Hey there, Benjamin from Loves Data here. Welcome back! In this video, I'm going to
show you how you can use Google Search Console to begin optimizing your website. We will look at how
you can add your website, I will run through some of the most important reports in Search Console,
and how you can identify insights that will help you improve your existing content
and write new content to attract new visitors and prospects to your website.
Okay, so Google Search Console lets you access a range of reports about how your website preforms
in the organic search results on Google. In order to access these reports, you will need to verify
that you are the owner of the website. This is to protect your data, so that other people,
like your competitors, can't just access your reports too. So let's start by taking a look at
how you can verify your website... I've already logged in to Google Search Console and we can
see I've already verified my personal site. Let's select this on the top left corner...
And let's choose 'Add Property'... When you add your website to Google Search Console you
can choose to add it as a 'Domain Property' or a 'URL Prefix Property'. In most cases,
I recommend adding and verifying your website as a domain property. This will mean you add
your top-level domain to Google Search Console and then any subdomains will automatically be included
in your reports. The URL prefix option lets you verify a specific URL. So if you verify 'https',
'www', 'dot' and then your domain. Only that domain will be available in Google Search Console.
You won't be able to report on any other subdomains or if people can access your website
without the 'www', 'dot'. So I'm going to enter my top-level domain using the 'Domain' option...
And then I'm going to click 'Continue'... To verify that we own the domain we need access
to the domain through our domain name provider. We need to add a DNS record to our domain. If
you don't have access to create new records, then I recommend finding out who does have access for
your domain. Otherwise, if you can't get access, you will need to verify your domain using the 'URL
Prefix' option we saw in the previous step. Okay, we can see this tells us we need to add a TXT
record. So let's copy this... For my website, I'm using Cloudflare to look after the DNS records,
so let's head to Cloudflare... I've already logged into Cloudflare and selected 'DNS'...
So all we need to do is click 'Add Record'... Select 'TXT' as the type...
Enter '@'... Paste the value we copied from Google Search Console... And click 'Save'...
If you're not using Cloudflare, then the steps to add the record will probably be
a little different, so I recommend searching the support articles for your domain name provider.
Okay, we've now added the record to our domain,
so let's head back to Google Search Console... Now let's click 'Verify'...
We've now successfully verified our website in Google Search Console! Let's go to the property...
We can see we will need to wait before we will see data in the reports,
so let's navigate to the property I already verified...
The menu on the left lets you travel between the different reports for your property.
The 'Performance' report lets you view the search queries people have entered to find your website,
along with the pages that have been shown in the search results... We will come back to this report
in a moment. The 'URL Inspection' option lets you enter the URL for a page on your website
to see if the page is being indexed by Google or not. Let's enter a URL to take a look...
We can see page has been indexed and we can also access additional details about the page...
And let's enter another URL...
We can see this page isn't indexed by Google... So we can use the 'Test Live URL' button to check
that the page is available... And if it is, you can request to have the page indexed...
The 'Coverage' report shows you details for all of the pages on your website... This includes any
errors that Google has identified... Pages with warnings... Pages that have been indexed without
any issues... And pages that have been excluded... You can select these options at the top to
update the visualization, and more importantly, view the individual details below the graph...
You can then select one of the rows to view granular details...
The 'Sitemaps' option lets you view sitemaps Google has found...
For my personal site, I don't have a sitemap, but you will see your sitemaps listed here,
along with the number of URLs contained in the sitemap and any potential issues. And you also
have the option of submitting a sitemap at the top... The 'Removals' option lets you enter
URLs you would like to be removed from Google's index... The 'Page Experience' report tells you if
Google thinks you are providing a good experience to users on your website. This looks at things
like loading speed, mobile usability and security for the pages on your website. 'Core Web Vitals'
provides more details about any issues relating to the loading speed of your website. It basically
looks at how quickly your pages and content load for people. Pages will be listed as 'Poor', 'Needs
Improvement', or 'Good'. And 'Mobile Usability' tells you if Google has identified any issues
relating to how people experience your website on mobile devices. Apart from these reports,
you might also see additional reports in Google Search Console. For example, if you have AMP,
or Accelerated Mobile Pages, then you will see details for those pages on your website too.
Now that we've what the different reports provide in Google Search Console, let's look at how we can
use the 'Performance' report to begin optimizing our content. I need to flag that my personal
site is a one-page site, that I really haven't optimized, so I recommend opening your own Google
Search Console reports and following along with your own data. Okay, let's select 'Performance'...
We can see the report is showing us the number of clicks and impressions for our website. Let's also
select 'Average Cclick Through Rate' and 'Average Position' at the top... This will add these
additional metrics to the report... You will see the search queries people have used to find your
website listed below the graph. And the search queries with the most clicks will be listed first.
You can now spend time identifying search queries that are relevant to your business that have a
lower than expected Click Through Rate (CTR). I recommend starting with ones that have a CTR that
is less than 6%. You can add a filter to help you pin-point these pages quickly. To do this,
click the filter icon on the top right corner of the table...
Then select 'CTR'... And change 'Equals' to 'Smaller Than'... And enter '6'... This
will give you a list of search queries that you can then use to optimize your content.
Also keep an eye out for search queries that have a strong CTR, but aren't showing an average
position in the top 10 organic results. There might be opportunities to optimize for these
search queries too. Now I want you to click on a search query that you want to optimize...
And then select the 'Pages' tab... This will show you the page (or pages) that you can optimize
on your website. I recommend creating a list of around five pages you want to optimize.
This will give you a good starting point, and you can then repeat this process to identify
additional pages that you can improve on your website. You can also look at your landing pages.
To do this, let's remove the search query at the top... And let's check that the 'Pages' tab
is selected below the graph... Now we can look for pages that have a lower Click Through Rate.
I recommend looking for landing pages that have a Click Through Rate below 4%. Again, you can add a
filter to narrow the results in your report. I also recommend making a note of any pages that
have a higher than expected CTR. Analyzing these pages might help you pinpoint content
that is already working well for your audience, so you can apply similar strategies to your other
content. Once you have a list of around five pages that you feel could be improved, you
should open those pages on your website and come up with ideas to improve the content. This could
include improving the page titles, descriptions, and of course, improving the content on the page,
images, graphics and more. For example, you might have identified a page that isn't performing well
and you discover it doesn't have much content. So you could then spend time expanding the
content that is included on the page. You might even add an additional image or other material
to provide more valuable information to your audience. You're now identifying opportunities
to improve your content and website using insights from Google Search Console.
Once you've made a change, you can then check back in a month or so to see if you've improved
your results. A great way to do this, is to select the date range at the top of the report and click
the 'Compare' tab. This will let you compare two date ranges. Are you using Google Search Console
to improve your content? I'd love to know! And if you found this video helpful, then please like it,
so I know to make more videos like this. I'll see you in the next video!