What Is Google Search Console?

The Google Search Console is a tool that can help you maintain website traffic and monitor your site’s marketing performance with key insights on how your site appears in search results, helping you to fix issues offering new ways for your site to rank higher on Google search.

It’s a free service! And using it will help you to manage, uphold, and troubleshoot your site's presence on search results. 

Now, for your site to be included in search results, you don’t have to sign up for this tool. It’s more of an additional machine-based system that can help you operate your website in smarter and more efficient ways.

So, the question is, how does Search Console pull this off? What features does it have?

How Google Search Console Works

In particular, the Google Search Console offers tools and analytics that can help you:

• View how Google finds and “crawls” your site.
• Fix indexing issues and send a request to re-index any new or updated content.
• View and analyze traffic data for your website, such as how often your site shows up in Google Search, the kind of search queries that link to your site, and how often people click on your web pages to answer those queries, etc.
• Receive alerts every time Google finds indexing issues, spam, or other problems on your site.
• See which digital spaces, blogs, or sites give a link to your website (and hence help drive traffic to it).
• Troubleshoot problems for mobile usability, AMP, and other search features.
  
  

Google Search Console is a great platform to invest some of your time in if you’ve created or are running a website and want to keep it in top shape! 

With it, you can improve your search rankings and tweak the way you appear to searchers to make the best impact and bring more relevant traffic to your web pages.

But, if you’re just starting, using the Console could feel a bit intimidating. 

Don’t worry! We can find out together how to start using this tool for your website.

How to Use Google Search Console

Firstly, you need to know that you don’t have to log in to Google Search Console every day to check up on analytics. If there’s something wrong with your site, you’ll automatically receive an email from Google alerting you about the issue.

Here’s how to set up Google Search Console:

1. Verify your website

The first step is to get your site verified through Google Search Console, making all the tools and data accessible to you. It’s the first step to integrating the tool into your website management plan.

2. Ensure that Google can track and read your pages

The Index Coverage report can present you with an overview of all the pages that Google indexed or previously tried to index on your website. So, you should review the available list and work on fixing any page errors and warnings.

3. Review all mobile usability errors 

Meanwhile, the Mobile usability report can show you any issues that might affect your users’ browsing experience while on a mobile device.

4. Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console

Now, you should note that Google can easily discover pages from your site without this step. 

However, submitting a sitemap via Search Console can help Google find your website faster and display it in search results. 

If you decide to submit a sitemap, you can also monitor any data related to it through the Console.

5. Monitor your site's performance

Lastly, remember that the primary purpose of using the Google search console is to help you monitor and manage your website’s performance. 

So, use the Search performance report to do just this as it’ll be able to show you how much traffic you’re getting from the Google search results. 

What’s more, it can even break this down according to the location of user searches, keywords, pages, etc. And for each of these categories, you’ll be able to view trends for clicks, impressions, and other relevant metrics!

Key Takeaway

Google Search Console is a great tool for website owners and hosts to monitor their online site performance and see ways to fix common issues. 

By understanding how your site ranks in search results and looking at the exact metrics that act as variables in the equation, you move one step closer to building a stronger website.