031: How to Use Google Search Console to Improve SEO: A Beginner's Guide

In this episode, Jules White delves into the importance of Google Search Console, a crucial yet often overlooked tool for website success. She explains how it can provide valuable insights into your site’s performance on Google, helping you drive more traffic and optimise for SEO. Jules also breaks down the difference between Google Search Console and Google Analytics, offering practical advice on how to use these tools together.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding Google Search Console: Learn how this tool helps Google see and index your website, and why it’s an essential first step for improving your SEO.
• Google Analytics vs Google Search Console: Discover the key differences between the two and why you should start with Google Search Console if you're a beginner to SEO and understanding your website data.
• Understanding Google Search Data: Jules discusses the importance of tracking impressions, clicks, and search positions to gain insights into how your website is performing on Google.
  Identifying and Addressing Issues: Learn how Google Search Console can help you spot potential errors and indexing problems that might be affecting your site's visibility in search results.

If you're looking to improve your website's traffic and SEO, this episode is a must-listen!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Google Analytics & Google Search Console Course – Step-by-step guide to setting up and using Google Search Console, ideal for beginners.
• Book a Power Hour – Get one-on-one help from Jules to fix your Google Search Console setup or troubleshoot errors.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for more valuable tips on improving your website's performance and SEO!

Chapters

• 0:37 Flooding in the Village
• 1:08 Introduction to Google Search Console
• 1:50 How Google Search Works
• 2:45 Google Search Console vs Google Analytics
• 4:12 Setting Up Google Search Console
• 4:50 Using Google Search Console Insights
• 7:28 Optimizing Your Website with Google Search Console
• 15:14 Technical Aspects of Google Search Console
• 20:20 Final Thoughts & Recommendations

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Morning!  Happy Friday.  I hope you can't hear dogs barking in the background. It's not my dog, she's off at doggy daycare enjoying herself. But there's dogs barking in the background. Um, hopefully you can't hear that.

Flooding in the Village

So, this week has been mad. The, the, the The village is famous again because we've had our bridge is,  completely underwater.

It's like a new lake as you go out of our village. So Sunday night was an absolute nightmare because there were all three routes out of the village were flooded, loads of houses got flooded. It was such a shame.  So, yeah, it's been raining overnight again.  They've pumped something like two Olympic size swimming pools of water out of the  new lake in the road.

, Already this week, but I'm guessing some of that will have gone back in. It's a, yeah, it's a real, real nightmare.

Introduction to Google Search Console

But anyway, , I'm here with you and I'm going to talk today about a tool that I use pretty much every day in my business. And it's something that I think is massively undervalued. People don't realize how helpful it can be. But it's one of the first things that I recommend if you're trying to achieve website success.

You're trying to get more traffic to your website. It's one of the first tools that I recommend setting up for your business, and it can help you make decisions about how you can improve your website, how you can get started with getting more traffic to your site, how you can improve your site, help you, helps you understand what Google sees and understands about your website.

So I'm going to talk about the fantastic Google Search Console.

How Google Search Works

And before we dive in with that  I just want to do a little recap on how search works and because I think it helps to understand that when we're thinking about how Google sees our website, it helps to understand that.  So Google's little robots go out and they crawl through the whole of the internet . So if you think about Google's index like a big library, a big catalogue, Google needs to decide where each of those pages, those webpages, should go. in relation to what people are actually searching for. So the robots go out and they crawl through your website and they come to certain decisions based on what's there, based on what's on your site, based on what you've told Google about your website.

They will then decide  where your content kind of fits into the, to the world of search essentially.  And what this tool will do is help you to make some decisions  based on data. So you can understand and make some informed decisions about your website and about the, , , , changes that you need to make to it really.

Google Search Console vs Google Analytics

So , , there's another tool that people often Have heard about and start using and get completely overwhelmed with it, and then it kind of all gets lumped into one    which is  Google Analytics and Google Analytics and Google Search Console do work well together. They go well together I definitely recommend having both of them But if you're just starting to think about how you can get more traffic to your site Google Search Console is actually the one I recommend setting up first  Because it's the one that helps you know,  how Google sees your site.

It's also a lot less confusing to use, so it's a lot easier for beginners to use. And  the difference between the two, Google Analytics will tell you where people have come to your site from, so whether they've come in from Facebook or from  any other socials   or  from an email campaign or  from organic search.

So they've come in from Google or Bing or Yahoo or whatever, and it will tell you what they've done when they're actually on your site. So it will tell you the pages that they've come into, , how long they've spent on those pages, those kinds of things.  Whereas Google Search Console kind of tells you everything that people do up to the point where they go through to your website.

