How Google Search Console Can Help With Your SEO Strategy

There are plenty of paid tools that can help with your SEO strategy.

One of the most useful is free, and it comes from Google itself.

Google Search Console shows how Google sees your website. It tells you which searches bring people to your site, which pages Google has indexed, and what problems might be holding your pages back.

It used to be called Google Webmaster Tools. The tool has changed a lot since then, so this guide covers how it works today.

Setting Up Google Search Console

You need a Google account to get started.

Next, add your website as a property. There are two options:

• Domain property: covers every version of your site, including www, non-www, http and https. You verify it by adding a record to your domain’s DNS settings.
• URL-prefix property: covers one exact address, such as https://www.yoursite.com.au. You can verify it with an HTML tag, a file upload, Google Analytics or an SEO plugin such as Rank Math.

A domain property is usually the better choice, because it gives you the full picture in one place.

Once you are verified, you can add other people under Settings, then Users and permissions. This is useful if your web designer or SEO agency needs access.

Data starts to appear within a few days.

The Performance Report

This is the report most people use first. It shows how your site performs in Google search results.

You will see four main figures:

• Total clicks: how many times people clicked through to your site from Google.
• Total impressions: how many times your site appeared in search results.
• Average click-through rate (CTR): clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: where your pages appear on average. A lower number is better, so position 3 beats position 15.

You can break these figures down by search query, page, country and device. You can also compare two date ranges, which is a quick way to see whether a change to your site has helped.

Many business owners are surprised by what they find here. A page you wrote for one keyword may be showing up for something else entirely.

Look for pages with lots of impressions but few clicks. Improving the page title and meta description can often lift the click-through rate without any change in ranking.

URL Inspection Tool

Paste any address from your site into the search bar at the top of Search Console to inspect it.

The tool tells you whether the page is in Google’s index. If it is not, it explains why. You can also run a live test to see how Google renders the page right now.

When you publish a new page or make an important update, you can click Request indexing. Google will then put the page in its queue to be crawled. There is a daily limit, so save it for pages that matter.

This tool replaced the old “Fetch as Google” feature.

Page Indexing Report

The Pages report, found under Indexing, shows how many of your pages are in Google’s index and lists the reasons others are not.

Some common reasons are:

• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google has seen the page but chose not to include it. This often points to thin or duplicate content.
• Discovered, currently not indexed: Google knows the page exists but has not crawled it yet.
• Excluded by noindex tag: the page has been told to stay out of search results. Check this is intentional.
• Blocked by robots.txt: your robots.txt file is stopping Google from crawling the page.

Not every excluded page is a problem. Tag pages, thank-you pages and admin pages are often excluded on purpose. The aim is to make sure your important pages are indexed.

Sitemaps

An XML sitemap lists the pages you want Google to find. Most WordPress SEO plugins create one for you.

Submit your sitemap address in the Sitemaps report. Search Console will show when Google last read it and how many pages it found, along with any errors.

You only need to submit it once. Google checks it again on its own when your site changes.

Core Web Vitals

This report uses real visitor data from Chrome to show how your pages perform on mobile and desktop. It looks at three measures:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content loads. Aim for 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Aim for 200 milliseconds or less. INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) in 2024.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the layout jumps around while loading. Aim for 0.1 or less.

Pages are grouped as Good, Needs improvement or Poor.

A poor LCP score often comes from large images or slow hosting. A poor INP score usually points to heavy scripts or plugins. A poor CLS score is often caused by images or ads loading without set sizes.

Smaller sites may not have enough visitors for this report to show data. If so, run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights instead.

Other Useful Reports

• HTTPS: confirms your pages are served securely.
• Enhancements: shows any structured data Google has found, such as breadcrumbs, FAQs or product details, and flags errors.
• Links: lists the sites linking to you and your most linked pages.
• Manual actions and Security issues: tells you if Google has penalised your site or found malware. Both should say no issues detected.
• Crawl stats: found under Settings. It shows how often Google crawls your site and how quickly your server responds. Note that this is about crawling, not how fast your pages load for visitors.

What Has Changed

If you have used Search Console in the past, a few things have gone.

The Page Experience report and the Mobile Usability report were both retired in late 2023. Settings for preferred domain (www or non-www) and crawl rate have also been removed. Google now works these out for itself.

Making It Part of Your SEO Routine

Search Console is most useful when you check it regularly.

A quick look once a month is enough for most small businesses. Check the Performance report for changes in clicks, look at the Pages report for new indexing problems, and keep an eye on Core Web Vitals.

If something drops suddenly, Search Console is usually the first place to look.

If you would like help reading your Search Console data or fixing what it shows, get in touch.