Check Out 7 Tips for Accurately Analyzing the Google Search Console Dashboard
If you’re an SEO enthusiast or a website owner looking to enhance your online presence, understanding how to analyze and interpret the Google Search Console dashboard is crucial for digital marketing success.
In this article, we will explore the main functionalities of the tool and unveil insights that can transform your site’s performance on the world’s largest search engine. Follow our tips below!
Benefits of Using Google Search Console
Google Search Console is more than just a free tool: it’s the key to unlocking the full potential of your online presence.
So, if you’re wondering why you should invest time and effort in this platform, here are some benefits that make it indispensable for any SEO strategy:
- Search Visibility: By using Google Search Console, you gain detailed insights into how your site appears in search engines, which queries generate visits, which pages are most viewed, and how users interact with your results.
- Keyword Optimization: Identify the terms by which your site is found. This allows you to adjust your keyword strategy to direct the most relevant traffic to your content.
- Technical Issue Detection: The Search Console is a valuable tool for identifying flaws that can impact your ranking in search engines. It sends real-time alerts about crawling errors, indexing issues, and other technical obstacles that could harm your site’s visibility.
- Content Performance Analysis: Understand which pages are performing best and which need adjustments.
- New Content Indexing: Ensure that Google is aware of your latest content. This speeds up the indexing process and helps your pages appear in search results more quickly.
Investing time in Google Search Console is not just a recommended practice, but a necessity for any website owner or SEO professional. By unlocking the data and insights provided by this tool, you’re on the right path to enhancing your online presence and achieving top positions in search results.
How to Use Google Search Console in Your SEO Strategy
The first step to start using Google Search Console is to create your account and integrate the tool with Google Analytics. This allows you to access data more integratedly and accurately, on both platforms.
Once set up, the Search Console will send notifications about site performance and technical issues. However, it’s ideal to closely monitor metrics within the platform as well.
Upon accessing the tool, the overview dashboard will present a summary of the main performance results, indexing (whether Google finds your page or not), user experience data, and improvement suggestions. But, by accessing the tabs on the left side, you’ll have access to all the details, as we’ll show next!
1. Discover How Your Site is Performing
In the “Performance” tab of Google Search Console, you can analyze the main results related to the keywords that send visitors to the site, the most accessed pages, countries from where the users come, and devices they use.
Each of these categories shows metrics for clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position in the search engine. With this, you can more easily find out which contents work best and what needs to be optimized to reach the top positions in the ranking.
There is also access to the Search Console Insights: a dashboard that shows information in a more didactic way, like a small visual report that’s easy to interpret. It is very similar to the Reportei report, making analyses more accessible to analysts.
2. Analyze a Page on Your Site
By clicking on the “URL Inspection” tab, you can analyze a specific page to detect if it is really appearing in search results and if there are experience improvements indicated for it.
This will allow you to have better control over each content and act more quickly to achieve better positions in the search mechanism.
3. Discover Indexing Errors
To get a general overview of the indexing results, you can access the “Pages” tab. In this section, the Google Search Console will show how many of your contents are indexed, how many are not, and the reasons for these issues on the site.
By resolving these errors, you’ll facilitate the recognition of pages in the search engine and, consequently, improve their ranking.
4. Add a Sitemap
Another way to help Google read your site and start positioning it in the search mechanism is by adding sitemaps in the Search Console. This will speed up the process of understanding the structure of the pages and the content on them.
5. Request Page Index Removal
Just as you can boost the indexing of a page on Google, there’s also the possibility of requesting the platform to stop reading certain content if you no longer want it to appear in searches.
For this, simply access the “Removals” tab and submit a new request. This action can be temporary or permanent – especially if related to outdated content.
6. Maintain the Best Experience on Your Pages
In the “Experience” tab, it’s possible to identify the quality of use on different devices and discover potential problems that are negative for users, causing them not to engage with your content and leave the pages quickly.
For example, the Google Search Console may indicate that the site is taking longer to load on mobile devices and suggest an improvement. By solving the issue, the search engine recognizes the change, and as a consequence, the site may be better positioned.
7. Pay Attention to Security Recommendations
Finally, in the “Security and Manual Actions” tab, the Google Search Console indicates points of improvement that should be made to keep the site always protected. That is, this is one of the main steps in analysis, as security breaches can lead to severe penalties for a site, from ranking drops to banning.
If your site is secure, the platform shows a notice that no issues were identified. However, if there are any issues, quick action will be necessary to address the situation.
Discover the Google Search Console Report by Reportei
Besides being able to perform a complete analysis via the Search Console, you can also generate reports of your SEO results through Reportei, in a visual, dynamic, and easy-to-interpret document.
By integrating the tool with our platform, you capture the main performance metrics in seconds and can assess them in conjunction with other channels used in your digital strategy, like Analytics, Google My Business, Google Ads, and much more!
Additionally, you have access to charts and tables that show the performance of your main keywords, pages, and the countries of origin of your users. In other words, it becomes much more practical to analyze the return and make the necessary optimizations to enhance your results.
Take advantage of a 3-day free trial at Reportei and closely discover the details of the Search Console report and other available integrations!
