If you don’t have a website or don’t own a blog page, this post will not be of any use. However, it’s really hard for me to believe that you don’t have either of these things, a website or a blog post.
In case if you don’t have any website yet, please allow me to motivate you. As of now, in 2021, there are around 2 billion websites. And 400 million of them are active websites.
Do you still not see the reason to be a part of a bigger picture? Well, If not, then I will be here hoping that you change your thoughts. But in case you are ready to upscale your game in this crazy virtual world, then I am your guy.
In today’s article, we will be discussing Google Search Console. And how to use it for the growth of your virtual business.
Google is the new lifestyle. Google owns the digital world, and Google loves to work for you. How? Indeed a very intriguing question.
Google lets you have tools that help to collect and analyze your website performance. Google search console was the first version of the analysis tool, which has now been upgraded to Google Analytics.
For all other products, Google lets you use its Search Console for free to maintain your website. In addition, it gives you valuable insights. Here we’ll explain how to use Google Search Console.
This article will be a step-by-step guide on how to use Google Search Console and improve your online presence.
I know it’s overwhelming. But I am here to help you throughout the process, and I will be making things easy for you.
The need to have Google Search Console
Google Search Console is free of cost Google platform, which lets you analyze the performance of your website. In addition, it helps you see where your website needs tweaking.
It is the tech editor of your website. It can tell you all the technical problems you are having, like crawl errors.
Isn’t that fancy that you don’t need to hire a person to check this for you. With that, Google Search Console lets you have a view of a specific keyword, and its impression counts daily.
And it won’t be wrong to say that Google loves to add a cherry on the top of all its platforms. For example, it emails you instantly whenever Google Search Console identifies new errors.
These automated email notifications enable you to be aware of issues that need to be fixed immediately. This is why you should learn how to use Google Search Console!
How does Google Search Console Work
- Step 1: To start using Google Search Console, you need to have a Google verified account. Login to Google Search Console with your Google account, and the first thing Google will ask you is to add ‘add a new property. It’s fascinating how Google treats your websites as Assets.
- Step 2:When you click on the ‘Add a property’ button, you are asked to insert your website address details. In the new domain option, you will be required to add the domain name only.
You need to select this option to track all the connected pages to that domain. Here you get to have an ‘old’ URL prefix option as well.
- Step 3:Once the web address has been added; you need to prove the ownership of the website. Google helps you verify that through multiple options
You have a Domain option that works with only DNS verification.
You have a URL prefix that supports indifferently.
And there are a lot more methods, which you can find in Google’s documentation, along with the difference these methods have.
- Step 4:In case you are a WordPress user who happened to use Yoast SEO, the Google Search console works perfectly for WordPress.
Google Search Console provides you with a verification code using ‘HTML tag.’
As you can see in the picture above, the code has been highlighted and ends with a .html extension. Thus, this code is easily copied.
You have to paste it into the ‘Webmaster tools’ tab of your Yoast SEO plugin:
Once the settings are saved, you can safely return to Google Search Console and click the Verify button.
This will confirm the changes you have made in the plugin. Then, the plugin will check the information and authenticate it.
If everything is okay and there are no errors while the plugin was processing the information, you’ll get a successful update message.
And that’s how Google Search Console will start collecting data for your website.
Features of Google Search Console
With all the settings done, let’s talk about what features you get and how these features help you take care of your website.
What would be the next step? Well, my dear friend, it’s time to let Google do its magic. We will now see what Google Search Console has for us and if any problems need fixing.
Plus, now you get to explore the reporting modules with all the information it has, and I will explain the functionality of these features with you in the remaining article.
- Feature #1: The Performance Review:
To start with, you need to know how the performance section of Google Search Console works. So here, in the performance review tab, you get to see all the pages and the keywords ranked on Google from within the domain and subdomains of your website.
As Google continuously updates its core functions, so now you get to see your historical data trending for the last 16 months. That’s massive data processed by Google within seconds.
You were thinking if things were going to be expensive. No Sir. Google and all its functions are free to use. Google loves to work for you for free in return for information collection, which you agreed in the service agreement section of account creation.
So now, if you start analyzing the performance tab on an hourly and daily basis, you would see what keywords and pages require optimization.
Once again, you feel stuck, and you ask yourself where to begin? So let’s dig in further to see what the performance tab has for us?
The performance tab indicates the performance of your website based on clicks, impressions, Click-through Rate, and average position of your website.
The following bullet points are the definitions of performance indicators:
- Clicks: Clicks let you see how many people have clicked on your website. The increment of decrement in the number of clicks tells you about the individual performance of the page titles and Meta descriptions on your pages.
- Impressions: in simple words, impressions tell you how many times your website has been shown in the search results.
- Click-through Rate: The Click-through rate, another fancy tech terminology that tells you the number of people who have seen your website in search results and clicked your website.
- Average Position:This is the last performance indicator. It shares the results of a keyword ranking in a specific time frame.
After the performance comes index coverage.
- Feature # 2: Index coverage
It a rather complex technical tab of Google Search Console.
- Does index coverage show how many pages there are on your website?
- How many have been indexed by Google?
- Are there any pages with issues?
- And how many pages are there which haven’t been indexed yet?
- What sort of errors are there which are not letting these pages be indexed on Google.
Index coverage is more of an inspecting tool that helps you rectify the issue immediately and get your website pages indexed on Google.
Because let’s face it, otherwise there is no revenue or earning for you.
- Feature # 3:URL Inspection
The URL Inspection feature of Google Search Console helps you analyze web URLs. You will retrieve the page from Google’s previous index and compare it with now to see the differences.
URL inspection lets you see technical info such as:
- When did Google crawl the page
- How did Google crawl it
- How it looked when Google crawled the page
- And a notice of several errors
This might be in regards to Google not being able to crawl your page properly. However, it also gives information about the structured data found on this URL.
- Feature # 4:Mobile Usability
And in the end, I will tell you about the mobile usability tab. This tab helps you see the usability issues with your website when accessed via mobile device.
As you know very well that the mobile traffic is rising. So it’s better to keep a watch on your mobile usability as well.
Bottom Line
Okay, so now, after going through the post, you should know what Google Search Console is capable of. Furthermore, how it should be used and what outcomes should we expect.
So now, like always, I am going to ask you questions. Do you use Google Search Console for your website performance monitoring? If not, then why not, and what is holding you back from improving the performance of your website.
I would emphasize again how important it is for you to start using Google Search Console.
And in the end, do you think I have missed something? Let me know in the comment. Still not going to use Google Search Console; tell me in the comments section?
