Google has a number of platforms that provide a wealth of information on the search performance of your website. Google Analytics and Google Search Console, formerly Google Webmaster Tools, can tell you a lot about your website’s visitors, their duration of visit, and the way they navigate it.
If you are new to the SEO world, all of the metrics and information it offers can be overwhelming. In this article, I will cut through the Google Search Console (GSC) and tell you which seven metrics you can use to manage your SEO on a daily basis.
What is Google Search Console (also known as Google Search Console)?
GSC, a Google service, is free and lets website owners, administrators, content managers, SEO strategists, and developers see how their site performs in Google Search Results. This information can be used to make changes to the site, making it more Google-friendly and user-friendly and performing better in search.
Submitting sitemaps
Sitemaps show Google bots the structure of your website. You can view the Compass Digital Strategy sitemap to see how it looks.
It may not look as good as your website (and it’s certainly not as beautiful), but it makes it easy for Google to understand the structure of your site. It lets the bots know which pages are linked from other pages, what the page hierarchy is, how much metadata there is, and even when your site gets updated.
It’s not necessary to upload your sitemap every time you create a new page or blog post. Google’s search engine is so advanced that most sites will still perform well even if they don’t have a sitemap. It can improve the speed at which Google understands and reads your website, helping you to rank higher.
Visible pages
The search bots will only display these pages in the search results. In WordPress and most other web-building platforms, you can select whether or not you want the bots to find a specific page, video, or image on your website. It’s called “page indexing.” You list the pages that you want Google to rank. You wouldn’t index any pages that you don’t wish to be found. For example, your 404 error page.
Consider the user’s journey when deciding whether or not to index a particular page. Would it be the right impression if this was the very first page that someone visited on your website when they didn’t know anything about your company? Are they going to find it confusing or helpful? If the answer is the latter, ensure that the page has not been indexed.
Pages that should be visible don’t appear
Pages are not always indexed correctly. Google might decide that a particular page isn’t valuable enough to include in its search results. Google will not index a page if there is not enough content or if the content has been duplicated. It would be best if you made changes to the page. It may be necessary to add more content, but make sure that it is still relevant. You can also rewrite paragraphs copied from another page on your website.
After you have made your changes, request that GSC reindexes the page:
Selecting the ‘URL Inspection’ option from the left-hand menu.
Pasting the URL that you want to be indexed.
Select ‘REQUEST INCENSING’ at the bottom-right corner of the box.
Page position
The organic search results are not static. Page rankings on Google’s first or second page can change from month to month. GSC’s average page position metric gives you an idea of where your content or site will be found on Google.
Calculating the average position can be complex. The middle place metric takes into account not only top-to-bottom results but also sidebars, rich results, and snippets. Has been the subject of some debate as to how accurate it is in calculating average position. It’s useful to have a quick overview of the performance of a page or site over time, especially if you are testing.
Clicks
Clicks mean exactly what you think they do. The Number of clicks on a URL from Google’s organic search results. This metric will tell you which URL and, therefore, which keywords are driving organic traffic to your site.
Number of Impressions
A URL that appears in search results organically rather than as a result of a paid advertisement is called an impression. This is what we call “being seen”; however, the person does not need to scroll all the way down to see the URL in the search results to get an impression. They don’t even have to click on the link. This metric is included in the click-through rate, which I will discuss shortly.
A high number of URL impressions is a positive sign. Google will include your page in its search results if it likes the content on your site. It’s only helpful if those impressions can be converted into clicks.
Click-through rate
It would be best if you looked at both the impressions and click-through rate (CTR) simultaneously. The first half of the battle is to appear on search engine results pages. The other half is getting people to click on the URL, which is why both metrics work well together.
Calculating the click-through rate is an important step.
CTR = Number of clicks/number of impressions multiplied by 100.
CTR can be used to determine the effectiveness of your page titles and descriptions.
The more appealing these text pieces are, the higher the likelihood that someone will click. A page that has a lot of impressions but a high CTR is likely to be a good candidate for Google. If GSC reports that the page has a lot of images but a low CTR, you might need to change your meta title and description.
It is also true that the opposite is true. It is worth optimizing a page that has a high CTR but low impressions.
GSC: How to get started
It’s also free (all you need is a Google account), and once you sign up, you can register your site in 10-15 minutes. You can also register your website in just 10-15 minutes with GSC (all you need to do is have a Google Account).
