How To Use Google Search Console

Want to know how to use Google Search Console for SEO purposes? Thankfully you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we’ll break down a few essential steps to setting up Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) for your organization. We’ll also discuss the benefits of persistently managing your search console, and some tools that may help with setup.

Using Sitemaps for Google Search Console

One of the first and most important things you will do to get your search console setup is submitting your sitemap. You will need to do this in order to have Google crawl your website in an automated fashion without the need to submit URLS manually.

Submitting your sitemap to google search console will also help your team spot errors as they arise, instead of only in a manual fashion when you are submitting URLs.

Your sitemap needs to be submitted in .XML form for Google to be able to crawl. Most website platforms like WordPress, Wix, and others offer easy access to their sitemaps through their backend editors or through plugins.

If you’re building in WordPress look into the YOAST SEO and All-in-one SEO plugin. Either of these can easily handle the sitemap building process for you. You can read more on how to setup WordPress sitemaps right here.

Google Search Console URL Inspection A.K.A Submitting URLS to Google Search Console

Another important aspect of using Google Search Console is leveraging the url inspection tool. The are two main benefits of using the URL inspection tool.

The first benefit is the ability to analyze your URLs in real time to see any performance issues that may need to be addressed.

The second benefit is the fact that you are manually forcing Google’s hand to crawl your URL. This can help to provide quicker SEO results opposed to relying solely on sitemaps.

Below, you are looking at our URL inspection on Google where you will find green checks next to all of our essential metrics. If any of these metrics are labelled in red with an “x” you will need to address the route of the issue.

How to Analyze Performance in Google Search Console

To analyze performance in Google search console navigate to the ‘performance’ tab on the left hand side of the screen.

Here you will find multiple dimension to analyze your search performance. This chart should be your bible for reporting on and measuring search optimization results. Often organizations will rely on visual evidence that they are ranking highly such as frequently googling their own business.

This can provide an inaccurate picture of your results and lead to false insights on marketing activities. Your goal in using search console to measure and optimize is to understand your true average position, impression, and click statistics from your SEO campaigns.

The goal of a search marketer is to consistently increase and maintain average positions for their organization. It is virtually impossible without the true data from search console.