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Google Search Console is the primary tool for tracking your site’s performance in the Google search engine. It provides you with details about your site’s keywords and their search engine rankings, and also displays any indexing errors. It is commonly abbreviated as GSC.
If you’re new to the world of SEO, this will serve as a comprehensive guide covering all aspects of Google Webmaster Tools. If you’re an SEO professional already familiar with the tool, I’ll share some tips and strategies to help boost your site’s ranking.
This guide will consist of 5 parts, as follows:
- How to use Google Webmaster Tools.
- How to improve your site’s SEO using Google Search Console.
- Increasing visitor numbers via Performance reports.
- The best features available in Google Webmaster Tools.
- Professional tips and strategies to help improve your page ranking.We will explain each of these parts in a detailed and comprehensive manner, supported by images, in the following sections. So, keep reading. Also, as an important note, the entire explanation applies to the old Google Webmaster Tools interface, pending the migration of all features to the new interface…
How to Use Google Webmaster Tools:
In this section, I will explain how to add your site to Google Search Console and how to make sure all settings are correct. First, you should log in to the tool using Gmail from this link, and after that, click on ADD A PROPERTY as shown in the following image:
After that, you will enter your website link, but you must make sure to write it in HTTPS format and not HTTP format
Now, you must verify your site ownership. There are 3 methods:
- Place an HTML tag on your site.
- Or add a CNAME or TXT record in your domain’s settings.
- Or by adding a simple HTML code snippet to the Header section of your site (This is my personal favorite method).
The second step is to choose your preferred domain display version in Google, for example, without www or with www. Select the version you prefer; this won’t affect SEO at all.
However, do not select the “Don’t set a preferred domain” option. Google has stated that if you choose this option, the search engine might treat your site dually, reading it as two separate sites—one without www and the other with www. This will negatively affect your site, especially concerning backlinks.
Third, select the country you are targeting. You can do this by choosing International Targeting from the Search Traffic menu, and then select Country…
Linking Google Analytics with Google Search Console: You must connect Google Analytics to Google Search Console so that you can see all your site’s keywords and their search volume. You can do this by opening Google Analytics, then clicking on Admin, followed by Property Settings, and then clicking on Adjust Search Console. You will find this option right at the bottom of the page.
After clicking Adjust Search Console, a list will appear. Click Add, then search for your site and check the activation box next to it. This completes the link between Google Analytics and GSC.
Next, you should check for any security issues affecting your site’s SEO. You can do this by clicking on Security Issues and reviewing Google’s scan results. Most likely, it will be fine, as shown in the following image, but this is to confirm security.
Adding Sitemap to Webmaster Tools:
You might not need to add a Sitemap to GSC if your site is small, but if it’s large, you should add one. Adding it even if your site is small won’t harm anything.
The easiest way to add a Sitemap to GSC is by using the Yoast tool. In WordPress, click on the Yoast tool and then click on “See the XML Sitemap” as shown in the following image:
However, if you are not using the Yoast plugin, you can get it directly by typing your site’s domain followed by /sitemap.xml, so it looks like this: yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.
Once you have obtained it, you will add it to Google Search Console. The previous method for adding it involved several steps, but in its latest update, the process has become very simple. However, you need to switch from the old version to the new version of Google Search Console by clicking on “Try the new Search Console” located in the left menu.
After switching to the new Google Search Console interface, click on Sitemaps, as shown in the following image:
Then, enter your website link followed by sitemap_index.xml, as shown in the following image.
After that, a message will appear confirming the successful addition of the sitemap, as shown in the following image:
How to Improve Your Site’s SEO Using Google Search Console
In this section, we will address some technical SEO issues. When you do this, you will find that your site’s rankings improve in search engines, consequently increasing your site’s traffic as well.
Usually, when your site’s pages are sound and have no issues, Google will index them very quickly. However, if it doesn’t index them, this indicates a problem with the page. You can identify the pages with errors and the nature of these errors through the Coverage Report. This report shows you all your site’s pages that have been indexed, those that haven’t been indexed, and the reasons why.
