Did you know that 93 percent of user experiences start with a search engine? Indeed, search engine giants like Google play a key role in helping people discover and visit your website among the sea of 2 billion websites. When a topic is searched, search engines sift through millions of indexed web pages and provide the best results that match your keywords. Whether you own or manage a website, you may be wondering how you can track and manage your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and performance. Keep reading to learn about what Google Search Console is and how it can help you manage your site’s SEO.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console (GSC) is a web service by Google consisting of tools and resources to help site owners and admins track and monitor a site’s performance. Formerly called Google Webmaster Tools, GSC has a user-friendly dashboard portal to add and manage all of your sites, which is helpful for digital agencies with multiple clients. The main features include information about a site’s search appearance, traffic, technical updates, crawl data, and recommendations for site improvements. 

GSC Portal

Communication

With a registered account, Google Search Console is the best way to communicate with site owners or admins. For example, Google can notify you when there are site issues or errors. If you need to contact GSC, there are some options to reach out to them about issues with your site or if you need additional site features.

Site Management

If you aren’t aware, optimizing your site is an ongoing process that is never “finished.” Luckily, Google Search Console makes it easy to manage your site. The dashboard offers tools to help you stay on top of your site’s SEO. 

Management Features:

  • Add new site domains
  • Track site’s performance and URL inspection
  • Submit and monitor your XML sitemaps
  • Send Google requests to check the status of site errors
  • Examine how Google views specific web pages and URLs on your site

Site Performance

Your Google Search Console account contains detailed information about your site’s SEO results. This technical information can help you understand the specifics of your site’s search results on Google. By evaluating this information, it will give you a better idea of how well your SEO strategies are working. 

Performance Features:

  • Monitor relevant site info, including site queries, pages, countries, devices, and search appearances by date and search type
  • Track total clicks and impressions by date and search type
  • Track average CTR (click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it) and position
  • Export performance reports to clients
  • Monitor mobile usability reports

Site Data

To make your life easier, Google Search Console can easily be integrated with other platforms, such as Google Analytics and major SEO plugins. This seamless data integration allows you to track and access your GSC data on your website. Indeed, this means you don’t have to constantly jump from your site to GSC’s portal to track your stats. How awesome is that? This also makes it easier to identify and solve any site errors.

Need a SEO Professional?

Maybe you own or manage a website, but you don’t have the time to manage this site’s SEO. Since search engine optimization is a crucial component for a successful site, it’s recommended that you hire SEO experts to assist you with effectively optimizing your site. This will ensure that your site is regularly monitored for any site issues and continues to rank well on major search engines.