Google Search Console: An In-depth Guide to Improve SEO

Google Search Console (GSC) is certainly among the most valuable webmaster tools for an SEO consultant and for all those who own a site, thanks to the detailed reports it provides us and which allow us to diagnose and solve technical problems that affect visibility. of our site on Google. In this complete guide we see in detail all its main settings and features.

Synthetic index guide Google Search Console

• What is Google Search Console
• How to activate the Google Search Console
• What you can find in the Search Console
• The features of Google Search Console
• What is the coverage of your website? Ask Google Search Console
• Request to crawl a URL
• Tips dedicated to improving usability
• Other noteworthy features
• How to add and verify a site in Search Console
• Complete list of Google Search Console settings, reports and features
• Conclusions

What is Google Search Console

Google Search Console, reachable at https://search.google.com/search-console/about, is a set of reports and free webmaster tools that Google makes available to us to get a precise and detailed picture of the goodness SEO services and the quality of your site.

The webmaster tool allows you to set different configurations useful for a better positioning in the search results and helps to identify the technical problems and criticalities that hinder a correct indexing and crawling of the site.

It also provides data and statistics on the rankings obtained and, on the improvements, to be implemented to achieve further results.

Although Search Console is an outdated tool, which has existed for a long time (previously it was called Google Webmaster Tools and with an excellent official guide , still today it is easy to find badly configured settings or even not configured at all, or only partial and superficial use. by web agencies and site owners who often limit themselves only to inserting the xml sitemap, leaving out everything else.

The in-depth knowledge of this tool is essential for those who want to become an SEO Specialist and want to optimize their sites at a professional level.

 

How to activate the Google Search Console

Before discussing the enormous potential of the tool, we want to deal with a fundamental step: the verification and activation of the Search Console.

The ways in which this step can be carried out are different. The most intuitive is undoubtedly that of verification through the Google Analytics tracking code.

To do this you need to have the same Google account linked to both tools. After taking the Google Analytics verification code, simply enter it in the “Head” section of the homepage. At this point, just go back to the Console, click on “Add Properties” and finally enter the URL of the site next to the word “URL prefix”.

 

What you can find in the Search Console

Let’s now move on to the countless reasons why you will no longer be able to do without this tool.

Let’s start from its structure. Once you log in you will find yourself in front of a page that is already able to tell you a lot about your website.

But the best is yet to come.

The first item of the sidebar, the one that in the figure is called Overview , already provides a wide range of useful information for improving your website. By selecting the item, you will land on a page with three different tables:

• Performance : here you will find a fairly general overview of the amount of total clicks of organic origin that your site has received in the time frame you will select.
• Coverage : it is a graph crossed by two lines. The red one indicates the number of “pages containing errors” , while the green one indicates the number of “valid pages” . If you are not already a good Webmaster, it is likely that the red line will not correspond to zero. And here, after a few seconds of using the Console, you already know where to go to intervene. And we are only at the beginning!
• Enhancements : in the lower part of the page you will find a table with preliminary indications on the usability of your website, both for the Desktop version and, above all, for the Mobile version. As well as a final figure on the amount of pages that have not been indexed by Google, under “Sitelinks Search” , rather than the much feared “404 errors” .

 

The features of Google Search Console

These three items are in turn the main categories of the menu that you find in the sidebar. So let’s see what are the features you can access and how to fully realize the potential of the tool.

A real boost to the analysis of search results

Let’s start with one of the most dense sections of information: that of search results. Here Google has chosen to intertwine the four most useful metrics to analyze the actual presence of your pages on the network, also dedicating a space to the results obtained by Google’s Discover function.

• Total clicks received by your site for the selected period
• Total impressions
• Average CTR or Click Through Rate
• Average position of indexed pages

If in the table that appears when you access the page, you can see the global data, scrolling it, or using the search filters, it will be possible to find much more detailed analyzes, in turn divided into different items. Among these the most important are:

• The individual queries you are positioned for
• The individual pages
• The geolocation of users who find your page in the results
• The subdivision by devices used: Mobile, Desktop or Tablet

But what can you do with all this information? Let’s take a practical example!

Sometimes it can happen to get a good positioning, managing to conquer the first page of the SERP for one or more keywords with good search volumes. In this case, the “Impressions” data will certainly be very high, and maybe that page will also bring a good amount of traffic to the website. However, if the CTR or Click Through Rate data is very low, this may mean that you are not capitalizing on the potential of that page. On the Search Console you will be able to immediately identify this problem, to try to solve it with the relative precautions.

