Google Search Console – How to Get Started With It?
Don’t you think it’s important to know what are you using before using it? If you want to use google search console and don’t even know what google console search is, then it is kind of heartbreaking. So, this article will help you understand what GSC is. Stick to the END!
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What is Google Console Search?
Out of multiple tools provided by Google “Google Search Console” is a web service to check indexing status, crawl errors, search queries, and optimize the visibility of their websites. Google search console is a site analysis and repair tool.
Putting it simply GSC makes sure your site shows on Google search results and works in optimal condition. That’s why back till May 20, 2015, it was known as the “Google Webmaster tool”.
Google has always been our life saviour all the tools provided by google are free of cost and so is GSC. We can use google console search even if we are penniless.
Who should use the Search Console?
So according to Google itself, you can use the google Search Console if you are
Business Owners
If you are a business owner and you don’t use GSC then you should. Connect your site to the search console, it will help you analyze and optimize your website. You can always hire a person if you can’t handle Google Console Search yourself.
SEO Specialists / Marketers
let’s say you are a digital marketing-focused person or blogger, Search Console can help you to monitor your website traffic and optimize your ranking, and make informed decisions about the appearance of your site’s search results. The search console provides a lot of information, you can use that info to make technical decisions and also market analysis along with other tools from google i.e., google Analysis, google trends, etc.
Site Administrators
If you are a site administrator then the Search console is for you, you can use the search console to make your site healthier by easily site monitoring and, resolving server errors, site load issues, and also security issues like hacking and malware.
Web Developers
While creating markup as a web developer you face issues like structured data errors. A search console can help you solve these types of errors.
How to Get Started with Search Console?
Here is the overview of the steps you can take to make your website optimal, let’s get started:
– Verify site ownership
The first and main step to get started with the google search console is to Verify site ownership. Without ownership, you can’t get access to the search console, google won’t give you access to someone else’s site.
– Make sure Google can find and read your pages
After ownership verification, head to the Index Coverage report and you’ll find an overview of all indexed and not indexed pages and their reasons, review the report and fix errors and warnings.
– Review mobile usability errors
How a website appears on mobile is different than how it is visible on computers and so are the issues, the issue your site face on phones are listed in the Mobile usability report. You can make it optimal by fixing those errors as phones are trendier than computers.
– Consider submitting a sitemap to Search Console
Indexing your pages are the most important task, otherwise, your site will not appear on search results, and for this submitting a sitemap through Search Console might speed up your site’s discovery.
– Monitor your site’s performance
Then review how much traffic you are getting, from where your traffic is heading and braked down into queries, pages, and also countries. For each breakdown trends for impressions and clicks and other matrices are available.
Limitation of Google search console.
Not everything is perfect. So is the case of the GSC, some of them include
You can’t submit an HTML sitemap.
XML site maps work easily on the search console but you can’t submit an HTML sitemap to the search console.
Errors can keep repeating and not get updated.
One of the issues is Search Console is not up to date errors keep on repeating even after fixing them, they keep on appearing after a time. And even the other stats like CTR or ranking keywords are not updated.
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Sum up
So, now you know what GSC is, whether it is a tool for you or not, if it is, then visit the guide and learn more about google search console.