Google Search Console: How to use the tool to take advantage of its results

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It's almost impossible that you've never used a Google tool in your company's day-to-day. The resources it offers, both paid and free, help from creating a free blog to team management, there are excellent tools that contribute to Digital Marketing .

And in the middle of this ocean of options is Google Search Console. For more shareholder database than ten years, this tool has been the right arm of marketing professionals looking for more information about access, searches and SEO .

In this article, you will understand everything about this tool and how to use it to achieve better results in your Digital Marketing strategy.

In this article, you will see:

What is Google Search Console
How Google Search Console Works
How to install and configure it
What are the basic principles of Google Search Console?
What are the Google Search Console tools?
What metrics should be tracked monthly in the Search Console?
How to optimize technical SEO with Google Search Console
Bonus: Advanced strategies with the Search Console
What is Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a platform from the search giant designed to help website managers monitor the visibility of their pages in the search engine.

In other words, it is Google's tool to help you ensure that your site is found, indexed and appears in the searches of your potential customers.

Previously, Search Console was called Webmaster Tools. The change was made to give the impression that the tool has a broader reach for users and not just professional technicians.

How Google Search Console Works
To really understand how Google Search Console works, you need to dig deeper into the tool. After all, Search Console is like a beautiful, complete toolbox, packed with options and features.

To summarize, Search Console has tools and reports that help you find issues on your website and resolve them quickly so the right people find it.

In practice, these improvements may include:

faster page loading speed ;
full understanding of where your traffic is coming from;
rapid identification and correction of defects in HTML code;
significant improvement in backlink strategy ;
boosting internal linking;
important SEO changes, to improve the positioning of your pages .
Now that you've understood the summary version, let's get to the denser content, starting with installation and configuration.

How to install and configure it
If you do a search, you will find many manuals showing the different ways to install Google Search Console. We will be more practical and show you only one way: the easiest one.

1) Log in with your Gmail account. If you don't have one yet, you can quickly create one.

Google Search Console
2) Open the menu and select +Add Property .

Google Search Console
3) Choose between Domain and URL Prefix and enter your website address in the desired option following the installation instructions (if you don't know which to choose, click on More Information to clarify your doubts).

Google Search Console
4) Follow the instructions to confirm ownership. If you chose the Domain option in the previous step, you will need to make an alteration to the website's DNS. If you opted for URL Prefix , we recommend selecting the HTML Tag option for easier and faster verification .

5) After performing the above procedure on your website, go back to Search Console and press the Verify button .

google search console
6) Done! Your property has been confirmed and everything is working.

What are the basic principles of Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a basic set of tools that inform the user:

If there are problems with the indexing of the pages by Google.
If the website was hacked or has malware.
If there is a need to improve the tags.
How is the traffic, in general?
With that in mind, we can understand some basic principles about using this important tool, which go beyond any design or functionality changes.

Ultimately, Search Console, like all Google products, is never immune to updates, which is good news for all of us. Here are some basic principles about the tool.

Be regular to have clarity
Knowing exactly how your website is indexed and crawled by Google, as well as seeing other relevant information about page performance, is very important.

This gives clarity to your SEO efforts and allows you to see whether the strategy you have outlined is on the right track, with a real chance of working or not.

Monitoring the information available in Search Console is essential to achieve clarity and take advantage of it to achieve better results.

Don't delay to act
Google Search Console reports are very useful and show you in a practical way what issues your website is facing, as well as what changes you need to make.

But what good is having all that information about what's wrong if you don't act quickly to correct the flaws?

It may seem too obvious, but the first thing you should do after finding relevant data on the platform is to work on it. Either to solve a problem or replicate what works in other projects.

Don't get too attached to current tools
We've already touched on this topic, but it's worth saying a little more about it: it's not worth getting too attached to specific tools, as they may be discontinued in a while.

The most important thing is to always understand how the platform works at its core and make good use of it. Search Console serves to measure and balance the health of your website in front of Google.

The more you and your team act according to the platform's guidance, the greater the chances of achieving good SEO results and, consequently, business.

What are the Google Search Console tools?
There are a number of Search Console tools and reports that help you maintain the integrity of your website and optimize it for more traffic, engagement, and conversions.

These tools and reports can be divided into two groups: current and legacy. Below, take a look at what these resources are and how they are organized.

