How to Use Google's Search Console to Monitor and Improve Your Site's

Chapter 1: SEO Tactics

How to Use Google’s Search Console to Monitor and Improve Your Site’s SEO By Chris Hornak

he Google Search Console pro- complex at first glance. Once you know what vides you with a wide range of the most important tools and reports are, and tools and resources that you can how to use them, you should find that it is use to delve into how a website easy to work Search Console into your web is performing within Google’s strategies. search index. It’s for website owners, webmas- In fact, once you get used to using these Tters, SEO experts, PR professionals and any- tools, you may wonder how you ever man- one else who wants to make better websites aged your website without them. and/or better content. Follow these steps to find out how you can When you know how to use these tools maximize on all that Google Search Console and resources, you can receive information offers to web users. about search traffic, errors, usability and more. Use this data to make your website 1. Check for Manual Actions as attractive as possible to Google’s search Manual actions are instances in which a algorithm, and your visitors will love you too. human reviewer working with Google has In order for people to fall in love with your looked at your site and decided that a page or content, however, they need to be able to find pages are not in compliance with the Google you. webmaster quality guidelines. If you have Google Search Console is extensive. If a manual action in place, your site will not you have not used it before, you may find it do well. It can be demoted or removed from

The manual action page will tell you if someone has flagged your site and how to fix it.

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search engine results entirely. is there and how it is organized. This provides This area of the Search Console is an im- Google’s webcrawlers with a better under- portant place to start. Any manual action on standing of your website, as well as the meta- your page will counteract whatever good SEO data information contained within every page. tactics you have employed. Sitemaps are particularly useful for large The manual action page on the Google websites, those with content that does not link Search Console will tell you if a reviewer has to other internal pages and new sites without flagged your site, and it will provide the infor- many external links. mation you need to address the issue. Com- Building a sitemap can take some time but mon problems indicated in the manual action it is worth the effort. If you can help Google report include spam, hidden text, unnatural look at your site more favorably and more links and cloaking. thoroughly, this is something worth doing. Once you have taken action against any To start, you should determine which pages issues marked as a manual action, and are sat- on your site should be crawled by Google. isfied that you are in compliance with Google’s Build a sitemap manually or use an external rules, you can request a review of your site tool to generate the map. from the report area. One easy way to submit a sitemap is by providing your Real Simple Syndication (RSS) 2. Submit XML Sitemap and RSS feed URL to Google. If you have a blog, the Feeds blog software or website is probably able to An XML sitemap can be very beneficial to create the feed URL. Once this URL is submit- your ranking within Google. At the very least, ted, Google will have information on the most it won’t do any harm to your rank. recent URLs you have created. The sitemap itself is a file that lists all of the Simple sitemaps with only URLs can be pages of your site so Google will know what created as text files with one URL per line. Save the file with a .txt exten- sion. You can test and submit your sitemap within Search Console.

3. Fix Crawl Errors If Google’s webcrawlers encounter problems, they will advise you through the crawl errors section of the Search Con- sole. It’s important to address these issues. They represent potentially missed areas of your site that could be affecting your search engine results page ranking. Crawl errors are generated when the webcrawler is unsuc- cessful or encounters an HTTP error code. Your sitemap tells Google how your site is organized into various pages.

If site errors show up in this section, look into the issue and fix it as soon as possible. Site errors appear if the Google crawler has mobile usability report will show you where not been able to access your entire site, while you can improve in this regard. It will high- URL errors appear in the event of specific light specific errors and the steps you need to page issues. Site errors often come down to take to fix them. inadvertently changed permissions, reorga- Common problems include using Flash, nization, broken scripts and problems with pages that are not properly adjusted for dif- directories, as well as external causes. ferent screen sizes, a small font size and touch If it’s something you can fix, investigate it elements too close to one another. and solve it as soon as possible. By looking through the mobile usability re- Site errors are commonly related to DNS port and making the suggested changes, you’ll issues, server problems, or a problem with see improvements to your Google ranking, as your robots.txt file. In some cases, a crawl error well as greater user satisfaction. is the result of something you did. If you have removed a page, for example, Google will likely 5. Make HTML Improvements return a 404 error. The simple solution is to HTML creates the backbone of your web- remove any links to that page, so you do not site. This code needs to be in good shape for have dead links elsewhere on your site. your site to look and act the way you want. When you fix a URL error, you can mark The HTML Improvements report helps it as fixed within the Search Console to tell you see where you can improve your code to yourself you have addressed it. If it is not ac- enhance your users’ experience and bring traf- tually fixed, it will reappear when the Google fic to your site through good SEO practices. It webcrawler runs through your site again. will show you problems with title tags, meta descriptions and non-indexable content like 4. Repair Mobile Usability Issues rich media files and images. Using proper, de- Many people are accessing websites with scriptive text and code in these areas, you can mobile devices and Google is placing a higher attract more traffic through keyword usage. level of importance on mobile usability for this reason. 6. Implement Structured Data Your website will look different on a The Structured Data Report gives Google’s mobile device and should be optimized for crawlers more—and more useful—infor- use on smaller screens. The Search Console’s mation about your site. By using schema.

