Google Search Console Guide: For SEO Beginners

Google Search Console is a great tool for monitoring and tweaking your website’s performance. It’s easily accessible and incredibly useful.

Search Console is free and feature-rich. You can view e-commerce performance, drill down into analytics, and gain traffic insights. It’s a handy tool that can accommodate any size business due to its diverse metrics.

Because Google Search Console is so complex, it can be intimidating for beginners to get started. But don’t worry! Once you master the basics, you’ll be using it like a pro in no time.

So, to help you get familiar with the tool, here’s a comprehensive guide on how to use it to optimize your SEO performance and improve your search rankings.

Benefits of using Google Search Console

As one of the most accessible free SEO tools on the internet, Google Search Console offers a range of features that rival premium SEO software.

Whether you’re new to SEO or you run a small business, it’s a valuable asset. Even for top companies, it’s a great supplemental tool. Used correctly, Google Search Console can really drive results.

Here’s a quick list of the benefits of using Google Search Console:

• Once enabled, it will tell Google to access your website content
• Tracking Search Performance
• Submit new website URL for crawling
• Track and reduce safety issues
• Understand how Google sees your website

Add your site to Search Console

Step 1: Select property type

First, log in to your Google account with your domain name and domain name and use it to access the Search Console. If this is your first time logging in, you will see a Welcome message that provides two property types: Domain Name and URL Prefix.

These are site verification methods, and URL prefixes provide a wider range of verification modes. Most people generally recommend choosing URL prefixes .

Step 2: Website Ownership Verification

Enter your website's URL and perform site verification to prove that you are the website owner. You can verify in a number of ways, the most effective being by using Google Analytics .

Google Analytics automatically verifies your site for you, simplifying the complex part of the verification process . The only additional step you need to complete is linking your Google Search Console account to your Analytics account.

Click the Admin button in the Google Tag Manager dashboard, go to Property Settings, and click the Add button under Search Console Settings. After that, you can select the Google Search Console and Google Analytics property types to complete the linking process.

Once your site is verified, proceed to the next step, or if this method doesn't work, try another method. Other options include DNS CNAME verification imported from an older version of Google Webmaster Tools.

Step 3: Add a sitemap

Next, if you have a sitemap for your website ready, prepare to upload the HTML file. Typically, this is an XML file format that provides Search Console with information about your website's pages. If your website already has a sitemap, you can find it at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml .

However, if you need to create a sitemap for your website, consider using an XML sitemap tool such as XML Sitemaps to do the job.

Alternatively, you can also use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress powered websites. Simply copy and paste the XML sitemap URL created by the plugin into the “Add new sitemap” field in Google Search Console.

Please note that it may take a few days for Google Search Console to detect your site's information .

Understand the data provided by Search Console

Google Search Console provides a wealth of useful data that you can use to quickly and accurately measure your site’s performance. The various options provided by the console can help you shape your future content strategy while providing insights into optimization opportunities.

These data include:

• Google Search Console Overview
• Performance Search Results
• Index Coverage Report
• Site Map
• Remove
• Core Network Metrics
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• External and internal links
• Manual Operation
• Mobile availability
• Crawl Statistics
• URL Inspection Tool
• Testers (Robots.txt file)
• URL parameters

Let’s examine each data point in detail to learn how to make the most of Google Search Console.

1. Google Search Console Overview

When you open Google Search Console and visit your website, the first thing you’ll see is the Overview tab. Here you’ll find a summarized version of all the data points the console provides , presented as small tabs and charts.

Clicking these buttons will take you to the corresponding tab where the report will display a more detailed examination of the data. Alternatively, you can access these tabs via the sidebar on the left.

2. Performance Search Results

The Performance report under “Performance Search Results” in Google Search Console gives you an overview of your site’s performance.

In this tab, you can view statistics such as total clicks, impressions, average CTR, average CTR, and average position . At the top of the page are filters for adding or removing parameters. These filters can be very useful for your marketing efforts, allowing you to re-adjust your SEO strategy as needed.

