How to Use Google Search Console for SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been a central tenet of online marketing success for a long time. This practice of optimizing your web pages, content, and ads for greater visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) revolves around keyword research. While SEO is nothing new, the strategies and tools that marketers use for SEO have evolved dramatically over the years. One such tool is Google Search Console.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use Google Search Console for SEO, so you can leverage its features to improve your keyword research and your return on investment (ROI).

Let’s get started.

What is Google Search Console (GSC)?

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. You can use Google Search Console to gain a better understanding of how Google sees your site, and you can use the tools and reports with the Search Console to address a variety of issues, including:

• Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site pages.
• Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
• View Google Search traffic data for your site to see how often your website appears in Google Search, which user search queries trigger your site to show in SERPs, and how often searchers click through for those specific queries.
• Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
• Show you your backlink profile — which sites link directly to your website.
• Troubleshoot issues for AMP (accelerated mobile pages), mobile usability, and other search features
• Discover which keywords your site or content currently ranks for in Google’s SERPs

How Google Search Console Helps Improve Rankings for Underperforming Keywords?

Unless your keyword is already ranking in position one or two, there’s always room for improvement. As such, any other keyword can be viewed as underperforming because most users will click on one of the top results. Therefore, if you are languishing further down the SERP rankings, you’ll miss out on a ton of valuable traffic.

So, let’s see how to use Google Search Console for SEO so that you can improve the fortunes of low-performing keywords.

You can view your underperforming keywords in Google Search Console with the following steps:

1. 1. Navigate to Performance > Queries
   2. Filter the data by position
   3. Check which keyword is underperforming

Optimize Pages With High Keyword Rankings But Low CTR

There is no guarantee that the top-ranking page will attract the most clicks. Some will perform better than average, while others won’t do as well as expected. You should try to identify the worst performing pages on your site, and analyze them to find out why they are ailing. After analysis, you may be able to figure out ways of increasing the CTR.

You can check which keywords have a high keyword ranking but low CTR by selecting on Performance, then Queries.

Let’s say you want to look at all queries with a CTR lower than 2%. You can do this by filtering the data by CTR. When you analyze keywords in this way, it’s easier to pinpoint irrelevant terms or those that don’t deliver the ROI you want to see. So, at this point, you may decide to remove some keywords from your campaign.

Learn which content types and topics get the most backlinks

When you’re learning how to use Google Search Console for SEO, it’s essential to know about backlinks. In Google, backlinks are an important ranking factor, as a site with more backlinks from reputable websites tends to get more organic search traffic.

If you have high-quality content created around relevant keywords, you should be able to get backlinks to your web pages. This strategy will help you do better in SERPs.

You can view your backlinks profile by navigating to the Links report in Google Search Console. Once there, check the top linked pages to see which content is most valued by others. With this in mind, you can take cues from these top-performing pages, and learn to optimize the rest of your site content, so it earns more backlinks.

Discover What Keywords Your Site/Content Ranks For Now

In Google Search Console, you can check the Performance report to see which keywords your site pages already rank for now.

To do this:

1. 1. Login to Google Search Console
   2. Select Performance
   3. Scroll down the page.

The Queries tab will be selected by default. Below it, you can scroll and page through the list to see every keyword that currently makes your pages show up in the search results pages.

When you want to drill down to understand which keywords each page ranks for, you must take a couple more steps:

1. 1. 1. Select the Pages tab
      2. Select the page you want to review

    

   

    

   3. Select the Queries tab again. Here, you can see all the keywords that the page in question is ranking for at the current time.

Taking this approach to assessing your page performance is an effective way of optimizing your page ranking. With careful analysis of the keywords that are already helping your site to rank, you can invest more of your resources in these, and cut the others out.

Find Out Where Your Pages Are Ranking for Specific Keywords

In terms of Google SERPs, the term Position refers to where you rank in the search results for a specific keyword. The average position metric is the average of your positions for every keyword that currently ranks in Google SERPs.

If you want to know how to use Google Search Console for SEO, you must get acquainted with the various visual tools it provides. Scroll down the page to view the table below the graph, as it shows you the position you rank in for every single keyword in your campaign.

You can use this data to monitor how your rankings change after you make any on-site adjustments and optimizations.

Identify Your Ideal Target Keywords

By reviewing your existing pages, you may spot opportunities to improve your rankings for specific keywords. Here is a simple method of finding the ideal keyword for any piece of content. You can use this process to optimize the page for its ideal keyword:

1. Analyze the queries that your page ranks for in regards to impressions, CTR, and average position.
2. Sort the data by impressions.
3. Narrow your focus to queries in positions 3-7, and identify the query with the most impressions.
4. Add this query to your Heading on the page.

Decrease Your Bounce Rate by Addressing Negative Keywords

When you know how to use Google Search Console for SEO, you’ll see that it isn’t just about finding valuable keywords that attract better results — you can also use it to weed out any problematic keywords in your account.

These Negative Keywords are queries that rank your content, but ultimately, attract the wrong type of user. Essentially, the keyword is attracting irrelevant traffic that will never convert. As such, keeping these keywords does more harm than good, as many users will bounce off your website soon after landing.

You should maintain a well-refined negative keywords list that filters out any irrelevant traffic, ensuring you continue to attract quality traffic with more leads.

Measure Changes in Branded and Non-Branded Search Volumes

The keyword data in Google Search Console has been expanded recently, and it has become one of the most-used features.

You will find this particularly useful when tracking and assessing the year-over-year performance of branded and non-branded keywords. By considering performance data across a longer period, you can get more accurate datasets and better results on which to base your decision-making.

If you want to know more about this topic, read our blog post, Branded keywords & Non Branded keywords: Bid or Not to Bid.

Wrap Up

Google Search Console is a powerful free tool that provides advertisers and marketers with a lot of valuable data and vital insights about their websites. It’s not always easy to know how to use Google Search Console for SEO, but it’s worth your time to find out.

You can explore the features of GSC to segment and analyze high and low performing keywords. Taking the time to assess performance at a granular level helps you figure out problems in your campaigns, which paves the way for better results in the future.