Google Search Console (GSC) is a completely free tool designed to help you improve your website’s Search performance. There are a variety of tools available within GSC. It can seem a bit daunting if you don’t know what to look for. So last week, I shared an overview of the features available within GSC’s Performance Report. Now, I want to dive into some of the more specific reports and tools available within GSC.
Mobile Usability Report
The mobile usability report highlights any errors or mobile usability problems that are unique to the mobile version of your website. With Mobile-First indexing taking precedent, the mobile usability report is crucial to improve your SEO efforts. The mobile usability report will highlight your mobile website errors over a date range and can also give you tips to correct the issue as well as the ability to test that the issue has been resolved. For a deeper look into the Mobile Usability report, you can check out Google’s Support article on the report.
Links Report
Google Search Console’s Link Report lets you see the total number of external and internal links on your website. Internal links refer to links from one page to another within the same domain. External links refer to links to your site from other website.
The Links Report helps you identify areas of improvement and whether other parts of your site need backlinks to improve your SEO. You can change the filter on this report to review specific pages or links within your site.
For a deeper look at Google Search Console’s Links Report, you can check out this Support article.
Index Coverage Chart Report
The index coverage chart indicates any coverage/indexing problems that Google is having with your website. This report helps you uncover how your website has been indexed within Google Search. It includes the numbers of pages indexed, alerts (pages that have been indexed but contain problems), legitimate pages, and omitted pages, pages that a website has deliberately excluded from the index.
This report is critical to understanding and improving your Search Engine Optimization efforts because it actually shows you how your site is being displayed in Search engine Page Results (SERP). For a more detailed look at what the report includes and what you can do with that data, check out Google’s Support article.
Sitemaps
The sitemaps tool in Google Search Console provides users a way to submit a sitemap to Google. A sitemap is a file that web developers can provide that tells search engines how to crawl your website. Providing a sitemap to Google makes it easier for Google to crawl and index your website. You can learn more about how to create and submit sitemaps using Google Search Console in this support article.
URL inspection tool
The URL Inspection tool helps you to review any given URL from your site so that you can see it how Google sees it. This tool will determine if the page is indexed (if it is not possible to allow the page to be indexed), if the URL is submitted to the sitemap, and if the page is mobile-friendly and if the breadcrumbs are right this will produce rich results. I find this tool particularly useful when launching new pages on our websites. The URL inspection tool also allows you to request indexing of a given URL. Learn more about the URL inspection tool in Google’s Support article here.
Next Steps
I know that was a LOT to take in. If you are wondering what to do next or how to even get your website set up with Google Search Console, we may be able to help you. Just contact us for help with any of your SEO needs.
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