7 Reasons Why Google Search Console Is Key For Your Website

Google Search Console is still as valuable today as it was when first launched as Google Webmaster Tools, with the basic key wins also still as relevant today, so here are 7 ways to make it work for you.

There are very few things in life that are totally free and yet useful, but when it comes to the tools you need to succeed online, I am a true believer in Google Search Console, as being a definite tool of the trade when it comes to online marketing. Some will probably laugh at this statement, others will slam me for promoting a Google product, but, without the use of this platform you could be potentially missing out on key data that is impacting your efforts.

If you are trying to get ranked on Google, then to me, it makes perfect sense that you use the tools that they provide you to analyse your site and its metrics, and also learn from what they are telling you. Of course, you could wave your sceptical hat at the world and say that Google only give us this to collect data, but to be honest, what it gives me far outweighs what it might be taking from me, so I am keen to make sure all of my sites and my clients sites make the most of it.

For those that do not know, Google Search Console is a free service provided by Google that once connected to your site allows you to gather a wealth of information, from backlinks through to site errors, allowing you, the webmaster, to spot errors, issues, opportunities and weaknesses and deal with them, and to put it quite simply, it gives you some of the key data you need to push forward with your website and online marketing pursuits.

Sitemaps

Many, many years ago webmasters believed that by submitting a sitemap to the search engines, you get your pages ranked and indexed really quickly. Whilst there is a lot of truth in the fact that sitemaps are important in the early days of a website, they are as important throughout your websites life and you should always make sure that your site has a sitemap in GWMT so that Google can find new pages quickly and also inform you about any errors with your pages that you might not know about. Sitemaps are in the basic terms, a way of telling the search engines about the pages and structure of your site, and letting them crawl it with more accessibility.

Rather than use Sitemaps as quick indexing myth factor, use them to help the search engine serve you and your website better.

Link Checking

The “links back to your site” function is far more important in the past two years due to the various Penguin penalties that Google have thrown into play. You should be monitoring your links and looking at any new links coming to back to your site, which can not only help to spot any issues, but allow you to see some solid links that you should be expanding upon. When it comes to the bad side of life, you can use this to help spot any negative SEO attacks (yes this does happen) and also to spot any links that you feel could potentially cause you long term issues, and then deal with them via the Disavow tool or get them removed. A decent function of this is the ability to download your latest links in a CVS file, which you can then plough through to make sure that everything is in order and deal with any potential issues before they become problematic.

Crawl Errors

To get your site ranking and into the search engines, all of them use clever “bots” to come along, crawl your site and then get your pages ready for inclusion into the index. From time to time they come across errors and can even fail to crawl, which can cause big issues for your site when it comes to appearing in search results. Also, having a load of issues is an onsite optimisation barrier, so by using all of the information you can find dead pages, server errors and faulty redirects and take care of them, which is only going to make the onsite health far better and therefore give you a better chance of getting some decent and stable rankings.

Search Information (Queries)

Google Analytics used to be able to show you the search terms that people came to your site via, but in the days on increased data protection (allegedly), Google now blocks most of this data being available and you get the not very informative (not provided), which is just a pain for any webmaster when it comes to seeing where the traffic is coming from in terms of search keywords. But, in search console there is a search queries section that tells your average position, impressions and clicks for the search terms people are finding you by, which can be a useful tool to have. I will admit I have never found this massively accurate and can sometimes lag behind the truth, but, as an overall guide, it is well worth checking this out to get some kind of a view on your search performance.

Security

A recent feature, but an important one at that, is the option to keep an eye on your sites health in terms of any hacks or exploits that might be damaging not only your reputation but also the computers of the many people visiting you. Many malware issues go unnoticed until you see warnings from Google in the search results or from Anti-Virus programs, but this feature will tell you if you have any issues and also the pages affected, giving you the ability and opportunity to go and sort it before it becomes a major issue, in terms of your reputation and potentially your rankings in the search engines.

Google Penalties

As much as it pains me to say this, search console has become most widely recognised as the way to find out if you have caused Google to give you a massive manual spanking, in terms of penalties for a whole range of issues. If you have been given a manual penalty, which is a penalty assigned to you by the Google Spam Team, then you will get a message about it here and hopefully as they become more transparent, will give you enough information to deal with it. Secondly, and almost as important, it gives you the option to contact Google when you have fixed the issues, as if you do not have a penalty listed here, you cannot contact them to resolve the issue. It is vital to keep an eye on any messages you get from Google, which is why by having a search console account you can be on top of any issues and deal with them immediately.

Data Problems

Although structured data is probably a whole new article or even series, structured data mark ups are basically a way of telling the search engine bots more about your page and what the page is offering, in turn helping the search engines to understand your site better and therefore deliver better results and improved snippet information in the results. GWMT allows you to view any errors with your structured data and resolve them, which in an age of small percentages of getting things perfect to increase rankings, it is well worth keeping on top of and making sure that you are indeed making the most of data mark-ups and implementing them correctly.

Oh, and in case we didn’t mention it, Google Search Console is totally FREE and is simple and quick to install. In our opinion, working without the tool is a no go, as not only does it provide you with a wealth of initial information, but going forward provides an excellent reference to the state of your website’s health and also how Google sees it when it comes to indexing and ranking. It is crazy not to take advantage of something so useful, and yet still so many webmasters either fail to realise or refuse to realise just how important it is.