To contextualise, Google Analytics is a platform that tracks and records all the activity on a website while a user is interacting with it. Search Console is a system which tracks all the behaviour on Google in relation to your website and the webpages indexed within Google. It gives a look into how a user finds your website and what they are searching for to do so.
It contains a plethora of insight into the user, their intent and relevance in terms of what Google views your webpages to be about. Ultimately the goal for an SEO, is to closely align a website’s objective with the user’s intent and SC helps us achieve this.
Google Search Console is not only for SEO use, there is an abundance of information available that different disciplines can find useful. Let’s explore some of the ways in which Google Search Console can be used to extract useful information for PPC, content, development, brand exposure and SEO.
Google crawls websites, gathering information for indexing and ranking purposes, and categorises issues it finds, then offering the information up to the webmaster to address.
Mobile Trouble Shooting - From a mobile perspective, a section called “Mobile usability” can be found, which indicates pages Google found in their crawl that could use improvements to make the webpages more user friendly. Issues like text being too small, or buttons and links that are not easy to press and pages which have elements that are cut off in the viewport of the device are all identified. This allows for far easier identification of pages which need to be looked into for improvements and fixes.
Error Fixes - Within “Crawl errors” Google categorises all the issues found on the website. Determining pages that are causing server errors or pointing out pages that have broken links on them. This is great for developers as well as SEOs, who work together to keep a website clean and of high quality, which is seen favourable by Google.
The table below is an example of how the tool can be used to determine when the issue was picked up first, to when last it was found in a crawl. There is also a structured data tool, and an HTML improvements section. These are used for identifying pages Google determines to have errors in code that needs to be looked into.
Google offers up this data free of charge and automatically, we do not have to do anything to get it, except verify the website with Search Console. This information is invaluable to a developer or webmaster.
As I have mentioned, Search Console is important to SEOs. Not only do we use it to determine issues and errors on a website needing fixing, Search Console is also used to determine how Google crawls a website, when it does that, for how long and what URLs along with various other areas to analyse. This is all important information for SEO to control what is on Google.
Search Analytics - Search Console shows what search queries are leading users to a website. This gives a good look into the terms Google has determined relevant for a website. The general information about the search queries are clicks, impressions, average position, and click through rate. Search Analytics is where the search query data is housed.
From an analysis perspective, there are various ways to look at this information. Here are two examples of ways to approach the analysis of this data.
PPC Specialists often do not look at Search Console, although I am unsure why due to the value it can add. Google gathers a lot of keywords which are seen to be relevant to a webpage. These are all search queries that have queued in a page of a website in the search results, all the way up to or past 400th position. A user does not have to click on the page for it to appear in the search analytics section. Often there are search queries that are relevant for a page, but do not have a good natural ranking to generate clicks and traffic. These are prime pickings for a PPC Specialist to bid on to generate traffic. The benefits of these keywords;
Linking Search Console with Adwords - A big advantage to search console is that it can be linked with Adwords. Once linked, a “Paid and Organic Report” within Adwords can be generated. This report shows three things:
This information could be used to adjust bidding and/or maximise share of voice within the SERPs between organic and paid listings. It also helps determine which keywords should be bid on or not as sometimes a paid ad cannibalises traffic from organic results. This is important to balance, as you would not want to pay for traffic you could otherwise get for free.
It is often hard to measure or gain insight into how a campaign has had an effect on users coming to a website. Traditionally it is difficult to determine the effect of TV, Radio or Outdoor advertising. By using Search Console, marketers can see if the behaviour of users leading to the website has been affected.
For instance, if an outdoor campaign or TV ad was run, within Search Analytics you will be able to see if there was an uplift in branded terms or campaign specific search terms leading to the website. This can prove valuable as we usually go to Google to search for something we have seen before.
If there is no uplift in branded terms when a campaign is running, the question has to be asked, was the campaign effective or not? This opens up additional areas for analysis and garnering insights into the campaign messaging and how effective it was or was not.
Search Console plays a role in the content writers life too. When writing blog posts with a particular objective such as generating traffic for a specific topic, once the blog post is indexed it will start generating impressions for relevant terms found on that page. Content writers will then be able to determine if their content has been effective or not.
The tool can further determine pages which are not relevant or have thin content through finding pages which do not generate traffic and have the wrong search queries leading to them. This information can be used to fix content on websites, to be more geared to the users needs and the company’s business objectives.
There is something in Google Search Console for everyone to use, if you take the time to look. The elements mentioned in the article are merely a drop in the ocean, as to the power and functionality that can be extracted from Search Console.
I urge everyone who might gain insight from Search Console to use it. It is one of the most powerful tools Google makes available to us to use, as it shows us information of what is happening within the SERPs. Even if you are not in SEO, do yourself the favour and get access to Search Console and see what insights you can gather to enhance the work you put out, be it as a developer, PPC specialist, marketer or content writer.