Google Search Console

You may not know it, but your website is constantly being tracked. From social media to local search engines, there are several ways in which your blog can be analyzed and ranked. This information can provide great insight for websites that want to optimize their performance.

If you are a blogger, you should be interested in this post, as this article will help you get started with Google Search Console. Essentially a free tool within Google Analytics, Google Search Console provides an in-depth look at how users are accessing your website content through search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

This article will walk you through everything you need to know about Google Search Console as an SEO tool and explain why it’s so important for your website.

What is a Google search console?

Search Console is an essential tool that gives Google users insight into the performance of their search engine, as well as any crawling issues or problems. This can be used to monitor crawl rate, indexing rate, and other details about how Google views your website. It also offers users a great way to get indexed faster and make sure your site is ready for prime time.

It is also a platform with built-in analytics tools that makes it easier for you to monitor the performance of your site in Google Search. Understanding how to use these tools will give you a better handle on how your site performs in search engines, which in turn can help you identify and fix any SEO issues.

How to get started with the Google search console

Sign Up

To get started with the Google search console, you have to sign up. Go to your browser and search Google Search Console. It will be the first link on your browser page, open it and click the Start Now button. When it loads, you’ll be asked to choose the Google account you want to connect your website to and to type in your domain name. After inputting your domain name, you’ll confirm if it is your website. Then you are done with the first process of signing up on the Google search console.

Add your sitemap

To add your sitemap to the Google search console, follow the steps listed below;

• Get your website’s sitemap: go to Google and search for your website sitemap, for instance, “site:yourdomain.comfiletype:xml,” or you can search for “site:yourdomain.com inurl:sitemap” you can also try this www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
• Click your website on the sidebar: ensure you pick the exact property for the domain you submitted on the Google search console in order to build a sitemap. Select your website to be accessible to the public.

You will see the sitemap option on the left-hand side under the index category.

• Remove other sites you previously submitted to the sitemap. To do this, select the three dots at the right corner and click on remove.

Under the Add, a new Sitemap, submit the site sitemap you copied.

Your sitemap will then be confirmed by Google that it is readable and discoverable by the public. This process may take a long, so wait patiently.

Importance of Google Search Console on your website

There are four major importance of the Google search console;

Performance reports: Google search console helps you see how well or bad your site is performing after a period of time. It shows you data that can help you build your website performance. The performance section is located on the left-hand side of the GSC page.

Through the filter options where you see “Your total clicks, total impression, Average CTR, and Average position,” you can choose to see the report that you are most interested in. There is also a filter bar that gives you the opportunity to search for a specific date, search type (image, web, news, or video), country, device, and search appearance. Then the table at the bottom of your screen shows the clicks and impressions of specific content on your website.

You can use the filters there to check the performance of the two contents. Try out a new filter and edit the one there if you are looking to analyze something specific. Through the GSC, you get to check the performance of your keywords, your traffic source, and the country.

Index coverage reports: through the index covered section in the GSC, you get to check the number of URLs indexed. You also get to see the URLs that have a problem with troubleshooting which prevents them from appearing when searched for.

The Error box filters page that is not indexed and doesn’t appear when searched in Google. When you click on a particular error, you get to see the reason why it was marked red, and then you will be able to solve it.

Valid with warning box shows pages that are indexed but may or may not appear in Google when searched for. GSC uses this section to warn you of a possible problem so that you can quickly resolve them.

URL listed in the Valid section shows that they are indexed and appear on Google when searched. There is no action you need to take for URLs listed here – unless, for some reason, you don’t want any URL there to be indexed.

In the Excluded box, the URLs there are neither indexed, appearing on Google search, nor have any error.

Google puts them there, thinking you want them to be excluded. This happens when a no-index directive appears on a page.

If you are consistent in creating content on your blog, the number of valid pages will keep increasing while other sections will reduce. Ensure to check your index coverage report to know when to take action on any URL.

Page experience report: This section in the Google search console combines reports of the core web vitals and metrics to show the page experience of your website. This page experience report explains the experienced user get when using either a mobile phone or a pc to enter your webpage.

We have the Good URLs percentage that shows the number of mobile URLs that has good core web vitals and no issues while making use of them. You also see the total number of impressions you get on your site. The number of Failing URLs that will need improvement in the core web is vital. Security issues on your site may prevent it from producing a good page experience. Also, the number of pages on your site that don’t use HTTPS instead use HTTP.

Having quality content on your blog can still rank even when you have a bad page experience, but if the content is similar to other content that has been ranked by Google search engine, then you will need to have a good page experience in order to rank high. Always pay attention to your page experience as it can help you rank your content higher on Google search.

Enhancement reports: this section of the GSC is similar to the index coverage report as it shows pages with errors, valid pages, and valid pages with errors. Pages with errors do not show on Google when searched. Pages with warnings do not appear in the proper place they are meant to appear on Google when searched. Valid pages have no issues as they are indexed and show properly on Google when searched.

Another importance of the Google search console

You can manually index an URL if it is not yet indexed by Google: Sometimes, when you publish content on your blog, they are crawled but not indexed, which means it won’t appear on Google search result. However, you can manually index it by;

• Copy the URL of the content you wish to index
• Go to your Google search console page, then click the search icon
• Paste the link there, then click “Test Live URL.”
• A bot will then run through the URL to see if the post can be indexed
• If it can, you will see a section that says “Request indexing” select it.
• You will get notified that the URL is now on the list of URLs waiting to be indexed.
• In a few hours, the post should be indexed.

You can see the keywords used to get to your site; When we create a post, we focus on some keywords to help us rank better. However, there are times that your keywords are not exactly the searchers’ intent, and for this reason, you get low traffic when most people make use of that keywords online. You can use the GSC to see how visitor constructs the keywords to enable you to include them in that blog post so as to rank higher.

Conclusion

Google search console is a tool that helps you monitor your website and keyword performance. It is handy for anyone with a Google Search presence or any other search engine presence. You can use it to check the performance of your site, pages, and keywords. It’s also useful if you want to keep track of your top competitors or monitor trends in visibility and user experience on the web.

This article has explained what you need to know about the Google search console. If you have any questions on the Google search console, kindly leave them in the comment section below.

Thanks for reading!

Originally posted 2022-10-07 18:18:19.