What is Google Search Console and what is it for? The most complete guide

One of the great advantages that Google offers as a browser is the possibility of acquiring free tools to improve your website . In this case we are talking about Google Search Console, one of the best tools that can help you improve a web page for free.

For that, it is important that you know what Google Search Console is. It is a tool that was previously known by the name of Google Webmaster Tools and provided information services about your website.

It is basically known as a tool that Google has created to allow people who have a web page to have essential information. But… what kind of information? The one you need to be able to improve optimization and to identify any problems on your website with Google.

The best thing is that it is an option that is free and that helps you maintain the ideal connection with Google as a browser. So it is necessary to be able to control it to ensure that Google Search Console offers us the best means to have a successful website on Google.

If you want to be aware of any problems that your website may have with Google such as penalties, this tool may be the key. And it offers a lot of benefits for your use.

What is Google Search Console for?

Now that we have mentioned what Google Search Console is about, it is important to be clear about how it works. What is Google Search Console for? To have basic knowledge about the elements or characteristics of your website that may affect its performance.

Thanks to the information process carried out by this plugin, you can have guarantees of improving your performance within Google. And the most important thing is that you will have a well-optimized web page, which will be rewarded with good web positioning and popularity.

That is why it can be said that Google Search Console offers benefits that may be more than necessary. And if you want to have a web page that meets the demands of this browser, using Google Search Console can help a lot. Continue reading and you will learn how to use this wonderful tool.

Advantages of Google Search Console

You are probably wondering what are the advantages of Google Search Console, so we have compiled a list that is quite easy to understand. This way you will know its functions and how they can benefit a web page.

• It verifies the level of performance that a web page has, comparing it to be able to establish if it is adequate.
• Detects any type of problem that may affect the performance of said website.
• Understand how Google values ​​a page based on its performance status.
• Get an analysis based on organic web traffic.

Considering that each of these characteristics are important for the development of a website, having them through Google Search Console can make a difference.

How to use Google Search Console?

Now that you know what the advantages are and how Google Search Console works as a free tool, we will explain how to use it. So that you can put into practice what you have learned and take advantage of its benefits on your own website.

• Sign in or create your Google account

When starting the process, it is important to have a Google account that you can easily create if you want to use one specifically for this. If not, you can quickly sign in with your Google account like any other time.

• Add a new property

If you have already signed in to Google Search Console through your Google account, you only need to enter your website to be able to continue with the process. It is important to verify the ownership of the website, so the method recommended by Google should be used when doing so.

To do this, Google allows you to download a file in HTML format, to be able to upload it to the web page you want to verify. When it has been uploaded properly, all you need to do is select the “verify” option and Google Search Console will have done its job. 

• Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console

Although this step is not mandatory, it is recommended to comply with it because it is much more beneficial. When you finish verifying in Google Search Console, it is best to send Google the sitemap of your web page.

If you don’t have it, you need to create one so that it can be sent to Google and bring great benefits. Among them, the possibility of showing how your web page is composed so that it is much easier to index.

If you have a sitemap you should know that it will allow the web spiders of a browser like Google to find the pages to index. This allows it to show up in search results in a more precise and organized way, thus helping Google to do its job.

Thanks to the different plugins that you can find for WordPress (if you have a page of this type), you will be able to create a sitemap quickly. And to submit it with Google Search Console, you just need to enter the “Crawl” category.

In it you will find the “sitemaps” option and when you select it, it will let you add yours easily with a single click.

Set Search Console preferences

Although it turns out to be a fairly simple tool, in this Google Search Console tutorial we show you the basic configurations. In them you can easily customize and improve the operation of this tool.

By clicking on the gear in the upper right, you will be able to find a menu where you can select “Search Console Preferences”. Thanks to this section you can receive information in your email about the status of your website.

In addition, Google Search Console also offers a “Site Settings” option, where you can choose the domain of your choice. And you can also set how often the crawl is.

Of course, Search Console guarantees the opportunity to link with other useful Google tools like Analytics. Through the Google Analytics administrator menu, it is possible to find the option “property configuration” and enter the Search Console section.

