Google Search Console, also known as GSC, is a powerful tool provided by Google to SEO professionals. It offers a comprehensive range of features and insights that can help optimize website performance and improve search rankings. In this article, we will explore the capabilities of Google Search Console and how it can benefit SEO efforts.
Setting up Google Search Console is quick and easy, but it may require some technical support. To get started, you need a Google account. Once you have an account, you can visit the Google Search Console website and choose a domain or prefix URL to verify your website ownership.
There are two options for verification: domain property and URL prefix property. A domain property provides a holistic view of your website’s performance in Google search results. It includes all subdomains but excludes protocols and path strings. On the other hand, a URL prefix property allows you to focus on specific sections of your website by including the protocol and path string.
After setting up the domain property, you can set up individual URL prefix properties for each subdomain or subfolder. This allows for deeper analysis and troubleshooting within specific sections of your website. For example, you can create reporting specific to your Help Center content or other relevant sections.
Google Search Console has evolved over the years, with various updates and new features being introduced. Some notable milestones include the launch of Google Webmaster Tools (now Google Search Console) in 2005, the introduction of mobile-first indexing features in 2019, and the recent rollout of a new design in 2021.
The tool offers a wide range of reports and insights that can help SEO professionals optimize their websites. The Overview section provides a bird’s eye view of all the data sets available in Google Search Console. The Performance section allows you to track search traffic over time, search queries, and page performance.
The URL inspection tool is another valuable feature that lets you see what Google sees per URL. You can check if a URL is indexable and request indexing if necessary. The Search results report shows search traffic trends, queries, devices, and search appearances. It also helps identify pages that are ranking for specific queries.
Other reports include Discover, which showcases your content’s performance in Google’s Discover feed, and Google News, which provides insights into how your content performs under Google News in search results. The Pages report is valuable for technical SEO and offers quick wins for optimizing your website’s pages. The video indexing report, sitemap report, and removals tool are also helpful features.
The Page Experience report focuses on user experience and includes Core Web Vitals and HTTPS usage. The Core Web Vitals report uses real-world data to measure page performance, while the HTTPS report tells you how many indexed pages on your website are HTTP or HTTPS.
Google Search Console also offers rich result reports for product snippets, merchant snippets, shopping tab listings, breadcrumbs, FAQ snippets, profile pages, review snippets, sitelinks searchbox, unparsable structured data, videos, manual actions, security issues, and links.
Overall, Google Search Console is an essential tool for SEO professionals. It provides valuable data and insights that can help optimize website performance and improve search rankings. With its comprehensive range of features, SEOs can make informed decisions about content updates, troubleshoot technical issues, and enhance the overall user experience of their websites. As Google continues to update and improve Google Search Console, SEO professionals can look forward to even more powerful features in the future.
