. These are ranking signals so pay close attention.
Accelerated mobile pages AMP
Accelerated Mobile pages is an open-source project that provides mobile websites with fast loading speeds and slow connections.
If you don't already have a page, you can click here to start creating one.
A boilerplate code will be provided that you can modify to fit your site.
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For pages in GSC go to Enhancements >AMP.
Links to Your Website
Are you curious about your backlinks.
GSC displays the top domains linking to you, as well as the pages of your website with most links. Scroll down until you see Links. You'll find a complete report of all links to your site by clicking on the link.
This is the most complete listing of all your backlinks (and other internal links)! You will get it for free.
It is a powerful tool that allows you to see where your content is being used on the internet and which pages perform best in Google's eyes.
Manual Actions
You can check if your pages do not comply with Google's webmaster guidelines by clicking the Manual Actions tab.
This is one of the many ways Google has taken steps against web spamming.
Mobile Usability
You can check if all pages of your website are following the best practices set by Google on the Mobile Usability tab.
As you can see text size and viewport settings can all be affected.
These and other errors can have a negative impact on your mobile site's ranking, which will cause you to be lower up the results page. These errors can be fixed to improve your user experience.
As you review this information, I recommend that you also test your website's mobile speed. I use Ubersuggest to do so.
First, type your URL in the search box, and then click Search.
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Click the Search button and scroll down until you have seeded Site Speed.
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The site speed will be displayed on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile loading times are more important for the purpose of this exercise. Mobile devices load my site in just two seconds. This is an excellent score.
Site speed is not the only thing that matters. There's also an advanced breakdown of:
- First happy painter
- Speed index
- Interactive time
- Opportunities for SEO audit
- First meaningful painting
- First CPU to go without power
- Estimated input latency
If you find any problems, immediately fix them and then retest your site. This may be enough for you to speed up your site's loading times.
Crawl Stats
You can find the Crawl Statistics report under Settings > Crawl stats for a deeper analysis of Googlebot's visits to your site.
This will show you how often pages of your site are being crawled and how many kilobytes of data are downloaded each day. It also shows the time it takes to download your site.
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Google says there is no "good crawl number", but they have suggestions for sudden drops or spikes in crawl rates.
Fetch with Google (Now Called URL Inspection).
This tool allows you to test how Google crawls your site and renders it.
This is a great way to ensure that Googlebot can access pages that are not normally accessible.
If the page renders successfully, you will be able to check if there are any blocked resources for Googlebot.
Click View Tested Page to view the HTML, screenshot and crawl errors. Note: Crawl errors used be its own report. Now it can be found in URL inspection under Coverage.
This tool is a great freebie for web developers who want to debug their websites.
Robots.txt
This tool is useful if you are using a robots.txt to prevent Google from crawling a particular resource.
If you don’t want your image to show up in a Google Image Search you can check your robots.txt to ensure that it isn’t.
You will receive a Accepted or Blocked message when you test. You can then edit the message accordingly.
Parameters
Google recommends that you use this tool sparingly as incorrect URL parameters can adversely impact the crawlability of your site.
Learn more from Google about how to use URL parameters correctly
This tool can be used to monitor their performance and ensure they aren't pointing Googlebot in the incorrect direction.
FAQs
What is Google Search Console?
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a set of tools that allows you to monitor your website's operation, identify potential problems and improve its Google rank. This is a Google online tool that provides information about your website and users who have visited it.
How to use Google Search Console
To learn how to use Google Search Console first add your website into Google Search Console. Next, create the operations that you want to optimize consistently. The next step is to submit a sitemap. Finally, you can learn metrics that will help refine and report on your operations after using the Google Search Console.
How to set up Google Search Console
Sign in to your Google Account and open Google Search Console. Next, add your site. To verify your account, enter your URL prefix or domain name. Then you can start taking advantage of these features.
Conclusion
Google Search Console provides powerful insight into your site's performance and what you can do for Google to pay more attention. After you've mastered the basics, you can learn how to use GSC data for increased traffic of 28 percent or greater.
Are you using Google Search Console? Which areas are you most helpful in? We'd love to hear your comments. Happy data analysis!
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By: Neil Patel
Title: Google Search Console: A Guide for SEOs (2022 Update)
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/google-search-console-guide/
Published Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2022 19:00:00 +0000