Listed below is a brief description of what each filter can display:

• Clicks: Displays the number of clicks from SERPs
• Impressions: Displays the number of impressions or SERP results viewed by users
• CTR: Click-through rate, which is the ratio of clicks to impressions
• Rank: Displays the average rank of the top-ranked site pages

Additionally, the Performance Search Results tab has more options that allow you to group data in specific ways. Here is a brief description of each option:

• Queries: View a list of search queries that drive more traffic and enhance your site’s page experience
• Page: Displays specific pages that appear in Google search results
• Country/Region: Split data based on user location
• Device: Separate data based on the device used for the search
• Search Type: Displays the type of search performed (web search, image search, etc.)
• Search appearance for rich results: This gives you access to special filters
• Date: divide the data according to the search time

3. Index Coverage Report

The Index Coverage report provides an overview of the indexing status and the URLs that Google has indexed for the selected property type . It also includes any issues the search engine may have encountered during the process.

Google indexes every word (including content tags and attributes) found on every page its robot, Googlebot, processes on the internet. It then creates a graph breaking down the URLs on the pages the robot has indexed. This makes it more likely that your site's content will appear in search results.

This report will change over time as you continue to modify your site content. Remember that robots will not include duplicate URLs or URLs that do not have an index meta tag.

4. Sitemap

Websites often have sitemaps to make it easier for users to navigate the website content.

If your website includes a sitemap, consider checking if the sitemap submitted in Google Search Console is the latest version . If not, simply download the latest version and add it to the console to refresh the number of submitted URLs.

You can also use the console to understand how search engines read your site and whether all pages are viewing as expected.

5. Remove

You can choose to temporarily exclude certain pages from Google search results. There are many reasons to do this, including updating a page, adding new content, removing incorrect information, or creating a new page covering the same topic.

A URL can be excluded for up to 90 days before the removal expires . Therefore, if you need to completely remove a page, you must do it directly from the website.

6. Core Network Metrics

Core Web Vitals is an effort by Google to provide developers and users with specific metrics for measuring the user experience of a website.

Essentially, Core Web Vitals is a set of tools available to all website owners that they can use to improve or degrade the experience of their website visitors. The toolset prioritizes three key user experience criteria: user-friendliness , site speed , and web stability .

Every year, the metrics used by Core Page Vitals are updated with different impacts on the site based on user experience and engagement. Since technical SEO places Core Page Vitals above other metrics, it is a pillar that every website owner must adhere to. After all, these metrics make or break a web page.

The main metrics included in Google Core Web Vitals include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) : Check how fast a web page loads
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) : Tracks the movement of web page elements
• First Input Delay (FID) : measures the user’s interactivity with web page elements

Also consider paying attention to some of the secondary metrics that are not part of the Core Web Vitals Indicators. By tracking these non-core Web Vitals Indicators, your website user experience will only improve.

These non-core indicators include:

• First Contentful Paint (FCP) : measures the time it takes to load the first piece of content on a website
• Speed Index (SI) : Measures how long it takes a website to display content
• Time to Interactive (TTI) : Measures the loading and interactive time of website elements
• Total Blocking Time (TBT) : measures the time between FCP and TTI
• Page Performance Score : The total score of all the above indicators

7. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is designed to ensure your mobile website loads quickly. This is especially beneficial for users on slower internet connections, helping them access your website easily.

You’ll need some coding knowledge to create AMP, as it gives you access to a few lines of modifiable code. But if you’re new, there’s a Google AMP guide to help you create them for your site from scratch.

You can enable AMP settings from the Enhancements section of the Enhancements tab in Google Search Console.

8. External and internal links

Google Search Console gives you insights into the most linked sites that link back to your pages. Additionally, you can use the console to view the most linked pages on your site. You can access the list of most linked pages by clicking “Links” on the left sidebar.

It is very helpful to understand how your active pages are linked on the Internet and how you use other websites (i.e. external and internal links ). It can allow you to determine the type of content that your website prioritizes in Google search results.