You will find the necessary instructions so that you can link your Google Analytics account to Search Console without problems and you will only have to save. Since Google Analytics is quite important when it comes to having a website, you will be able to have a greater amount of accurate information.

• Control Panel

Now that the basic configurations have been made, it is important to start with the more advanced configurations of Google Search Console. To do this, we enter the control panel that offers a certain type of report to receive important news and the current status of the site.

With the important news section you will be able to know all the relevant information about any problem on your website. In addition, you will be able to receive an email at the same time to alert you of any inconvenience that may affect its performance.

In case you do not have any type of problem that affects the web, this section will also notify you and always records everything with its respective date. Thanks to that, you can access a history of the notifications provided by Google to know what the problems have been.

The control panel also offers the current state of the site, where the detailed graphics of a web page are located and are divided into three:

• Crawl errors: If there is a problem when indexing your web page, Google will let you know through this option. In this case they can be caused by DNS, Server Connectivity or Robots.txt Information. Any of these options should remain green to confirm that they are working properly.
• Search analysis: To know about the traffic of your web page, this is the appropriate option. Since it offers an analysis of the traffic that it has had during the last month, to know the number of clicks that your web page has received.
• Sitemap: In case you have submitted the sitemap to Google to help it index your web page, then you can access this option for more details. There you will find the URLs submitted and indexed by Google in an analysis.
• Appearance in searches 

With Google Search Console you can improve the optimization of your website and the way it is seen in Google search results. That helps a lot because it allows you to get more clicks, which means a lot more web traffic.

Let’s start with the fastest methods to improve the appearance of your website:

• Structured data: Thanks to this data, the appearance of a web page in Google results can be much more attractive. With slightly detailed information, you can attract more clicks and Google Search Console allows you to know which ones have errors. Each one can be improved in a detailed and indicated way.
• Rich cards: These are better views because they are visual structured data. You can find them when searching for movies, since Google returns results with covers. And if you have them on your website, in the Google Search Console section you can see their status and correct them individually according to their rating.
• Marking data with Google Search Console: In order to use structured data, you need to mark and label it. With this tool you can bookmark them in an easier way, because you only need the URL to select what you want to bookmark. It also allows you to select pages similar to the chosen one, to improve.
• Improve HTML: Using Google Search Console allows you to find errors in titles, meta descriptions and even content that should be indexed. By displaying the problem, you can fix each of the errors in the affected URLs.
• Accelerated Mobile Pages: Google thinks of everything, even small details like the speed of loading your results on mobile. For that, it uses this system that allows a web page to have the standard speed through the mobile. So you can activate it for your website.
• search traffic

If you thought that Google offered enough information, we are sure that this part of Google Search Console will be much more useful. Since it offers a lot more information that includes great features of a web page. And it is divided as follows:

• Search analytics: Thanks to this option you can have an analysis of the organic traffic of your website and its performance. In addition, it uses a wide variety of metrics that help to obtain more precise results depending on the group of metrics chosen. They are divided into clicks, impressions, CTR and position.

It is also possible to find data grouped according to the queries or keywords that position your website and pages that are shown in a search.

• Links to your website: For Google, the way in which other pages have links to your website is totally relevant. Therefore, Google Search Console offers data about the websites that offer links to your page, such as how many links it has. In addition, the anchor text or even the number of domains that this link has.
• Internal links: Here you will find the own pages that link to our website, internally.
• Manual actions: Having no messages in this section indicates that there are no penalties from Google for violating a rule. Resolving the issue also involves submitting a request to Google to remove the violation.
• International segmentation: If you have a web page in several languages, this option helps the web to appear in the appropriate languages. In addition to allowing each version of the page to be in accordance with the appropriate country. For that the hreflang tags are checked.
• Mobile usability: If there is any problem accessing or using your website through mobile devices, Google will notify us through this option.
• google index

When it comes to accessing information about the pages indexed by Google and those not indexed, this is the ideal option. Google Search Console allows us to verify all the necessary content through the following options:

• Indexing status: Through this section we will know the number of pages indexed by Google. Those that are blocked do not appear in Google results and should only be so when it comes to duplicate content, or not very relevant.
• Blocked resources: If you have blocked any page so that it is not indexed, they will appear here and you will be able to verify that they are the appropriate ones. In case of having an error and not indexing an important website, it can be corrected thanks to this option.

