If you have a website I am sure you are familiar with Google Analytics. And, if you are as big of nerds as we are about them you use Google Analytics constantly to see where your website traffic is coming from, what pages are being visited, and how people are using your website in general. In all honesty, the ability to track these kinds of things are what drove me to this business in the first place.

But, the one thing that Google stopped showing inside analytics several years ago was “queries”. Queries are essentially the keywords people used to find your website. It was a little bit of an annoyance when this happened and made it harder to figure out the best way to market online.

But, then enters Google Search Console.

What is Google Search Console?

Formerly known as “Google Webmaster Tools”, renamed to Google Search Console in May 2015, is an additional Free service that helps you measure your website’s performance and find site issues related to your website search appearance. It was created to help you monitor your website’s overall search results data such as keywords, rankings, total clicks. It also shows you average ranking information by actual page on your website and by search queries ( keywords). Below we will discuss some of the benefits and how to go about setting up search console for your website.

Google Search Console Benefits

Now that you know what Google Search Console is, here are a few of the cool benefits of Google Search Console. And, there are several very important benefits

1. Queries( Keywords): Google Search Console shows you the keywords and phrases that you appear in search engines under. So, if you are optimizing your website, lets you know that you at least show up.
2. Position( Ranking): now with the way search engines work depending on your previous search history, search results you’ve clicked on, and where you are located you may see different results than your friends and family. But, Google will give you an average position of where your website ranks. So, this will help you know if what you are doing is working in regards to your SEO efforts.
3. Sitemap Submission: THIS IS THE MOST OVERLOOKED & IMPORTANT BENEFIT! Several years ago you would have to wait for google to crawl your website. Then, you could place a sitemap.xml file on your website which helped google crawl your site faster, but you still had to wait on Google to get there. Now, in Google Search Console it allows you to submit your site map to Google. This helps expedite Google seeing new content or changes you make much faster. Some website builders need you to add in your sitemap in order to really start indexing the sites built on them such as Weebly.

How do you get started using Google Search Console?

So, if you would like more information on getting Google Search Console setup for your website go here. https://search.google.com/search-console/about

NOTE: make sure you are an admin on the google analytics for your website. Otherwise, you won’t be able to set this up unless you have access to the website code or backend.

Once you hit the “start” button, you will need to be logged in using a google account. Then you will be asked to “select a property type”, and then enter the url for your website. I normally use the “URL Prefix” property type, it is the quickest and easiest way.

If you are an admin on your analytics account then it is pretty simple. And, the Google Search Console will start “processing data”. It takes a few hours to gather all the information on position, performance, links, queries, etc.

If you do not have admin access to your Google Analytics account then you will need to Verify Ownership”. You will be given a few options to either add an html tag or html file, or access to google tag manager or your Domain name provider.

But, once you have Google Search Console setup for your website. You will immediately start the see the benefits! So, add it to your website today!

For questions about getting your website set up on Google Search Console, feel free to contact us anytime!

Have a great day!