Current
These are tools and reports updated according to the most recent version of Google Search Console. These include:

Overview page : Displays a summary of the website's condition in Search Console, primarily performance, coverage, and security issues.
Performance Report : See how many people clicked on your website when searching on Google, what queries brought up your website, and what average position it ranks in.
URL Inspection Tool : You just need to enter an active URL of your website and see the detailed information that Search Console gives you.
Coverage Report : Shows which pages on your website are or may be indexed and the reasons for each result.
Sitemaps Report : Shows which sitemaps were submitted, statistics, and possible errors about each.
Mobile Usability Report : This report shows an evaluation of the usability of each indexed page on mobile devices.
AMP Report : Shows which AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) pages on your website can or cannot be indexed.
Advanced Search Status Report : Reveals which advanced searches Google can and cannot crawl. This report only appears if Google identifies certain types of content on your website.
Manual Actions Report – This is where you can see all the manual actions on your website.
Security Issues Report : Shows you potential flaws that threaten the security of your website and how to fix them.
Link Report : Through this tool you can discover which websites link to you, with which texts, and even check the status of your internal links.
AMP Test Tool – Allows you to test the validity of an AMP page.
Mobile-Friendly Test Tool – This resource evaluates whether a page is mobile-friendly.
Change of address : If you migrate your website to another domain, you must use this tool to notify Google.
Legacies
Legacy tools and reports are those that the Search Console team is still working on to figure out ways to create a permanent replacement. Check out what they are:

URL Removal Tool : Used to temporarily remove a URL from search results. For a permanent effect, other resources are required.
Crawl Statistics : This is used to track how often Google crawls your website. If it is high, you can request a reduction in crawling.
Test robots.txt : Test the syntax of your robots.txt file and confirm that it has no issues.
URL Parameters Tool : This tool allows you to tell Google any parameters in the URL that change the content of your website. For example, the country parameter changes the language.
International targeting : By using a specific tag (hreflang) it is possible to ensure proper Google tracking for each language or country in which it is available.
Google Analytics Association : Tool used to import analytics data from Search Console to Google Analytics .
Data Highlighter Tool : Websites that have many pages with model data (such as event calendars and bus routes) but cannot use structured data should use this tool to help Google extract the information.
Messages Report : This is where you find messages sent to your properties (your websites).
Crawl Rate Settings – Where you can reduce the crawl rate of your website by Google, in case it is overloaded.
Email preferences : This is where you choose whether you want to receive informational or alert emails from Search Console regarding your properties.
Web tools : Various tools that can be useful for your website.
What metrics should be tracked monthly in the Search Console?
The Search Console performance tab displays 4 metrics that are quite relevant and should be considered on a monthly basis.

Even if you also add them to Google Analytics, you can analyze the Search Console to find out how your organic strategy is doing. After all, the tool does not analyze clicks or impressions from Google Ads.

The metrics are:

Impressions : The number of times any URL on your website appeared in Google search results. This is used to see how much your content is being considered in Google's selection for user searches.
Clicks : The number of clicks your site's URLs received when they appeared in Google search results. This can reveal how much people are interested in the titles of the content you publish.
CTR : Click Through Rate is a ratio between the two previous metrics. It allows you to know the percentage of impressions generated by a click.
Position : This is the average ranking of your website's URLs in search results. If one URL appears as the 3rd result and another appears as the 7th, your average position will be 5th, (3+7)/2.
But, at the end of the day, why do you need to track these basic metrics? Precisely because they provide important information about your digital strategy as a whole.

Few impressions may mean that Google does not consider your website relevant and/or trustworthy. Few clicks show that your titles and meta descriptions need to be improved. And the higher your average position, it means that Google attributes more quality to your content.

Furthermore, these metrics show how Google Search Console is a relatively easy tool to use, even for beginner users, although it also contains more advanced resources.

One of its greatest merits is that it detects problems automatically. Even if you cannot solve them, the diagnosis is already done and it allows you to generate a free spreadsheet to give to a webmaster who can solve the problem for you.

How to optimize technical SEO with Google Search Console
Google Search Console is welcoming to new users, but it's also very useful for those who are proficient in technical SEO . In fact, they may be the ones who benefit the most from the tool.

But the question is: how to use Search Console to optimize technical SEO and achieve higher search engine rankings?

Ironically, the first way to do that is by executing the basics with quality and care. Google itself recommends that advanced users read and apply the information in the beginner's guide, as it contains a lot of useful information to get the most out of the platform.

Also, be sure to read the webmaster guidelines provided by Search Console. There you'll find plenty of technical and strategic guidance, including the appropriate number of links per page, instructions on specific tags, and practices to follow and avoid.

Bonus: Advanced strategies with the Search Console
We also want to give you tips for creating an advanced strategy in the tool. We are not going to detail them all, but we will show you the way that will help you explore new options to reach and attract the people you are looking for.

It is worth structuring your website following these practices to appear in searches:

Featured passages : A section of content is highlighted on the search page, above the link. This stimulates the reader's curiosity and encourages a click.
Refined Search : Refined Search has visual effects, such as images, rating stars, or other graphical elements. It may appear as a single result or part of a carousel.
Discover : Not part of search, but can make your page appear in Google's Site Display list for Android users.
Information panel : Panel with text, links and images on a certain topic. It can display data such as dates, names, logos, website, etc.