To work on your SEO, Google’s Search Console is essential. Free and reliable (of course, Google itself says so), it is a comprehensive tool that will help you get your pages and content indexed on Google and on the web in general. However, Google’s help resources are numerous and sometimes complex to get to grips with. To fully understand the features of Google Search Console, the differences between the various tools, and learn how to use the tool step by step, here is a complete guide. You will also find all the advantages this platform offers!
What is Google Search Console?
SEO
SEO is the organic ranking of web pages on search engines. The goal is to increase traffic to a website by making it appear in the top results for selected and optimized keywords.
Read also: SEO: what is it? tips and trends
Definition:
Formerly Google Webmaster Tools, the tool changed its name in 2015 after being enriched with new features. Its purpose is to help both beginners and experienced users optimize websites. This service is free, available with or even without registration. Here are some of Search Console’s key features:
- Gain visibility into page indexing
- Get traffic information about your site
- Improve mobile usability
- Find sites that link to your site
- Be alerted in case of a problem
Google Analytics
It is Google’s statistics tool. Easy to use, it provides reliable figures that are essential for analyzing a site’s results. It is used by more than 75% of professionals.
Google Scholar
This somewhat special search engine allows you to search exclusively for academic articles.
Google Page Speed Insights
This tool analyzes a web page and offers suggestions to speed up your page loading.
Google Suggest
Also called autocomplete, these are the search suggestions Google offers when you search for a keyword.
Google Keyword Planner
More focused on SEA than SEO, this tool lets you find keywords associated with a keyword of your choice.
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Using Search Console
Creating an account
To create an account, go to the website. You then need to add a property and enter your site’s URL or domain name. Google then asks you to verify that the site really belongs to you, using various methods of your choice!
You can validate this by using Google Tag Manager or Analytics, adding a DNS record via your domain name provider, or even adding an HTML file to your website. You then need to wait a few days for it to be validated.
Install Google Search Console
To start, link your Search Console to Google Analytics, which can provide more details about the number of visitors and how they arrive on your site. To do this, go to Administration in Google Analytics, then to property. At the bottom, you will find “Search Console”.
Features
Performance report
This dashboard is divided into several parts. You will find, in particular:
- number of clicks
- number of impressions
- click-through rate
- average position of your site in search results
You can then filter the results by page, country, device, etc.
Tip: if a page has many impressions but few clicks, review your title and meta description!
Coverage report
This section gives you information about the pages that are indexed by Google. You will therefore find all the issues encountered by the Googlebot in particular. An error will indicate that the page is not indexed, a valid page may present an issue and will be marked “with warning”, and finally “excluded” if the page cannot be indexed.
Tip: the URL Inspection tool can speed up Google’s indexing of a new page
URL inspection
As mentioned above, this tool lets you inspect a URL live to determine whether or not it can be indexed. You can also resolve issues from this area.
Info: indexing a page is a phase of organic SEO. It is the first step during which search engines become aware of your page and make it accessible.
Netlinking
The Google Search Console lets you analyze your backlinks. With the links report, you will find inbound links to your site provided they are relevant.
Info: the purpose of netlinking is to increase the number of backlinks to your site.
Mobile site: usability
This test is very easy to use: you enter your site’s URL and in less than a minute you will have the results. All mobile usability issues will be reported: font too small, use of Flash, or others. A site’s mobile usability is becoming increasingly important, because users are spending less and less time on computers.
Essential Web Signals
Or Core Web Vitals: these are important criteria for user experience. Loading speed, for example, is taken into account. This tool, which appeared in 2020, relies on three criteria:
- largest contentful paint (content loading time)
- first input delay (site reaction time between a click and an action)
- cumulative layout shift (visual stability)
You will then get scores with suggestions for improvement!
How to use Google Search Console to improve your SEO?
Google Search Console can help you optimize your content. Indeed, you will find the queries internet users used to access your site, the number of clicks, impressions, etc. Thanks to this information, you can improve pages where the number of impressions is good compared with the number of clicks, for example.
With the “links” tool, you will have interesting clues. For example, if the sites that link to your site are not of good quality, this harms your SEO. Google allows you to disavow them so that they no longer harm you.
Indexing your URLs is the basis of your SEO. By looking at the errors, you know the points to watch and can remedy them.
Finally, speed and user experience are also evaluated in Google Search Console. This will give you indications about the improvements to make to improve your organic SEO.
You now know all the elements you need to understand how Google Search Console works and what it is used for!