The Coverage Report is a new part of GSC and wasn’t in the previous version; the Index Status section was used instead. At the top of the page, you will find Errors, which represent the errors present on the site. When you click on it, the causes of these errors will be displayed, as shown in the following image:
When you click on the errors, it will open all the pages that contain the same error, as in the following image:
After that, resolve all these errors. Be aware that the types and number of these errors vary from site to site. Likewise, follow the same method for the ‘Valid with warnings’ section. However, if you cannot resolve any of the errors, do not ignore it, as it will certainly negatively affect your site. Therefore, go to Google Index, which you will find in the old version of Google Search Console, and click on Remove URLs, as shown in the following image:
After that, enter the URL containing the error that you were unable to fix, as shown in the following image:
And then you click on Submit Request.
Reviewing pages indexed without errors:
Now we will go to the other section, which is Valid, and we will review two aspects:– A sudden drop in the number of indexed pages.– Having a larger than expected number of indexed pages.
Regarding the first point, this sudden drop might be because an entire section of your site has encountered problems, or you installed a new plugin that caused these issues, or you changed something on the site which led to these errors.
As for the second point, if you find that the number of indexed pages is greater than the number of articles you’ve published, don’t worry about this. This frequently happens within the tool and doesn’t impact SEO at all, nor does it indicate any site issues.
Reviewing excluded pages:
And now we will go to the last section, the excluded section, which represents the excluded pages. There are many reasons that lead to exclusion, such as:
- Duplicate content on your site.
- Or pages containing inappropriate or low-quality content.
- Registration and login pages are also excluded.
So you click on the excluded section and see the excluded pages and the reason for their exclusion, as shown in the following image:
Some issues, like ‘Page with redirect’, which means you redirected articles from one link to another, are normal problems. Another issue, like ‘Alternate page with proper canonical tag’, is caused by duplicate content on your site, and so on…
As we mentioned earlier, problems and errors vary from one site to another. Therefore, you should research each error and try to fix it, whether by yourself, by searching online, or with the help of a developer or another expert.
Checking HTML Improvements pages:
You don’t need to be an expert in the HTML programming language to fix errors on these pages, as they are very simple and clear. The HTML Improvements pages show you certain errors on your site’s pages, for example:– Page titles exceeding the maximum limit of 70 characters or being duplicates.– Article meta descriptions exceeding the maximum limit of 300 characters or being duplicates.
To perform this check, navigate to Google Search Console and then to HTML Improvements, as shown in the following image:
And all the HTML-related errors on the site will be shown to you. When you click on any section, it will display all the articles that contain errors.
Increase visitor numbers from performance reports:
This is considered the best and most important part of today’s article, because we will explain how you can use your site’s performance reports to increase visitor numbers.
What is the “Performance Report”?
The Performance report is a tool in Google Search Console that provides a comprehensive analysis of your site’s performance on Google. This report shows you the number of clicks you receive, and it also lets you see the click-through rate and your average ranking for all the core keywords you rely on.
Performance reports were not available in the previous GSC version; instead, there was Search Analytics. It largely provided the same information, but some new features have been added, such as the ability to filter results precisely according to your preferences. Additionally, the analysis period in the previous version did not exceed 90 days, whereas now it can extend up to 16 months and potentially even longer.
This will save you from subscribing to tools that pull and save Google Search Console reports for you, allowing you to refer back to them when you want to review the site’s performance. This will also be useful if you use local SEO!
How can you increase your CTR using Google Search Console?
As we mentioned in the introduction, CTR is a very important factor for ranking in the top search results, and Google Search Console will help you with this through its performance reports. In this strategy, we will rely on two factors, which are:
– The first factor is the Average position of pages in the search engine.– The second factor is CTR.