So it, it's just in relation to Google Search, but it tells you. How people have actually found you on Google search. So it's tells you  what people have typed into Google that has then led them into finding your website on a search results page. It can help you find and fix issues as well. So you can  make sure that there's nothing preventing your website from actually showing up on Google.

Setting Up Google Search Console

So it's actually really simple to set it up.  There's  several   ways that you can actually set up Google. Google Search Console. Essentially,  you set up an account, and then you have to verify your website.

So  Google is basically making sure that you are the person that owns that website. So not anybody can just go in and claim a site. It's some things you have to do in the back end. And as I say, it's really simple to do. I've actually got an online course that teaches you how to do this.

So it teaches you how to set up Google Search Console, how to use it, and what bits to focus on, what bits you can ignore. And, , how to  do that in a bite sized way. So I will link to that in the show notes. So you can  check that out if you want to. 

Using Google Search Console Insights

But once you've actually got it set up, it will tell you about your performance on Google.

So it will tell you how you're doing. It will give you insights on what's happening. I would definitely recommend looking at it on both desktop and mobile. There's a mobile, it's not an app, but you could, you go in the mobile version of the website. It's very easy to use.  I use both to be honest with you.

So I use this literally every day in my business and I use both. I use it sometimes on my mobile and sometimes on desktop. So I definitely recommend looking at both and see which one you prefer.  When you  first come into it, once you've got information gathering, because it does take a little while, once you set it up, you won't see data straight away, but you'll start to see information gathering. 

And there's something called the insights panel.  This is the bit that looks very visual. It looks very user friendly, and it is very easy to understand. And it sort of gamifies it a little bit.

So they have, , like badges you can get and it tells you when you hit certain milestones so like when you get your first 10 clicks from Google when you get your first 100 clicks from Google and it will tell it will tell you how you're doing you can see the dates so you can see if what you're doing is actually making a difference and that you're progressively getting more and more clicks from Google each month and that's what we're going for really is trying to actually hit those milestones you So that you are actually increasing your traffic and the right traffic coming through from Google.

So  it does that and it tells you it within that insights panel, it tells you your most popular content. So it'll tell you in the last 28 days, what's done well on Google, what has had the most visits, , what basically has been the content that people have enjoyed looking at.

And what,  is working on your site.  It will also then show your new content as well. And I find this is really helpful because if you've published a new article and you're not seeing that appearing in that new content section within the Insights in Google Search Console, then that's a really good indication that something's not right.

So either you're not promoting it enough, or you haven't set it up in a way that Google can actually understand it, or you've not submitted it to Google, or like Google hasn't actually crawled through that content yet. So that's quite a good way to sort of kind of keep an eye on that. I was looking at my account yesterday and I saw that I've been releasing blog posts recently,  really regularly every week.

Releasing the podcast as a blog post as well and I wasn't seeing that there. So that's something I need to go into my account and just see what's going on. And it probably is, I've not promoted it enough.  So I need to go in and actually do some promotion on those blog posts. Make sure that Google has crawled through and indexed them.

And it does take time to do that. I'm going to talk a little bit about how you can actually  try and speed that process up of actually Google understanding your content and putting it in the index. But it does take time. So that doesn't always happen.

Optimising Your Website with Google Search Console

When you first release that content, but if you're releasing content regularly, Then you should always see something in that new content piece within the insights panel It will also tell you in that panel as well  Whether people have linked to your website as well, and I like to see that.

If you can see that you're getting new links coming in, new people linking to your content from elsewhere on the internet, then that's a really positive sign that what you're doing is working. People are finding your content helpful and that, you know, your SEO efforts are actually making a difference.

So, , It's definitely, as I say, it's a lot easier to use than Google Analytics, and Google Analytics is a separate thing. You can connect them together, so you can actually see your Google Search Console. You can see some of your results from there in your Google Analytics, which I find that I don't really use it that way.

I still use Google Search Console a lot more than Google Analytics, because it's just, you can go in and literally just very quickly look at the information and see what's happening with it, really.  Once you've got, , that information gathering, there's different reports that you can see. So you can go in and you can see the number of impressions.

And impressions are the number of times that Google has displayed your website in a search result. So the number of times that Google has associated your website with a particular search term and has displayed it in search results. And that could be displayed in any position. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you're showing up in Even the top 10 or any, you know, necessarily anywhere near that.

It might be that you're on page 98 , but you're still getting that impression, which is good.   , that feels like,  a hard mountain to climb, but it means that Google is starting to associate your website with the right terms. And then you've got something you can work on.

