Beginner’s Guide to Google Search Console

Introduction

In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for businesses. One of the key elements of building and maintaining an effective online presence is search engine optimization (SEO). And when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, Google Search Console is a powerful tool that you shouldn’t overlook.

This beginner’s guide will walk you through the basics of Google Search Console and help you understand how to use this tool effectively to improve your website’s performance in search results.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console (previously known as Webmaster Tools) is a free web service provided by Google. It allows website owners and administrators to monitor their site’s performance in Google search results. With this tool, you can gain valuable insights into how your site appears in search results, identify any issues that may be affecting its visibility, and optimize its overall performance.

Getting Started with Google Search Console

Step 1: Setting up Your Account

To get started with Google Search Console, you need to have a Google account. If you don’t have one already, create an account at https://accounts.google.com/signup.

Once you have created your account:

1. Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome.
2. Click on the “Start now” button.
3. Select “URL prefix” or “Domain” depending on whether you want to verify a specific URL or multiple URLs/domains.
4. Enter the URL(s) of your website(s) and click on “Continue”.
5. Choose one of the verification methods provided by Google (HTML file upload, HTML tag insertion, domain name provider credentials).
6. Follow the instructions for the chosen verification method to verify your ownership of the website(s).

Step 2: Configuring Your Property Settings

Once you have verified your ownership, it’s time to configure your property settings.

1. On the Search Console dashboard, select your property (website) from the list.
2. Click on “Settings” in the left-hand side menu.
3. Review and update necessary settings such as preferred domain (www or non-www), target country, crawl rate, etc.

Key Features of Google Search Console

Google Search Console offers a wide range of features and functionalities that can help you optimize your website for search engines. Let’s take a look at some of its key features:

1. Performance Report

The performance report provides insights into how well your site is performing in organic search results. It shows data like total clicks, impressions, average CTR (click-through-rate), and average position for specific queries or pages over a chosen period of time.

By analyzing this data, you can identify which keywords or pages are driving traffic to your site and make informed decisions about optimizing these areas further.

2. Index Coverage Report

The index coverage report helps you understand how Google is indexing and crawling your website’s pages. It shows information on indexed pages, excluded pages due to errors or directives, warnings for potential issues affecting indexing, and more.

By regularly reviewing this report, you can ensure that all important pages are properly indexed by Google and address any issues that may be preventing proper indexing.

3. URL Inspection Tool

The URL inspection tool allows you to analyze individual URLs on your website and see how they appear in Google search results. It provides detailed information about whether a page is indexed or not, any crawling or indexing errors encountered by Googlebot when accessing the page, canonicalization status, mobile usability issues detected on the page, etc.

This tool is handy when troubleshooting specific URL-related issues and ensuring that your pages are optimized for search engines.

4. Sitemap Submission

Sitemaps help search engines understand the structure and content of your website better. With Google Search Console, you can submit your sitemap to ensure that all important pages on your site are discovered and indexed by Google more efficiently.

5. Mobile Usability Report

In today’s mobile-first world, having a mobile-friendly website is essential for a positive user experience and better search rankings. The mobile usability report in Search Console highlights any issues with the mobile version of your site, such as viewport configuration problems, small font sizes, clickable elements too close together, etc.

By fixing these issues, you can improve the overall usability of your site on mobile devices and potentially boost its visibility in mobile search results.

The Google Search Console is a useful tool for obtaining necessary information about a site, correcting errors and doing everything possible to increase its visibility in search results.

Unfortunately, the console interface is complicated, and the help section can confuse even more, so not all webmasters are aware of the capabilities of such a service and can use it correctly.

We will go through the main tabs and settings of the Google Search Console to clarify the situation. You need a Google account to use the console. If you have one, follow the link to the main page of the console.

First, you should add a site and confirm your rights to it. There are some special ways to perform. The suggested method is to upload the Html file to the site folder. If for some reason you cannot do this, use one of the alternative methods.

To confirm the site, you must copy the proposed meta tag and paste it between “the” and “tags” in the site code. If the site uses WordPress, the tag can be found in the header.php file in the template editor.

You can also use Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager accounts to simplify the process. Another way is confirmation of rights using a domain registrar.
On the next page, a summary opens in front of us.

While there is no information in it since Google displays data with some delay. Therefore, even if the site is already indexed, you will have to wait 2-3 days before the statistics appear.

At the top, you’ll see a welcome message from Google with recommendations. Before looking at each section, let’s move on to the settings.

Search Console Settings

If you do not want to receive email notifications from the Search Console, do not check the box. But it is better not to do this – you can skip an important message (about viruses on the site, sanctions, access errors, etc.).

Site settings

The main domain and the scanning frequency are indicated here.

Each site initially has two versions: www.site.ru and site.ru. The information on them completely coincides, but for search engines, these are different sites. To avoid duplication, one domain is selected as the main, and the second is simply glued to it.

Now, when accessing a non-primary domain, it will be redirected to the primary. Choose the option that you prefer to see in the search. In this case, you will need to set up call forwarding.

Please note that you cannot determine the primary domain until you add both versions of the site (with and without www) and confirm the rights to them. Another item in the settings is changing the frequency of a site’s crawl by a robot.

It is recommended to choose the first option: at the discretion of Google. But if your hoster periodically sends letters about exceeding the server load limit, you can temporarily limit the scanning speed to solve the problem.

Change of address

This section is used when changing a domain. The page explains what needs to be done when moving the site to avoid problems with Google.

Google Analytics Resource

If you’re already using the Google Analytics tool, link it to the Google Search Console and get more information about search traffic.

Users and Resource Owners

This tool is useful if, for example, you give a resource for promotion to another specialist or company. To add a new user, enter the address of his Gmail. In this case, you can set user rights. For example, with limited access, the user will not be able to carry out any actions on the site – only view some data.

When selling a site, they change the owner. To do this, go to “Resource Owner Management.” There is information about attempts to confirm the rights to the site: quantity, the result (successful/unsuccessful), method of confirmation and date.

Also here you can see the data of the current owners of the site and add a new one. Related users display Google’s site related resources (e.g. AdWords, YouTube, Google+). You can add a binding to a mobile application.

If you link the site and the application, Google will automatically index the application based on the site’s data and show it in a search for mobile devices. After adding a site in messages, a checklist appears on its promotion in the search. This is a list of the basic steps you should take to get you started.

Helpful hints

This tab shows errors in rich cards if you have any. Useful tips allow you to give the user even more information on request directly in the search results.
By clicking on the Create useful cards button, you will be taken to a page with instructions for creating cards.

They are sorted by content type (article, book, course, event, music, etc.) and by individual snippet elements (breadcrumbs, carousel, logo, etc.). The Google Search Console is a very cool free webmaster tool. It helps to identify errors on the site, get information about violations and security problems and provides a lot of useful statistics for analysis. Only here you can evaluate the look of the site in a Google search and take the necessary measures to make it more visible to the user.

Therefore, it is worth exploring the console interface. Moreover, it is not difficult.

Conclusion

Google Search Console is a powerful tool that can greatly benefit website owners and administrators in improving their online presence. By utilizing its features effectively, you can gain valuable insights into how your site performs in organic search results and make informed decisions about optimizing it further for better visibility and traffic.

Take the time to set up Google Search Console for your website(s) if you haven’t done so already. It’s an invaluable resource that will help you stay ahead in the competitive online landscape!