How to Use Google Search Console for Your Website

by Nishant Gujjar SEO Executive

Are you new to using Google Search Console? Well if you are, then you have come to the right place because we are going to help you in getting most out of it to improve your website’s performance and SEO.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is an online tool that allows its users to collect, analyze, and interpret data of their website.

Benefits of Using it

Using Google Search Console, you can quickly get lots of insights about your website’s performance and its content which can help you in optimizing your it to rank higher on Google SERPs. For example – you get information about your website’s performance, speed, crawling errors, sitemaps errors using Google Search Console. Additionally, whenever it detects new issues on your website, it sends you an email containing the details of the detected error.

How to Setup Your Account?

Go to https://search.google.com/search-console and sign in using your Google account.
Next click on the “Add property” option from the top bar.
Select the “+ Add property” option from the drop-down menu.
Next click on the “URL prefix “option and enter your website URL or click on the “Domain” option enter your domain name in it.
Once you have done that you have to verify your ownership.
If you have selected the “Domain “option for adding your website then you have to use the DNS verification method for verification. However, if you have used the “URL prefix” option, you can verify your property using an HTML tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or Domain name provider.
Once you have verified your ownership it will start collecting data about your website.

How to Use Google Search Console?

Now you have set up your account, it’s time to start using it to get most out of it. To get data about your website, you have to go through different tabs and their reports in the Google Search Console.

Performance Tab

Using this tab, you can get information about the performance of your keywords and pages and see for which keyword your website is ranking high/low in Google. Within the performance tab, you get options like:

Queries-This option can be used to know about the queries being used by users for which your website is getting ranked.
Pages- This option can be used to check the performance of your pages.
Countries- This option can be used to determine the countries from which you are getting maximum traffic.
Devices – This option tells you about which devices are people using to browse your website.
Search appearance- This option is used to check the performance of your rich results in Google.
Dates- This option can be used to measure day to day performance of your website.

Index Coverage

Using this tab, you can inspect the technical aspects of your website. Using it you can get information about the number of pages that are being indexed by Google and how many pages are not indexed by Google due to an error or issue. Frequently check this tab to see if there are any errors or issues with your page due to which Google is unable to index it. Once you have fixed the errors you can mark it as fixed in the tab and Google will try to index that page again. While going through coverage reports in the index tab check for trends like decrease in numbers of indexed pages, sudden or unexpected hike in your website traffic. These trends signify that there is an issue with your pages and websites which needs your attention

Sitemaps

Under this option, you can easily check if your sitemap has any issues or if your pages are getting indexed or not. So, if you haven’t submitted your sitemap, then it is highly recommended to submit it and check for any error in it under the sitemaps.

URL Inspection

The URL inspection helps you in analyzing specific URLs of your website. Using this tool, you can compare your website page with the page retrieved from Google’s database. This helps you in analyzing how your webpage looks when Google indexes it. It also provides information about the errors Google encountered while crawling. Using this information, you can optimize your website and improve its SEO.

Enhancement tabs

Next is the “Enhancement “tab. Under this tab, you will find all the insights and things that you must do to improve your site’s performance. The enhancement tab has 3 options in it:

Core web vitals-It allows you to check your website speed.
Mobile usability- It allows you to check issues in the Amp pages of your website.
Sitelink search box – It allows you to check the performance of your rich results.

Links Tab

Under this tab, you can get information about your internal links and backlinks. Using the tab, you can see the number of links (internal links and backlinks) you have and the anchor text used for those links. You can also use it to analyze whether your most important pages are getting backlinks or not.

Source: How to Use Google Search Console for Your Website