The one just reported is just one of the many ways to profitably use the data present within the Console, but, as you use it, you will see that a lot of analyzes similar to this can be done. The secret, in this case, is to waste some time to get familiar and enter into its logic, in order to grasp every secret.

 

What is the coverage of your website? Ask Google Search Console

In this section you will find all the useful data for a correct analysis of the indexing level of your site thanks to the continuous feedback provided by the so -called Google spider every time it finds itself analyzing it.

Always playing with the various filters, you will also be able to see how many pages are indexed correctly, which are the ones that Google cannot read, or, again, the 404 errors, as well as the pages penalized by various errors that are identified during the crawl and subsequently indicated by the Console to allow you to get involved.

 

Request to crawl a URL

Let’s now pass to another very useful section of the tool: the control of the URL.

Let’s say you have made a change to a post on your blog, to try to position it better. By inserting the link in the search bar, you will “force” the crawl of the page.

This is a real request made to the crawler, who will immediately go to work to check for updates.

Another feature of this tool is the ability to check for any errors or problems that may be preventing Google from crawling your page correctly.

 

Tips dedicated to improving usability

The performance of your pages is a fundamental element for good SEO positioning.

Nowadays, if you have a slow or poorly built site, you will hardly be able to obtain satisfactory results. Precisely for this reason Google has decided to dedicate a section of the Console to improving usability, called “Core Web Vitals“ .

Here you can see which pages of your site are considered by Google as “Good”, which ones are “To be improved” and finally also those “Poor”. Always in the same report you can also easily understand if the version that has problems is the one for the Desktop or the one for the Mobile, as well as you can deepen the reports already created to understand what the problem may be and go to intervene in a targeted and efficient way. .

 

Other noteworthy features

Once we have analyzed some of the most important parts of the tool, let’s mention other features that, more often than not, could be more than useful :

• Sitemap : if you haven’t already done so and are wondering why your site doesn’t appear on Google, thanks to the Search Console you can upload your Sitemap in less than a minute.
• Deleting pages : through the Console you can easily delete certain pages that, for one reason or another, you no longer want to be indexed.
• Internal and external links : this is a complete list with all the links, both incoming and outgoing, of your site. A feature already present in many other tools, which however fits perfectly in a context of this type. The importance in creating a good Link Building strategy is of primary importance for the success of your project.
• Security : By checking this section on a regular basis, you can see if the security of your site is solid or if there is something to improve.

 

How to add and verify a site in Search Console

GSC must be activated on your site in order to function. The first requirement to add and verify a site in Search Console is to have a Google account and then complete the activation process by verifying the ownership of the site to be monitored.

After logging in to indicate the site to manage, you must press the “Add a property” button.

Once you have entered the URL of the website you will need to proceed with the verification. There are multiple verification options and you can choose the option that best suits your needs and technical knowledge.

 

Site verification options

The first verification option recommended by Google Search Console is: Domain Name Provider. This option requires advanced technical knowledge of DNS management and consists in adding a TXT record and then waiting for DNS propagation.

It is therefore advisable for those who are inexperienced to use the alternative methods proposed:

1. Uploading an HTML file: You will need to download the HTML file provided and upload it to the root folder of the web server of the site to be verified. To use this method, you must be able to upload new files to the web server.
2. HTML tag: consists of adding a meta tag to the home page of the site to be verified. To use this method, you need to be able to edit the HTML code of the site pages. The code will need to be placed inside the head tag.
3. Google Analytics: To use this option, you need to install the Google Analytics tracking code and be an account administrator. If you don’t know how to do it, read How to add a site to Google Analytics.
4. Google Tag Manager: To use this option, you must have the container snippet installed and have management permission for the Tag Manager container.

Once one of the verification options has been completed, simply press the Verify button to confirm activation.

At this point, if the site has been online for some time, Google Search Console will show the data it has collected, while if the site has recently been online, it will be necessary to wait a few days to obtain the first data.

In this second case it is advisable to enter sitemap.xml to give Google the pages of our site that we want to be indexed and proceed with the configuration of the various settings.

 

Complete list of Google Search Console settings, reports and features

Now that we’ve added and verified our site in Search Console, let’s get to the heart of this guide.

Google Search Console is a tool full of reports and tools for webmasters that help us optimize our site and its contents, improving the crawling process and speeding up the indexing process.

Following is the complete list of Search Console settings, reports, and features covered in this guide:

1. Search Console Settings and Configurations

In the Google Search Console settings menu, we find the following options:

• Search Console preferences
• Site settings
• I change address
• Property of Google Analytics
• Users and property owners
• Verification details

Search Console preferences

In this section we can activate the alerts to receive emails with the reporting of the problems encountered.