9. Manual Operation

Structured data is part of Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines, which every website should follow. The purpose of these guidelines is to prevent useless, deceptive, or spammy content from flooding search results pages.

Some best practices include:

• Your website content must be useful, informative and reliable
• Use a lot of words that users will search for in the body of your content, titles, and headings
• Enable link crawling to help Google find other pages on your site
• Promote your site in Google News and related communities, and tell Google about it in related communities and like-minded people
• Follow guidelines for specific content types (e.g. images, videos, etc.)
• If necessary, take steps to control your content and opt out of search results

10. Mobile Usability

Web visitors are more likely to browse the web on mobile devices. Mobile usability becomes an important point to consider when optimizing your website .

In Search Console, you can find a list of bullet points that Google considers best practices. These standards include text size, distance between clickable elements, viewport settings, and website errors.

It is important to address mobile usability issues as soon as possible, especially since the mobile user base is increasing rapidly. If not addressed, it can cause your search result ranking to drop significantly.

11. Crawl Statistics

You can see how often Google crawls your site in the Crawl Stats option in the Settings tab. This can help you understand how much data is downloaded from your site and how quickly it's downloaded.

Note that the exact frequency of crawls is not as important as sudden increases or decreases in crawl rate. If your site’s crawl rate spikes too quickly, you can try the following:

• Adjust your robots.txt file to prevent certain pages from being crawled
• Use Google Search Console to set a crawl rate limit, preferably for a shorter period of time
• Prevent crawling of pages with infinite results via robots.txt or nofollow tags
• Use appropriate error codes to indicate missing, closed, or moved URLs

If your website's crawl rate is lower than expected, you can try updating its sitemap and unblocking pages via the robots.txt file .

12. URL Inspection Tool

The URL Inspection tool allows you to test Google's ability to crawl and render specific URLs on your site. This can help determine whether Googlebot can crawl a page, which might only be clear through testing.

A successful test will produce a perfectly loading page indicating which resources are inaccessible to robots. You can access the website code and any web page errors via "View Test Page".

This is a very useful tool during the debugging phase of Web development.

13. Robots.txt Tester

Robots.txt is a useful text file, but it can be difficult to determine if crawl blocking is working as intended . For this reason, you can use a robots.txt tester to ensure that your website or its elements are not visible when you visit it.

The test will give you an "Accepted" or "Blocked" message and you can adjust this as needed.

14. URL Parameters

URL parameters can be used in an ad's tracking template or custom parameters to obtain information about clicks made through a website URL. There are two main types of parameters: content modification parameters and tracking parameters .

Content modification parameters transfer information directly to the landing page and can only be set in the final URL. Tracking parameters, on the other hand, pass information about the click to the website owner's account, ad group, or campaign in the template.

Please note that this tool must be used with caution, as incorrect settings may negatively impact your site’s crawl rate .

Optimize your website for better rankings

Optimization is one of the most important steps in any marketing strategy, and Google Search Console helps you optimize your website effectively.

First, there are three strategies you’ll rely on to ensure your website gets the search traffic it deserves. Let’s explore them in detail.

1. Optimize underperforming results

If you’ve been working on website content for a while, you may have noticed that some pages need a makeover. This can be the case even if you have a large number of keywords.

What you need to do is to find out those keywords with high exposure but low click-through rate . This means that users see these keywords in the search results, but they are not attractive enough to visit the website.

The key here is to improve your SERP presence and increase your click-through rate. You can do that by following these steps:

Step 1: Generate a report

Start by running a Google Search Console report and enabling all available filters: Total Clicks, Total Impressions, Average Clickthrough Rate (CTR), and Average Position. Here you’ll find several parameter tabs that you can use to further narrow down your Google Search Console data.

Step 2: Evaluate keyword performance

Select the Query tab from the tabs to view a list of keywords with the filter applied. The keyword data listed here will give you valuable insights into how each keyword is performing in terms of impressions, clicks, and CTR.

