If you want to be an SEO professional Google Search Console or Google Webmaster is something you should be aware of.
Google Search Console is like a bible for an SEO professional. Why because it keeps a record of how good your SEO efforts are. Let’s learn more about Google Search Console.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free platform that can be used to monitor the performance and organic presence of your website. Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s organic search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.
It tells you about the clicks, impressions, highest-traffic queries, mobile site quality, and gives you an overall idea about your webpages. GSC was Initially called “Google Webmaster Tools” and many of you may know it by that name.
How to use Google search console?
We know that performing SEO and feeding high-quality content is required for your page to perform well. Once that is done, you need to monitor how it’s all working out and weed out errors to make your website more efficient.
This is done by Google Search Console. To use GSC first you need to add your website to Google Search console. Please note that only and only if you have access to the website codes you can add it to GSC.
How to add your site and verify on Google Search Console?
To use Google Search Console, first log into your Search Console account. Then you have to add your website to it. This is done by the “Add Property” option.
Next, you will verify that the website is yours. Since GSC shows confidential business information about your website, you need to verify that you are indeed the owner or authorized personnel for it.
Verification can be done using the following methods:
• Adding an HTML tag
• HTML file method.
• And Domain name provider
What does Google Search Console tell you?
GSC tells you a lot of information that can help you monitor and better the health of your site. They are:
– Search Analytic: For vitals like clicks, impression and CTR of your website.
– Find Links to Your page
– Number of Internal Links.
– Manual Actions to be addressed by owner.
– Audience Targeting
– Mobile-friendliness
What are the Search Console reports and why do you need them?
Overview page: This is the Google search console home page and shows the vitals of your page. The search console home has a graphical representation of total clicks along with error/valid status of indexed pages, and tips on site improvement.
Performance report- This one lets you look at where you showed up in search. You can see how many people saw your page and clicked on it in search results. It will also show your average position.
URL Inspection tool – This tools show you the page HTML code and its errors. This helps to troubleshoot crawling errors on your site.
Coverage report- This report shows the index status for all the pages on your site whether they can/can’t be indexed.
Sitemap report- Here you will know which sitemaps are submitted for your site.
Speed report- This is an important statistic that shows how fast your page loads for the user.
Mobile Usability report- Here you will find the mobile usability evaluation available for all indexed pages.
AMP report- This one tells you which AMP pages appearing on your site could or couldn’t be indexed.
Rich Result Status reports- This report takes into account which rich results Google could or couldn’t crawl.
Manual Actions report-As talked about earlier, you can look into this report to see if there are any manual actions against your site and fix it.
Security Issues report- This one takes into account the security issues found by Google for your site.
Links report – As the title suggest, this gives an account of the sites linked to yours. This is ideal to know if your site is connected to the right websites and not linked to or by spammy or useless sites.
There are also Google Search Console Webmaster tools like the AMP Test tool, Mobile-Friendly Test Tool, Change of address tool and the Removals Tool that help troubleshoot major issues.
Conclusion
Google Search Console is a free service that helps you analyse your website’s performance to the last detail. It is an essential tool to monitor and fix your site’s issues.
Avinash Chandra’s Personal Blog: https://www.avinashchandra.com/
AVINASH CHANDRA ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Avinash Chandra on Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Avinash…
Avinash Chandra on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandraav…
Avinash Chandra on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chandraavinash/
Avinash Chandra on Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/chandraavi…
Avinash Chandra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chandraavinash1
Avinash Chandra on Medium: https://medium.com/@avinashchandra_27519
#AvinashChandra #GoogleSearchConsole #SEO
source
