Would you like to be able to verify how Google is rating your website and identify positioning issues? There is a tool that can help you with this! It's called Google Search Console, a free platform from the search engine that allows you to analyze many variables to achieve success in your SEO strategy. In this article, our experts Blas Giffuni and Camilo Ramírez give an introduction to this useful tool and explain to you in an easy way how to start using it and what you will find in it. Keep reading!
What is Google Search Console?
Search Console is a free service from Google, which shows you an analysis of how Google sees your website and also generates reports to identify indexing issues and appearance of it in search engine results. This way, you can evaluate and improve many variables related to the SEO of your website.
Things to keep in mind about Google Search Console:
Google Search Console is a free tool.
You can access it by typing 'Google Search Console' in the Google search engine, and it will likely appear in the top results. You can also go directly to Search.google.com.
First, you need to have a Google account, i.e., a Gmail email. You can also do it with a work or corporate account, as long as it is a Gmail one.
Keep in mind that to review the information of a website, you must have administrator permissions. So you can rest assured that not just anyone can access the relevant and sensitive information of your website, as a validation process is carried out to confirm that you are indeed the owner of the domain you want to monitor.
You can monitor several websites within Google Search Console. This is very common in the case of digital agencies that manage multiple clients. Since Search Console belongs to Google, it provides first-hand information directly from the source. Therefore, it is more reliable and accurate than many other applications.
How to verify your web property in Google Search Console?
Initially, to get access to all the information that Google Search Console offers, you must log in with your Gmail account.
The tool will ask you to verify that you are the owner of the website you want to monitor and will ask how you want to manage the website in Search Console. There are two options:
Domain: with this option, you include all versions of your domain; that is, all elements of the website and also its subdomains are monitored. Add it without the https protocol and without slashes.
URL prefix: in this case, you choose only to monitor a specific part or element of the domain. Therefore, only the URL you indicate is analyzed.
Then, you must choose the verification method you prefer or that suits you best.
Methods for verifying your web property in Google Search Console Google Search
Console has different verification methods, which vary in complexity level.
Here are some:
HTML file: you must upload an HTML file to the server network through a specific URL.
HTML tag: it involves inserting a line of code into the HTML source code of the main page of your site.
Google Analytics: if you already have a Google Analytics account that you can access and it is linked to your website through a tracking code, you can also connect it to your Google Search Console and thus verify your property. This is one of the simplest methods.
Google Tag Manager: if you have an account in Tag Manager, you can also verify the ownership of your domain by associating it with Google Search Console, as long as there is already a Google Tag Manager snippet on your homepage.
Hosting: copy the code from Google Search Console, access the DNS records of your domain, and paste the code into the TXT records of your hosting (the provider through which you rent your domain).
What type of information do you find in Google Search Console?
Performance reports: with this report, you can find out how many people have viewed your website and clicked on it in Google search, in which queries it has been shown, and the position it has occupied.
The data offered in this report includes clicks, impressions, CTR, and the position of your site.
Page indexing report: it shows the indexing status of all pages of your website and explains the reasons why they may or may not have been indexed. We recommend that you regularly check this report to detect crawling issues on your website.
Page experience report: with this report, you can discover what percentage of the URLs of your website offer a good experience to users, evaluating issues such as speed and usability.
Another report is that of website improvement opportunities and technical flaws to correct.
Filters in Google Search Console
Above the initial report or first overview of Search Console, you will see a downward triangle that will allow you to filter and compare the different types of metrics and reports available and thus enrich the analyses.
In conclusion:
Google Search Console is a useful and extremely important tool for all people and businesses that want to implement an SEO strategy for their website and improve their positioning in search engines. It is worth exploring the tool and learning how to use it to get the most out of it!
We invite you to continue reading our blog to learn more about search engine positioning.
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