Google Search Console: The Definitive Guide
Updated: Nov 24, 2022
If you're looking to do any form of SEO, then you need to use Google Search Console.
Here’s why.
It’s free
It’s accurate
It’s effective
In this post, I’ll show you how to use Google Search Console step by step.
Let’s get started!
If you want to jump ahead to a certain section, just click on the link below.
What is Google Search Console?
Verify Your Site
Performance
Add a Sitemap
Reporting: Google Data Studio
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free webmaster tool from Google. It helps you optimize your website by providing data for performance, coverage, sitemaps, and more!
You don’t have to be signed up for Google Search Console in order to show up for Google Search results, but I highly recommend it.
It’s a powerful search engine tool that isn’t too difficult to use if you know a few things about how it works.
Step 1: Sign Up for Google Search Console
To get started, simply visit their website and click “Start Now”
.
You’ll need a Google Account in order to sign up.
Step 2: Verify Your Website
Once you sign up, the next thing you need to do is verify your website. This shows Google that you have ownership of your website and are authorized to manage it on their platform.
There are 7 different ways to verify your ownership. Watch the video below for a step by step tutorial on how to verify your site.
Once you have your site verified, you have to wait a couple of days for it to start populating data.
Then you can start using the tools.
Step 3: Performance
I recommend starting with the Performance section. This is where you learn all about your clicks, impressions, click-through-rate, and average position in Google Search results.
You can get there by clicking on “Full Report” from the home page or by clicking on “Performance” on the side panel.
Once you’re there, you’ll notice some metrics and a graph at the top.
This shows clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position for the selected search type and date range.
You have to CLICK the section you want to show up on the graph. By clicking the different sections, you can TOGGLE between the different metrics of your performance.
The great thing about this report is that it is data coming directly from Google! There are several SEO tools available on the market, but this is one thing that I love about GSC.
Since it comes from Google it's the most accurate in my opinion.
Below the chart, you can see more information about queries, pages, etc. You can also click between each of those tabs for more information.
I like to spend most of my time on analyzing queries and pages. Then you know the keywords that you’re ranking for and the best performing pages on your website.
So may be wondering how you can use this report to your advantage?
Here are a couple of ideas.
Look at the average CTR of your pages.
If you see you have a lot of impressions but a low click through rate for one of your pages, then you have a great opportunity!