How does Google see your website? What are your site’s top performing pages? Which keywords are people using to find your site? What’s needed to improve your website’s performance?
Google Search Console is the free tool that helps you get to the root of these questions. Here are the need-to-knows for understanding and making the most of the product.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free product designed to help website owners monitor the performance of their website in Google Search results.
Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, it helps measure organic search engine listings such as keyword rankings, as well as any issues reported by the search engine that can be used to improve the website’s performance.
The information provided can help a site owner understand how they’re doing in Google Search. It also informs anyone who directly works on the site – be that an agency like Infotex or site owners and administrators – how to troubleshoot issues and improve performance.
How do you access Google Search Console?
If you have a website with Infotex, then it is very likely that your site is already registered with Google Search Console. You can contact your Account Manager or the Support Team if you wish to be added as a user to the Google Search Console service.
Otherwise, sign up to Google Search Console to verify your ownership of your website and get going.
What can you see in Google Search Console?
Once logged in to Google Search Console, you are presented with a left hand menu of sections including:
Overview: Provides a summary of your site performance and indexing in Google.
Performance Reports: Displays how many people saw and clicked on your site in Google Search, as well as your website’s average position in Google search rankings. This information can be seen for both keywords and for individual site pages, so it is an important tool for understanding the search terms people are using to find your site and the content that is being seen most in search results.
Page indexing: A report which shows all pages on your site that are known to Google, along with whether each page is or is not indexed in Google, and the reasons for this.
Page experience: This report isn’t about what some would typically associate with Google Search. Page experience reports on how “good” a page is in terms of other factors like loading speed and mobile experience. As Google’s ranking algorithms have become more and more sophisticated, these experience metrics have become more important for Search Engine Optimisation.
Our take on Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a vital tool for any Digital Marketer for both troubleshooting and understanding a site’s performance. It’s well worth a look, even if you’re just wanting an overview of what keywords your site is being found for.
This article is part of our new blog series, Websites 101, lightly introducing and explaining important topics on everything to do with websites, including design, digital marketing, software, infrastructure and beyond.
Got a question you want answered as part of the Websites 101 blog series? Get in touch to let us know.
