Marketing Psychology: 5 Tips to Win Hearts (+ Examples)
Marketing is all about human behavior, so it makes sense that having an understanding of psychology could improve the way we approach marketing initiatives....
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Google is the one search engine to rule them all. As such, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to help improve your site’s performance and visibility.
While numerous SEO tools exist online, Google Search Console is one of the most beneficial when used to its full potential.
Unsurprisingly, Google says anyone who has a website should be using GSC. Diving into basic and advanced GSC tactics can offer helpful insight into your SEO efforts.
Whether you’re unfamiliar with GSC or just want to make sure you’re taking full advantage, we’ve broken down all the details. Here’s how to properly use Google Search Console to improve your marketing plan.
Linking your Google Analytics account with your Search Console account allows you to get valuable keyword data back that is not provided by GA. (Image: Google)
As Google explains, GSC is a free service you can use to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google search results.
Some marketers and website owners only use GSC for checking vanity metrics. However, it can be leveraged for so much more.
Google Search Console features a handful of reports for tracking your site’s metrics:
In May 2022, Google announced it would also be releasing a new video page indexing report in the near future.
New to Google Search Console? Follow these steps to add your site to GSC and begin taking control of your SEO.
Setting up your GSC account correctly will provide the most accurate information, metrics, and reports about your business’s Google search performance.
Plus, it’ll allow you to make an informed decision for your next marketing move.
After you log in to Google Search Console, click “Add Property.” From there, copy and paste the URL for your homepage into the “Domain” or “URL prefix” field.
Use one of these five ways to verify your site:
Choosing the “URL prefix” option above tells GSC whether you prefer www or non-www domain versions of your site. This prevents Google from splitting the page views, backlinks, and engagements between the two.
It also gives you a hyper targeted view of just that preferred domain versus all versions including secure (http) and non secure (https).
Pro tip: If you want to track a subdomain, you have to set up a separate property for tracking altogether.
Linking your Google Analytics account with your Search Console account allows you to get valuable keyword data that isn’t provided by GA. (If you use GA4, you can now link GSC to this.)
In your GSC, click on “Security issues.” In most cases, there won’t be any security problems found on your site, but it never hurts to check. These issues could affect your site’s SEO if any are detected.
If you don’t already have one, you’ll first need to create a sitemap. This is “a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them,” as Google explains.
Once you have one, submit it to Google using the Search Console to paste your sitemap URL.
Google Search Console is regularly rolling out new updates and new features. (Image: Rawpixel)
Once you add your site to Google Search Console, you want to ensure you’re getting the most out of it. Follow these advanced tips to fully optimize your SEO strategy.
Google Search Console is regularly rolling out new updates and new features. A few of the most recent ones include:
While there are many benefits of using Google Search Console, the data and options can be overwhelming. Avoid making these three mistakes, and you’ll become a pro at this helpful SEO tool in no time.
There are three GSC role types: Owner, User, and Associate. Give careful consideration about who should have which permission level:
After signing up for GSC, it’ll be most beneficial if you can continually monitor your property for accuracy and issues. Using the reports created with GSC, you can track top-performing pages and those that could use improvement.
Not addressing crawl errors can damage your site’s rankings and overall usability. Moz goes more in-depth about fixing common crawl errors that can pop up on your GSC.
Pro tip: You can choose to receive email alerts when an unusual event or error occurs with your site.
We’re going to have to agree with the powers that be at Google: You should be using Google Search Console for your website.
As a free, easy-to-use tool, the service can help everyone from digital newbies to marketing pros boost their business in Google search results.
Understanding how to properly set up your site on Google Search Console and leverage all of its features will help you take your SEO plan to the next level.
This article has been updated and was originally published in May 2021.
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