Google Search Console (GSC) offers several tools to assist businesses in their SEO, such as luxe URL inspections, manual action alerts and core web vitals data.
Website owners with a verification token can gain access to GSC and its reports, as well as use its Change of Address tool to inform Google of site migrations.
Sitemaps
Google Search Console (GSC) is an invaluable resource that offers essential data on your site and pages that make up it. GSC is used by multiple teams involved with digital marketing – web developers for troubleshooting technical issues and SEO specialists for monitoring changes in keyword rankings – while serving as an ideal place for submitting sitemaps and requesting reindexing requests.
XML sitemaps are files containing all of the URLs on your website that you want search engines to index and crawl, providing search engines with more opportunities to index pages that would otherwise remain undetected by them. While not necessary for every website, sitemaps are highly recommended – GSC allows direct submission, keeping everything in sync between each submission.
Once you have connected the All in One SEO plugin to your GSC account, navigate to the “Sitemaps” tab and click “Add a New Sitemap”. Fill in your XML sitemap file’s address into the box provided before clicking Submit. It can take some time before Google fully indexes your site but this sitemap submission process will speed this up considerably.
GSC makes it easy to monitor the indexing status of your site with its “Indexed” tab, showing which pages have been scanned and processed successfully by Google. If there is anything amiss with the list of indexed pages, “Why aren’t these pages indexed?” is available as an exploration tool into why your website may not be receiving proper indexing by Google.
Though sitemaps aren’t required for all websites, it can be an essential way to increase indexing efficiency by giving Googlebot and other web crawlers an easier time discovering your important pages. Furthermore, creating one provides Google with a roadmap of your site’s most crucial pages for easier indexing.
Mobile Usability
As more users rely on mobile devices to browse the web, optimizing websites for mobile use has become essential. An experience-rich mobile site that ranks higher in mobile search results may draw in additional traffic; using Google Search Console webmasters can monitor mobile usability issues on their websites to enhance user satisfaction and boost their rankings.
Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability report highlights issues that may compromise the mobile performance of websites, such as non-responsive designs, blocked resources, and small font sizes. These problems can severely erode user experiences on mobile devices and result in higher bounce rates and decreased engagement on websites. Analyzing these reports allows website owners to identify areas for improvement and implement targeted fixes on their sites.
One issue that can significantly hinder mobile usability is when clickable elements are too close together, leading to users accidentally tapping on the wrong link or button. To address this problem, website owners should ensure their pages have adequate padding between elements in order to help users more accurately locate their targets and click accurately on them.
Another mobile usability issue can arise when content extends past the width of a mobile device, leading to horizontal scrolling and decreasing overall user experience on mobile devices. To resolve this problem, website owners should ensure their pages use responsive design and limit how far their content extends past mobile screens.
Website owners should regularly examine the Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console in order to detect errors that could interfere with mobile performance, such as using font sizes too small for mobile devices that make reading content difficult and can lead to higher bounce rates and poor user experiences. To address this problem, website owners can increase visibility by making use of larger font sizes so their content is easily legible on mobile devices.
Website owners should make sure their pages have viewport tags set to “device-width”, so the page displays correctly on all devices. In order to do this successfully.
Indexation
Google’s search engine uses indexing technology to evaluate every page and file on a website, using this information to decide which pages appear in search results and which don’t. Unfortunately, however, indexing can sometimes prove troublesome for websites; to gain clarity into how Google evaluates content from your website’s Pages Indexing report is the best way.
The Page Indexing report lists all URLs indexed by Google over time – typically one year ago – and can help webmasters quickly identify duplicate content, redirect loops and any other issues which might be negatively affecting search performance.
Page Indexing data may seem complex at first, but it’s essential to remember there are multiple possible indexing issues. Below is a breakdown of what each status means:
Valid – When Google indexes a page, this means it has been discovered, crawled and indexed successfully. Therefore it’s a good idea to regularly inspect this section for errors and ensure your critical URLs don’t fall outside the index inadvertently.
Duplicate Content – Google has identified multiple pages on your site which appear identical, potentially creating duplicated keyword rankings for those pages. To avoid duplicate content issues on your website, it is advisable to establish canonical versions for each page and link back to these from other pages on the same domain.
Error – This error indicates that Googlebot encountered difficulty indexing a page, potentially due to incorrect rewriting or noindex tags present on it. When this occurs, it is imperative to rectify the situation quickly by eliminating any noindex tags present and rectifying whatever issue existed prior to starting indexing again.
The Page Indexing report is an effective way of keeping an eye on your website’s content and making sure that Google indexes it all correctly. By reviewing it regularly, you can be assured that all of it ranks for all keywords that matter.
Keywords
Google Search Console is by far the premier tool for monitoring and analyzing SEO performance. This free resource offers invaluable information on how sites are performing organic searches (not direct or from ads).
Clicking an individual report will bring up a detailed breakdown of its relevant data, with options to sort and filter each metric so you have exactly the data necessary for improvement. Search Console also enables businesses to compare metrics over time in order to see how trends change over time.
Google Search Console’s Index Coverage report allows web owners to visualize how well their sites are covered by the Google search engine, helping them assess how many pages have been indexed as well as whether any crucial parts such as structured data, rich snippets or bread-crumbs have been left out. Furthermore, this report can reveal how long each page took to index as well as what percentage of the Google search engine covers their site.
This report can also display pages that have not been indexed for various reasons, such as being disallowed by a meta no-index tag, duplicate pages of existing indexed pages or canonicalization to another URL. As an SEO, knowing these areas requires attention is invaluable for prioritization purposes.
Businesses can leverage two key reports in order to improve their rankings on organic search: Link and Structured Data reports. These provide insights into your internal links, pages on your website that have been linked to, as well as which keywords may have been most frequently used as anchor text links. All of this data can help businesses improve the site rankings they achieve through organic search.
If there are multiple people managing your GSC property, it can be helpful to create different roles for each one. There are two roles – Owners and Users. An owner has complete access to a Search Console property; they can change settings, use tools, add or remove users as necessary, as well as set permission levels on users. A user has more limited rights; they can view data and take actions but cannot add or remove other users.