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Do you person a website oregon support the website of the institution you enactment for? Of course, to bash this right, you request to support a keen oculus connected the show of your website. Google offers respective tools to cod and analyse information from your website. You astir apt person heard of Google Analytics and Google Search Console before. These tools are escaped for everyone maintaining a website and tin springiness you invaluable insights astir your website. Here, we’ll explicate however to usage Google Search Console for SEO!
Why usage Google Search Console?
Google Search Console helps you way the show of your website easily. You tin get invaluable insights from your Google Search Console account, which means you tin spot what portion of your website needs work. This tin beryllium a method portion of your website, specified arsenic an expanding fig of crawl errors that request to beryllium fixed. This tin besides springiness a circumstantial keyword much attraction due to the fact that the rankings oregon impressions are decreasing. Or find the reasons wherefore immoderate pages aren’t indexed.
Besides seeing this benignant of data, you’ll get email notifications erstwhile Google Search Console notices caller errors. Because of these notifications, you’re rapidly alert of issues you indispensable fix. That’s wherefore everyone with a website should larn however to usage it!

Search Console is structured astir assorted sections
Search Console has respective sections, which support expanding arsenic Google adds more:
- URL Inspection
- The URL Inspection instrumentality lets you get insights connected circumstantial URLs and however Google sees and indexes these. You’ll besides spot if the leafage is eligible for affluent results.
- Performance
- In the Performance section, you’ll observe however your tract is doing successful the regular hunt results, connected Discover, and Google News, if it is eligible for those.
- Indexing
- In the Indexing section, you’ll find each the insights you request to spot however Google discovers and indexes your pages. You tin besides larn if and however Google is indexing the video contented connected your site. There’s besides a conception to cheque your XML sitemaps and immoderate leafage removals you whitethorn person requested.
- Experience
- The Experience conception gives you an thought of however Google values your page’s show connected mobile and desktop, with a small assistance from Core Web Vitals, and whether your pages are served via HTTPS connections.
- Shopping
- In the Shopping tab, you’ll find much accusation astir however Google sees your products — if you ain an ecommerce tract oregon merchantability thing other online. You tin spot which products person affluent results, positive insights into your merchant listings and however you look successful Google Shopping.
- Enhancements
- The Enhancements conception lists each the structured information that Google recovered connected your tract and whether oregon not it is eligible for affluent results. This includes events, reviews, occupation postings, and more.
- Security & Manual Actions
- The Security & Manual Actions destination shouldn’t beryllium visited often, arsenic it lists information issues recovered by Google oregon erstwhile it issues a manual enactment against your site.
- Links
- The Links conception overviews your site’s interior and outer links.
Setting up an account
You’ll request to make an relationship to commencement utilizing Google Search Console. Within Google Search Console, you tin click connected ‘add a caller property’ successful the apical bar:

You tin insert the website you privation to adhd by clicking the ‘Add property’ button. If you take the caller Domain option, you lone request to adhd the domain sanction without www oregon subdomains. This enactment tracks everything connected to that domain. With the ‘old’ URL prefix option, you indispensable adhd the close URL, truthful with ‘HTTPS’ if you person an HTTPS website and with oregon without ‘www’. To cod the close data, it’s indispensable to adhd the correct version:

You indispensable verify that you’re the proprietor erstwhile you’ve added a website. There are respective options to verify your ownership. The Domain enactment lone works with DNS verification, portion the URL prefix supports antithetic methods. You tin larn much astir the differences successful Google’s documentation: adding a caller property and verifying your tract ownership. You tin besides usage Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin to link Analytics and Search Console portion giving you statistic successful your tract dashboard.
Add to Yoast SEO
For WordPress users who usage Yoast SEO, get the verification codification via the ‘HTML tag’ method from the Ownership settings successful Search Console. Copy the long, random drawstring of characters.

You tin easy transcript the codification and paste it into the Google tract successful the ‘Site connections’ conception successful the settings of your Yoast SEO plugin:

After redeeming this, you tin instrumentality to Google Search Console and click the ‘Verify’ fastener to confirm. If everything is ok, you’ll get a occurrence message, and GSC volition commencement collecting information for your website.
Features successful Google Search Console
Now that you’ve acceptable up your account, what’s the adjacent step? Well, it’s clip to look astatine immoderate of your data! In the remainder of this article, we’ll research immoderate of the reports and accusation available.
Performance tab
In the Performance tab, you tin spot the pages and keywords your website ranks for successful Google. If you’re eligible for that, you’ll besides find reports connected your content’s show successful Google Discover and connected Google News. You’ll get 16 months of show information for your reports.
If you cheque the show tab regularly, you tin rapidly spot what keywords oregon pages request much attraction and optimization. So, wherever to begin? Within the show tab, you spot a database of ‘queries’, ‘pages’, ‘countries’, oregon ‘devices’. With ‘search appearance,’ you tin cheque however your affluent results are doing successful search. You tin benignant each conception by the fig of ‘clicks’, ‘impressions’, ‘average CTR’, oregon ‘average position’. We’ll explicate each of them below:

1. Clicks
The fig of clicks tells you however often radical clicked connected your website successful Google’s hunt results. This fig tin accidental thing astir the show of your leafage titles and meta descriptions: if conscionable a fewer radical click connected your result, your effect mightiness not basal retired successful the hunt results. It tin beryllium adjuvant to cheque what different results are displayed astir you to spot however you tin optimize your snippet.
The presumption of the hunt effect besides impacts the fig of clicks. If your leafage is successful the apical 3 of Google’s archetypal effect page, it volition automatically get much clicks than a leafage that ranks connected the 2nd leafage of the hunt results.
2. Impressions
The impressions archer you however often your website oregon a circumstantial leafage is shown successful the hunt results. The fig of impressions aft this keyword shows however often our website is shown for that keyword successful Google’s hunt results. You don’t cognize yet what leafage ranks for that keyword.
To spot what pages mightiness fertile for the circumstantial keyword, you tin click connected the enactment of the keyword. Doing this for a keyword, the keyword is added arsenic a filter:

Afterward, you tin navigate to the ‘Pages’ tab to spot what pages fertile for this keyword. Are those pages the ones you’d privation to fertile for that keyword? If not, you mightiness request to optimize the leafage you’d similar to rank. Think of penning amended contented containing the keyword connected that page, adding interior links from applicable pages oregon posts to the page, making the leafage load faster, etc.
3. Average CTR
The CTR – Click-through complaint – tells you what percent of the radical who person seen your website successful the hunt results besides clicked done to your website. You astir apt recognize that higher rankings mostly besides pb to higher click-through rates.
However, you tin besides bash things yourself to summation the CTR. For example, you could rewrite your meta description and page title to marque it much appealing — Yoast SEO has AI features to assistance you bash that. When the rubric and statement of your tract basal retired from the different results, much radical volition astir apt click connected your result, and your CTR volition increase. Remember that this volition not importantly interaction you if you’re not ranking connected the archetypal leafage yet. You mightiness request to effort different things archetypal to amended your ranking.
4. Average position
The past 1 connected this database is the ‘Average position’. This tells you the mean ranking of a circumstantial keyword oregon leafage successful your selected period. Of course, this presumption isn’t ever reliable since much and much radical look to get antithetic hunt results. Google seems to recognize amended and amended which results acceptable which visitant best. However, this indicator inactive shows whether the clicks, impressions and mean CTR are explainable.
Indexing
The’ Indexing’ conception is simply a much method but treasured summation to Google Search Console. This conception shows however galore pages have been successful Google’s scale since the past update, however galore pages haven’t, and what errors and warnings caused Google to index your pages incorrectly. Google divided this conception into parts, collecting your regular pages and video pages portion giving a location for your XML sitemap and the removals sections.

We urge you cheque this tab regularly to spot what errors and warnings look connected your website. However, you besides get notifications erstwhile Google has recovered caller errors. Please cheque the mistake successful much item erstwhile you get specified a notification.
You whitethorn find that errors are caused when, e.g., a redirect doesn’t look to enactment correctly, oregon Google finds breached codification oregon mistake pages successful your theme. You besides find mistake messages similar “Crawled – presently not indexed“. Google has a agelong database of imaginable reasons wherefore pages aren’t indexed and what you tin bash to hole that.
Clicking connected 1 of the issues, you tin analyse the mistake much in-depth to spot what circumstantial URLs are affected. When you’ve fixed the error, you tin people it arsenic fixed to marque definite Google volition trial the URL again:

Things to look retired for
There are a fewer things you should ever look for erstwhile checking retired your indexing sum reports:
- If you’re penning caller content, your indexed pages should steadily increase. This tells you 2 things: Google tin scale your site, and you support your tract ‘alive’ by adding content.
- Watch retired for abrupt drops! This mightiness mean that Google is having occupation accessing (all of) your website. Something whitethorn beryllium blocking Google; whether it’s robots.txt changes oregon server downtime, you request to look into it!
- Sudden (and unexpected) spikes successful the graph mightiness mean an contented with duplicate content (such arsenic some www and non-www, incorrect canonicals, etc.), automatically generated pages, oregon adjacent hacks.
We urge you show these situations intimately and resoluteness errors quickly, arsenic excessively galore errors could awesome debased prime (poor maintenance) to Google.
URL Inspection
The URL Inspection instrumentality helps you analyse circumstantial URLs. You retrieve the leafage from Google’s scale and comparison it with the leafage arsenic it lives present connected your tract to spot if determination are differences. You tin besides find much method info connected this page, specified arsenic erstwhile and however Google crawled it and however it looked astatine that moment. Sometimes, you’ll besides announcement respective errors. This mightiness beryllium regarding Google’s inability to crawl your leafage correctly. It besides gives accusation astir the structured information recovered connected this URL.

Experience
The acquisition study is an invaluable addition. It gives a bully thought of however accelerated your tract loads connected mobile and desktop and however Google uses core web vitals to people page experience. It shows which pages person issues that support them from performing well. The information is based connected the Chrome UX report, truthful it’s close information from existent users.
Site speed, leafage experience, and idiosyncratic acquisition are analyzable topics with galore moving parts, truthful learning however to deliberation astir leafage velocity is good. The reply is here: how to cheque tract speed.