Step 3: Track Underperforming Keywords

Next, narrow down the number of keywords to 5 to 10 that have high exposure but low CTR. Feel free to copy them into a text file or spreadsheet to track them more effectively.

Step 4: Analyze the performance of underperforming keywords

Now you can analyze how your competitors are using these keywords via Google Search. It is crucial to determine why these keywords are not performing well for your website (while your competitors are performing relatively successfully) .

The most common reason for poor performance for a specific keyword is poorly crafted meta descriptions and title tags. To improve the quality of these elements, consider making them more attractive while also SEO-compliant. Specifically, for meta descriptions, you must create concise descriptions while sparking the curiosity of your readers .

This may result in an increase in search traffic to your site. Continue to optimize your site to further improve its performance.

2. Conduct mobile keyword research

Mobile keyword research is another important aspect of SEO that Google Search Console addresses directly. As the number of mobile devices continues to grow, it’s crucial to use the keywords with the highest click-through rates in your content.

Visit the Performance Search Results report and instead of clicking on the Queries tab, select the Devices option. Here you will get three options: Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet.

Select Mobile to find all the common keywords that are searched by mobile users. Simply add these keywords to your content to improve your website’s ability to rank higher in the SERP rankings and adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly.

3. Find and correct performance issues

Determine what your site needs attention by using Google Search Console to find and fix performance slowdowns.

Typically, the console will display issues within a viewing window of up to 16 months, but this time frame may need to be larger. To resolve this, click the "Date: Last 3 Months" bubble to access the date range.

You can select the time range manually or choose from predefined ranges such as Last 7 Days, Last 28 Days, etc. Additionally, you can click on the Compare tab to compare how your website performed over the specified time range.

Once you click Apply, you'll see a variety of data with plenty of interactive elements to help you better understand it. You can see clicks, impressions, CTR, and position and how they've changed over time, helping you troubleshoot any potential issues.

Fix issues and optimize indexes.

Google Search Console lets you spot indexing errors and provides the tools to efficiently fix them. It’s like having a supportive guide by your side as you fine-tune your site.

This can be done through the Index Coverage Report, which shows a list of pages that were successfully indexed. In addition, it also shows those pages that were not indexed due to errors.

To access the list of index errors, open the Index Coverage report and click the Errors tab. Make sure no other tabs are highlighted, then scroll down to view the details.

In the Details section, you'll see a list of errors, validation status, trends, and the number of pages affected by each error. You can drill down further to see a specific URL and when Googlebot last crawled it.

Here is a list of some errors that can cause indexing issues:

• Redirect Error
• Server Error (5xx)
• The submitted URL appears to be a soft 404
• Submitted URLs marked as “noindex”
• The submitted URL returns an unauthorized request (401)
• There is a crawling problem with the submitted URL
• The submitted URL is blocked by robots.txt
• The submitted URL was not found (404)

If you encounter these errors, there are some quick fixes you can try to resolve them. Each error has a different fix, as described in the following sections.

1. Fix "Submitted URL not found" error

Usually, "Submitted URL Not Found (404)" errors are easy to fix because they are usually false positives. Therefore, you can first check whether the specific URL is accessible.

First, expand the error details mentioned above and click the “Inspect URL” option. This will prompt Search Console to ask Google Index to provide you with data about that URL. When Google Index generates results, you can open the URL in a separate window to see if it works properly.

There are two possible situations: either the URL is accessible and the error is a false positive, or the URL is inaccessible .

If a URL is normally accessible but is marked with a 404 error, you can manually add it to the Google index. To do this, click the "Test Live URL" button and then click "Request Indexing." After that, simply verify the fix to add the URL to the index.

However, if the URL returns a 404 error on the browser window, you can resolve this issue in two ways. On the one hand, you can leave it as is and let Google remove it from the index after enough time has passed. Conversely, you can use a 301 redirect on the page to redirect potential users to another page on your website.

2. Fix "Server Error (5xx)" error

This error occurs when Googlebot cannot access the website for some reason . Typically, this is due to the server being down or temporarily unavailable.

