Every job has its own tools. This law does not apply only to jobs and jobs that are done in the real world, and not in the virtual world. In the digital space, everything has its own tools. For example, 3D design tools are design software. Although digital marketing follows the principles and rules of traditional marketing, its tools are digital and in the Internet space.
The story of site SEO is a little different. SEO for Google is done with the principles and rules specified by Google and with the tools provided by Google to SEO experts. This article intends to comprehensively introduce the most important SEO tool – Google Search Console – and answer important questions about it.
But before introducing the tool, we must first explain a little about the site’s SEO. If your website has the features that Google defines and is important to, and specifies that the user will find the best and most authentic content on your site, it will place your site on the first page of search results.
Site SEO is a collection of principles and tips that help your site reach the first page. Have information on your own site or know what problems your site has from Google’s point of view; what should you do
This is where Google tools such as Google Search Console come to your aid.
Table of Contents
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.
So Search Console is a service that Google has provided to those who deal with the site and it’s SEO. Search console is not software. Search Console provides you with various data and information (in the form of reports) about your site. To use Search Console, you must have a website and know how to work with Search Console and use its reports and data.
What does Google Search Console do?
Search Console either tells you something about your website or gives you a tool to tell Google something.
Google Search Console:
- It confirms that Google has seen your site and indexed your pages (actually crawled your site), you can also ask him to index a page or content;
- It tells you what websites have linked to your site;
- Reports the errors and problems of your site (including spam pages, problems with the mobile version of the site, etc.);
- Google search traffic data (how many times your site appeared in search results? How many people entered your website? And…) Provides you.
Who should use Google Search Console?
Google has given the most complete answer to this question:
Anyone with a website! From generalist to specialist, from newbie to advanced, Search Console can help you.
But if we want to explain a little more, it can be said that Search Console is a tool for the following businesses:
- Online Business Owners and Store Websites: When you own a website, you need to know everything about it. You don’t have to be an expert or a site designer, you can evaluate the SEO status of your online store from the search console reports.
- SEO experts and digital marketers: Search Console reports are the basis of site SEO evaluation. Also, search console data and reports are the basis for decision making by marketers.
- Web developers and webmasters: Search Console alerts and finds bugs (even threats, security issues, and malware). This makes the work of those who are responsible for maintaining the performance and security of the site very, very easy.
How to work with search console?
Working with Search Console may seem a bit complicated, but it’s not. Everything is categorized and easy to use. All you need to get started is a website and a Gmail account. Next, the method of using this tool will be taught step by step.
First step: register the site in the search console
After you log in to Search Console with your Gmail account, the first thing you see in the left menu is Add Property. When you click on it, you have two choices to introduce your site (Property) to Google: URL prefix or Domain.
If you register the domain, subdomains and blogs will also be registered. If you want to register 2 separate websites you must use URL. After this, it is time to confirm that you are the owner of the website. There are several methods for this (verification) that you can choose. The result of all these methods is the same: Google makes sure that the person who accesses the statistics and information of the website through the search console is the owner of it.
Second step: register the sitemap in the search console
In the left menu and in the Index category, select the second option which is sitemap and put the address of the sitemap file in it.
Step three: View search console reports
- Overview: All search console information about your website, which you can see separately in the left menu, will be displayed to you at once. You can see the full version of the report by opening any report. Overview reports include:
- The Performance report that shows the overall status of the site in Google and is very, very important for SEO experts.
- Coverage report, which shows the number of valid and indexed pages, as well as invalid, unindexed and error pages.
- Experience report in which the performance status, site speed and quality of the mobile version of the site are displayed.
- Enhancements report that helps the SEO expert to use tools to improve the performance of the site and its pages. For example, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a tool that helps website pages to load faster on mobile and slow internet speeds.
- Security & Manual Actions: The fifth category in the left menu is dedicated to reports about the site’s security status (Security issues) and manual action. If your website violates Google’s guidelines in the content of some of its pages, Google will not show that page to the user in the search results and will inform you in this section (Manual action).
- Links: Which websites have linked to which pages of your site and with what words (Link texts)? How many internal links are there on your site? The answers to these questions are placed in the very valuable reports of this category of Search Console. This report is very useful for SEO expert and website internal and external link building program.
Fourth step: using reports and fixing faults and errors
At this stage, the SEO expert or webmaster should use the search console reports to fix the flaws and errors. To fix some problems and errors, there are tools in the search console, and the rest of the errors (which may be related to the server, hosting, plugins or site codes) must be fixed by the programmer or site designer.
URL inspection
One of the very useful tools in the search console, which SEOs are very interested in, is URL inspection. If you want to introduce a new page or content to Google, the best way is to use this tool. Click on the third option in the left menu, enter the address of the desired page in the box at the top of the page, and then click request indexing. If the page has no problems and is indexed, everything is green.
Removals
If for any reason you want Google to temporarily not show a page in search results, you can use this tool. Maybe the page content isn’t quite ready or there’s an error that you need time to fix. Google will not display that page for 180 days. This tool can be used in another way.
If you permanently delete a page or photo (for any reason) from your site, but that page or photo is still displayed in Google search results; With this tool, you ask Google to delete it forever and not show it anymore.
Google Search Console and Google Webmaster Tools
The previous name of Google Search Console was Google Webmaster Tools. Therefore, these two names refer to one thing, not 2 different Google tools. It was in 2015 that Google changed Webmaster Tools and it was called Google Search Console. On the one hand, Google Search Console allows the webmaster to constantly monitor the website and the performance of all its components and pages, and on the other hand, it makes it easy to troubleshoot the website and its versions.
(The webmaster is the person who is responsible for maintaining and ensuring that all the components of the site work properly. The webmaster must have extensive knowledge of programming and site design. The webmaster is responsible for fixing the problems and defects of the site.)
Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics
But the two are definitely different from each other. Google search console, which was determined what it does and what benefits it has. Google Analytics is a service from Google to analyze website users. Analytics data and information are more useful for digital marketers.
The difference between these two services is that Google Analytics reports to you the information and behavior of users who visit your site (for example, did the user enter your site with a mobile phone or a laptop? Searched for you on Google or entered from a link on another website. Has your site been visited? Which pages and contents of yours have they seen? And…) But the search console information about your website and how Google sees it.