Now, for the first factor, we will focus on pages ranking fifth or lower. You can do this by clicking the filter and selecting Average position, as shown in the following image:
And select a filter value greater than 4.9, as shown in the following image:
After that, we will go to the second factor, which is CTR, where we will look at the Advanced Web Ranking study and see the corresponding CTR value for the fifth position, as shown in the following image:
You will find that the CTR value is around 4.35, therefore you will filter the performance report results so that the displayed results are less than 4.35. You can do this by also using the filter and selecting CTR, as shown in the following image:
After that, we make the displayed results less than 4.35.
And so, all the displayed results will be less than 4.35 in CTR and in the fifth position or lower.
Next, we will select the results that have a very low CTR, and the pages that rank in the search engine and are associated with this keyword will appear. This is done by clicking on Pages from Queries, as shown in the following image:
Find all keywords present on the pages:
The third step is to find all the keywords present on the pages you have reached. There is little value in increasing the CTR for just one primary keyword per page; instead, you should improve it for multiple keywords to achieve acceptable results. You can do this easily by also using the filter, where you click on +NEW and choose Page, as shown in the following image:
And after that, you enter the URL of the page that has a low CTR, and it will show you all the primary keywords on this page, as shown in the following image:
Now, you will modify the title and description of the page with a low CTR by excluding the low-CTR keywords and including the high-CTR keywords. According to Google reports, there are some words that cause a significant increase, such as:– Today.– Now.– Quickly.– Step-by-step.– Easy.– Best.– Final.– Simple.Therefore, also use some of these words in the page title as well as the page description.
Track the results to see the outcome:
After you have finished all modifications on the pages with issues, wait for a period exceeding 10 days, because Google will likely not update your site’s data before this period. After that, also use the filter to compare the previous results with the current results. You can do this by clicking on the date filter, selecting Compare, then choosing Custom, and from there, specify the first time period and the second time period, as shown in the following image:
After that, search for the keywords you implemented the strategy on, and you will find that the CTR has increased by no less than 50%, God willing.
Finding High-Impact Keywords:
You can find high-impact keywords yourself and use them to increase the CTR through the performance report as well. Here’s how: Go to the performance report and request to view the results for the last 28 days. After that, use the filter to show results with a CTR greater than 7.9. Finally, click on Impressions to sort the visible results from highest views to lowest views.
Consequently, you will have a large collection of high-impact keywords on the CTR rate. You should identify these words and use them on pages with a low CTR rate. Similarly, you can rely on pages that utilize high-impact keywords on the CTR rate to increase the overall CTR percentage. This can be done by improving the articles associated with these keywords. You can achieve this by:
– Making the content 100% complete as much as possible, to provide the best user experience.
– Using videos in your articles, as well as plenty of images or GIFs, to keep visitors on your site for the longest possible time, which increases the Dwell time rate and consequently raises the page ranking.
– Using lots of internal links that connect your pages to each other.
– Obtaining strong text links (backlinks) for these pages to increase their ranking rate in search engines, and certainly text links are the most important factor.
Best Features in Google Webmaster Tools:
This is the fourth and penultimate part of today’s article, in which we will explain some of the best features found in Google Search Console.
Finding Errors in Schema Codes:
Firstly, if you are using Schema codes, you might face some problems with incorrect codes. Webmaster tools will help you find the incorrect codes and explain the reason so you can solve the problem. If you are not using Schema codes, you should search for them and use them on your site immediately, because the latest statistic from Google says that Schema codes improve the ranking of 35% of websites in the Google search engine. There are two ways to check Schema codes:
Method One: You must log in to your account in Webmaster tools, then go to Web Tools, and from there choose Testing Tools, then select Structured Data Testing Tool.
You enter your website name, and it will search your site for HTML errors resulting from Schema codes and it will show you the results like the following image:
In the previous image, it shows you that it found one code with an error, and that the error is a result of a missing title in the code. As soon as you write the title in the code, you will find that the problem has been solved immediately. The second method: I personally prefer this method because it gives you the results directly within your site, and it is by logging into your Webmaster Tools account also, and then going to Search Appearance and then choosing Structured Data.
The results will appear directly, and you can click on them to modify the errors in each code directly.