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Google is placing a lot of value on mobile usability, so pay close attention to this report to rank higher.

Clean up your code with input from the HTML Improvements report. org vocabulary and formatting, or by tag- This area of the Search Console also allows ging information on your site with the Data you to see where your structured data types Highlighter tool, you can organize all of the have errors. Happily, it offers information on pertinent details of your site, your business how to fix and verify markup, and provides a and your services. testing tool, too.

The Structured Data Report provides crawlers detail about your site and tells you how to fix markup.

Check in often on clicks, impressions and the rest of the information in the Search Analytics Report. 7. Use Search Analytics to Find Low into what is working and what could use a Hanging Fruit change. One of the most important areas of the Using this report, you can see how your Search Console is the Search Analytics Re- search traffic is changing, where it is coming port. Here, you can track your SEO directly from and what keywords are bringing people from Google, giving you valuable, free insight to your site. This information can lead you to

new topic and/or keyword optimization op- portunities. For instance, if people are visiting a specific page using a keyword that you have A Beginner’s Quick Guide not targeted, this is a great opportunity to to Using Google Search give that subject and keyword more in-depth Console for SEO coverage, either by enhancing the existing Getting started with Google Search Con- content or creating an all-new page. sole does not have to be intimidating. It’s a good thing to do if you are interested Note that it’s important not to go over- in maximizing on your search engine board. You should avoid cannibalizing a topic optimization (SEO). There is a learning by creating more than one page optimized for curve for most users and you might lose the same keyword term. an afternoon or two, but it’s well worth it. Get it right and the Search Console will By regularly checking in on clicks, impres- save you time and money. sions, search results page position and click- Follow these simple steps and you’ll be through rates, you’ll be able to tailor your well on your way. SEO strategies to what is actually happening 1. Add your site and verify it: This is on your site. step one. Create or log on to your Search Console account, add prop- 8. Monitor Latest Links erty (your site), and follow the steps Google’s Search Console makes it easy to to verify that you are someone with access to the site. monitor links to your site with a report that Take your time and get this right. shows a list of all the links the crawler has dis- It gets a lot more interesting very covered. It will also display what link sources quickly afterward. are most common and what anchor text is 2. Link Google Analytics: An optional step, but one that will give you the most common. You can use this information best information between both sets to expand your reach. of tools. Recommended. By tracing links back to where they came 3. Make a sitemap: This is an ideal way from, you can take advantage of niche networks. to ensure that Google crawls all of For example, if a specific forum or discussion your website. page has linked to your site, you might interact 4. Test your robots.txt file: Google’s tester tool ensures that your robots. with that site and its visitors, generating more txt file is error-free. It’s a good thing interest in your site and what you have to offer. to do. You can also use this information from 5. Crawl for errors: This section of the links to reach out to influencers who are dis- Search Console lets you know what, if any, errors are present on your site. cussing your site. Track links back to bloggers Armed with this information, you can and consider thanking them and/or offering fix the problems before they impact to work with them on a mutually beneficial your page rank. campaign. If you are looking for additional help with This information will also help you to iden- specifics in the Google Search Console, visiting the Google Search Console Help tify negative links that could create problems Center will not disappoint you. It gives for you through manual actions. Beware of you valuable information about the con- spammy links and the other common manual sole, how it works and what steps you action issues. can take to implement best practices for your site. Google Search Console is a vital tool and resource for anyone involved with running a

website. As a free service, it will not take any- rich results with structured data, to digging thing out of your budget to use, but is worth into search terms to find out what your read- its weight in Google gold for search engine ers want to know more about, you can use optimization and other marketing techniques. the information provided by Google Search The Search Console provides web users Console to make your website all that your with accurate and up-to-date data, offers users hope it will be. every tool needed to monitor and manage You do not have to guess what will drive search functionality and provides numerous people to your website. Google Search Con- reports that give a great deal of insight into sole will make this information available to every aspect of what is and is not working in you so that you can improve your website and your search engine ranking strategy. All of produce ever-better content. It’s a must-have this is available to you in an automated for- for anyone involved in online marketing, mat, so you do not need to expend funds or especially those who handle search engine time to generate these reports on your own. optimization and inbound strategies. n From optimizing and improving your website’s appearance for all users, to creating Chris Hornak is owner of Blog Hands.