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How to Use Google Search Console: Our Top Tips for Getting the Most from this Free Tool

by | May 30, 2017 | blog | 0 comments

Basics of Search Console

Search Console, formerly called Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT), is a great tool for monitoring overall site health and getting an inside look at your technical SEO, which is search engine optimization that is not content related, but consists of the foundation of your website. This tool gives you access to see if Google is reading your main files, like robots.txt or sitemap.xml, correctly and if you have any errors to fix. This tool also gives you an inside look at keywords you are getting organic traffic from, which has been limited in Google Analytics as of a few years ago.

Search Console is completely free, it just needs to be set up and verified.

Search Console Setup Tips

For the initial setup, Google makes it simple with step-by-step instructions found here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

A great beginners guide to reference for setting up your account can be found here, by our friends at Moz: https://moz.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-google-search-console

  1. I’ve always found this set up to be easiest done by whoever has access to your website hosting account, such as GoDaddy. Using your hosting account to verify ownership of the domain is the easiest and quickest that I’ve found, although all methods work depending on which credentials you have available..
  2. I’ve done a lot of troubleshooting recently when people  have set up multiple  accounts (whoops) because Search Console is so particular. Be  sure to copy and paste the exact URL of your domain. So, for example if your site has http or https, or if it is www or non-www, it will make a difference in Search Console pulling in your data. Data takes a while to populate, so if you set up your account and you are not seeing anything populated for a day or so that is totally normal and it’s too soon to tell if it is set up properly or not. If a week goes by and still nothing, check your URL to ensure you put it in exactly as it appears in your browser.
  3. Make sure the right people have the right access. There is an owner of the account, full access users and restricted access users. If you want to make changes within the account, make sure to get full access to ensure you can access all of the data and error reports ,and more importantly, actually make changes to resolve anything noted. So, for example if you want to mark a 404 error as fixed because you just resolved that error (yay one less thing!) then you would need full access to your Search Console account.

Top Five Uses for Search Console

  1. Fetch and Render: Under Crawl tab → Fetch as Google, you can submit URLs to see what Google is seeing. Is your content showing up? Have you updated your page recently and want Google to recognize the new changes?
  2. Search Traffic and Keywords: Play with the filters under Search Traffic → Search Analytics to see what your latest rank changes are, where you are getting the most clicks and see metrics like average ranking position for all your terms. Change your filters to see a different list of the thousand results Google shows you.
  3. 404 Errors: Crawl → Crawl Errors, will show you all of the errors on your site. 404 errors (page not found errors) are generally what I look at. These are both a poor user experience and cause Google to spend time crawling pages that do not exist. You can see a thousand errors at a time, resolve them and mark as fixed as you fix them, and even see where the error pages are linked to from to remove the linking page or fix the broken link..
  4. Removing URLs from Index: Have an old URL in the index you’ve removed it from your site, or noindexed the page, and even Disallowed it in your robots.txt file but it is still showing up? This can be super frustrating. Give this a try: Google Index → Remove URLs, to temporarily hide the URLs from the index and see if they go away.
  5. International Targeting: Have an international website targeted for a specific language and country? In Search Console you can reiterate to Google which language and country your website is relevant for. Go to Search Traffic → International Targeting to use this feature.

Assignment: Create a weekly checklist that includes these items, so you can catch errors in advance and keep track of historical progress. I usually do this every Monday to catch any errors at the beginning of the week.

  1. Average ranking position for all of your terms
  2. Ranking for your brand name
  3. Number of 404 errors

Monika Choudhary

Web Developer

Monika is competent professional with 10+ Years of Experience in the Website Design and Development. She is having a great expertise in developing responsive e-commerce, real estate, social networking, jobs portals, classified, corporate based websites & her expertise includes WordPress, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Laravel. She is detail oriented, driven worker who enjoys fixing code and creating something beautiful websites from scratch. Quality Work & On time delivery is always her aim. Always trying to achieve client satisfaction level, she will not only work with you to develop an amazing website with high coding standards, she will also ensure it engages with your potentials to drive more conversions and leads.

"What does karma mean to you?"

"To me, Karma is the result of a person's actions and I believe that what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions. Doing things with a good intention is what matters to me the most and that is what I always remember when working for my clients. I have realized that in this industry where there is a lot of competition around, I am working for my clients with a good heart and a positive vibe. That's what keeps me going."

"Who is your dream client and why?

"My dream client would be a company or an organization who passionately wants to build a strong online presence in the digital world. The one that’s easy to work with and that inspires you and makes work not feel like work is the dream client for me. I would love to guide them from the initial stage to build up their recognition through clean and advanced coding on the web."

Leighton Hendrick

Digital Marketing

+20 years of marketing, public relations, communications, advertising and internal and outside sales experience.

Extensive experience in developing and managing all levels of product and offering campaigns including marketing collateral, Web site content, SEO, paid media and social, inside sales call campaigns, sell sheets and management of campaign success metrics.

Demonstrated success in launching new products and corporate brands, developing demand generation programs, and creating internal and external communication pieces.

Exceptional collaborator with the ability to build relationships with trade media and manage large-scale corporate initiatives and events.

Proven ability to create and manage lead generation and call campaigns that result in the successful conversion of new and unique clients. Creator and Editor-In-Chief of IT Compliance Magazine, a quarterly publication with over 2,500 international C-Level readers.

Cassie Boca

Founder, CEO

Cassie taught herself SEO in 2006 when she was working at a small business that needed to increase visibility but didn’t have any budget. She understands the financial challenges startups and small business have in that they have to wear every hat and prioritize what they work on based on what will have the largest impact to the business. There are never enough hours in the day, but consistently Cassie found her time spent increasing rankings in organic search, ensuring locations and contact info was accurate online, building positive reviews, and spreading positive news about the companies she worked at.

In the last 10+ years, Cassie has seen it all, but always comes back to her passion for helping inspirational companies grow. As a consumer, she tries to limit her purchases to companies she believes in (ok, she still goes to Target… she’s a human) because as consumers we have the ability to help companies succeed. If we all purchased from companies that aligned with our personal beliefs, not only would companies step up but we’d see a shift in the brands that we interact with daily. She calls this being a “conscious consumer”… sometimes we think she made that phrase up, but the more time we spend with her the more we find ourselves buying only from companies we know the founders or love their mission.

Enough business talk, Cassie is passionate about connecting with like-minded people, traveling and is a pretty badass skier. She loves to chase winter seeking powder fields, and on a powder day you may even get a FaceTime call from a chairlift or the backcountry.

What does karma mean to you?

To me, karma is the intention behind our actions. Good karma, to me, means doing things with good intent, a pure heart, and positive energy. When starting a company, it was critical that I start it with good karma. In writing our mission statement you’ll see that our mission has the intent of helping consumers find companies they are proud to wear their logo or recommend to a friend…what I call being a conscious consumer. When I realized my intent behind starting this company was coming from a place of wanting to increase visibility of companies putting good into this world, I knew we had to include karma in the name.

Who is your dream client and why?

My dream client isn’t a company any of us have heard of. I’d love to hear from a young startup doing something inspirational, I mean, my passion is for increasing visibility so it’s not much of a challenge if a company comes to me and they are already hugely successful.

If I had to pick a company that already exists, it would be Charity Water. Their mission and vision inspire me so much, I had all of my wedding guests make a donation there instead of buying us gifts. But again, Charity Water has great visibility already so I’d love to find a company that isn’t there yet where I feel we can change the trajectory of their company through the work we do.