Precise information on the affected resources can be accessed by clicking the arrow next to the number of affected pages. There you will also find each URL that is affected and you can update the content in order to avoid the blocking that affects the URL.

• URL removal: If you want Google to remove any URL from the results, it can be done through this section. It’s as simple as entering the URL to quickly remove it.

• Crawl in Search Console

Crawl problems can cause Google to fail to index a web page. This represents a big problem and with this section it is possible to avoid it through other options such as:

• Crawl errors: It is important to keep track of crawl errors, because they prevent a page from being indexed by Google and not appearing in the results. Website errors can be caused by DNS, server connectivity, and robots.txt information.

While in URL errors, Google focuses on which URLs do not allow a page to be indexed. In the form of a list you will be able to find each option according to its date and thus you will be able to fix them so that the traffic is not lost.

• Crawl statistics: Know the activity that Google spiders have during the 90 days after your entry in this section. There you will know how many pages are tracked per day, the kilobytes that are downloaded and the download time of a website. In addition, you can buy according to the standard data on one side of the graph.
• Browse as Google: If you want to see your website in the same way that Google does, this option allows it. So you can understand a little more about its performance.
• Robots.txt Tester: Robots.txt files help Google know which websites it shouldn’t index. And with this function we guarantee that those files work correctly so that the less important pages do not appear.
• Sitemaps: Check that Google indexes the desired web pages according to the submitted sitemap. If there is any error for its correct operation, it will be notified.
• URL Parameters: If there is any duplicate URL, it can be fixed with this function. With the parameters established, Google is told how to process a URL so that it does not identify it as a duplicate.
• Security issues

As Google always identifies any details outside of its standards, Google Search Console also has a section for security issues. In the best of your cases, you can offer a brief message in which you do not find any type of security problem within a website.

Thus, users will be able to browse a completely secure site. But in the worst case, Google will notify you if some kind of security problem is found or if you have malicious software. So you can fix it quickly, so users can continue to enjoy a secure experience.

• web tools

Although it is a fairly extensive tool, Google Search Console allows you to access other tools that improve your website. It is almost like obtaining all the means to make a web page easy to manage, thanks to resources such as:

• Structured Data Testing Tool, which helps you find out if Google is parsing structured data correctly and displaying it in searches. 
• Structured Data Markup Helper, a tool to learn how to markup structured data properly.
• Email markup checker.
• Google My Business.
• Google Merchant Center.
• PageSpeed ​​Insights, the tool that helps you have a faster and better optimized web page for all types of devices.
• Custom search engines, which allows you to create a personalized search with Google on your website.
• Google domains, an option to create a web page with the help of Google.
• Academy for webmasters, a tool to learn how to make a successful website without complications. So that it can appear in Google searches well positioned.

Conclusion

Now that you know how Google Search Console works and its many advantages, it is important that you start using it for your website. In addition to the fact that you have already learned how to configure Google Search Console in a practical way, you know each of its advanced configurations.

With the help of this free tool, Google demonstrates once again the quality of the efforts it offers to make having a website easy. Thanks to Google Search Console you will find to improve your presence within Google results and optimize SEO OnPage.

It is a complete option that allows you to access steps to solve any problem with Google. And as if that were not enough, it is information that Google itself provides you in a reliable way so that you can use it to the fullest and avoid penalties.

Remember that its ease of use will allow Google to index the pages in a better way and will identify security problems. Do you have a problem with your website that decreases its performance considerably? Thanks to Google Search Console you will be able to solve each of them in detail.

Take full advantage of this complete tutorial of one of the most useful tools that Google has. And take care of knowing the main problems that affect the performance of your web page, hand in hand with advice provided by this important browser.

This makes it much easier to find solutions that the Google Search Console tool itself offers you, while you compare your statistics. Since it basically carries out a complete study of each important characteristic that Google takes into account when indexing a web page.