How to Use Google Search Console to Improve SEO?

Have you ever wondered what kind of content your audience likes? Or how they will find your website? Google search console is the answer to your questions. It is an effective tool known for offering valuable insights into your traffic and rankings.

Another question raised here, why do businesses often overlook it when developing their SEO Strategy? A key reason for neglecting is the interface that often marketers don’t like to interact with. That is not a good explanation for you to miss it especially when you aim to improve SEO Strategy.

This article will delve into everything about GSC including how you can use it to find keywords, fix errors and monitor your website performance.

What is Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free Google service for website owners, that enables them to monitor your website performance and troubleshoot the errors to improve SEO on Google. It is a powerful tool to locate the flaws in your website and solve them to accomplish higher rankings in search engines.

How To Get Started with GSC

To drive maximum benefits from GSC, you need to know how to use it properly. The first step for using the search console requires you to verify the site map ownership. Google has numerous ways for you to complete this verification, depending on what you are verifying 

These include 

• A blogger-hosted site
• A domain
• Google hosted site 

While others will rely on below 4 methods 

1. Google Tag Manager
2. Meta Tag 
3. Google Analytics Tracking code 
4. HTML File upload 

In case you are using a Google registered domain, you will automatically find it in Search console.

Easy Steps to Set up GSC

Setting up your search console account for the first time? No worries, its a simple and sweet process. We are here to help you with a step-by-step process.

Step	Description
Sign-in to Google	Start by signing in to your Google account, which is the first step to getting started.
	If you have separate business and personal accounts, connect the one used for your website.
Open GSC	Navigate to Google Search Console (GSC) and click on the “Start now” button to begin.
Add your website	Once in GSC, click on “Add property” from the drop-down menu.
Include your domain	Select the property type and enter your site’s URL. Ensure it’s the exact URL to avoid issues.
	After adding your domain, proceed by clicking the “Continue” button.
Account Verification	The final step is to verify your account to complete

Using Google Search Console to Improve SEO

So far, we have learned about different ways to set up a Google search console. Now is the time you can use it to improve your website performance.

Finding the right Keywords 

Keywords are phrases that a user types into a search engine while looking for his desired product or services. These phrases are crucial for marketers to know about user behavior and buying preferences. The good news is, that you can utilize GSC to find top-performing keywords and include them into your content. 

You can do this by evaluating Google Analytics data. Below is a step-by-step process for a better understanding.

• Access Google search analytics in the Search Console 
• Check out the keyword’s audience is using to find out your website 
• Closely monitor how many times your website appeared in search engines against particular keywords. If you are seeing high impressions, it means your website is getting noticed by a huge portion of the traffic.
• Check the impression percentage displayed in the result of clicks. A high click rate demonstrates your website is meeting the customer demands.
• The search console also displays the average position of your website. Examine it carefully to find out whether your website is standing in a low or a higher position. 
• Mark the keywords driving more traffic as compared to others. In addition, check for those keywords with high impressions but low click-through rates.
• Now you have both high and low-performing keywords, use them to form a solid SEO strategy.

Keyword optimization

Finding out your top-performing keyword requires evaluating the data provided by Google Search Console. It helps you to check which phrase is bringing a high number of visitors and vice versa.  Target keywords with high impressions and low clicks.

These keywords are close to ranking on the first page. You have to optimize them further to accomplish your goals. A bonus tip for you is to spy on your competitor and see the keywords on which his website is ranking.

Content Optimization 

So, you have found the high-performing keywords, right? The next step is to incorporate them into your content. It is because these keywords will improve SEO of your website, resulting in a wider audience reach.

Whether you are writing a short post or a comprehensive blog, make sure to include these keywords. It will allow Search engines to understand the relevance and purpose of your written content. Moreover, your chances of getting a higher rank in SERP (Search engine rank page) will increase.

Work on Completing the Sales Funnel 

Work on completing your sales funnel when finding the right keywords for your website. Usually, we have four types of keywords 

1. Navigational
2. Informational 
3. Investigational 
4. Transactional 

Informational keywords help users find data regarding any niche like education, fitness health, etc. They intend to provide information, but making things easy for users offers you a great opportunity to increase your sales. 

