What is Google Search Console? Instructions for installing on the website

As a website administrator or SEO specialist, you must know how to use Google Search Console. This handy tool helps you better understand user behavior on your website. At the same time, it provides essential data on website performance reports and search efficiency. From there, you can improve user experience and enhance website performance to achieve higher rankings on Google search results. To learn more about this tool and how to set it up and use it, follow the content below from Sóc Lửa Agency!

What is Google Search Console?

First introduced in 2015 under the name Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google for website owners and administrators to monitor, analyze, and optimize their website’s visibility on search results. Acting as an intermediary between Google and website owners, Google Search Console provides detailed data such as click-through rates, average rankings, and keywords. Additionally, it alerts you to issues your website might be facing, such as indexing problems, spam content, or broken URLs. Moreover, you can see which websites are linking to yours. 

Connecting your website to Google Search Console (GSC) enables you to gain deeper insights into your website’s performance, monitor how it appears in search results, and resolve technical and content issues (addressing Onpage SEO, Offpage SEO, and Technical SEO errors). This allows you to optimize search performance and increase traffic. It is an essential tool for businesses with websites aiming to create Googlebot-friendly pages and improve their rankings on Google’s search results pages. 

Key features of Google Search Console

You can use the Performance report on GSC to monitor and measure website search performance through metrics such as impressions, clicks, average ranking position of keywords and websites. 

Website administrators will receive notifications about errors and problems that affect Google's ability to index the website. Detailed information about indexing issues includes non-indexed and indexed URLs, indexing errors and indexing warnings. 

The fast index feature (Fetch as Google) provides URL submission to Google so that the indexing system can increase the ability of articles and business information to display on search results as quickly as possible. 

Statistics on internal links and backlinks, The Google Search Console lets administrators know which external links point to the page, the frequency of display. Besides, you can check internal links in the Internal Links section. 

Submitting a sitemap in GSC allows administrators and SEOers to send notifications to Google about the website's operating diagram. This helps Google find and index all website pages faster. 

With the feature of collecting information and detecting errors, Google Search Console provides web administrators with reports on bot activities performed on the website in the last 90 days. In addition, it detects errors and sends notifications to administrators to fix them. 

In addition, Google Search Console also provides many other functions for users such as setting the language for the website, checking errors by phone, checking unusual actions, viewing index status, etc. Moreover, this tool also helps identify and fix security issues affecting the website such as malicious code, malware, etc. when scanning. 

Benefits of Using Google Search Console

One of the essential tools for building and developing websites and supporting SEO is GSC. This tool offers businesses the following benefits: 

Better Understanding of Target Customers: GSC helps businesses gain a better understanding of their target customers (needs, preferences, and search behavior) by providing data on search queries. Additionally, businesses can adjust their content and product strategies to meet customer needs. 

Keyword Performance Tracking: Google Search Console provides detailed information about keywords that help customers find the business website. This includes impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position in search results. Once content is optimized based on keywords, businesses can improve their search rankings and enhance their customer reach. 

Detecting and Fixing Errors: Through this tool, administrators can identify issues such as 404 errors, crawl errors, non-indexed pages, and security concerns. Using this data, they can improve website performance and increase visibility in search results. 

Identifying and Resolving Technical Issues: This tool provides data that helps businesses identify and fix technical issues such as page load speed, mobile compatibility, and Core Web Vitals. This ensures timely detection and resolution of issues, improving user experience. 

Analyzing SEO Strategy Effectiveness: With Google Search Console, businesses gain access to data that tracks and measures SEO effectiveness. By comparing website performance over time and analyzing the impact of SEO campaigns, businesses can make necessary adjustments to their strategies. 

Enhancing Brand Credibility: When a business's website ranks highly in Google search results, it gains more visibility and credibility. Customers tend to trust and highly regard websites with top search rankings, increasing the likelihood of customers choosing the business's products. 

Guide to Setting Up Google Search Console for Your Website

If you want to monitor and optimize your website's performance in Google's search results, follow these steps to set up GSC for your website: 

Step 1: Visit the Google Search Console website at https://search.google.com/search-console/about. Then click on Start Now.

Step 2: On the next screen, select the property type with two options: Domain and URL Prefix.

Step 3: Add domain ownership by entering your domain name in the Domain field (excluding HTTP/HTTPS and www). After entering, click Continue.

Step 4: Copy the TXT record from the instruction dialog box. 

Step 5: Open a new tab and log into your account with your domain name provider. Look for DNS Records or DNS Management on the domain administration page. 

Step 6: Click Add Record or Add New, then select TXT Record from the dropdown menu and fill in the required information, including Name and Value (the TXT string provided by Google Search Console). 

Step 7: Click Add Record to save the new TXT record. Then return to the GSC page and click Verify. Google will take some time to process the verification request. 

Step 8: Once verification is successful, access the GSC dashboard to monitor your website's performance. 

Note: The DNS record update process may take up to 24 hours to reflect on Google.

Tips for using Google Search Console effectively

Although GSC is a powerful and easy-to-use measurement tool, to achieve maximum website performance, you need to pay attention to the following issues: 

Because Google Search Console is always updating new features and website performance data. Therefore, businesses should maintain the habit of accessing this tool to monitor important indicators, update new information and exploit the features thoroughly. 

Although it has a friendly interface, some GSC reports still contain many technical terms. Businesses should spend time understanding the meaning of the indicators in the report to analyze the data accurately. 

Keyword rankings determine traffic and conversion ability, but you should not focus too much. Instead, create quality, useful content for users to optimize the experience on the website. 

SEO is a long-term process that requires perseverance, implementation and change. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve high search rankings in the new time of building a website. 

Combine with other website analysis tools such as Google Analytics to get a comprehensive view of website performance. 

Google always has certain principles and guidelines for website administrators. Businesses should follow these rules so that the website is not penalized. 

So we have just learned about an important tool to help manage websites and support SEO provided for free by Google. Take full advantage of this tool to help exploit important data from which to deploy effective marketing campaigns to help maximize website performance!

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