Written by Sherlock Holmes
Google Search Console (or “GSC” for short) allows you to monitor and manage your website through an official Google portal that is full of useful statistics.
Moreover, it is a completely free tool but invaluable for arriving at interesting insights. Search console helps you identify problems that may prevent the site from being indexed by Google or displayed in organic search results. However, this is only a tip of the iceberg.
Here are 10 things you can do with Google Search Console:
To get started, visit Google Search Console and sign in with your Google account.
1. Submit a sitemap
Although Google’s web crawlers themselves can learn a lot about a Web site and its individual Web pages, you can give them a little extra help in learning the information they need by submitting a sitemap to Google.
A number of websites will automatically generate a sitemap for you. If not, create a sitemap and upload it to your server. Once you have these, loading them into the Google Search Console is very easy.
2. Discover common keywords that people google
Anyone who finds your website through organic search has used a specific search term to get there. Google Search Console shows you the most common keywords that bring people to your website.
3. Identify the most popular pages
Every website has pages that perform better in the search engines than others. Google Search Console will help you determine which of your web pages brings the most people to your website.
4. Look at where your visitors are coming from
If your business serves a certain part of the world, it is more important to get traffic from visitors who live in a certain geographical area than anywhere else. Google Search Console will also provide you with data on where your visitors are, so you can be sure you are reaching the right people.
5. Learn what devices they use
Mobile-friendliness of websites is critical. Through search console, you can see which devices and operating systems are visiting your Web site.
6. Make sure your website works well on mobile.
While it is a good idea to run your own mobile tests on your website, you can also use the Google Search Console to confirm that your website meets mobile usability standards.
7. See which sites link to your website.
For anyone focused on SEO, this is important information to have access to. Backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors so every time another website links to your website, your website authority increases in the eyes of Google’s algorithm.
8. Check for broken links
Broken links offer a poor experience for your users. As if that were not bad enough, it also ensures that Google will assign a negative effect on your ranking.
9. Identify website security problems
Website hacks happen daily. Even as a small business, you are not safe from hackers and it can always lead to serious problems. It becomes even more dangerous when an e-commerce site is hacked that collects sensitive customer data such as credit card information.
10. Confirm that your schedule formatting or structured data is in order
If you use schema markup or other structured data on your website, Google can confirm for you whether it is set up properly to work in the SERPs.