In addition, you must look for investigational and transactional keywords such as product reviews and feedback in Google Search Console. Website owners must pick these keywords out to increase their sales.

For instance, if you are a water bottle company your informational keyword is “how to use a bottle“ and your investigational keyword can be “types of water bottles“. Similarly, your transactional keyword will be “best water bottle 

Strengthen backlink profile 

Through link reports from the search console, you can easily improve your SEO Strategy. It shares lots of useful information that you can use to optimize your pages by looking at its internal links. Moreover, you can check all the pages with most internal links.

There you will find the number of links your target page carries. Compare the quantity of your links with all other pages of your website. This will help you find more backlinking opportunities.

Fixing Sitemap Problems 

Problems in your sitemap may cause problems by confusing the Google crawlers. In addition, it wastes your time and leads to indexing the wrong URLs instead. To resolve these problems, go to the sitemap report and click on the icon next to it.

There you will see the tabs showing the total errors, warnings, and valid URLs. Fix them one by one and move a step further to improve your overall SEO Performance.

Analyzing your website Health with Google Search Console 

For those wondering how to improve SEO on Google must realize how Google crawls your website and why your pages are not indexing 

Enter the index coverage report, that will inform you what issues Google is having when it comes to indexing your website pages. After logging in you will witness how the number of indexed pages has changed in the past month.

Below are some common errors that prevent your website content from indexing these include 

• URL Not Found: when a page is not accessible and when someone tries to open it he sees an error 404
• Redirect Error:  You may encounter a redirect error when the website page is not working properly. Redirect chains and redirect loops are both examples of a redirect error.
• Soft 404:  In case of a soft 404 error, you may not find the required page. That means your website has a bug that is restricting the pages to appear in front of users.
• URL has a crawl issue: Sometimes, crawlers block a particular page in your Robottxt. However, this is not always a reason, therefore, you have to go on the page and investigate about the real issue.

How to Fix Errors 

404 is an error when a particular URL of your website is not accessible to anyone. The common reason is when a page no longer exists. However, it 404 error often appears when there is a change in URL. Here is how you can easily fix the problem to improve SEO of your website.

Go to index and coverage, over there you will find a list of problems available on your site. You will see all the affected URLs by clicking on them.

Google search console displays all 404 pages on your website. Sometimes, the corrected 404 errors continue to show up in the search console. Therefore, fix the cause of the 404 error directly to ensure it does not display again.

Do it by redirecting the page and pointing it to the content on your website that resembles to the page already removed. You can use 301 permanent redirects; it is a great solution that sends users to an alternative page. 

Difference between Google Analytics and Search Console 

Newbies often mix Google Analytics with Google Search Console. While there is a huge difference in their roles and functionalities. Google Analytics is a reporting tool that shares insights about how users interact and behave on your website.

While Google search console tracks your website performance showing how many clicks and impressions your website has. Moreover, it also shares information about pages including indexed and non-indexed.

In other words, Google Analytics tells you the number of people visiting your website. Moreover, it also explains the source from which they are coming such as social media, organic search or direct. While you can use GSC for 

• Fixing usability problems
• Seeing backlinks from other websites pointing towards yours
• Keywords that visitors are using to search about your business 
• Spotting your top organic pages 
• Site map submission 
• Ensuring structure data functioning 
• Checking core web vitals success 

Old vs New Google Search Console

Google launched a new search console back in 2018. Where most features from the old version were shifted to the new. Some changes have been made as well such as including a performance report, and index coverage report that replaces crawl errors.

In addition, there is a new feature named URL inspection that has replaced the older one named fetch as Google.

Below is a detail of the replaced features 

The new version of the search console is not have all the new features, some of them are updated or replaced

• Site map reports
• AMP Status: Accelerated Mobile Pages
• Mobile usability is similar
• Security issues report 

Final Thoughts

Google Search Console is a great tool that explains everything about your website performance. These include the impressions and clicks your website has. Moreover, it displays important information about your pages like how many of them are indexed and nonindexed.

Some individuals confuse Google Analytics with Google Search Console. While both tools differ from each other in their functions. Above we have explained everything from how to improve SEO Strategy using a search console to setting it up in simple steps. Use it regularly to check the errors and fix them to optimize your website to accomplish top ranks in Google.

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