How To Use Search Console To Improve Rankings

For most web owners, The search console is nothing more than a free tool that they can to understand how Google views their website. Unfortunately, that is where it ends. A lot of website owners miss out on the fact that they can use the Search Console to improve their website SEO Adelaide and as a result, drive more traffic to their website.

There is so much more than you can do with Google Search Console than just adding your website to its catalogue. In this article, we will take a look at ways that you can use Google Search Console to improve the search engines of your website.

I will assume that you have already added your website to Google Console. However, before we go on let me take you through steps on how to add your website to Google Search Console.

Adding your website to Google Search Console is simple and will only take a few minutes.

Step 1: Go to the Google Search Console Website

Step 2: Click on the Start Now button

Step 3: Sign in using a Google account

Step 4: Enter your website’s URL.

Step 5: You will be asked to verify ownership of your website.

Then you have successfully added your website to Google Search Console. However, there are other things that you may have to do to get your account fully set up. Some of them include:

Setting up your preferred domain name
Setting Your Target Country
Adding Sitemaps
Connect the Search Console to Google Analytics.

Now that you have everything set up, let us look at ways you can use Google Search Console to improve your search rankings.

Improve Rankings for Underperforming Keywords

You can improve keyword rankings that are performing poorly using Google Search Console. Underperforming Keywords are the keywords that do not rank on the first or second position. The reason is that most surfers only click on the first two results that after they search on something on Google.

If you rank in positions lower than this, you are losing out on a lot of traffic. For instance, if you rank on the 8^th position, only about one-eighth of searchers will click on your results. If you hit the first position, the clicks increase to almost 14%.

Using Google Search Console, you can find the underperforming keywords. Here is a step by step guide on how to do this:

On your page, go to the Search Results report
Toggle the data for the average CTR and position
Go to Queries Report and set the ranking position filter to below 8.1
Sort the results in descending order

Then, you will have a list of the most underperforming keywords on your website. After you all this, you will figure out the optimizing potential of each keyword. Then, you can analyse the page individually.

Then, you can boost the position of your page by using some regular SEO hacks.

Optimise web pages with high rankings and low CTR

Sometimes, your page might get high rankings but get have a low click-through ranking. For example, when you look at pages that rank no 1, some of them get higher than the average 30% clicks number 1 posts get. Others get lower.

If your case is the latter, you can improve the click-through rate of your page using Google Search Console. Using Google Search Console, you can find the pages that are performing badly and figure out if there is a way to improve it.

Here is how to use Google Search Console to find the under-performing pages:

On your page, go to the Search Results report
Toggle the data for the average CTR and position
Filter the data so that only average rankings below 3.1 are showing
Then, Sort by CTR in ascending order
Search for keywords with impressions with CTR lower than average

Fix Sitemap Issues

Sitemaps are protocols that allow Google crawlers to easily navigate your website. If you have issues with your sitemaps, Google’s spiders may get confused. The wrong URLs may get indexed which will cause them to waste time resources.

Here is a step by step guide on how to see the state of your website’s sitemaps.

On your page, Go to SiteMaps report
On the icon next to a sitemap, click ‘see index coverage’
A tab showing the errors, warnings and excluded errors will appear on your screen.

Here is a tip that can be useful: Tackle the errors and warnings first. Excluded pages are very common are easy to deal with. However, errors and warnings are more serious issues that should be given more priority.

Know which content gets more backlinks

There is a strong relationship between search traffic and backlinks. Google uses backlinks as a very important factor when drafting ranking numbers. Having backlinks should be a major priority for your website if you want to gain more traffic.

However, to attract great backlinks, you have to post the right type of content. To know which type of content will attract the most backlinks, take a look at the content you have posted previously.

Here is a step by step guide on how to do this:

On your page, Go to the Links report
Click on More
Go to the Top Linked pages report under the External links option
Sort the report in descending order to see which pages have the most backlinks

This way, you can search for patterns and plan to make your new content follow that pattern.

Other ways you can use Google Seach Console to gain organic traffic include:

Using it to find pages that need more internal links
Know which pages that need to be updated

In Conclusion

Google Search Console can be much more than a formality for your website. It can do a lot to improve your SEO in Adelaide on your website. This will, in turn, drive traffic to your website.