Google Search Console, one of Google’s products, is a tool that anyone with a website needs to increase visibility in search engines. The tool includes many performance metrics and shows how compliant your site is for Google. It also creates the opportunity to identify and manage all SEO issues. However, it is also an important guide for you to improve the problems.
Thanks to this tool, which is extremely advantageous for many digital marketers and SEO experts, the measurement of sites on the Google search engine can be performed very easily. This gives you an important advantage in making the necessary optimizations.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console, also known as Google Webmaster Tool, is a tool for monitoring performance in search results. This tool is a free service offered by Google that allows you to find and fix all of your site’s technical errors. This tool is extremely easy to use and provides very detailed information about your site’s performance against search results.
However, thanks to the results obtained, it provides you with important ideas about what kind of SEO work you should do. While providing detailed information about the structure of the website, it can be said that it is one of the indispensable parts of an SEO study. It is a system that allows improvements to be made on websites.
What Does Google Search Console Do?
For people who are considering setting up a website, the question of what Google Search Console does is one of the most curious topics. For users, this Google tool has many different features. The most prominent feature is that websites can be indexed with this tool. You can do an indexing for your websites and make the necessary checks in the index where the site is indexed. The fact that it is free is among the best advantages of this tool. This is an important plus for e-commerce sites. With Google Search Console, you can get the following advantages:
- It easily detects pages that are difficult to crawl with Googlebot.
- Measures the mobile compatibility of the site in SEO.
- It allows you to upload and control the sitemap.
- Detects how the site is searched on Google.
- Analyzes the performance of selected keywords.
- Controls link structure.
- It helps you determine how your site link will appear in the directory.
- Page speed is important in determining the loading speed.
- It extracts all SEO errors on your site in detail.
- URL removal on search results that do not need to be indexed.
- Shows all click-through rates of the site.
- It helps you view which websites your sitelinks are shared on.
It is a Google tool that works in many areas such as the items listed above.
How to Setup Google Search Console?
For Google Search Console installation, you first need a gmail address. Then you can perform the installation by following the steps below:
- After logging in, click on “Menu” at the top left. Here you need to click on the ‘Add Property’ option from a list that appears.
- In the ‘URL Prefix’ section on the right side of the pop-up, you need to type your domain name with http or https.
- After this stage, the most important part is the verification process of the site. Verification can be done with more than one method. You can use the following methods for this:
- You can add the given verification code to the <head> tag while coding your site.
- You have the chance to verify with your Google Analytics account.
- You can download the given verification file and save it to the FTP directory on your site.
- After the verification process, it is necessary to promote your site’s web pages to Google. For this process, you need to upload your sitemap to Search Console. You should add your sitemap by going to the Crawl section in Search Console, just under the Sitemaps tab.
What are Google Search Console Features?
There are many operations that can be done using Google Search Console. These processes can be explained as follows:
1. Preview
The preview is a tab that is the dashboard of the vehicle. This tab provides some statistics on performance, enhancements and overall coverage.
2. URL Inspection
This feature controls the indexing of a page by Google. You can easily check a URL or request indexing.
3. Scope
If there are any problems indexing your site, you can easily identify the problem with this tab. This feature also allows you to see which pages have been indexed.
4. Performance
This feature shows the performance of the site in Google search results. With this feature, which reveals important metrics, details such as current position in searches and click-through rate can be clearly seen.
5. URL Removal
This feature is used to remove the pages of the site on the console from Google search results.
6. Mobile Usability
It is a feature used to reveal errors that the site encounters during viewing on mobile devices. It provides an opportunity to examine these issues in detail.
7. Site Maps
Sitemaps provide information to Google about the sitemap of the property owned. It is also possible to view the submission history with the sitemap submission process. It is also possible to identify what kind of errors are in the maps sent.
8. Speed
With this feature, the speed performance of the pages within the site can be easily measured. A more comfortable comparison can be made with real-time usage data.
9. Connections
The links feature focuses on which pages are linked to the most. It can be more clearly seen by whom these transactions were carried out.
Which Data is Tracked with Google Search Console?