Enhancements: affluent results
If you person structured data connected your tract — provided by Yoast SEO, for lawsuit — it’s a bully thought to cheque retired the Enhancements reports successful Search Console. The Enhancements tab collects each the insights and improvements that could pb to affluent results. It lists each the structured information that Google recovered connected your site. There’s an ever-expanding database of affluent results, and you tin find the following, among different things:
- Breadcrumbs
- Events
- FAQs
- Job postings
- Profile pages
- Review snippets
- Sitelinks searchboxes
- Videos
All these tabs amusement however galore valid enhancements you person oregon however galore person errors oregon warnings. You get details astir the benignant of errors and warnings and connected which URLs these are found. There’s besides a inclination enactment that shows if the fig of issues is expanding oregon decreasing. And that’s conscionable the commencement of it.

The Enhancements reports assistance you find and hole issues that hinder the show of your affluent results successful search. By checking the issues, speechmaking the enactment documentation, and validating fixes, you tin summation your accidental of getting affluent results successful search. We person a much expansive usher connected the structured information Enhancement reports successful Google Search Console.
Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is simply a roadmap to each important pages and posts connected your website. Every website would payment from having one. Do you tally the Yoast SEO plugin connected your website? Then, you automatically person an XML sitemap. If not, we urge creating 1 to guarantee Google tin easy find your astir important pages and posts.
You tin find an enactment for XML sitemaps wrong the Indexing tab of Google Search Console. Here, you tin archer Google wherever your XML sitemap is located connected your site:

We urge that everyone participate the URL of their XML sitemap into GSC to marque it casual for Google to find. In addition, you tin rapidly spot if your sitemap gives errors oregon if immoderate pages aren’t indexed. Regularly checking this ensures that Google tin find and work your XML sitemap.
We urge regularly checking the XML sitemap conception successful our plugin to negociate which station types oregon taxonomies you see successful your sitemaps!
Shopping
Google Search Console besides has a Shopping section. Here, you tin cheque however Google sees your products and if they get due affluent results. You’ll spot if they are valid oregon if they are missing fields that marque the merchandise snippets much prominent. Click connected a merchandise to spot which fields are missing for peculiar products and if these are indispensable parts oregon nice-to-haves. If you’ve added these to the structured information of your products, you validate the hole successful Search Console.
In the Shopping section, you’ll besides find your Google Merchant listings and an enactment to alteration buying tab listings to amusement your products connected the Shopping tab successful Google Search. With these options, Google gives ecommerce tract owners — and radical selling worldly — much ways of checking however their listings are doing.

Links
Within the links to your tract section, you tin spot however galore links from different sites are pointing to your website. Besides, you tin spot what websites link, however galore links those websites contain, and what anchor texts are utilized astir erstwhile linking to your website. This tin beryllium invaluable accusation due to the fact that links are inactive captious for SEO.

Within the interior links section, you tin cheque what pages of your website are astir linked from different spots connected your site. This database tin beryllium invaluable to analyse regularly due to the fact that you privation your astir important pages and posts to get the astir interior links. By doing this, you marque definite Google understands your cornerstones arsenic well.

Manual Actions
You don’t privation to spot thing successful the manual actions tab. If Google penalizes your site, you’ll get much information. If your tract is affected by a manual action, you’ll besides get an email message.
Several scenarios tin pb to these kinds of penalties, including:
- You person unnatural/bought links
Ensure links from and to your tract are valuable, not conscionable for SEO. Preferably, your links travel from related contented that is invaluable for your readers. - Your tract has been hacked
A connection stating your site’s astir apt hacked by a 3rd party. Google mightiness statement your tract arsenic compromised oregon little your rankings. - You’re hiding thing from Google
If you’re ‘cloaking’ (that is, intentionally showing antithetic contented to users to deceive them), oregon utilizing ‘sneaky’ redirects (e.g., hiding affiliate URLs), past you’re violating Google’s guidelines (now known arsenic Google Search Essentials). - Plain Spam
Automatically generated content, scraped content, and assertive cloaking could origin Google to blocklist your site. - Spammy structured markup
If you usage affluent snippets for excessively galore irrelevant elements connected a leafage oregon people up contented hidden from the visitor, that mightiness beryllium considered spammy. Mark up what’s indispensable and lone indispensable things.
Security issues
Within the information issues tab, you’ll get a notification erstwhile your website seems to person a information issue.
Google Search Console is essential
Reading this station should springiness you a bully thought of what Search Console is susceptible of and however to usage it, truthful we’d similar to inquire you this: Do you already usage Google Search Console for your website? If not, make an relationship to cod information astir your website. Do you deliberation thing is missing? Feel escaped to permission a comment!
Read more: How to marque your tract basal retired successful the hunt results »
Edwin is an experienced strategical contented specialist. Before joining Yoast, helium worked for a top-tier web plan magazine, wherever helium developed a keen knowing of however to make large content.