Boost Your SEO with Google Search Console

If you’re managing a website or websites for others, it’s important to track their performance. One of the best SEO analysis tools in the market is Google’s Search Console.

In this comprehensive beginner’s guide, we’ll cover how to set up and use Google Search Console’s key features, including the performance tab, index coverage, URL inspection, enhancements, and the disavow tool.

Optimize Your Content and SEO Strategy with Search Analytics

Search Analytics is one of the key features of Google Search Console that can help you improve your website’s content and SEO strategy. By using Search Analytics, you can see which queries bring users to your site, analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search, and make data-driven decisions about your content and SEO.

Get Your Content on Google’s Radar

Submitting your sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling is crucial to getting your content indexed and visible on Google Search. Google Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap and URLs for crawling, and review your index coverage to make sure that Google has the freshest view of your site. By regularly submitting your sitemaps and URLs, you can ensure that your website is visible and accessible to your target audience.

Get Alerts on Issues and Fix Your Site

Google Search Console can help you stay on top of any issues that might be affecting your website’s performance. By setting up email alerts, you can receive notifications when Google identifies issues on your site. This allows you to see which URLs are affected by these issues and take immediate action to fix them. Once you’ve fixed the issues, you can also notify Google through Search Console, so that they can re-crawl and index your site.

Understand How Google Search Views Your Pages

The URL Inspection tool is a powerful feature of Google Search Console that provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index. With this tool, you can see how Google Search views your pages, identify any issues that might be affecting your page’s visibility or ranking, and take action to improve your page’s performance.

By utilizing these features of Google Search Console, you can optimize your content and SEO strategy, ensure that your website is visible and accessible to your target audience, and stay on top of any issues that might be affecting your website’s performance.

Setting Up Google Search Console

To get started with Google Search Console, you first need to verify ownership of your website. This can be done by adding a meta tag or HTML file to your website, or by linking your Google Analytics account to Search Console.

Once you have verified ownership, you can access the full range of features provided by Search Console.

The Performance Tab

The performance tab is a crucial feature as it shows what keywords your website ranks for and their performance over the last 90 days. Other factors linked to your keywords include:

• Clicks: the number of times people have clicked on your website via Google. Linking this to keywords, you will be able to see what keywords have the greater effect when it comes to attracting your audience. The more clicks, the more traffic they are generating.
• Impressions: how often a specific page is shown in search results. It gives a more general number, but it is still related to the search engine results.
• Average CTR: the percentage of people who clicked on your website after seeing it. Your CTR or click-through rate tells you what percentage of people have seen your website but then have gone onto click the link within the search engine. Higher rankings usually lead to a higher click-through rate. To increase your CTR, make your meta description more inviting or even change the page title. Both are quick fixes but also very effective.
• Average Position: where a specific keyword ranks on the search engine. You need to aim for page one of Google as it enables you to be found, and statistically, most who are not on that first page are not generating as much traffic via the search engine.

To make the most of the performance tab, it’s important to use it in conjunction with other tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Keyword Planner. By analyzing the data provided by these tools, you can make informed decisions about your website’s content and SEO strategy.

Index Coverage

The index coverage feature shows how many pages you have indexed in the Google search engine and which ones have any working issues that need to be resolved. This tab is useful for fixing errors quickly. Indexing your new articles is a must.

This allows Google to then crawl the pages in order to give them a ranking. If they are not indexed, it then becomes increasingly hard for the search engine to know what is ranking and what isn’t.

URL Inspection

URL inspections analyze the specific URLs on your website.

By comparing what’s on the search engine to how it appears on your website, you can identify areas for improvement. This feature allows you to identify any issues that might be preventing your pages from ranking well.

Enhancements

The enhancements feature looks at how your page is performing, from its speed to its mobile usability. All are valuable tools and can present further opportunities to develop your site. Speed is one of the main factors that will contribute towards your SEO.

As many readers want the content they are trying to access as fast as possible, poor speed reduces UX. Looking at the content, picture size, or even the server who you are hosting your site with are all considerations when looking to make your page faster.

Disavow Tool

The disavow tool allows you to disavow (or disassociate) any low-quality or spammy backlinks pointing to your website. This tool is particularly useful if you have received a manual penalty from Google due to a backlink profile that is considered spammy or manipulative.

To use the disavow tool, you need to download a list of all the backlinks pointing to your website. You can do this by going to the “Links” section of your Google Search Console account and clicking on the “Export External Links” button.

Once you have your list of backlinks, you can use a tool like Moz or Ahrefs to analyze the quality of each link. Any links that are low-quality, spammy, or irrelevant can be disavowed using the disavow tool.

It’s important to note that you should only use the disavow tool as a last resort.

Before disavowing any links, try to contact the website owner and request that they remove the link pointing to your website. If they refuse to remove the link, then you can disavow it using the disavow tool.

It’s also important to be careful when using the disavow tool. Disavowing too many links can harm your website’s rankings, so it’s important to only disavow links that are truly harmful to your website’s backlink profile.

It’s also a good idea to keep a record of all the links you disavow in case you need to reference them in the future.

Additional Tips

While using Google Search Console is a great way to improve your website’s SEO, there are some additional tips you can follow to maximize your results.

For example, be sure to optimize your website’s meta descriptions and title tags for your target keywords. You should also ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and has a fast page loading speed.

Finally, it’s important to regularly review and update your website’s content to ensure that it remains fresh and relevant.

By regularly adding new, high-quality content to your website, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and attract more visitors.

Conclusion: Improve Your SEO Strategy with Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful tool that can help you improve your website’s SEO and track its performance.

By using the features provided by Search Console, such as the performance tab, index coverage, URL inspection, enhancements, and the disavow tool, you can make informed decisions about your website’s content and SEO strategy.

However, it’s important to use these tools carefully and in conjunction with other SEO analysis tools to get the best results.