The Google Search Console is a free web tool for the analysis and optimization of websites and apps. The Google Search Console can be used to make settings, call up important statistics and carry out optimizations. This provides an insight into data such as clicks, impressions or the number of pages indexed in Google.
Basic information
The Google Search Console provides in-depth information about how Google sees a website, which keywords it ranks for and which pages are visited particularly frequently or rarely. This gives the website operator the opportunity to optimize the site for important search queries, identify errors in the semantics of the website content or query the indexing status.
This makes the Google Search Console an important and powerful tool in the field of search engine optimization. It provides website operators with a wide range of relevant data for on- and off-page analysis. The information is presented in clear reports.
The data from the Google Search Console can also be used for other Google services. For example, the Google Search Console can be linked to Google Analytics or Google Ads.
Who is the Google Search Console suitable for?
The Google Search Console is not only aimed at professionals. It is also an important tool for small sites. Thanks to the clear dashboard and the changeable time frames, you can find and optimize your top keywords as well as your long tail keywords.
The facility
A Google account is required to use the Google Search Console. In the event that other Google services such as Google Analytics or Google Ads are used, it is recommended to use the same Google account for the Google Search Console.
To create a data view of a website, a property must be added. To do this, the ownership of the website must be verified.
You can choose from two property options:
Option A: Domain property – This option covers the specified domain and all subdomains.
Option B: URL prefix property – With this option, it is possible to analyze only a specific URL without other pages being recorded.
Based on your selection, it is now necessary to confirm the respective option. This is done either by adding a DNS entry or by confirming your URL prefix property using an HTML file. If you have already confirmed your Google Analytics or have set up the Google Tag Manager, the confirmation process will be considerably faster.
Important information at a glance
Overview:
The Google Search Console provides a quick overview of the most important functions and information on the performance or visibility of a website or app. The ‘Overview’ dashboard contains data on performance, coverage and improvements.
Performance:
All clicks from the web search are displayed under Performance. If you open the report, you will see information on clicks, impressions, the average CTR and the average position in the search results. The data is only recorded after the property has been created and stored for up to 16 months.
Under the ‘Search queries’ tab in the performance report, you can see which search queries brought users to the site. The clicks as well as the impressions for the search queries are displayed. It is also possible to filter the data. For example, you can filter it according to the position in the search results to identify keywords that have a high impression but for which you do not appear on the first page. By clicking on the search query, you can find out which page of the website ranks for the keyword. This gives you the opportunity to optimize the corresponding page or to optimize for the corresponding keyword.
The performance report also contains information about which landing pages the users reached via the search queries, which countries the search queries came from and which devices were used.
Coverage:
All valid and incorrect pages are displayed under Coverage. The Coverage report provides information about the indexing status of the website. If you open the report, you get an overview of errors (pages that could not be indexed), warnings (pages that were indexed but with which there are problems), valid pages and excluded pages. This offers the possibility to extend or adapt the sitemap accordingly.
Improvements:
Under improvements, you will find specific optimization suggestions from Google. These relate to user-friendliness on mobile devices and errors in the readability and presentation of structured data. As more and more people are using the Internet via cell phone or tablet and a large proportion of Google searches are already being made via these devices, user-friendliness on mobile devices is a high priority and has an influence on Google rankings. The report ‘User-friendliness on mobile devices’ provides an overview of which pages are optimized for mobile devices and on which pages structured data is incorrectly or incompletely marked up.
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