Congratulations on setting up your Google Search Console, and welcome to the wonderful world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization, you didn’t think we were done with the acronyms did you?). Your Search Console is not only a great place for you to monitor the traffic to your site from Google, but also gives you some insight into exactly how clients are finding you - insight you can use to boost your SEO and reach more of your ideal clients. So log into your search console and let’s take a look around!

Let’s start at the Overview tab. 

Overview

At the top of the page you should see your Performance graph. If you have just set up your Search Console for the first time you probably won’t see much, if any, information. Don’t worry, this is completely normal! It takes time for Google to index your pages and for your new website to start appearing in searches. As your site begins to rank you’ll see your console go from this

to this

This graph is mapping the total clicks your website has received from search queries, these are the people finding you online through organic search results. 

Below the Performance graph is your Indexing chart. This chart tracks the pages of your website as Google indexes your pages. When a page is indexed it means that Google has crawled the page and stored it in its search index, the repository Google looks to whenever you type in a query. If you notice a few pages aren’t indexed don’t panic! There are a number of reasons Google might not be including a page in their search results, some of which you can help with. But we’ll get to that later, let’s look at the fun stuff first.

Performance 

On the left hand column you will find the Performance tab, open that sucker up! The first thing you’ll see is a more in-depth Performance graph. This graph doesn’t only track your total clicks, but your impressions, click through rate, and even average search position. By clicking on the different parameters you can see how they interact over time.

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Below the Performance graph you will see a breakdown of your site's performance by usage. You can find out where in the world your traffic is coming from, what pages are the most visited, what devices are most used, and, most importantly, the top queries through which potential clients have been finding your site. 

These queries are your secret weapon.

By knowing what your visitors are looking for you can begin to tailor the content of your site to attract more of your ideal clients. For example, if clients are searching for a local wedding venue and your site is appearing in the results, it’s time to push some venue content. You know what information your clients are looking for - so give it to them! Be the answer they need. Dust off your blog and write up a list like ‘Top 10 Wedding Venues,’ or put together a guide to a local venue. It’s a small thing that can have a huge impact on where you appear in a search, and how often clients click through to your website. 

I know, I know, blog’s are time consuming, but I promise it’s worth it. If you need a hand check out our article on blog writing here. 

URL Inspection

Your sitemap does a lot of heavy lifting, but there might be a few more things you want to tell Google about. Your packages, for instance (side note, if your website was created with the Website Creator this won’t apply to you, we already took care of it 🙂)

Because your packages are technically not part of your website their URL’s are not included in your sitemap, meaning Google won’t know to track them. What we need to do is to let Google know that these pages are a part of your website as well.

Go to one of your live packages, as in the page your client would see, and copy the URL. Next paste it into the inspection bar at the top of your Google Search Console and hit enter. Google will check its records to see if the page has already been indexed. If the page has not been indexed, which it probably hasn’t, your Search Console will let you know that the URL is not on Google. Now click the Request Indexing button and let Google work its magic. 

Rinse and repeat with as many packages as you like, the more the better. And if you hit the daily submission cap don’t worry. Google only allows so many pages to be manually indexed by a user in a day, so take a break and get back at it tomorrow!

 Pages

Here you can keep an eye on which pages Google has indexed, and which pages it hasn’t. There are a variety of reasons Google might have not indexed a page, some of which will require action to rectify. If you click on any of the rows in the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ table it will open up a page with a more detailed view of the issue, including exactly which pages are being impacted. 

To learn more about the issue, Google provides an in-depth guide you can find by clicking on the ‘Learn More’ link at the top of the page. Once you’ve fixed an issue, you can hit the ‘Validate Fix’ button and Google will take another look at the page to see if it can now be added to the index. If you’re ever unsure what to do you can always send us an email at websites@bookfocal.com. We’re always here for you :)

Sitemaps

You’re probably familiar with this tab after setting up your Google Search Console, but it never hurts to do a quick review. This is where you can add in your sitemap and tell Google all about your wonderful website. A sitemap contains all the URLs associated with your site, and automatically updates as pages are added and removed. Set it and forget it!

Removals

This is another handy one. Remember the pages tab, did you see a row titled ‘Not found (404)?’ Well we’re going to take care of those right now, along with any other old URLs still floating around in cyberspace. 

A 404 error simply means that the URL no longer points anywhere, it’s like the internet’s return to sender. Google has these pages in its index but doesn’t yet know that your content has moved. We’re going to bring Google up to speed, but first let’s find out exactly what it knows. 

In Google, search “site:yourdomain.com” to bring up all the URLs currently associated with your website. The number of results will vary, from one or two for a new domain to pages for a more established domain. We want to go through your results one by one, looking for any that return a 404 page. Every time a URL brings you to a 404 page, copy the address and head back into your Search Console. In your Removials tab select ‘New Request’ and paste in the copied URL. Submit your request and Google will begin the process of analyzing the URL and removing it from internet searches. 

And that’s your Search Console in a nutshell! An extremely useful tool that can help you set yourself apart from the competition. For more information, or if you’re just feeling chatty, drop us a line!

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