How to Use Google Search Console for SEO

Analysing your website traffic and pages on your site will not only help you structure your website and help improve your site’s SEO, but it will also enable you to attract more visitors and help to increase conversions. Using Google Search Console will enable you to better optimise your website, which if done correctly, will improve your search engine rankings and links to your site, and boost your organic performance.

Google Search Console is one of the best SEO tools you can use. Not only can it identify search traffic, but it can tell you if your website is indexed correctly, which keywords customers are using to find your website, and it helps you to fix security issues, server errors and usability issues.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) helps websites improve their Google search results ranking and visibility. This powerful SEO tool provides you with a thorough analysis of your website, who visits it and where exactly the traffic is coming from. It shows you what pages your users landed on, how they get there, what device they used and how much traffic overall your site is getting. 

Google Search Console provides you with the tools to make your website more successful. It can help to improve your website in so many ways - from inspection and analysis to highlighting issues on your website, Google Search console does it all. The tools and reports in Google Search Console are extremely useful and provide information on the following:

• Organic Traffic - Google Search Console has an entire section dedicated to search traffic. This tool is vital to SEO as it shows which search queries are used to find your site and how often your site shows up in Google search and how many times your website link is being clicked on.
• Website Health - Google Search Console provides you with a page experience overview and outlines any issues your website may have, for example, broken URLs or mobile usability issues. 
• Google Core Web Vitals - To follow on from website issues, Google Search Console has a tool to help you with Core Web Vitals. This highlights pages with issues that need fixing on both desktop and mobile.
• Search Results - This section provides a detailed analysis of the performance of your website. It shows search queries, top-performing pages, devise use and search appearance. Links - This tool shows you the top internal links as well as the websites that link to your site.
• Sitemaps - This tool provides you with all the information you need about the current status of your submitted sitemap.

How to add your website to Google Search Console

If you haven’t added it to your website already, setting up Google Search Console is fairly straightforward. You need access to Google Search Console to get started, so if you don’t have an account, sign up for Google Search Console. Once you have done that, follow the steps below to start tracking and analysing your website:

• Sign in to your business Google account
• Go to Google Search Console
• Click ‘’add property’’
• Choose ‘’website’’ from the drop-down menu and enter your website URL 
• Verify your website by either domain or URL prefix. Any one of these methods can be used to verify your website ownership:

                             - HTML file upload                    

                             - Domain name provider                

                             - HTML tag                      

                             - Google Analytics tracking code                

                             - Google Tag Manager container snippet

Setting up Google Search Console via domain means you’re creating a single property that includes all subdomains and connects Google Search Console to every aspect of your website. Selecting URL prefix means you are creating a single property with only one URL prefix and it will only be connected to one version of your website.

Once you have finished setting up Google Search Console on your website, the next step is to submit your sitemap as this is a key ranking factor in SEO. To add this, click the link build and submit a sitemap and follow the instructions. Once you have submitted your sitemap and verified your account you can start utilising all the fantastic features in Google Search Console.

How to use Google Search Console for SEO

Now that you have access to Google Search Console, you can start to make use of many of the fantastic features. Below you will find information on each feature on Google Search Console and how to use it:

URL inspection

The URL inspection feature is a fantastic tool to utilise as you get to see how Google views your website. It can help to highlight issues on a specific page and is a useful tool especially if you are redesigning your website or adding new content. It can help to diagnose issues such as Google not being able to crawl your page, whether it is indexed and whether the page is mobile-friendly.

Performance

Search results This is my favourite feature on Google Search Console. The search results feature highlights clicks, impressions and the average position in search results for your site. It also shows the top queries users are searching for, top-performing pages, devices use and your website's search appearance. 

Discover

The Discover tool, formerly known as Google feed, shows users topics that interest them. It provides you with information about interests and helps you to pinpoint how often your site is shown in users’ Discover feed, which pieces of content perform well, and how it compares to traditional search results.

Index

Coverage

You can run an index coverage report to see which pages Google has found on your site and which pages have been indexed. It also highlights any issues that need to be fixed.

Sitemaps A sitemap lists your website's most important pages, so it is vital to ensure this is submitted correctly and search engines can find and crawl it. 

Removals

The removal tool enables you to temporarily hide a page from appearing in search results and provides information on a page or pages that have been reported.

Experience

Page experience

The page experience report shows metrics such as mobile usability and Core Web Vitals, as well as showing the percentage of URLs with good page experience and impressions.

Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals are a valuable user experience metric, assessing the user's experience based on load performance, responsiveness and layout. Whether it be desktop or mobile, core vitals pinpoint poor performing URLs that need improving. For more information, our blog post core web vitals Google algorithm explains Google Core Web Vitals metrics and how to access and optimise it on your site

Mobile usability 

The mobile usability report highlights pages that have usability issues when viewed on mobile. These issues can range from the text being too small to read, content being wider than the screen and clickable elements being too close together. With the help of a web developer, fixing these issues will help to better optimise your website for mobile. 

Other useful tools

Data highlighter is a webmaster tool in Google Search Console for teaching Google about the pattern of structured data on your website. For more information about structured data, our blog post on how to improve SEO structure data will provide all the information on what structured data is and why it is so important to your website and its appearance on SERPs.

Google Search Console is a vital tool in SEO. It provides you with all the data you need to improve your website for better leads and conversions. Not only that, it will help you fix underlying issues and help the user navigate and find exactly what they need on your site.

If you would like help with your SEO, get in touch with SilverDisc.