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Are you making the most of Google Search Console? As marketers, we've talked about the importance of SEO so much that it's become almost redundant. According to Similarweb's 2024 Digital Marketing Report, organic search traffic accounts for an average of 53% of total website traffic. Particularly during the current economic downturn, Google Search Console isn't just a useful tool - it's essential for companies looking to reduce their search advertising spend and increase conversions through organic traffic!
While companies are adopting specialized SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush, Google Search Console remains the fundamental tool for monitoring and managing website SEO status in Google's search engine.
In this article, we'll explore the core features of Google Search Console and learn practical strategies for achieving higher search rankings.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free SEO tool provided by Google. It shows website owners how their sites are performing in Google's search engine. The core function of Google Search Console is to support website performance and search engine optimization (SEO). You can analyze search traffic, monitor indexing status, and diagnose any issues that arise on your site. Google Search Console is typically used by marketers, SEO specialists, web developers, and site administrators.
Domain A domain property includes both main domain and all subdomains. This is the most basic property type as it allows you to analyze all domains without having to list every URL on the page.
URL Prefix A URL-prefix property only includes pages that begin with a specific URL. You can select this when your website starts with a specific URL.
Domain Domain properties can only be verified through DNS records. The DNS record verification process may vary depending on your domain provider and site management platform.
URL Prefix URL prefix properties can be verified through various methods. Google recommends uploading an HTML file. Other options include adding HTML tags, verifying through Google Analytics account, GTM (Google Tag Manager) account verification, or DNS record verification similar to domain properties.
Once setup is complete, you can start using Google Search Console. It may take 24-48 hours for data to be imported. You can also check Google Search Console data simultaneously in Google Analytics by linking it with GA4.
Google Search Console provides four key metrics: 'Total Clicks', 'Total Impressions', 'Average CTR', and 'Average Position'. Analyzing and managing these metrics effectively is crucial for improving Google search rankings.
Total Clicks: Represents the number of times users clicked on your website's link in Google search results. This is a direct indicator of traffic from search results.
Total Impressions: Shows how many times your website appeared in search results. An increase in impressions positively affects brand awareness in the long term.
Average CTR (Click-Through Rate): Represents the ratio of clicks to impressions. This is similar to the metrics used in search and display advertising. If this number is low, you may need to optimize your meta descriptions or title tags.
Average Position: Shows the average position where your website appears in search results. This is provided as an 'average' value since rankings can vary depending on user location, device, and search history.
These key metrics can be sorted by various criteria including search queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance, and dates. In particular, clicks, impressions, and positions can be sorted in ascending/descending order with a click, allowing you to quickly derive insights from your preferred perspective.
Technical SEO is about establishing the technical foundation of your website. No matter how high-quality your content is, if your webpage loads slowly or the website's technical structure isn't properly organized, search engines can't properly recognize that content during web crawling. Technical SEO helps diagnose and solve these issues to help search engines efficiently discover and index content. While complex technical SEO processes might require help from tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, significant optimization is possible with Search Console alone.
a) Index Coverage
The Index Coverage feature allows you to monitor how your website's pages are being indexed by Google's search engine. Through this process, you can identify the number of pages actually appearing in search engines and discover and fix issues with problematic pages. You can find specific solutions for pages with indexing issues in the Google Search Central Community.
b) Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are key performance metrics introduced by Google to measure user experience on web pages. Here, 'user experience' focuses on page speed. Through Core Web Vitals testing, you can receive scores for page load speed, responsiveness, and visual stability in both desktop and mobile environments. Marketers can identify pages with Core Web Vitals issues and work with developers to improve scores. Websites with high Core Web Vitals scores showed an average 31% increase in position and 23% improvement in CTR compared to those that don't.
Key Core Web Vitals metrics include:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) : This measures the time it takes to load the largest visual content element in the viewport from when a user requests the URL. For good user experience, pages should load within 2.5 seconds. You can find LCP improvement guides here.
FID (First Input Delay) : This measures the response time until a user can first interact with the page. Google defines "fast" as within 200 milliseconds.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) : This measures the degree of visual layout changes during page load. Generally, a score below 0.1 is considered good.
Once you've built a structurally sound website through technical SEO, the next step in ranking strategy is establishing solid content. You can create SEO-optimized content using keyword data from Search Console. Let's look at practical methods for extracting and utilizing organic keyword data from Search Console.
1.Check keywords with low position rankings in the 'Queries' tab. (The lower the position ranking, the higher the chance of appearing at the top of search results.)
2.Select keywords that have both low position rankings and high impressions.
3.Use Google Keyword Planner or other keyword analysis tools to verify the actual search volume of these keywords.
4.Plan content and utilize keywords in meta descriptions and meta tags, focusing on keywords that have high position rankings and high average search volume.
In this article, we've explored everything from the basic concepts to core features of Google Search Console. We've confirmed that Search Console can help monitor search performance, diagnose technical SEO issues, and develop content strategies based on keyword data.
Particularly, if you consistently check index coverage and Core Web Vitals scores to improve your website's technical SEO, and efficiently plan content using organic search query data, reaching the top of Google search results is just a matter of time.
Furthermore, by integrating Search Console and advertising data in Adriel MI, you can use Search Console data more strategically. In our next article, we'll introduce practical methods for integrated data analysis using Google Search Console and the Adriel dashboard.