It is very useful to be notified of the problems identified by Google so that they do not persist over time without any corrective action.

Site settings

Allows you to choose your preferences regarding your preferred domain and crawl speed.

The preferred domain choice refers to the display of the domain URL within the Google search results.

It is possible not to set a preferred domain or to choose for viewing with the www or without the www, but it is advisable to specify the preferred version to prevent any duplication of content.

The crawl speed is a setting to change when you want to limit the crawl activity of Googlebot because it is slowing down the web server due to excessive http requests.

If the web server does not experience any slowdowns, it is advisable to let Google determine the crawl speed itself.

I change address

It allows you to indicate to Google the transfer of the site to another domain. It is necessary to configure these settings for the purpose of a correct SEO migration to make Google digest the change of domain faster.

To use the tool, you need to follow these steps:

1. Select the new domain from the list: if the new domain is not displayed, you will need to add it to proceed.
2. Confirm the correct implementation of 301 redirects: the URLs of the old domain must redirect to the URLs of the new domain via the 301 redirect. For more information read the article Redirect 301 Htaccess best practice .
3. Check that the verification methods are still present: This step verifies that both the new domain and the old domain are both verified correctly before the transfer and that they remain so afterwards.
4. Send the request for change of address: to transfer the indexing of the old domain to the new domain.

Property of Google Analytics

The properties of Search Console and Google Analytics can be linked together to enable them to communicate data from one platform to the other (it will then be possible to see the data in the Acquisition menu of Google Analytics).

To activate the link, from the list of managed sites just click on the Analytics web property to be linked and click on save.

Users and property owners

Manages access permissions to the webmaster tool, allowing the addition or removal of owners and users with limited or full authorization.

Sometimes, during the SEO quote phase, I ask the customer for limited access to quickly check the health of the site.

While full access I enter it as a requirement of the SEO contract to be able to configure the Google webmaster tools correctly.

Verification details

Indicates how Google Search Console verification was done, verification attempts and owners verified.

Associates

Here we can associate Search Console with other Google family accounts, including AdWords, Google+ and YouTube.

2. Dashboard

The Search Console dashboard allows us to quickly check the health of the site through widgets: Crawl Errors, Search Analytics and Sitemaps.

These widgets act as shortcuts for the complete reports that we find in the navigation menu on the left.

3. Messages

This is the section where Google communicates with webmasters, where we can view the messages sent by Search Console.

The messages relate to the health of the site, such as an increase in 404 errors, crawling problems or more serious issues such as the presence of malware.

4. Appearance in the search

This section allows optimization of the snippets of our site in the Google search results. It has the following items:

1. Structured data
2. Information cards
3. Data highlighter
4. HTML improvements
5. Accelerated Mobile Pages

Structured data

Indicates the structured data detected by Googlebot within the pages of the monitored site and any elements with errors.

Structured data is additional information that can generate rich snippets in Google search results.

To check that they are implemented correctly on our site and to test the markup code for rich snippets, with suggestions on optimization or troubleshooting, Google provides the structured data testing tool .

Information cards

The Information Cards (also called Multifunction Cards or Rich Cards) allow you to show a snippet with more information in serp, for some types of content including recipes, events, products, reviews and courses.

This section is useful for checking and correcting any errors in the information sheets or for obtaining suggestions by type of card.

Errors or omissions in information sheet data can limit the range of functions available or prevent the sheets from being processed altogether.

Data highlighter

The data highlighter is a valid alternative to add structured data to the pages of your site, without having to modify the HTML code.

Once you have entered the URL you want and set the type of information to highlight (articles, products, events, etc), it allows you to highlight the various elements of the page to indicate to Google how you want the page to be displayed in the search results.

It is possible to highlight a single page or several similar pages.

HTML improvements

This section lists any problems with the site’s content and indicates the HTML improvements that need to be made to correct them.

By clicking on the highlighted items, the list of URLs will appear where GoogleBot has encountered the problems mainly related to the duplication of the title tag and the meta description or the lack of these elements.

Resolving the indicated issues will improve the user experience on the site and its performance in organic results.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Indicates the indexed AMP pages and any errors in the implementation of the AMP protocol on the pages of our website.

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source protocol designed to provide web pages that load quickly on mobile devices in order to improve users’ browsing experience.

By clicking on a specific error, you will be able to see the list of URLs that present it.

By clicking on a specific URL you will be able to get recommendations to correct it.

