As defined by Hubspot, Google Search Console is a free platform for anyone with a website to monitor how Google views their site and to optimize its organic presence.
This dynamic service essentially allows you, as a website owner, to get a sneak peek behind the search engine curtain. With GSC, you can understand exactly how visitors are finding and interacting with your site, with valuable metrics and information collected by Google all in one convenient dashboard.
In today’s quality-content-driven internet era, most of us understand the importance of search engine rankings and being on the coveted first page.
However, the awesome thing about search engine optimization is that, unlike your business’s competitors or quarterly profits, your rankings are something you can control. By understanding SEO-related metrics and where your site stands, you can directly shape the reach and success of your website just by fine-tuning your content in ways that Google likes. With the help of Google Search Console data, you got this!
Simply sign into your Google account, go to Google Webmaster Tools, and select “add a property”.
The information that GSC provides about your site is pretty confidential, so it’s important to verify that you are the site’s owner. Here are some different ways to verify ownership.
It’s important to let GSC know what your preferred domain is. Otherwise, it could treat URLs that are displayed differently but link to the same site – seahawkmedia.com vs. www.seahawkmedia.com, for example – as two completely different sites, making the data it provides incomplete.
There are two different role-types in GSC. The first is an owner, or a person who has total control and can access all the functionalities of GSC, as well as add/remove other users. The second is a user, a person who can see all data and possibly take some actions but cannot add/remove other users. It is important to be selective here and only provide access to those members who absolutely need it.
This step is optional, but is helpful in ensuring all of your site’s pages can be found by Google. You should especially consider doing so if your site is new, very large, or has pages with few inbound links. The GSC site maps tool can be helpful here.
Navigating your site’s Google Search Console data should be super simple, as long as you understand the following terms.
Here are three ways to make the most out of the data provided by Google Search Console.
No matter how brilliant your website is, optimizing its search engine performance starts with having access to the right data.
Google Search Console is an immensely helpful and versatile tool that truly takes the guesswork out of SEO, helping you bring your site right to the top.
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