11 Top Tips; Google Search Console

Talk about an overload of information!!

To look at Google Search Google with no purpose, I can tell you from personal experience is just a chaotic and overwhelming experience! One that leaves you confused, concerned, and just really a bit stressed and at a loss.

Those are pretty much all of the things that you don’t want to be right? Well, the somewhat random assortment of search reports are useful and free to website owners. 

They provide valuable insights and don’t worry, you are not alone, not all of them provide critical insights – I call those the easy on the eye reports, pretty to look at, but no real insights.

Google Search console is reliable if you are motivated enough and especially if you are on a tight budget, this tool will get you well on your way on the long journey that is SEO.

Today I am going to briefly discuss the 11 more useful Google Search Console features and show you a little ‘How To Do’, your welcome.

1. Can Google See You

Indexing issues!! If Google can’t see you then neither can your target audience. Simple as that. Google Search Console to the rescue. 

Check if Google can see all of the pages that you would like to appear in the SERP’S.

When Google is blocked from a page and this can happen accidentally, those pages are essentially just sitting ducks, bringing you no traffic whatsoever.

The Fixing of Indexing Issues

• Index> Coverage and check the status of your webpage:

Red and Yellow: Pay attention to your error messages.

• Errors

Errors are generally displayed because they either do not exist or that have restricted access. 

Example Below: Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ and Server error (5xx).

Each error is clickable and you can click on each of the errors and get a list of the URL’s that are affected. 

• Common Errors

Submitted URL cannot be indexed

This is when you have requested indexing, but Google cannot access the page. The first thing to check in this instance would be if you have requested this on purpose. 

If you don’t want it indexed, just recall your request for index, most likely the reason for this is that the URL has ended up in your sitemap, just take it out.

If you do want your page indexed, you must stop blocking Google from doing its job. Of course, there are an array of ways to go about this. No matter the reason, Google any of the following and allas, you will be met with a simple resolution. 

You’ll be happy, your website will be happy and Google will be happy. Win, win, win situation.

• Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ 
• Submitted URL not found (404) 
• Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404.
• Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt 
• Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401) 
• Submitted URL returned 403

Once you have removed the block, submit it to be indexed using your URL inspection tool.

• Just a little warning that Google is becoming increasingly concerned.

Google will always let you know if they have indexed something that they are not sure was meant to be. 

In terms of SEO, warnings can sometimes be more alarming than errors – what if Google is showing something that is not supposed to be shown, generally shown as Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt .

How to fix this issue?

• Blocking it, then add the noindex tag to the page or remove the page : Index > Removals > New request.

Allocation of resources for technical Audits on your website, including your website’s design will show issues such as broken images, links, videos, duplicate content, meta descriptions, localisation problems and so many more – and is well worth the time and effort.

2. Optimize user experience

Web Design and functionality. This is an area that I believe personally is overlooked by a lot of businesses. Why? I don’t think that the majority of people know that you have under 8 seconds before you lose a visitor to a poor user experience.

Poor user experience (UX) = Lower levels of engagement and higher bounce rates. 

Now, here’s the catch – there’s always a catch. If you think, oh I’ve just lost a few customers, then you would be wrong. When user activity declines, Google has been known to decide that based on this that your pages are less relevant – You start dropping, not good!

Again Google Search Console to the rescue, with UX reports galore, so we can get to the root of the problem and fix it before we enter the dreaded decline stage.

• Core Web Vitals report

Judging a page in its loading stage based on:

• Speed
• Interactivity
• Visual stability 

The benchmark? What are they looking for? Under 2.5 seconds is Googles standard to become interactive to the user. Now, the average speed is 18.8, Google aren’t saying it has to be 2.5, they are just pretty much saying you have to be faster than your competitors.

Once you open the Core Web Vitals report, the tool will show you how many of your pages need changes and will bring a list of issues (if there are any) to your attention.

How to Check:

• Click the issue> click on the URL >  PageSpeed Insights for a more detailed report and thankfully – SOLUTIONS.

• Mobile Usability report

The mobile usability report shows you the issues that mobile users experience while on your website.

The errors described, so you can understand what it is that you need to fix, and how.

Top Tip: Each issue is clickable for more insights and there is always helpful information on how to go about each issue.

Once all of the errors are fixed, click the Validate fix button to remove the error from the report.

3. Are Your Keywords Underperforming

Your keywords are tracked in Google Search Console. If a keyword is on the verge of occupying big volumes of traffic, then a little optimisation on these pages will go a long way in boosting your traffic.

On the other hand, you can also find underperforming keywords:

• Performance > Search results, enable Total impressions and Average position and scroll down to the table of queries.

Filter the underperforming keywords: 

• Filter > position > greater than, and set the cutoff point depending on your strategy (Impressions/Rank etc)

If a keyword is currently in position 5, but gets 20 impressions per month, there is little to be gained from moving this keyword to a better position. Click filter > impressions > greater than to eliminate keywords with very low impression count.

When you have your list of underperforming keywords you can then click a certain query and select Pages to see the pages that rank for the query.

4. Find Underperforming Snippets

Google Search Console is a useful tool to figure out if some of your snippets have a lower Click Through Rate than is normal for their position.

Each position in search results averages a certain percentage of clicks. For example, if you rank in position one, your CTR is likely to be around 30%. If it’s significantly below 30%, then there might be something wrong with your snippet.

How To Do It:

• Performance > Search results, enable Average CTR, Average position, and Total impressions. 

Filter impressions to eliminate low-quantity keywords, and sort the table by Position in ascending order:

Pay attention to the CTR’s that seem too low and investigate. Type the underperforming query into Google. There are a few reasons that could result in a low click through rate: 

• SERP’s might contain a lot of ads or featured snippets that take most of the users’ attention and clicks 
• Your snippet is not as catchy as those of your competitors.

As always, there are so many tools to help with this, find out what your competitors are doing and do that.

5. Do Your Pages Need An Update?

Google Search Console’s Search results feature shows you what pages need a bit of a revamp.

Now don’t worry about a page being flagged for this, it is 100% natural for this to happen, just a little bit of TLC and you’ll be back.

How To Do It:

• Date > Compare > Compare last 6 months to previous period