If it's an important term that you're not showing up for, you can look at how you can then improve that. So you'd see that, you'd see impressions, you'd see the number of clicks as well. And this is the one that we really love to look at is how many clicks you're actually getting through from Google and which terms are actually bringing people through.

So you can see  how many people are clicking through to your website and what they've typed into Google that has actually made them then get to that point of clicking through to your website. You can see the average position as well, which I find this one's really helpful.

So, in terms of making decisions about where to focus your efforts first, because if you can see that you're showing up for a particular search term, like if there's a really important term for your business and you're showing up in positions, let's say between position nine and position 20 in the search results pages, so that's kind of teetering on the bottom of page one.

If you're in position sort of 11 to 20, then that means that you're  You've then gone on to page two, and that's a big difference between the amount  of search results that will get people clicking through to them if you're on page two versus page one. I was talking about this with somebody yesterday, and we were saying about the fact that I do click through to page two because I find that there's so much, you know, there's so much junk now on page one often where there's so many sponsored results and so much different stuff going on on page one that I do tend to click through to page two, but the majority of people don't.

The majority of people will click on those top three results and certainly on the ones on page one, you're going to, you're going to have a lot more chance of  getting more people clicking through to your  website . So  you can then look  at filtering those results. The filters are really easy to use as well.

So you can put on a filter that shows you just  say from position nine upwards, and then you can then filter the results by the number of impressions. So , you can see which pages are getting lots and lots of impressions on Google. So Google is, is bringing you up often in search results.

And you're in those positions which maybe with just a little bit of work on those pages and a little bit more optimisation you could maybe then take yourself up , those rankings quite easily. And those are the kind of the pages to focus on first really. As long as those search terms are actually relevant for that page and are relevant for that business.

Because that's something that you will often see in Google Search Console is that , you'll get really random things coming up there. So Google is associating your website with a really random term.  And, , I've seen that in my own account. Like one of the things that my site shows up for regularly is FEA Create versus Kajabi.

, so the only reference to Kajabi on my site is, is one of my preferred platforms. But other than that, I don't actually have an article FEA Create versus Kajabi. I probably should create one because if Google is already associating me with that and people are searching for that, which makes sense that that is a logical.

search that people would do, then I probably should create some content around that. , but those kind of things. You can get things showing up , where Google , knows there's a related term that's, that may be on your site, or you might have just mentioned it somewhere in the body, somewhere in your site, and there's not a lot of other content out there around that.

, but you can see that. Essentially, you can see in those results, the things that Google is, associating with your website. And it can be really, really helpful. helpful to then see the things that Google isn't associating with your website. So if there are really important terms, you feel like, Oh yeah, why am I not talking about that?

Or why does Google not understand that about my website and about my business? Then that's where you can also focus. So having a look at, okay, what are the main things that I should be showing up for? And , why am I not showing up for anywhere for that? And it could be that it's too competitive.

So there's just way too much content out about that.  But usually  If you're talking about these things enough and in the right places, then you should be able to show up somewhere. Because especially if it's new content, then Google wants to see new, good quality content. And so that's, that's where you can sort of really focus on that.

So it helps you to make those decisions on where to start. , I would say to , as well as focusing  on those positions, so those just below. The first few results positions, I would also look at the clicks, so which pages and which search terms are actually bringing clicks through to your website, because that's what matters.

People actually coming through and not just you showing up in search results, we want those clicks through to our website. So look at that.  Look at if there's anything where you're showing up in lots of  impressions, but you're not getting many clicks, especially if you are showing up in those higher positions where you would expect to be getting clicks through to your website.

That would then suggest that maybe.  we need to look at your page descriptions or your page title and make it more enticing and more compelling for people to actually click through to your website. So  that's something that  if you're seeing that, if you're seeing that you're getting lots of impressions, but, and you're in a good position, but not many clicks, I would start thinking about that really.

 What you can also do is you can filter by pages. . So if you can see a list of all the search terms and where, where you are, what positions you're in, how many impressions you're getting for those, you can actually click on that search term and it will tell you what pages are being associated with that search term.

This can also be a good way to make sure that your pages aren't competing against each other. So if you have  two pages that are showing up for a key search term and they're both getting, , a similar amount of.   impressions and even clicks for those  search terms,  I would think about maybe whether you can  consolidate those pages or whether one page needs to be more specific in terms of what you're actually going after with that keyword.

Because it's essentially Google is a bit confused then, it's confused on which page of your website is the most important to deliver that search result that people want to see. I love it when I get messages from my clients saying that they've been into their Google Search Console and they can see their results going up, they can see their graphs going up, they can see that it's actually making a difference.

