Google Search Console is a powerful tool that allows website owners and administrators to monitor and optimize their website’s performance on Google search results. With its wide range of features and functionalities, it offers valuable insights into how your website is performing, helps you identify and fix issues, and enables you to make informed decisions to improve your website’s visibility and ranking on Google.
To start using Google Search Console, you first need to have a Google account. If you don’t have one, create an account by visiting the Google Account creation page and following the instructions.
Once you have a Google account, go to the Google Search Console website (search.google.com/search-console) and sign in using your Google account credentials. If you have multiple websites, you can add them to your Search Console account by clicking on the “Add Property” button and following the prompts.
After adding your website to Search Console, you need to verify ownership to prove that you have the necessary permissions to access its data. Google provides several verification methods, including HTML file upload, domain name provider, HTML tag, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.
Once your website is verified, you can start exploring the various features and functionalities of Google Search Console. Let’s dive into the main sections and their functionalities:
Performance
This section provides valuable insights into how your website is performing on Google search results. You can see the total number of clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position for your website’s pages. You can also filter the data by date, query, page, country, and device to get a more detailed analysis.
The Google Search Console blog section is a great place to find information on how your website is performing on Google search results. You can see the total number of clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position for your website’s pages. You can also filter the data by date, query, page, country, and device to get a more detailed analysis.
URL Inspection
This feature allows you to inspect a specific URL on your website and see how Google sees it. You can check if a URL is indexed, view the Googlebot’s last crawl date, and see any issues or errors encountered during the crawling process.
The URL Inspection tool can be very helpful in determining if there are any issues with your website that are preventing it from being crawled and indexed by Google. You can also use it to troubleshoot any errors that are being reported in the Search Console.
The tool is located under the “Crawl” menu in the Search Console. To use it, simply enter the URL you want to inspect and click the “Inspect” button. The tool will then show you the page crawled by the Googlebot, as well as any errors or issues that were encountered.
Coverage
The Coverage section shows you the indexing status of your website’s pages. It highlights the number of valid, excluded, and error pages, and provides detailed information about any issues that Google encountered while crawling and indexing your website.
The Coverage report is divided into the following sections:
- Valid pages: This section shows the number of pages on your website that Google was able to index and includes information about any errors that were encountered.
- Excluded pages: This section shows the number of pages on your website that Google was not able to index and includes information about the reasons why.
- Error pages: This section shows the number of pages on your website that had errors while being crawled by Google and includes information about the errors that were encountered.
If you see that there are a lot of errors in the Error pages section, then you will need to fix them in order to improve your website’s visibility and ranking in Google. You can find more information about how to fix errors in the Google Search Console Help Center.
Sitemaps
In this section, you can submit your website’s sitemap to help Google understand the structure and content of your website better. A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the pages on your website and provides additional information about each page.
This information can include the page’s title, description, last updated date, and more.
Submitting a sitemap helps Google index your website content more efficiently and can also help improve your website’s search engine ranking.
To create a sitemap for your website, you can use a sitemap generator tool such as XML Sitemap Generator. After creating your sitemap, you can submit it to Google by following the instructions below.
Instructions for submitting a sitemap to Google
- Go to Google’s Sitemaps submission page.
- Click the Add a Sitemap button.
- Enter the location of your sitemap file and click the Submit button.
- After submitting your sitemap, you will see a confirmation message indicating that your sitemap has been added.
If you have any questions about submitting a sitemap to Google, please visit our Help Center.
Mobile Usability
With the increasing use of mobile devices, it’s essential to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. This section highlights any mobile usability issues that Google has detected on your website and provides recommendations for improvement.
To see how your website looks on different mobile devices, use the Mobile-Friendly Test.
The Mobile-Friendly Test checks to see if your website’s content is sized and formatted properly for mobile devices.
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you may see a warning like this:
This website is not optimized for mobile devices.
To make your website mobile-friendly, follow the recommendations below.
- Use a mobile-friendly design A mobile-friendly design automatically resizes and reformats your website’s content to fit on a smaller screen.
- Use a responsive design A responsive design adapts to the screen size of the device it’s being viewed on. This means that the website will look different on a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, and a phone.
- Use a parallel design A parallel design uses a separate website for mobile devices, which is accessed by m.website.com. This is a good option if you have a lot of content that can’t be easily reformatted for a smaller screen.
- Use a redirect design A redirect design sends mobile users to a different website than desktop users. This is a good option if you have a lot of content that can’t be easily reformatted for a smaller screen, or if you want to provide a different experience for mobile users.
Links
The Links section provides information about the external and internal links pointing to your website. You can see the top linking sites, the pages on your website with the most links, and the anchor text used in these links. This data can help you identify potential link-building opportunities and fix broken links.
External links are links from other websites that point to your website. They can be a valuable source of traffic and help you build your online presence. Internal links are links from one page on your website to another page on your website. They can help you improve your website’s navigation and search engine optimization (SEO).
The Top Linking Sites section shows the websites that have linked to your website the most. The Pages With the Most Links section shows the pages on your website that have the most links. The Anchor Text section shows the text that is used in the links to your website. This data can help you identify potential link-building opportunities and fix broken links.
Security Issues
Google takes website security seriously and alerts you if it detects any security issues on your website. This section will notify you of any malware infections or hacked content that may harm your visitors or affect your website’s ranking.
Manual Actions
If Google detects any violations of its webmaster guidelines on your website, it may issue a manual action. This section provides information about any manual actions taken against your website and the steps you need to take to resolve them.
A manual action is a message from Google that informs you that one or more of your webpages has been demoted or removed from Google’s search results because it violates one or more of Google’s webmaster guidelines.
Core Web Vitals
This relatively new section focuses on user experience metrics and measures how well your website performs in terms of loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. It provides insights into how real-world users experience your website and helps you identify areas for improvement.
Enhancements
In this section, you can find opportunities to enhance your website’s appearance in search results. It includes features like breadcrumbs, logo markup, site links, and structured data. Implementing these enhancements can help your website stand out in search results and provide users with more relevant information.
These are just a few of the many features available in Google Search Console. As you become more familiar with the tool, you’ll discover additional functionalities that can help you optimize your website’s performance and visibility on Google.
Conclusion
Google Search Console is an invaluable tool for website owners and administrators. It provides a wealth of data and insights about how your website is performing on Google search results. By regularly monitoring and analyzing this data, you can identify and fix issues, improve your website’s visibility, and make informed decisions to enhance the overall user experience. So, if you haven’t already, start using Google Search Console today and take your website to the next level.