Finding Pages That Need Internal Links:
Internal links are definitely considered one of the most important factors in the Google search engine, and there is a tool in Google Webmaster Tools that helps you find topics that need more internal links. You can do this by logging into your Webmaster Tools account, then choosing Search Traffic, and from there selecting Internal Links. A report will appear showing all pages on your site and the number of internal links pointing to them, as in the following image:
Then you search for pages that need a small number of internal links and increase the number of links on them.
Professional Tips and Strategies to Help You Rank Your Page Higher:
This is considered the last part of today’s article, and I will explain how to use Google Search Console to improve Crawl Stats, fix some mobile usability issues, and improve the click-through rate (CTR) on mobile.
What is Crawl Stats?
It represents the crawl rate, or in other words, the errors your site encounters during indexing. Indexing comes from Google spiders crawling your site, which is why it’s called the crawl rate. You can find the crawl rate by clicking on Crawl Stats in GSC, as shown in the following image:
Some say that the crawl rate is not important recently, but this is not true. Let’s assume you publish 10 pages daily and Google crawls only one page a day, this means that all of today’s articles will be indexed after 10 days. And what if you made a modification to a specific article?? Certainly, it will take another long period for Google to notice the update, so the crawl rate is important.
How to Increase Crawl Rate:
You can increase the crawl rate through 3 steps: Step one: This is searching for pages that you don’t care about or target but which Google consistently crawls, for example, the login page, category pages, or if you have an online store and add products in multiple colors, it’s not important to index all colors, but it’s enough to index only one color to index the product itself.
You can do this by logging into your Google Search Console account, then going to URL Parameters, then clicking on Add Parameter, and from there, specify the criteria you don’t want Google to crawl, for example, take a specific word that you put in all the titles you don’t want indexed, like COLOR, SIZE, and so on.
Step two: Make your site as fast as possible. You can also view page loading speed from Crawl Stats, as in the following image:
You look for areas where there has been significant fluctuation and investigate the reason for this fluctuation and this problem. In other words, the page loading speed must be as fast as possible to increase the rate of pages that will be indexed daily, which will increase the crawl rate.
Step three: Get the largest number of text links (backlinks) for your site. This was a statement from Google itself, meaning that if you increase the number of text links, the crawl rate on your site will automatically increase. Relying on Manual Indexing: You can also rely on the Fetch As Google tool for manual indexing of all your pages. If you have many pages, this will take a long time, but it is certainly better than leaving them for several days to be indexed automatically.
How to use the Fetch As Google tool: You will log in to your Google Search Console account, then go to Crawl, then to Fetch As Google, and you will put the link of the page you want to index, and then click on Fetch as in the following image:
After that, click on Request indexing, then choose Crawl only this URL, as in the following image:
and you will find that Google indexed the page within minutes and very quickly. You can also use Fetch As Google to update the content of old pages, as updating the content of old pages is considered one of the main points for increasing the number of visits to your site. The last use of the Fetch As Google tool is to show you the problems that the indexing crawlers faced when indexing your pages. You can do this by clicking on Fetch And Render instead of Fetch in the previous step, and it will show you the page as it exists, as well as the page as read by the Google search engine. For example, the following image:
You will notice that Google could not recognize the image located at the top. When you scroll down, you will find reports with all the errors, like the following image:
You will find that there are more than 9 images on the page that Google could not identify, so you should go and change these images to speed up the indexing process.
And the last tip today is knowing how compatible your site is with mobile phones:
The rate of people visiting websites from Google increases daily and has started to exceed the number of computer users. The latest statistic from Google states that 58% of users visit Google from mobile phones.
You can find out how responsive your site is to mobile phones by going to Mobile Usability, and it will show you some issues on the site that affect mobile users, as in the following image:
and you will click on the errors that appear to you and you will see the related pages and you will fix these errors. In this way, we have covered all aspects of Google Search Console. If you did not find clear information or encountered any problem, do not hesitate to contact us or comment below the article with the problem you faced and we will answer you at the earliest opportunity.
If you have any question or inquiry, you can ask it in the comments!
Good luck!
