If you want more traffic from Google but aren’t sure what to improve on your website, this article is for you!
Google Search Console is as free tool that helps site owners see how their site is performing.
You may have heard of Google Analytics, but that focuses more on site performance related to user interactions, conversion rates, and how much time users spend on your site.
Google Search Console shows you how you rank on Google Search, including your website clicks, average position on Google, and the queries that lead to your website. This data comes directly from Google, so it’s extremely valuable for SEO.
Find out how to use the Google Search Console Performance Report to find easy SEO wins: like which pages to optimize, which keywords to target, and where you’re missing out on potential clicks.
First, make sure you’ve already set up a Google Search Console account, connected your website and submitted your sitemap to be indexed. You can watch this video for a step by step tutorial:
Once you’ve created your account and logged in, you can use the Performance report to prioritise your SEO strategies.
1. Log into your Google Search Console account.
2. Once you’re in Google Search Console, click on Performance.
At the top, you’ll see four main metrics:
- Total clicks
- Total impressions
- Average CTR which stands for Click Through Rate
- Average position
Keep in mind that if you have a cookie banner enabled for your website, that may affect the tracking results from Google Search Console or Google Analytics, depending on how the code is defined in your website builder. Also, Google Search Console may not show data for some queries that are made a very small number of times, or if they include sensitive information due to privacy concerns. Due to these factors, your site’s performance may be even better than the numbers that you see under Performance, but the numbers shown are the results that Google Search Console has tracked under those conditions.
Date Range
Note on the top we are seeing performance reports for the last 3 months, but you can choose a different date range.
Top Queries, Clicks and Impressions
Now on the Queries tab, you’ll see the top queries that people search related to your site. Seeing your top queries shows you what queries are leading to your website. It will give you an idea of what people are looking for, and if your website and services align with that.
You can see how many clicks on your website you get when visitors search that keyword or phrase.
You’ll also see the impressions, which tell you how many times your website was displayed in the search results and seen for that search query.
See a lot of impressions, but not a lot of clicks?
Be sure to optimize your site and page titles and descriptions. Make your title tag and meta description more compelling and descriptive, so when your website is listed in the search results, they will entice the right visitors to click into your website.
Another thing that might be going on is that although your website may appear on the search engine results, the ranking on that page may be low, for example it may be website number 7 on the first page. So although Google Search Console may track that as an impression, visitors may not click on your website because it is too low on the list of search results. In this case, you would want to work on improving your ranking, AKA position, for your website or web page.
Some small improvements you can make include improving the content on your web pages to answer the search queries better, improving headings on your website, and adding internal links that lead to the pages that you want to rank higher.
Filters
Filters make the performance report even more powerful.
You can filter by:
- A specific page
- A specific query
- Country
- Device, like mobile vs desktop
For example, if you filter by country, you can see if your website is reaching your targeted users. If not, then you may need to add some tweaks, like adding location into your headings, creating a location specific web page like Best Floral Shop in Chicago, etc.
You can choose multiple filters at once. So using these filters can help you get more context about what’s going on with your website.
Pages
If you click on the Pages tab, you can get more insight into the top performing pages for your website.
These insights could be especially helpful if you offer multiple services. If you see that one page is getting significantly more clicks than others, it can either tell you if a service is more worth your efforts and is working for your business, or if you actually need to improve your website content for your other, less popular service to boost its traffic.
Date Comparison
One feature people often ignore is date comparison.
On the top, click on the More drop down, and choose compare.
For example, you can compare the last 3 months with the previous 3 months.
This helps you see:
- If your SEO changes worked
- If traffic dropped
- Or if impressions are growing over time
For example, if you see that you’re getting more impressions for most queries, but one has dropped, you can assess if there’s something you need to tweak without losing the improvements from the other search queries.
Use In Conjunction with Google Trends
With this information from Google Search Console, you can use Google Trends to apply this information to your website and get more results. With Google Trends, you can find out what keywords people are searching for, and you can add filters like region and time period to get more context around these keyword trends.
Go Further With Your Strategies
If you consistently check Google Search Console and make small improvements, it can have a huge impact on your website performance over time. This is a great start to improving your website traffic and growing your online presence, helping the right audience find your website.
Along with improving your site performance, you’ll want to focus on getting more conversions and turning your audience into customers or clients by improving your website design, optimizing your business model, boosting the quality of the services you offer, and more. So keep going and enjoy the process!
Want to watch this tutorial in a video? Here you go!