You cannot afford as a website owner not to use Google Search Console. Anyone who wants to ensure that their website is performing in Google’s search results must have this tool.
Your website’s overall performance and the number of visitors it receives each month may both be significantly influenced by how it appears in search engines, particularly industry leaders like Google. However, a lot of website owners don’t think much about this.
We’ll explain Google Search Console and all of its applications and advantages in this post. Then, we’ll demonstrate a number of methods you may validate GSC so you can utilize it in conjunction with your WordPress website.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console, formerly known as “Google Webmaster Tools,” is a free suite of tools made accessible to all website owners with the goal of assisting users in managing and understanding how their website appears in Google’s search results. On May 20, 2015, Google Search Console was introduced as a replacement for Google Webmaster. Google made the announcement that a new search console version will be available in January 2018. This would ensure that the UI is completely redesigned.
They may assist you in taking the appropriate actions to raise your site’s ranking and the general appearance on search results pages.
With Google Search Console, you can:
- Track current SERP standings
- Monitor website errors
- Uncover and resolve code markup errors
- Integrate your application with your website.
- Submit new content for indexing
- Add a sitemap
- Find and fix common malware and spam issues
- See which search queries (keywords) cause your site to appear in search results
- Find out which queries drive the most traffic to your site
- See what other sites are linking to your site
- See if your website passes Core Web Vitals tests
- Check to make sure your structured data (breadcrumbs, reviews, recipes, etc.) is set up correctly
What are the Benefits of Google Search Console to Small Businesses?
Improve Search Appearance
Your digital marketing approach must include the use of Google Search Console to enhance your website’s search visibility. You may see how your sites appear in Google’s search engine results page, or SERP, using Google Search Console.
Consider your results’ appearance while improving your site’s search visibility. Make sure that everything is proper, including the titles, URLs, meta descriptions, site links, and more. As a consequence, you may see the outcomes just as a website visitor could on the search engine results page.
Crawl Your Website
A crucial component of SEO is having your website crawled. A bot is a crawl. When you search for terms, the bot crawls all of the web information present on the internet. You may learn information about your website from a crawl.
Keep an eye on your crawl statistics and use Google Search Console to correct any issues. To aid Google in understanding specific elements of your website, such as your URL parameters, you may even insert your own information here.
To check for issues on your own website, use the Robots.txt Tester tool. This will assist you in preventing any future crawler problems that can adversely affect your website.
Improve Site HTML
Utilize Google Search Console to help you enhance your HTML. Make sure you use this chance to assess your title tags. The right title tag hierarchy should be followed while setting up your pages. The title tag hierarchy on the pages should be proper. On your page, you should have a Title tag (H1). The remaining headings should follow H2 through H6.
Always make sure to add meta descriptions to all your pages and posts for SEO. If you don’t remember to do it, you can use the Google search console to add it now and optimize it for particular keywords.
Improve the Site’s Organic Search Traffic
Utilizing Google Search Console is a sign that you wish to boost website traffic. The tool’s part in search traffic is rather extensive. It produces insightful data that show you how visitors are accessing your website through organic search results. It will provide the top search results, your website’s ranking, and the most popular search terms.
Monitor Link Reports
You may view information regarding links to your website in Search Console, including the most popular website pages and the anchor text that was used. If you are concentrating on a link development plan, you should be aware of these elements.
As part of your SEO strategy, link building is concentrating on obtaining more backlinks from reputable websites to your website. High-quality websites linking to your website tell Google that you have interesting material on your website.
Get Website Messages
You will be notified by Google Search Console if and when problems arise with your website. When there are security threats or when your pages aren’t being properly crawled, it will give you warnings or messages.
You may anticipate problems by reading the Google Search Console notifications. When Google discovers a problem, you’ll be the first to know. Additionally, you may configure message forwarding on the platform to have the notifications sent to your email address.
It’s crucial to pay attention to any website notifications from Google Search Console that you may receive. It might be simple to put off making these website adjustments, but they are crucial upgrades that must be completed. The penalties for not making the adjustments will be felt by your website.
How to Add Your Website to Google Search Console?
- To get started, go to the Google Search Console website and select “Start Now.”
- Sign into your Google account. If you haven’t created a property yet, you’ll go straight to the Welcome screen
- If you currently have a property set up but need to add another one, select Add a Property from the dropdown menu at the top of the left-hand navigation.
There are two methods for site verification: domain name or URL prefix. We’ll look at how to Verify your site using either method.
Method 1: Domain Name
To verify a Domain property in Google Search Console, you must first prove that you own the domain, not simply the URL. That means you need to verify it with your DNS (Domain Name Service) provider. To do so:
- Enter your domain name first, then click Continue. Google will give you specific directions if you have one of the hosts in their dropdown. Or, you can just pick Any DNS provider for the universal instructions:
- Copy the TXT record (that string of code).
