How to monitor page positions and get other useful information? Today I have prepared a Google Search Console tutorial what is this tool and how to use it? You’ll learn more in this article. Need more comprehensive support in increasing and analyzing your site’s visibility? Contact me!

Google Search Console – what is it?

GSC is a free tool that allows you to monitor site visibility and get other useful information. To use its capabilities, however, you must first verify that you own the site. You can do it, among other things. By uploading an HTML file and publishing it on the site, inserting an HTML tag on the home page of the site, tracking code
Google Analytics
or Google’s tag manager.

How to verify the site? – Google Search Console tutorial

1.Sign in to Google Search Console

The first step is to log into Google Search Console, using your Google account. If you do not already have such an account, you need to create one.

2.Add your site

You can choose between two services: domain and URL prefix. The first means that you will have access to analytics of the entire domain, i.e. all the URLs belonging to it. With a URL prefix, the situation is different: you can access, for example, only a specific subpage (e.g., yourwebsite.com/clothes). You can have up to 1,000 different services in one GSC account.

3.Verify the site

Google will then ask you to confirm that you are the owner of the site you want to add to Google Search Console. You can verify a Domain service only by verifying DNS records, for a service with a URL prefix there are many methods available to add a Google Search Console verification code. You can do this, for example, by uploading an HTML file, placing an HTML tag on the home page, Google Analytics tracking code or Google tag manager.

How to use Google Search Console in SEO?

Once you have added your site and confirmed ownership, Google will begin analyzing your website and you will gain access to data important from an SEO perspective.

The recommended tool for SEO specialists, developers, site administrators and business owners is Google Search Console. Indexing is just one of the parameters you can check in it. GSC allows above all:

• Verify that Google sees and indexes your site.
• Troubleshoot indexing problems and send requests to index new and updated content.
• Check what user queries your site is showing up for, how high the CTR is in search results.
• Control which sites have links leading to your site.
• Troubleshoot AMP pages (Accelerated Mobile Pages, accelerated mobile pages created to ensure the fastest possible loading).
• Check that the site displays well on mobile devices.
• Receive alerts when indexing or site security issues arise.

One can distinguish at least a few key reports from the perspective of an SEO or site owner.

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Overview

A review is simply a summary of your site’s search engine performance. Here you will find all notifications and basic data, e.g. search engine positions of the site, indexation status and display on mobile devices. This way you get all the most important information right from the start.

Display of search results (effectiveness reports)

Google Search Console allows you to view search results for your site, including information on queries typed by users, number of impressions, CTR and average position in search results. All this data is available both for the entire site and for individual pages. You can also sort them by device type (desktop or mobile) or by the country from which the query came.

Site map in Google Search Console

You can easily create a sitemap of your site and submit it to Google for faster and more efficient indexing. It is also possible to check whether any errors occurred during the transfer.

Site indexing

There is also a page indexing report available in GSC – you can check whether the sub-pages are already indexed or possible to be indexed. If some subpages are not indexed, you will get a justification for why this is happening.

Mobile review

With Google Search Console it is possible to check for errors in displaying the site on mobile devices. This way, you can be sure that your website is well optimized for phones and tablets.

Links

You will also inspect at GSC how your
link building
. You can see what sites are linking to your site and the destination of internal links on your site. It’s worth verifying that you don’t have links on low-quality SPAM sites.

Photos and video

Google Search Console allows you to monitor search results for images and videos that are related to your site. You can check how often your media is displayed and for which keyword phrases. In addition, you will verify that the videos on your site (if you have them) index well.

HTTPS

Google attaches great importance to HTTPS because it labels sites that don’t have it as unsafe. In GSC, you can also check how many URLs indexed on your site have HTTPS.

Site security

Google Search Console allows you to monitor the health of your site, including detecting indexing errors, alerting you to security issues (e.g. content modified by hackers, malware).

It’s worth using Google Search Console because it’s versatile and – free. Having trouble verifying your site with GSC? Contact me!