Google offers a range of tools to map your website performance.
And if you have hired a competitive SEO agency, these tools are all you may ever need to improve your website’s engagement. Google Search Console is one such tool that you can use for increasing traffic and organic rankings.
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What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console combines a set of webmaster tools that help in optimizing your website for Google Search. Earlier, it was named as such as well. But with the company’s penchant for renaming stuff, they changed the name from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console.
Most SEO professionals still use Google Webmaster and Search Console interchangeably. So, do not get confused if you are interviewing a new SEO agency and the terms come up.
How does Google Search Console differ from Google Analytics?
If you have dabbled with SEO before, you will know that Google Analytics is used for monthly reporting and annual performance reviews. It is a reporting tool that tracks your website visitors, traffic sources, user interactions, and conversions.
On the other hand, Google Search Console reports your website’s performance on search engines which makes it markedly different from Google Analytics. In essence, you can use Google Search Console to optimize it according to search engine parameters, in turn getting better rankings and potentially more visitors, which is then reflected in your Google Analytics reports.
At DO COMMUNICATION, we use Google Search Console for,
- Checking the indexing status of your website, which is basically identifying if a page is being tracked by the search engine or not.
- Fixing usability issues, such as mobile usability errors where the content is wider than screen size or clickable elements are too close to each other.
- Checking backlinks from other websites to your website, to identify and report spam links.
- Find out the search queries used by users to reach your website.
- Finding out the best-performing pages in search results.
- Ensuring that your structured data is working as intended. It helps in generating rich snippets in the search results.
- Checking the core web vitals of your website to ensure that we remain within the defined thresholds.
- Submitting a sitemap.
Hereby, our team constantly monitors both Google Search Console and Google Analytics to create a monthly roadmap segregated in weekly activities. With that out of the way, let’s check out some SEO hacks you can implement using Google Search Console.
8 SEO hacks for new Google Search Console users
Before we dive deep into each of these GSC strategies, here’s a quick overview.
- Improve your Click through Rate (CTR).
- Stage keyword ranking improvements.
- Explore fresh content ideas.
- Find new keyword ranking opportunities.
- Improve your website’s performance score.
- Improve internal linking quality.
- Find new backlink opportunities.
- Optimize for rich snippets.
1. Improving Click through Rate
In organic search, CTR is calculated by dividing the total number of search views (excluding ads) by the number of clicks or unique website visits. For example, if your website was seen by 100 people in organic results and 10 people clicked on it, your CTR is 10%.
The higher your CTR, the higher your website traffic. Google Search Console allows you to view the click through rate for individual pages. You can also see the queries which are getting the highest number of visitors to these pages. What next?
You can use this information to continue improving the pages which have high CTR to maintain your advantage. Additionally, you can identify pages which have a high visibility but are lagging in clicks and ask your SEO team to work on improving those pages for better CTR.
2. Staging keyword ranking improvements
Google Search Console also lets you filter keywords by their ranking position. Where most people simply use this option to isolate keyword rankings, smarter agencies use it for keyword improvement planning by optimizing the website for the ‘nearly there’ keywords.
For example, you have a list of 100 keywords for which you wish to optimize the website. Let’s assume that GSC shows 5 of your keywords ranking in Top 3 positions. 15 more keywords are ranking on positions 4 to 10, and a further 20 keywords are ranking between 11 to 15, that is page 2.
A smart SEO professional will use this information to create a gradual improvement plan to move the ‘nearly there’ keywords, which are the keywords ranking on positions 5 and 11, 6 and 12, 7 and 13, and so on, to bring them a step up. Eventually, you will have a significant number of useful keywords ranking on top and on the first page.
3. Exploring new content ideas
Going through your web page performance report you can also identify user interest in blogs, articles, and product pages. Creating branching content for the most visited pages on your website will not only increase website visits but also help you in creating better internal links, which we shall discuss in a moment.
Use your top landing pages to research and create valuable content for your users. You can also consider your top performing content into different types of assets, such as videos, podcasts, infographics etc. to rank in various forms of Google Search results.
4. Find new keyword ranking opportunities
Fresh content ideas help you expand your keyword scope. Use your top queries to research more related keywords. There are both paid and free tools that let you find similar or related keywords.
At DO COMMUNICATION we regularly use Semrush Premium to explore new keywords for creating informational content. Using this strategy, we delivered a 2400% annual traffic increase for one of edutech clients. The client specialized in corporate communication programs, and our primary goal was to increase the blog performance.
5. Improving website performance score
With fast internet and even faster devices, nobody has the patience for clunky website interfaces which take aeons to load. So, back in 2020, Google introduced the Core Web Vitals. A set of metrics that assess your website’s load speed and grade it against the competition.
Generate a core web vitals report using the Google Search Console and put your dev team in gear to improve your website’s performance score.
6. Improve internal linking quality
GSC also has an entire section dedicated to links. It allows you to view both internal and external links. At this point, we are specifically talking about improving your internal links.
You can use the links tab to view the pages with most internal links on your website. Now perform a technical analysis of page performance and correlate it with internal linking quality and quantity. Use this information to select target pages and add or improve the quality of your internal linking.
For example, add ‘also read’ sections to your blog posts, include ‘detailed review’ links on your product pages and link them to relevant blogs, and so on.
7. Find new backlink opportunities
As mentioned in the previous point, the links tab also lets you explore backlinks that lead users from other websites to your website. Backlinks are used by the wider SEO community to pass on something that is quite cheekily named ‘link juice’.
Check out domains that are linking back to your website and check their domain authority. If certain high authority websites have given you an organic backlink, there is a high chance that you can get another one by contacting them.
8. Rank in featured snippets
You may have noticed that in recent years Google Search has started showing bits of extra information, such as summaries, ratings, pricing, etc. within the search results. These are called rich results or featured snippets. You can also optimize your website for ranking in the featured snippets by adding extra bits of code to your web pages.
Google Search Console picks up a page where you have added rich code and alerts you about any errors or anomalies in performance. Using this information you can improve your page performance and potentially feature in rich results.
Also Read: How to Optimize Your Google Profile to Grow Your Business in 2024
That’s not all
SEO is an ever-evolving field. When it comes to ranking at the top, every little action on your website matters. At DO COMMUNICATION, we have a young and motivated team of industry professionals. We are excited by new challenges and pride ourselves in staying apace with Google's SEO updates. If you found this article helpful, give us a like or follow on our official Facebook and Instagram handles. Adieu.