- Different DNS service providers have different locations where you may add a TXT record. Check online for how to add new records based on your DNS.
- In the “Create New Record” window, paste the TXT record in the value field and save it.
- You should get a success message after returning to Search Console and clicking Verify.
Method 2: URL Prefix
- Enter the correct website URL used by WordPress and click Continue.
You’ll be prompted to verify ownership of the website. There are a few methods to accomplish it, but we’ll demonstrate the HTML tag technique because it’s the simplest.
- Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it
- So that Google can verify that you are the website’s owner, add this Google site verification meta tag to WordPress. It should be placed between the <head> </head> section, before the first <body> section of your homepage.
If you don’t know how to edit WordPress theme HTML, don’t worry. You can use a plugin to add the HTML code without a hassle. To do this,
- Login to your WordPress dashboard
- Navigate to Plugins> Add New and search for Tracking Code Manager.
- Click on Install, wait for it to install and then click on Activate.
- You can find the Tracking Code Manager option under the Settings menu on the left panel.
- Click on the ‘Add new Tracking Code’ button to set up Google Analytics on your website.
- Type a name for the code.
- Paste the copied HTML meta tag code into the field provided.
- According to Google, the code is supposed to be pasted in the <head> section of your website. Therefore, for the “Position inside the code” field, choose ‘Before </head>. This means you’re telling the Tracking Code Manager to place the code before the end of the <head> section and before the first <body> section.
- In the “Where do you want to add this code?” section, select the “Standard code tracking in your WordPress” option.
- Once you select this, another field will pop up, “In which page do you want to insert the code”. Select ‘In specific post or page’.
- Check the ‘Include posts “page” box’. A new field will pop up.
- Clear the field, click on it, and a drop-down list of all your pages should appear. Select the home page.
- When the “Do you want to exclude some specific pages?” field pops up, leave both options unchecked and click Save.
Your website has been added to Google Search Console successfully. The ‘Go to Property’ link will now take you to your Google Search Console dashboard.
That’s not the end, however. You need to take other steps to take advantage of Google Search Console fully. You’ll need to add an XML Sitemap of your website and connect it to your Google Analytics account.
How to Add XML Sitemap to Google Search Console?
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that catalogues a website’s key pages so that Google can identify and crawl them all. It also helps search engines understand the structure of websites.
You want Google to index all of your website’s key pages. However, occasionally pages are created without internal links connecting to them, making it difficult to discover them. Although it won’t improve your search rankings, it may undoubtedly make it easier for search engines to index your content.
if you have already any kind of SEO plugin, then it’s likely that the plugin has automatically added an XML sitemap to your site. Most SEO plugins come with that feature so you just need to find it and download the file. If you haven’t installed any, then follow the steps below.
- Use an XML Sitemap Generator tool. I recommend XML Sitemap Generator for Google.
- Navigate to Plugins > Add New. In the search box, type sitemap generator.
- Click on the Install button next to the XML Sitemap Generator for Google. Click on Activate after it has been installed.
- Go to Settings > XML Sitemap to access the newly installed plugin.
- On the XML Sitemap page, you don’t need to do anything. Click on the preview to see what your sitemap will look like.
- Click Save to create a sitemap and save changes. The Plugin will constantly update your sitemap to accommodate new pages and blog posts.
The default XML sitemap is https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
Just replace the “yoursite” with your website domain name and copy it. You’ll use it later to upload your sitemap to Google Search Console
- Go to the Google Search Console dashboard and click on ‘Sitemaps’ from the left column.
- Paste the sitemap URL in the field provided.
- Click on Submit. Google will now add your sitemap URL to your Google Search Console.
How to Connect your Google Analytics to Google Search Console?
You can analyze search console data in Google Analytics by linking Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account. This gives you a fresh viewpoint on the content and keywords that are performing best for you.
If you don’t have a Google Analytics account or haven’t connected your website, read this article to set it up.
To connect,
- Visit your website’s Google Analytics dashboard.
- Click the “Admin” button in the lower-left corner of the screen.
- On the Admin screen, click on the “Property Settings” section on the admin panel, then click the “Adjust Search Console” option.
- click on the Add button to select your website. You’ll be redirected to Google Search Console.
- Select the property you want to link to Google Analytics from the dropdown menu with a list of all the websites connected to that Google Search Console account.
- Select the Google Analytics property you want to link with Search Console.
- Click Continue. You’ll now see a popup window indicating that Google Analytics and Search Console are successfully linked.
The Search Console reports are now accessible in your Google Analytics account’s Acquisition reports section. It also aids in obtaining keywords that Google Analytics does not disclose.
In subsequent articles, we’ll look at how to harness the power of the Google Search Console to reap the benefits discussed above. Subscribe to our newsletter or click on the bell icon to get notified when we publish.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments section.
