How to Use Google Search Console

If you are looking to gain more traction on your website,  Google Search Console may be a useful tool for you. This tool helps website creators track performance in search engines, fix issues, and become more prominent online.

Many people use Google Search Console to identify opportunities for better performance under certain search keywords. It allows you to find keywords relevant to your site’s content. That provides an excellent starting point to create a strategy allowing users to find your site more easily based on those keywords.

How to get started with Google Search Console

You can use Google Search Console to monitor your site’s performance and presence in Google Search results. If you are a site administrator, business owner, web developer, or SEO specialist, this tool may provide useful insights and information about your website. Once you complete the necessary steps to learn the basics of Google Search Console, you can use it to improve your website, search results, and more.

Here’s what you’ll do:

1. Sign into Google Search Console.

2. Select a property type.

3. Enter your site’s Domain or URL prefix.

4. Verify your ownership.

5. Manage users and permissions.

6. Use the Page Index Report to solve issues.

7. Keep an eye on Search Performance.

8. Add a sitemap (if necessary).

Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.

1. Sign into Google Search Console. 

To begin accessing Google Search Console, go to Google Webmaster Tools. Use your Google account to sign in to Search Console to begin.

2. Select a property type.

You can either enter a domain or URL prefix. A domain property requires you to verify ownership through DNS record verification. A URL prefix has other verification methods covered in the next step. 

3. Enter your site’s domain name or URL prefix. 

For a domain name, enter your site’s URL without a www prefix. For a URL prefix, make sure you type in your URL as follows: https://www.example.com.

Then, click Continue.

4. Verify your ownership.

You must verify your ownership of the domain before you can proceed to use Google Search Console, which gives you access to sensitive information about Google searches for a website.

If you entered a domain, follow the DNS verification process. Click Start Verification > Confirm to allow Google to make changes to your DNS to complete the verification. 

Keeping the DNS record in place is essential, allowing you to stay verified. Additionally, consider adding multiple verification methods to ensure you retain verification. You can do so from the Settings > Ownership verification menu.

If you entered a URL prefix, you can verify your ownership of the site through one of several methods: 

• HTML file upload: Requires the ability to upload and publish a file on your site at a specific URL.

• HTML tag: To use this method, you must be able to edit the HTML source code of your site’s homepage.

• Google Analytics tracking code: If your page already has this code, simply enter it. If not, you must add one. If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, you’ll likely need to create one. 

• Google Tag Manager: If your page has a Google Tag Manager snippet, access it and add it to verify. If not, add one by creating a Google Tag Manager account.

• Google Sites, Blogger, or Domains account: Use the recommended method for each platform.

• Domain name provider: This is the only way to verify a domain property. Use the verification wizard to find your domain provider, and follow the prompts on the screen to verify.

Once you verify ownership, continue to your property to learn more about the tools within Google Search Console.

5. Manage users and permissions.

In Google Search Console, you have owners and users. Each with its own set of permissions and abilities within your site. Owners have full control, including configuring settings and adding or removing users. Standard users can view data and perform some actions but cannot add new users, while restricted users can only view data. 

6. Use the Page Index Report to solve issues.

Search engines use three steps to develop search results. First, it crawls or discovers pages on the internet. Next, it indexes those pages or sorts them into a large database. Finally, Google ranks the indexed pages, and people are able to find them in searches based on their ranking.

The Page Index Report will show you a summary table at the top listing all the pages Google is indexing on your site. You can also find pages that are not indexing and error information about why Google hasn’t indexed them.

7. Keep an eye on search performance.

The Search Performance page gives you a detailed view of how your pages rank for the keywords they target. You can learn a lot about your site traffic here, including where it is coming from, what searches are bringing people to your site, and which pages are performing best.

Google Search Console offers many ways to view your site’s data, whether it’s through graphs, lists, or tables. You can customize the menu to see different metrics, change dimensions, and adjust filters.

Click-through rate (CTR) tells you the percentage of people clicking on your link out of the number of people who have viewed your page as a search result. You can adjust your strategy for meta titles and meta descriptions in an effort to raise the click-through rate.

8. Add a sitemap (if necessary).

Google says it won’t have any issues finding your pages in most cases, as it is capable of crawling the dearth of pages on the internet continuously. A sitemap is a list of pages in a web domain that you can submit to Google to help it find your pages and index them. Google does not require you to submit a sitemap to use Google Search Console.

If you have a small site and you can navigate to any page on your site by using a link from another page, you won’t need to submit a sitemap.

You can submit a sitemap if you have a large website or a site with isolated pages that are not easily navigable from a backlink (a link from another page). You can find a sitemap developed for you if you use a website service such as Squarespace or Wix.

Learn more with Google

You can learn more about digital marketing and e-commerce by exploring the Google Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Professional Certificate on Coursera. This certificate, shareable on LinkedIn once completed, includes lessons on the fundamentals of digital marketing and offers the opportunity to gain the skills needed to land an entry-level job. Through seven courses, you can learn more about how digital marketers attract and engage customers through channels such as search and email.