The work that we're doing on their SEO and the work they're doing making content is actually making a difference. And that's why I like it, because you can go in and you can just see what's happening. You can see if things are making a difference. And as I say, it's a free tool to use. So it's something that I definitely would recommend setting up.

What you can also do in here. 

Technical Aspects and Troubleshooting

which is slightly more technical, is you can submit your pages to Google here as well. So Google Search Console is the place where you will also see errors. So , if there are things that are preventing you from actually showing up in search results, and there are things that are actually stopping Google from being able to understand your site, or even completely blocking your site, or you might go in and you might find that your site isn't indexed at all.

And that has happened quite a few times where people have come and they've sort of said, yeah, my website's not. doing what I want it to do. I don't, I never seem to show up and  it's just not quite right. And then we go in and we find that , they haven't got a site map , all their site is set to no index, which is basically telling Google don't index these pages.

So that's,  obviously really important to go through and do that and make sure that there's nothing technical that is preventing Google from actually indexing your pages.  You can go in and look at the reports and it will tell you which pages are indexed.   Which pages Google has discovered and crawled through, like read all the information on that page, and then put you in the index.

It will tell you also which pages haven't been indexed. So you can then work out whether they are important pages, because there will always be pages that are not. not indexed and that's fine because there will be things that you don't actually don't want google to index so you'll always see lots of really random pages  and that's okay  so say if you have a category page or if you've got blogs with different categories you might see different versions of that That are actually showing up in your search console as not indexed, but that's fine.

It's just making sure that those most important pages, the pages that you do want to show up in Google, are are actually there, and that's something you can do in there. And then you can also go in and investigate why those pages aren't showing up. And that sounds a bit technical, but it actually really isn't.

It's sometimes just a case of being able to go in and see, yep, my homepage, my about page, my recent blog are in the index, and Google is actually showing them up, and people can find them essentially on Google.  , when you create a new piece of content, you can actually go in and , put the URL for that new piece of content. and submit a request for it to be added to the index.

So for me, when I create a new blog, I'll grab the URL for that blog. I'll go into my Google search console and there's a, there's a bar across the top that says, let me just check. I can't remember exactly what it says.  Inspect any URL. So essentially what that will let you do is go in and put any URL of your website in there and then it will tell you whether Google can find it, whether it's in the index already, whether you can submit a request for it to be added to the index.

And essentially what that does is it means that you don't have to wait for Google to come around and crawl through your whole website again.    before that gets added to the index .  So essentially what you do is you tell Google, yes,  this page should be in the index, please index it.

And it still can take time for that to happen. It doesn't mean that it's immediately going to happen, but it's, it's certainly worth doing that for any new content that you create,  make sure that it's in your sitemap. If you're not sure what a sitemap is, then it's basically.  like a table of contents for your website.

Most website builders will do this for you. Some will automatically add new pages. If you're using FEA Create and you're creating new web website pages, you need to manually add them into your sitemap  And this is something that often trips people up. So if you're using FBA Create, FG Funnels, anything else built with Go High Level, make sure that you are actually, when you create a new page, when you create a new blog posts, a new funnel, anything like that.

I think with blog posts, they've actually made it so it automatically goes into the sitemap, but there are still some issues with the blog builder. I'm still not using the blog builder. I still just build my blog pages out as webpages  because until they get a few issues sorted out and I just don't use the blog builder yet.

Hopefully it will be soon that they'll fix the issues and then I can actually be able to use the proper blog builder because it is a pain actually trying to build it out with normal web pages. But anyway, that's a, that's a bit of a tangent that I'm going off on. So essentially what you need to do is make sure that whatever web platform you're using, make sure  or getting a sitemap.

And what that does is you essentially then just get a little address. If you're not sure how to do it for your platform, then just Google it. It's really simple. And it sounds really complicated, it's actually not. And once you've submitted your sitemap into Google Search Console, you never have to do that again.

It should, that will just automatically be there. But what you need to do is make sure those new pages that you're adding into your sitemap are actually Then index, which is where you will go in and inspect that URL. So that's, really important. One of the first things I'll always check if I'm working with a new client on their Google search console and we're trying to work out what's happening with their site, we'll always go in and make sure there is a site map, make sure it's been read recently, that there's no problems with, with Google actually being able to read that site map.

And essentially what it does is let's Google understand about the structure of your website and the pages that are there and the pages that should be put in the index as well.  I would recommend  using Google Search Console, , I use it nearly every day in my business, but I recommend probably looking at it at least once a month.

