Tapping into the power of Google Search Console, a versatile, no-cost tool, is a foolproof strategy to elevate your website’s SEO, secure a top spot on Google, and ultimately drive more organic traffic. Mastering this utility isn’t rocket science; once you set it in motion, you can easily extract beneficial insights from the dashboard. This comprehensive guide provides you with ten potent tactics to win with GSC:

1.  Keywords

Google Search Console can help pinpoint the underutilized keywords for which your site has significant potential to score well. Navigate to the ‘Performance’ section and tailor the results to reveal queries with an average position of 10-20 and substantial impressions. This enables you to curate a list of potential gold-mine search queries and relevant pages on your site — pages that could swiftly ascend to Google’s much-coveted first page. Cherry-pick the pages crucial to your business and ensure they align with SEO best practices and incorporate the pinpointed keywords where fitting. Need additional support in optimizing your content? Seek the help of pack-digital.

2. Evaluate and enhance mobile usability

Google places a high value on mobile user experience. Websites optimized for swift, seamless mobile use generally outperform those with a tedious and complicated mobile interface. GSC offers a handy tool (found under ‘Experience’ then ‘Mobile Usability’) to verify whether your site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test. Pages with identified mobile usability issues will be flagged as ‘not usable’, along with specifics of the problems to rectify. Address the issues to make your landing pages a breeze for Google and your visitors. A win-win scenario!

3. Monitor page performance history

Maybe you launched a new page months ago and you’re curious to see its SEO performance, or you’ve enhanced a landing page hoping to attract more organic traffic, or perhaps a section of your site is experiencing a decrease in visitors and you need to investigate. Utilize the Performance tab on GSC to monitor changes in impressions, clicks, and average position over time. This data serves as a valuable benchmark to assess and analyze the effectiveness of your organic search optimization efforts.

4. Discover internal linking prospects

Links help Google discern the most valuable pages on a website. Pages with a significant number of links pointing to them (both internally and externally) are perceived as highly valuable. Review the ‘Top Linked Pages’ on Google Search Console to determine which pages Google deems as most crucial, with a potential for ranking high on search engines. If key search landing pages are missing from this list, think about incorporating links to them from some of the top linked pages. Remember, it’s important to include internal links only where they appear organic and beneficial to users, using clear, user-friendly anchor text.

 

5. Review and Boost Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a group of metrics that Google utilizes to gauge the performance of a webpage. These vitals focus on the speed and smoothness of page loading, which significantly contributes to user experience. Search engines favor pages with high Core Web Vitals scores. Within GSC, navigate to ‘Experience’ and then ‘Core Web Vitals’ to evaluate your site’s performance. For pages marked ‘Poor’ or ‘Needs Improvement’, implement the provided suggestions to accelerate your site, enhance user experience, and boost your SEO simultaneously.

6. Understand a Specific Page’s Status with the URL Inspection Tool

When you’re optimizing a specific page on your website, employ the URL inspection tool to ensure Google has indexed it. Indexing is a critical step for your page to appear in search engine results. You can also use this tool to ‘request indexing’, allowing you to submit new pages to Google or alert Google to updates or modifications to an existing page.

 

Your website’s XML sitemap is a critical asset for Google. It serves as a roadmap for Google’s crawler bots as they explore your website, facilitating their journey to every page on your site. This crawling process is the initial, crucial step for these pages to feature in Google’s search results. Whether you craft your sitemap manually or use a tool to auto-generate one, ensure it’s current and has been submitted via Google Search Console, which you can do in the ‘Index’ section of the interface.

8. Identify and rectify indexing issues and errors

The ‘Index’ section of Google Search Console lets you view a list of all your website’s indexed pages, as well as those that haven’t been indexed. An unindexed page will never surface on Google’s search engine results page, so it’s worthwhile to scrutinize these lists to verify there aren’t significant search landing pages that should be indexed but aren’t. Remember, there are many valid reasons a page might not be indexed; it could be a duplicate, it may no longer exist, or it could be intentionally blocked from appearing on search engines. If you’re uncertain about which pages should be indexed or how to interpret this data, reach out to the team at pack-digital for assistance.

9. Assess performance across different countries

Examine the ‘Countries’ tab in the ‘Performance’ section of GSC to understand how Google impressions, clicks, CTRs, and positions vary from one country to another. This might reveal untapped opportunities to venture into new markets, or indicate that a crucial business location is currently under-optimized for search. You can also study the organic search queries your content ranks for in each country to understand how potential customers discuss your products, services, or industry in different regions.

10. Fuse insights from Google Analytics

If you’re focused on enhancing your website SEO, it’s likely you’re well acquainted with Google Analytics and use it to track organic search traffic to your site. (If you haven’t set up GA4 yet, now’s the time!) Review GA’s landing page reports, concentrating on organic search traffic, to identify pages that are important to your business but aren’t receiving a high volume of SEO traffic. You can then examine these pages in Google Search Console to learn more about how Google perceives them, whether there are errors to correct, or potential queries for further optimization.

Applying these methods in Google Search Console can substantially enhance your website’s SEO and improve your visibility in Google search results.