Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google, enabling webmasters to monitor, analyze, and optimize their website’s performance in Google search results, providing insights into indexing status, search queries, and site errors.
Basically, This article is for those people who are not much familiar with the term Google Search Console. So if you are a beginner, this blog can help you to know more about Search Console:
Let’s see what headings is this article going to cover:
What is Google Search Console?
It is a free Google service or tool that allows users to keep an eye on their website search performance and also to troubleshoot and update errors. It can help you to improve your site’s presence on Google search results.
Thus, you can use this tool for monitoring the site’s search performance. For instance, measure the site’s search traffic, and resolve some server errors, site load issues, and security issues like hacking and malware.
This tool was popularly known as Google Webmaster tools and on 20 May 2015, it was renamed Google Search Console.
How do Search Console tools help in optimizing the website’s search performance?
- The tool makes sure that Google can find and crawl your site.
- Further, it helps in fixing indexing problems and requests for re-indexing of new or updated content.
- Furthermore, Google Console provides you with the site’s Google Search traffic data. For example, the number of times the site appears in Google Search, for which searches query your site displays, the number of times searchers click on your site for those queries, and more.
- Moreover, you will get alerts on issues and fix your site. For instance, when Google encounters any indexing issue, spam, or other issues on your site, you will receive an alert.
- Additionally, informs you about the other site’s sites links on your website.
- Last but not least, it also troubleshoots issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features.
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How One Can Start Using Google Search Console Tool?
The first thing is that you o not need to log in to the Google Console every day or every time. Because you will receive email alerts if Google encounters any issues on your site.
But in case you optimize the site content, you should check your Search console account once to ensure that your content or data is stable.
Follow the following to start using the console tool for enhancing the website performance on search results:
- Check Out Whether You Have Access to the Information or Not
- Verify if Google is Able to Crawl Your Site or Not
- Check its Mobile Usability Reports
- Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console
- Observe Your Site’s Performance
Let’s understand each of them in detail:
1. Check Out Whether You Have Access to the Information or Not
First, verify that you have got access to all the information that Google Search Console offers. In other words, check out that you have ownership of your site.
2. You can verify the WordPress site ownership in two ways:
- HTML file upload
- Meta Tag
Further, you will have to choose the URL-prefix properties process for both of the methods.
Method 1: HTML File Upload
Follow the following steps:
- First, Go to the Google Search Console
- Click the Property Selector dropdown on the Search console pages left-hand corner and then click on Add Property.
- Now, select the Property Type in the pop-up and enter your site’s URL.
- Click the Continue button.
- To download the HTML file, select the HTML file upload.
- Then, upload it to the website’s root.
- At last, click on verify back in the Search Console to finish the verification process.
Method 2: Meta Tag
When verifying the site’s ownership with its domains using the website platforms like Wix and Weebly is like the above method. But, you have to add a meta description to your Wix site.
- Verify if Google is Able to Crawl Your Site or Not
Then, check your site’s Index Coverage Report in which you will get to know about which of the pages of your site Google has indexed or tried to index.
Further, fix the errors or issues that are acting as obstacles in their indexing.
4. Check its Mobile Usability Reports
Next, also check the mobile compatibility of the site to check out the mobile usability errors that Google has faced on your site. As a result, it will offer a poor user experience when they will browse your site on their mobile devices.
5. Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console
Even without a sitemap, Google will discover your site but sitemaps help Google to discover your site faster. So you have to submit sitemaps to Google Search Console to improve your site’s page navigation speed.
You can use a sitemap generator tool to create and submit it.
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5. Observe Your Site’s Performance
The last step is to monitor your site’s performance. For this, you can review your site’s Search Performance Report. In this report, you will get to know how much traffic your site is getting and from where like from Google search, queries, etc.
You will also get the report of the total number of impressions clicks and your website’s position on Google search results.
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Some Important Terms that You Will Get to Read While Starting Google Search Console
Here are some important reports that Google Search Console provides you to improve your site’s performance:
Search Performance Report
This report gives you the details of the total number of clicks, impressions, click-through rate(CTR), and average site position in the topmost results.
Clicks: It gives the details of how many times a user browses your site or clicks your site over a while.
Impressions: It also gives the details of how many times your website get appears in Search results, whether the user clicked on your site or not.
Click-Through Rate: It gives the report of the number of clicks through a specific link or Call-to-action button your sites get.
Average Ranking or Position: The report also tells about the average position of your site in the topmost Google search results.
The Index Coverage Report
This report gives the detail of how many of your site’s pages get indexed by Google and How many pages Google tried to index. Further, it gives you the following four stages on your site:
Error: It will give you the description of specific errors or issues on your site due to which your site does not get indexed. Thus, you should first fix it.
Warning: Google Search Console tells you that your site gets indexed by google but there is some issue on your site that must be fixed.
Excluded: The pages are not indexed due to the presence of non-canonical pages. The non-canonical pages mean duplicates of other indexed pages.
Valid: It gives the number of pages that are valid or free of any issue to be indexed.
The Sitemaps Report
The sitemaps report is used to tell Google about the submission of new sitemaps for your domain. It also gives the number of URLs that Google has crawled directly from the sitemap.
URL Inspection Tool
You can use this tool to test the individual URL’s status and function on the site and makes sure that the pages get indexed by Google.
Manual Actions Report
With this report, you will get to know about Google has given a manual action or penalty to your website due to the use of unethical practices that are against their guidelines.
Removal Tools
You can use this tool to remove your site’s pages from search results. Furthermore, Google can crawl your website but due to the use of this tool pages will not appear in search results.
Core Web Vitals Reports
This report is also called a speed report and provides you with insights into your sites based on their rankings for slow, moderate, and fast loading speeds.
It also measures the following:
LCP(Largest Content Paint): It is to measure how much time valuable content takes to appear on a page.
FID(First Input Delay): The amount of time it takes before a user makes interacts with the page.
CLS(Cumulative Layout Shift): The amount of time the page layout moves around during loading.
Mobile Usability Report
It tells you about the issues or errors on your site that prevent it from being a mobile-friendly site. And it also caused problems when viewed on mobile devices.
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Ready to Start Google Search Console
Read this blog and start using Google Search Console free tool by Google Today. Further, with the help of the tool improve your site’s performance on search results by finding issues or errors on your site and troubleshooting them.
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