You'll get emails regularly and Google tells you how you're doing. Normally when you hit a new milestone, Google will tell you how you're doing, or you'll get an email once a month telling you this is how you've done this month.  And you often will also get emails telling you there's problems.  A lot of those you can ignore, but I would always just make sure that when you get those, those things saying that there's problems, just make sure that you do actually just have a little click on them and make sure it's not one of your most important pages is suddenly saying that Google can't read it or whatever.

And because if there, if it is, it could then suggest there's a problem with your website. So yeah, have a look once a month. Just look at how your performance is doing. Look at, make sure that, you know, your, your content is actually, the new content is showing up in there, is being indexed. Have a look at what your most popular content has been.

Have a look at what new links are coming through to your website. And just keep an eye on it. And I think it's one of, another one of those things where actually, Always just measuring against our own data is a good way to go because  you could benchmark yourself against , how other people are doing, but actually just keeping an eye on what's happening with your own site is something that's a really good first step for just seeing how, how it's going, seeing whether what you're doing is actually making a difference really.

I'm all about creating your own content first and  I think this is the way to make sure that you are actually making the most of that content. I've got a couple other episodes about that. other podcast episodes around Making sure that we do create content for our own domain first episode two is all about how not you don't have to keep feeding the algorithm and Creating your own content is important and episode 12 is also about why creating content for your own domain first is critical for marketing success.

So I'd recommend having a listen to those episodes  if you haven't listened to them already. It's something that , I do feel really passionate about, about the fact that whenever we're thinking about content, whenever we're creating content,  create it for our own website first, and then use that to then push that out to other places like social media, mails even, just , if you've got some content that it comes back to, it essentially allows your website to become that hub of content , for your business.

And it's a place you can send people, if you get any frequently asked questions,  once you've been asked a question more than once or twice, then if you've got some content on your website around that, you can then send people there and it just makes your life a lot easier really.

And you're building something that's sustainable for the future. So SEO. Results  snowball over time, so the more you do, the more quality content that you create for your website, the better.  And it's something that will pay dividends in the future. So I think having Google Search Console just helps you to make the most of that content, helps Google understand and to use that content in searches.

And ultimately it's all about driving and more of the right kind of traffic through to your website . 

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

In   conclusion, I would say definitely think about using Google. If you haven't got Google Search Console set up, go and get it set up. Check out my course if you want to find out how to do that in easy bite sized pieces.

It's great even for beginners. Even if you're thinking, well, I'm not thinking about doing too much around my website and my SEO right now. If you set it up, it can be gathering data in the background. And it's one of those things where your future self will thank you for doing that. Because even if you don't want to do anything with it right now, just having that information there, when you are ready to then do something and to look at this more seriously, then you'll, you'll be very grateful that you've done that.

you're putting in hard work, making this content, let's make the most of it. Like, even if that content, I'm not just talking about blog posts, I'm talking about your sales pages, your homepage, your about page, making sure that Google understands and can read and index those pages is really, really important.

You're creating this fantastic content. Let's make sure that Google knows what you're all about and understands your business.  So I will link to my course,  in the show notes, if you want some one to one help with  either help with setting it up or with understanding it, with understanding your metrics, making sure that everything is.

as it should be, making sure that your site is all indexed in Google as it should be, then book a Power Hour with me and we can just focus on your Google Search Console and making sure that Google actually understands what's happening with your site, look for any errors, try and fix any that we can.

I've done that in Power Hours before with clients where they've had a nightmare, they've not been able to get their site to show up in Google. We've literally gone in, made a few changes to Google Search Console and to the back end of the website, and it's managed to fix that straight away.  

Google Search Console It's highly recommended for me.

I think it's something that is a very undervalued tool   it's one of those things that actually people, quite often haven't even heard of it as I say. So hopefully this has been helpful in just in terms of understanding the value of it and how you can use it and not to be scared of it because it is a, Google tool.

So they're not always set up to be the most user friendly, but actually this is one that is, it's, it's, it's simple to use. And I think  it will be helpful in your business essentially. 

So have a great weekend. I'm not sure if I'm going to be swimming this weekend. I don't know. It's one thing actually going and cold swimming, but then getting dressed into cold, damp, wet clothes is not always this much fun.

So I hope I will. It usually has to be pretty bad for me to not swim, and I always enjoy it.  I don't ever regret swimming. So hopefully, keep your fingers crossed, it might stop raining today, and we'll escape all these floods and everything. Have a lovely weekend, and I'll see you soon. Bye!