These types of errors are usually best reported to Google, but if you get multiple errors in a short period of time, it can be hard to ignore them. In this case, it's best to check the server operation on your side to find out what's causing the error .

To resolve Server Error (5xx) indexing issues, highlight one of the URLs showing this error in the Index Coverage report. You will see a sidebar open on the right with options to Inspect URL and Test Robots.txt Block.

Click Check URL to see more details about the error. You may see a "URL not on Google: Index Error" message.

This could indicate two things: Google removed the URL from its index, or the URL was unavailable when Googlebot tried to crawl it .

Copy and paste the URL into a new window and check if it loads. If it loads fine, switch back to Google Search Console and click the "Test Live URL" button.

After that, the tool should be able to load the page and its details. Simply click "Request Index" to add the page back to the Google index.

But if the site doesn't load in a separate browser window, you may want to recheck the error by following the same steps. You may get a different error or the same error may be returned, requiring a different fix.

Finally, if you can’t resolve the error, you may want to add a “noindex” HTML tag to the page’s title. It’s also best to remove it from your sitemap entirely to prevent Google from revisiting it and generating further errors.

3. Fix the "Submitted URL appears to be a soft 404" error

A soft 404 error means that it does not indicate to search engines that it must be ignored, but instead generates a valid code. This usually applies to web pages that are only accessible after a user performs a specific action, such as adding an item to a shopping cart .

Soft 404 errors can be fixed in no less than four different ways. You can:

• Returns a 404 error code
• Remove the page that generates the error from your sitemap
• Redirect to another page
• Leave it as is and wait for it to resolve automatically

These errors are usually to be expected, so it is a good idea to just ignore them.

4. Fix the "Submitted URL has crawling problems" error

URLs with crawling issues indicate that something is preventing Google from indexing them. The key to resolving this issue is to find the root cause and add it back to the Google index .

Find the page that returns the error in the Index Coverage report and click the 'Inspect URL' button. You can view the crawled page and inspect its details on the 'More Information' tab.

Typically, a page has crawling problems because its resources failed to load during the indexing attempt. However, to determine whether page elements are loading properly, open the URL in a separate browser window.

If it loads fine, you can be sure that the error is temporary. Click the "Test Live URL" button to refresh the error report, then click "Request Indexing" under "More Information" to add the page back to the index.

You will receive an email notification whether the indexing job was successful or not.

5. Fix redirect errors

Redirect errors are caused when Googlebot cannot access a page due to an incorrect redirect. The redirected page either does not exist or does not load correctly.

You can fix these errors by following these steps:

• Click the "Inspect URL" button and expand its details
• Click the "Test Live URL" button
• Once you resolve the errors, click Request Indexing.
• Return to the report and click Verify Repair.

A successful fix will return a "Passed" result in the Verification column next to the error report.

Report a Search Console error

Sometimes you can't fix specific errors on Google Search Console on your own. When this happens, you can try reporting these issues directly to Google.

By clicking the "Report a domain verification problem" or "Report a user management problem" button , Google will provide you with some troubleshooting steps. In addition to these steps, you will be asked to fill out the error report with as much detail as possible. This report will be sent directly to Google, who may be able to resolve the issue in the future.

The best way to troubleshoot Google Search Console errors is to check out their help guides and community posts . There’s a good chance someone in the community has encountered this issue before and may be able to provide a solution.

Optimize and monitor your website using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful, easy to use, and simple to understand tool. Despite its ease of use, the SEO tool has a high ceiling, which means that experienced professionals can benefit from it for marketing purposes.

In addition to the features listed here, Search Console allows users with advanced SEO knowledge to perform tasks such as uploading link disavowal reports. Additionally, due to its highly secure nature and ease of troubleshooting, Search Console can promote a healthier approach to improving website performance.

Be sure to take full advantage of this free tool to take your website traffic and impressions to new heights!

Also, let us know which feature of the Google Search Console tool you find most useful.

Don’t forget to share this article!

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