Google Search Console : A Definitive SEO Guide for (2024)

Google Search Console provides website owners with crucial data required to monitor the performance of the website in search and enhance search rankings for information such as keywords and queries that is exclusively available through the console. This makes it essential for an online business that is keen to maximise its online growth.

Google Search Console is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools in the industry. Today, approximately 80% of people use GSC for just checking metrics such as clicks and impressions. While there is nothing wrong with checking those metrics, they must understand that Google Search Console can do a lot more!

As a business, if you are integrating Google Search Console to just check clicks and impressions on the website, you are missing a lot of opportunities for your business.

Our Google Search Console Guide shares in-depth information on how you do more with GSC, including how to get started with google search console, how to use google search console, and common GSC FAQs.

What Is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console, one of the best SEO tools, is a free web service hosted by Google. The Search Console, also commonly referred to as Google Webmaster Console, offers a way for publishers and search marketing professionals to monitor their overall site health and performance relative to Google search.

It gives an overview of parameters related to search performance and user experience, publishing can use this information to update their sites for maximum results, which includes attracting more traffic and converting them into paying customers.

Google Webmaster Console also ensures that Google can notify you when it identifies security issues such as hacking vulnerabilities or if the search quality team is imposing a manual action penalty.

Significant Google Webmaster Console features:

• Monitoring indexing and webpage crawling.
• Identifying and fixing relevant errors.
• Overviewing search performance.
• Requesting indexing of updated web pages.
• Reviewing internal as well as external links.

Google search console also provides targeting reports that come in handy while improving website’s search performance and attracting more traffic. These reports provide valuable insights into targeted search queries and keywords. Using these insights you can tweak your SEO strategies to make them more optimised.

So, let’s get started on how to use google search console, which includes adding a website to google search console, verifying website ownership, and troubleshooting issues with GSC.

Getting Started: Adding Website to Google Search Console

Lets focus on the Google Search Console set up. The first step involves integrating the Search Console to verify the website ownership. Google offers users several different ways to accomplish website verification, based on whether they are verifying a website, a domain, or a Google site. Domains registered with Google can be automatically verified by adding them to the Google Search Console.

A majority of users often verify their websites using one of the following four methods:

• HTML file upload.
• Meta tag and meta description.
• Google Analytics tracking code.
• Google Tag Manager.

But some of the website hosting platforms limit what a user can upload and often mandates a specific way to verify the website owners. However, it is becoming less of an issue as many hosted websites or platform services offer an easy-to-follow verification process, which is as follows.

Steps to Add Website to Google Search Console

This is a step-by-step Google search console tutorial for adding website:

Step 1: Sign into the Google account. Make sure to use the business and not the personal account if it is a business website.

Step 2: Go to Google Webmaster Tools/Google Search Console Tools.

Step 3: Click on the Add a property option.

Step 4: Select “Website” from the drop-down menu to enter the URL of the website. Make sure to use the exact URL that appears in the browser.

Step 5: Click on Continue.

Step 6: Pick a method to verify the website. A few choices will appear, you’ll have to choose one of the following: HTML file upload, HTML tag, domain name provider, GA tracking code, or GTM container snippet.

Step 7: If your site supports HTTP:// and HTTPS://, add both of them as separate sites. It is also important to add each domain.

Once you have set up your website, you’ll have to spend some time understanding the data insights and how they can be used in your marketing strategies. If you are new to SEO, you can use our SEO glossary to understand all the SEO terminologies.

If you’re still unsure about how to add your website to Google Search Console, you may want to consider working with an experienced SEO agency in Mumbai.  Their team of experts can help you set up Google search console for optimal performance in search results.

Ways to Verify Website Ownership

There are two standard methods to verify your own site with a search console, for example, a standard WordPress site can be verified with the help of following:

• HTML file upload
• Meta tag

It is generally recommended to use the URL-prefix properties process as it is easier to implement.  This process involves adding a unique code snippet to the head section of the website’s HTML code. This code snippet verifies ownership of the website and grants access to the corresponding Google Search Console data.

Now, let’s take a look at the HTML File Upload Method:

Step 1: Go to the Google Webmaster Console and open the “Property Selector” dropdown option which is at the top left-hand corner of the Search Console page.