Thanks to Google Search Console, you have the opportunity to track a lot of data about your site. All of this data is presented to you in detailed reports. Thanks to the reports provided, it is possible to easily realize improvements on your site. With this tool, you can gain a wealth of information on the following metrics:
1. Total Clicks
Thanks to the total clicks, people can easily see how many clicks the website has received in Google search results. However, it should be noted that if a single user appears more than once i
However, it should be noted that if a single user appears more than once in the results, this is counted as a single click.
Total impressions ensure that all results are seen as clicks in the searches made. How many links your site has encountered is revealed by the total impressions.
3. Click-through Rate
It represents the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
4. Average Location
It is used to report the best position of your website in search results.
5. Screening Statistics
This shows how many pages have been scanned in the last 90 days. There is also a chance to view the download size and download time with these statistics.
6. Site Links
With this process, you can rank at the top of the page rankings. It also helps you to intervene in the pages in cases where changes are required.
Add Sitemap to Google Search Console
This tool allows Google bots to crawl websites accurately. You should also include a sitemap in XML format to make the crawling process easier.
It is necessary to click on the ‘Sitemaps’ section in the menu on the left side of Search Console. After this process, you should use the ‘Enter Sitemap URL’ section to add the necessary sitemap link for your website. You can then click ‘Send’.
How to Evaluate Search Console for SEO Success?
Since it is a free system, it is easily used by every SEO expert. Thanks to this application, all kinds of scanning operations can be done easily. At the same time, it can be easily seen where the site is in search engines.
It creates an important advantage in site modernization processes that need to be done. You can easily use the reports provided by the tool to make the desired changes. It is one of the Google tools that positively affect the success of the site in order to increase ranking in search engines.
Google Search Console Speed Report
Google always prioritizes site speed. Especially much more importance was given to mobile site speed. For this reason, Google now communicates all site speed details to the user with a number of reports. Speed reports provide URL-based reports on desktop and mobile site speeds. This makes it easier to identify problems with site speed, especially for sites that publish a lot of content.
These reports categorize URL groups as fast, medium and slow. At the same time, the reasons why pages with slow speeds experience slow speeds are also detailed in the reports. However, all URLs with the same speed value are also listed separately. You can take timely action to solve problems and work to increase the speed value of the site. The data related to these speed reports are obtained with the PageSpeed Insight tool. You can click on the ‘Developments’ page to access the reports.
Reports Available with Google Search Console
The reports you can use with Google Search Console are as follows:
- Brand Name Generic Searches
With this report, you can filter all search queries related to your brand. Making sense of the distribution of search queries is crucial in determining SEO strategy. It is used to determine the visibility of SEO efforts. However, it is possible to view the brand search from 16 months of data. One can learn about the strength of a brand.
- Home Other Pages
It is an important report in determining organic traffic for home page views. It can further increase the impact of the SEO campaign. Traffic is extremely important for important brands. However, it also provides reports on traffic to other pages.
- Brand Influence by Dimension
Other aspects of your site’s traffic are also extremely important. This allows you to see all devices and filter the rankings.
- Periodic Data and Date Comparisons
Thanks to this reporting, you can see all data for 16 months retrospectively.
- Comparative Pivot Tables
It is a reporting in Google Search Console that offers the possibility to create different items among new filters. This reporting gives you the chance to use multiple filters. However, you can make the scenarios more narrow.
Filtering to Summarize Reports in Google Search Console
Google Search Console uses a number of filters to parse and display data. Filters provide important advantages for the website in terms of use. These filters include:
1. Search Type
There are 3 different search types. These are image, web and video searches. You should choose whichever one you will get more traffic from.
2. Date Range
This filtering gives you 16 months of data. You can also select your specified date ranges.
3. Query
With this filter, you can only report on certain keywords. It provides you with information by selecting the keywords you specify.
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You can use the page filter to find URLs and compare different URLs.
5. Device Type
To see the performance on devices such as desktop mobile or tablet, it is possible to determine the filter type of the devices. It is possible to compare performances on different devices.