5. Search traffic

In this section dedicated to the analysis of traffic from Google to our site, we find the following items:

1. Research analysis
2. Links that lead to your site
3. Internal links
4. Manual actions
5. International targeting
6. Usability on mobile devices

Research analysis

Section dedicated to the analysis of positioning on Google, which allows us to understand the performance of the monitored site for a period ranging from the last 30 days up to a maximum of 90 days.

It is very useful for knowing the keywords and individual pages that drive traffic to our site: in fact, for each search query for which our site has been viewed in serp, the report provides us with data on clicks and impressions received, on the CTR and the average position in the Google ranking.

This data is extremely important because it sets an overall picture on the results of the SEO campaign .

In addition, the queries indicated in the tool are great guidelines for creating relevant and user-engaging content.

A very useful feature is the ability to filter data based on the following dimensions:

1. query: list of keywords for which our site was visible on Google.
2. pages: the main landing pages that receive the most access from Google. By clicking on the specific page we can get the list of keywords that have generated clicks and impressions.
3. countries: the countries from which the traffic originates.
4. devices: segmented traffic for desktop, mobile and tablet.
5. search type: segmented traffic for web search, images and videos.
6. date: traffic segmented by date.

Finally, through the link to Google Analytics, it is possible to combine these data with the acquisition, behavior and conversion metrics.

It is important to specify that this report cannot replace the use of specific software for positioning control (such as the SEO Power Suite Rank Tracker), because the queries that are returned are selected based on the number of impressions generated.

Links that lead to your site

Section dedicated to link building , which mainly allows us to understand the popularity of the monitored site and the number of total links that our domain receives.

Although it is not even remotely comparable to a link intelligence tool (like Ahrefs ) it can still be useful.

The Most Linking Report provides a list of domains that have at least one backlink to our site.

If we realize that we receive an excessive number of backlinks from a poor quality domain and that could be a source of penalties , we can contact him asking for the removal of the backlinks or disavow him the disavow tool.

The Your Content with More Links report shows the pages on our site that receive the most backlinks. It is important to make sure they are our strategic pages.

Finally, the How your data is connected report shows the list of anchor text of our site’s backlinks.

If we receive an excessive number of transactional anchors, it is better to take cover to avoid repercussions from Google Penguin.

Internal links

List of pages on our site that receive multiple internal links. Clicking on the specific landing page will show the list of URLs that link it.

Also in this case it is advisable to make sure that the pages with the highest number of links are the strategic pages.

Manual actions

If our site is manually penalized by the Google antispam team, in this section we find the message with the causes of the penalty and the recommendations for resolution.

Ideally, this section should contain only the phrase: No manual antispam intervention found.

If the monitored site has been penalized, it is advisable to evaluate a decriminalization service to get out of the penalty and recover the lost traffic.

International targeting

This section, essential for international SEO for multilingual sites , allows you to verify the correct implementation of the hreflang Tag and to specify the geographic target of our contents so that they can be shown to relevant users.

Country settings can be changed only for domains with a generic extension (.com, .net, etc) while for domains with a language extension (.it, .fr, etc) the country will be associated by default.

Usability on mobile devices

Indicates any usability problems on our site on mobile devices.

The most typical problems concern the use of flash on mobile pages, text too small to read, contents larger than the screen, etc.

Websites with usability issues on mobile devices may not rank well in Google search results.

6. Google index

Section relating to the indexing of our site. It has the following items:

1. Status of indexing
2. Resources blocked
3. URL removal

Status of indexing

Total indexing status of the monitored site, where you can see the total number of URLs indexed, blocked by robots or removed from the index.

Resources blocked

List of URLs that are blocked from crawling by Disallow directives in the Robots.txt file.

By clicking on the host that has the problem you can get the list of blocked resources.

Usually the problems concern images, CSS and JavaScript files blocked by incorrect directives present in the Robots.txt file.

URL removal

Allows you to request the temporary removal of specific URLs from Google search results as long as the page is no longer present and returns a 404 or 410 error.

The content will be removed for 90 days and during this time it will be possible to request re-inclusion in the results.

It is advisable to use this tool only in the absence of alternatives.

I remind you that it is possible not to show a URL in Google search results through the noindex directive of the meta robots or by preventing the crawling through the Disallow directive in the robots.txt file.

7. Scan

Section relating to the crawling activities of our site. It has the following items:

1. Scanning errors
2. Scan statistics
3. View as Google
4. txt file tester
5. Sitemap
6. URL parameters

Scanning errors

It returns the crawl errors found by Googlebot during the scans of the last 90 days indicating the type of error, its severity and the URLs where it occurs (with the possibility to download the complete list).

