Google Search Console (GSC) is an essential tool for website owners and SEO professionals looking to optimize their site’s performance in Google search results.
GSC provides valuable insights into how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your website, allowing you to identify and resolve issues that may be hindering your site’s visibility.
We’ll show you how to set up and use Google Search Console by setting up your GSC account, protecting it from unauthorized access, and leveraging its key features to improve your website’s search engine performance.
Setting up Google Search Console
To get started with GSC, visit https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome and click “Create Account”.
Unless you’re signing up for various Google business offerings, select “For Personal Use”.
Complete the signup process, which includes verifying your domain ownership.
There are several methods to verify your domain, with the HTML tag and page methods being the easiest, unless your publishing platform doesn’t allow modifications.
Alternatively, you can verify through Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager if they are already set up on your site.
If you cannot edit your pages or the content in the head section, you can verify through your DNS settings, although this method is more complex and carries the risk of unintentionally altering your site.
When setting up your GSC account, you’ll choose between a “Domain Property” and a “URL-Prefix Property”.
A Domain Property covers all subdomains and can only be verified by DNS, but it returns results for all versions of “the same” site, regardless of http or https.
URL-Prefix Properties are more specific, requiring the exact http or https and www or non-www version, and can even include a specific path like myspace.com/myName/.
Protecting your Google Search Console account
As the owner of your GSC account, it’s crucial to maintain control and never share your password with others.
When working with SEO providers, you can authorize them to read your account data without giving them your password.
Competent providers should have a tool that allows you to grant them read access, similar to how apps request permissions.
If they need to submit a sitemap or request Google to index your pages, they may require write access.
However, never grant ownership of your account, and always ensure that you can revoke access when necessary.
Be cautious of unscrupulous providers who may misuse GSC features, such as telling Google to ignore all of your pages when they are let go.
By only granting read access and revoking it before parting ways, you can prevent such scenarios and always have your own access to the data.
It’s your site, after all. Own it!
Understanding key features and reports in Google Search Console
- Performance report: Use this report daily to monitor your site’s growth. Track the number of keywords receiving impressions to gauge the available keyword traffic, and use the rank data to identify new keywords entering the rankings at various positions.
- Pages (Index Coverage) report: Check this report to ensure new pages are being indexed and to identify any sudden jumps in numbers that may indicate good or bad issues.
- Links report: Regularly review this report to see how your site’s internal and external links are growing over time. Links are the authority your site needs to rank for top 10 versus bottom 100.
- Security and Manual Actions: Keep an eye on these tabs to identify any issues that need immediate attention.
The Pages tab lists all known URLs for your website, sourced from external websites, sitemaps, and Google’s crawling of links.
By clicking on a URL using the Inspection icon, you can access a load of information about how Google perceives that particular webpage, helping you identify areas for improvement.
Integrating Google Search Console with your SEO tool
Once you have your GSC account set up, you can authorize third-party apps to access your data, enabling them to perform calculations and display the information in new ways.
For example, the DIY SEO Toolbox integrates with your GSC account for read access and combines it with data from its own crawler to provide a more comprehensive view of your site’s performance.
This tool uses your GSC data to help prioritize pages needing the most attention based on impressions, clicks, and rankings.
It also sets up alerts to quickly notify you when issues are detected.
To integrate a tool like DIY SEO Toolbox, click the integration button on the app’s settings page.
You’ll be redirected to a Google page where you can verify your identity and grant the app read permissions.
If you ever need to revoke access, you can do so within your Google account, ensuring complete control over your data.
This process and read only access allows the tool to access the necessary information (clicks, impressions, rank, URLs, etc.) without adversely affecting your GSC account.
A Cohesive Starter Plan
Regularly monitoring and utilizing Google Search Console is essential for website success and it’s free to sign up through Google.
By catching errors as Google sees them, you can promptly address issues before they fester and become major problems.
While additional software can help catch issues before Google does, GSC alone will help you identify when to fix an issue.
Once you’ve set up your GSC account, focus on the main areas we’ve discussed: the Performance chart, Pages tab, Links tab, Security, and Manual Actions.
Explore the wealth of information available in the tool to gain a deeper understanding of how Google perceives your website.
While GSC alone won’t guarantee top rankings, it will help you strategize and work towards achieving the best possible search engine performance when combined with other tools and strategies.