Google Search Console(GSC) is an invaluable tool used by marketers to monitor key aspects of their SEO strategy. The tool is provided for free by Google and provides information on how your site has performed in search results. The tool also gives information on the technical SEO health of your website.
The tool has two sections. Along the left is a list of reports and on the right is the report itself telling you information on your website. Here are a few key areas of GSC to investigate and use to improve the SEO of your website.
Sitemaps
This is where you will submit a sitemap of your site to Google. This is the main reason to set up your Google Search Console. You should always submit a site map to Google. Your site map is an XML file that lists all the pages and posts on your website. Search engines use site maps as guides or “maps” when they crawl your site.
Performance View
The second option along the left is the Performance view. This the most interesting of all the reports in Google Search Console.
The view is made up of two parts. The top is a graph showing you four metrics and how they’ve trended over time. Below the graph is a table containing specific information related to the metrics shown in the graph.
The four metrics included in the performance report are clicks, impressions, average CTR, and Average Position. Clicks are the number of times a link to your website was clicked on when it showed up in a search result. Impressions shows how many times your website has shown up in a search result. Average CTR is the average click through rate and is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions. And finally average position shows how your site is ranking search results with lower numbers indicate a higher rank near the top of the search results screen.
Below the time series graph is a table with several tabs running along the top. The two tabs that are most interesting are Queries and Pages.
The queries tab shows you keywords and the four metrics related to those specific keywords. This tab is helpful in that it can tell you which keywords your site displays and which search keywords gets your site the most clicks. You can also look at average position and average CTR for the various keywords, but clicks and impressions are the two more important metrics.
The page tab shows you the organic search metrics for specific pages of your website. Again clicks and impressions are important metrics for this data, but average position can provide a lot of insight. By improving the average position of a website’s page you’re likely to get more traffic to your website.
Coverage
The coverage section shows if there are any issues with your website. Google Search Console will tell you if there were any issues with the crawl on your website. In the table below the graph, it can tell you specifically what the error was and how to fix it. Google Search Console is vital for getting the SEO health of your website in working order.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals gives you insight into the performance of your website. Website speed and usage are a major factor in how Google ranks your website. It is in this section Google Search Console will tell you if your websites performance is good, poor, or needs improvement. Making sure all of your pages load quickly will increase your rankings and your traffic.