It is very useful in the SEO audit phase to verify that there are no problems deriving from a previously unmanaged migration.

Regarding the classification of errors, these are divided into:

1. DNS errors: related to the inability to communicate with the DNS server.
2. Server connectivity errors: related to the inability to access the requested URLs during the scan.
3. txt file retrieval errors: related to the inability to retrieve the robots.txt file (for example when returning error status code).

Ignoring these errors could mean a deterioration in search engine rankings over time.

Often to solve these errors it is sufficient to implement the 301 redirect via htaccess.

Scan statistics

GoogleBot crawl activity statistics in the last 90 days with graphs representing the number of pages scanned (Pages crawled daily), data downloaded (Kilobytes downloaded daily) and the time spent downloading a page ( in milliseconds).

View as Google

This feature allows you to check how Google renders the pages of our website, to view the HTTP headers and information that GoogleBot retrieves as soon as it crawls a page.

Once the URL to be scanned has been entered, the options we can choose are:

• Retrieve : In this case, Search Console is limited to just crawling the page and returning the HTTP header.
• Retrieve and View : In addition to scanning and HTTP header, the tool renders the page in Desktop or Mobile (smartphone) version.

It is also possible to request indexing for the pages analyzed by clicking on Request for indexing.

By clicking on Indexing request it is also possible to request indexing for the pages analyzed, stimulating the indexing process of a site on Google .

Robots.txt file tester

Displays the current content of the Robots.txt file and indicates if there are Disallow directives blocking access to specific site content.

The Robots.txt file is essential, as search engine spiders check the directives in this file before crawling a site to determine which parts of the site they can crawl.

It is therefore necessary to check that the robots.txt file is present and that it gives the right directives.

This tool allows you to test the various configurations to find the most suitable one for your site and the URLs to check how the various Google user-agents analyze the contents for crawling.

Sitemap

In this section we can send, test and analyze the xml sitemaps of our site.

It is advisable to divide the xml sitemaps to be inserted by type of content (pages, images, videos, etc) and then send them through the tool.

Once the download by Google Search Console and the processing of the included xml sitemaps have been completed, a page with the reading statistics is returned.

It is very important to investigate any problems found and the pages sent but not indexed.

These pages can be a symptom of an internal problem on the site which, if not managed in a timely manner, could generate more serious problems with consequent repercussions on the indexing and search engine positioning of the site.

URL parameters

It allows you to configure the parameters within the URLs of our site helping Google to interpret them for correct indexing of the pages.

This tool is often used in SEO for E-commerce , since this type of site tends to have many parametric URLs due to the various product ordering methods and the presence of filters.

The parameters in the URLs are character strings that indicate the presence of dynamic content, that is, generated by taking information from the database tables.

Finding parametric URLs is quite simple as these URLs have the value “?” normally.

By clicking on Configure URL parameters it is possible to indicate to GoogleBot how it should manage each parameter to avoid duplication of content, opting to let GoogleBot decide or indicating the meaning and role played within the URLs identified.

It is advisable to use this function only if you are familiar with the operation of the parameters and their purpose.

Otherwise, it is advisable to purchase technical SEO consultancy , since the incorrect management of URL parameters could have major repercussions on the correct indexing of your site.

Furthermore, it is often possible to avoid using this tool by correctly implementing the rel canonical on your site.

8. Safety issues

Search Console reports any malware found on the monitored website to allow us to quickly remove it.

9. Other resources

List of tools and direct links to services:

Structured data test tool: Useful tool to verify the correct implementation of structured data and the correct interpretation by Google and therefore the possibility of generating rich snippets.

Markup assistance : Inserted a starting URL this tool guides us in the correct implementation of the structured data markup.

Email markup testing tool : Allows you to validate the structured data present in the HTML content of an email message.

Google My Business : Check for free that your business looks good on Google Search, Google Maps and Google+.

Google Merchant Center : The account where you can upload product feeds for Google Shopping campaigns.

PageSpeed ​​Insights : Link to a tool that analyzes the web performance of web pages and provides useful tips on optimizing speed.

Custom search : To use Google as an internal search engine for your site.

Google Domains : Google’s service for registering a domain name and creating sites.

Webmaster Academy : Official Webmaster Tools course that provides guidance on creating a perfect website with targeted content and making it visible in Google Search results.

Conclusions on Google Search Console

Now that you have read the guide to Google Search Console you will have understood how it is fundamental both for the configurations it makes available to us and for the analytical data it provides us on the health of our site.

Install Google Search Console on your site and if you have any doubts or questions about it, use the comments without delay!

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