Step 2: In the pop-up window labelled “Choose Property Type,” select the “URL-prefix” option from the list of available property types. Then, enter the URL of the website you want to verify. Now, click the “Continue” button.

Step 3: Select the HTML file upload method to download the file.

Step 4: Upload the HTML file to the root of the website.

The root here implies https://example.com/. So if the downloaded file shows verification.html, then the uploaded file should be available at https://example.com/verification.html.

Step 5: Finish the verification process by clicking on the “Verify” button back in the Search Console.

Verification of a website with its domain in website platforms such as Wix and Weebly is the same as the above-mentioned steps.

Troubleshooting With GSC

The website rankings in search results completely depend on Google’s ability to crawl and index the listed web pages. The Search Console URL Inspection Tool will notify you of any issues that are found during crawling and indexing the web pages. It identifies such issues before they become a huge problem and start affecting your website ranking.

URL Inspection Tool

The URL inspection tool helps in identifying whether a URL of a web page is indexed or is eligible to be shown on the search console. For each submitted URL, the user can:

• Request indexing for an updated webpage.
• View how Google discovers the webpage.
• View the last crawl date for a URL.
• Check if Google is employing a declared canonical URL or another one.
• Check the status of mobile usability .
• Check enhancements including breadcrumbs.

Coverage

The coverage section of the search console portrays the following:

• Discovery: How Google discovered the URL.
• Crawl: It highlights whether Google has successfully crawled the URL or not and provides a reason as to why it hasn’t happened.
• Enhancements: It provides the status of structured data.

Fixing 404 Errors

The coverage report helps in alerting the publisher of the 404 and 500 series error responses. It also assists in communicating that everything is fine. A 404 server response or error is called when the browser or crawler’s request for a specific webpage is made in error or the page does not exist. However, this does not mean that the website is in error.

If the crawler comes across another site or an internal link to a webpage that does not exist, the coverage report throws a 404 response. The Inspect URL tool to catch these instances in time.

From there the user can identify if the link is broken or if it needs to be fixed or redirected to another correct page. It could also notice that the webpage never existed and that the linking to that web page made a mistake.

Advanced Tips and Strategies Of Google Search Console Features

Google Search Console enables businesses or marketers to easily monitor and resolve server errors as well as site load issues, and security crises like hacking and malware. It also helps in ensuring site maintenance or adjustments smoothly with respect to search performance.

Using Google Search Console to improve SEO:

• Monitor organic traffic along with keyword ranking, CTR (click-through rate), and traffic data
• Track index coverage and inspect web pages that are indexed by Google crawlers
• Identify removals and sitemaps.
• Check the performance of Core Web Vitals 
• Troubleshoot and identify mobile usability.
• Keeping a track of manual actions and security issues marked by Google
• Analyse crucial backlink data

Why is Search Console Good For SEO?

With Search Console, publishers, and SEOs can upload links, disavow reports, and resolve penalties for security issues such as site hacking. All of this helps in contributing to a better website security and site performance, factors that Google takes interest in while ranking websites on the search engine.

Using Google Search Console for SEO helps brands with online marketing by assisting them in monitoring their website traffic, optimising their ranking, and making informed decisions about the appearance of their website’s search results.

Search Console can also be used to influence technical decisions for the website as well as to undertake sophisticated marketing analysis in conjunction with Google tools such as Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Ads.

Search console is considered a vital component for SEO as it offers a valuable service that every web publisher is often concerned about when it comes to enhancing the search visibility of the business.

Conclusion

To summarise, Google’s Search Console helps webpages list these data points:

• Confirming whether Google can find or crawl the website.
• Fixing the indexing problems as well as requesting re-indexing of new or updated content.
• You can integrate it with Google analytics,  use the insights to improve your digital marketing efforts.  It shares data such as how often the website appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.
• Receiving alerts when Google locates indexing, spam, or other issues on the website.
• Directing which sites link to the website.
• Troubleshooting issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other features.

Were you aware that you could also measure the results of your social media strategy with Google Search Console? You can find out how social media is driving traffic to your website and monitor your website’s performance in search results.  This is where a reputed Social Media Agency in Mumbai with a strong background in SEO and digital marketing comes in.

FAQs