How to Use Google Search Console: Simplifying SEO Tasks

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO), understanding how to use Google Search Console usage can be a game-changer. This free tool offered by Google provides insights that can help you optimize your website’s presence in Google’s search results. Here’s how it can be beneficial for website owners and web admins.

Google’s Perception of Your Site ∞

One of Google Search Console’s advantages is that it allows you to see your website as Google sees it. This tool provides valuable insights into how Google’s web crawlers interpret your site. The console will notify you about any issues with crawling or indexing your site. This is crucial for ensuring your site’s visibility in search results.

Monitoring Traffic and Performance

How to use Google Search Console extends to monitoring your website’s performance in Google Search. It provides comprehensive reports on your site’s performance, including data on the search queries leading users to your site, the popularity of your pages, and the devices used to access your site.

Issue Alerts and Resolution

The console is not just about monitoring but also problem-solving. It will alert you if the tool detects issues on your site, such as mobile usability problems, indexing problems, duplicate content, and more. Furthermore, it provides resources to help you resolve these issues and allows you to request Google to re-crawl a fixed page.

Enhancing Site Visibility

Discovering how to use Google Search Console can help improve your site’s visibility. The tool provides insights into the queries that make your site appear in search results, including those on mobile devices. It also shows how implementing Search features like rich results can enhance your site’s appearance in Search results.

Sitemap Submission and Checking

A sitemap file provides information about your site’s pages, videos, and other files and their interrelationships. The console has an option to submit your sitemap, helping Google better understand how to crawl your site.

Content Removal

If there’s content on your site that you’d prefer Google not to index and display in search results, Google Search Console can help. You can use the tool to request the removal of such content.

How to Use Google Search Console: Add Your Site Property ∞

Navigate to the Google Search Console web application.
You should log in with the Google email we registered for the site.
On the “Welcome to Google Search Console” page, click on “Domain”.
As Google states, “A Domain property aggregates all protocols, subdomains, and paths.”
Write “yourdomain.com” in the textbox and click [CONTINUE].

You should log in to your Cloudflare console before continuing.
On the “Verify domain ownership via DNS record” window, click on [START VERIFICATION].
A Cloudflare window will open; click [Authorize].

The above will add TXT DNS Record to your Cloudflare DNS Records to verify your domain with Google.
This will navigate you to the “Ownership verified” window; click on [GO TO PROPERTY].
You can review the menu on the left side to familiarize yourself with the console’s tools.

Get Google Search Console Site Verification Token ∞

In the top left corner, select your property connected to “yourdomain.com.”
You will navigate to the “Users and permissions” page. If you didn’t, click on the left menu side [Settings] and [Users and permissions].
In the “Users” section, you will see your user. On the right side of the row, click on the “three vertical dots” sign. Then click on [Ownership verification details].
This will open a new window with a text box that contains:

google-site-verification=AbCHg123456789

Copy the code that comes after the “google-site-verification=”, meaning you will copy only:

AbCHg123456789

Read more about Google Search Console verification in Google Docs.

The Messages Section: Your Personal Notification Center ∞

The Messages section, symbolized by a bell icon at the top right corner, acts as your notification center, keeping you updated on new issues, updates, or actions required on your site. Whenever there’s a new message, the bell icon will display a notification badge, signaling that something needs your attention. It could be anything from new crawl errors, manual actions taken by Google, or even tips and recommendations to enhance your site’s performance.

You can access a dropdown menu listing all your recent messages by clicking on the bell icon, each with a brief description and a timestamp. From here, you can navigate to the respective sections of the Console to address the issues or learn more.

Keeping a regular eye on the Messages section ensures you stay ahead of any potential problems and are always informed about the health and performance of your website. It’s a feature that underscores the importance of proactive management in maintaining a robust online presence.

Navigating the Menu in Google Search Console ∞

The menu within Google Search Console is your navigation hub, each item leading you to a different aspect of your site’s performance and issues.

Overview

The Overview section gives you a snapshot of your site’s performance, indexing status, and any pressing issues that need your attention.

Performance

Dive into the Performance section to understand how your site is doing in search results, which keywords bring traffic, and how often your site appears in searches. You can see the click-through ratio (CTR) from Google SERPs to your site, the number of times your URLs were shown in SERPs (impressions), how many clicks were from these impressions, and your average position in SERPs.

URL Inspection

URL Inspection is your magnifying glass on how Google sees a specific page on your site. Here, you can request indexing for a new or reindexing for an updated page.

Pages

In the Pages section, you’ll see how individual pages perform in search results, helping you pinpoint where improvements are needed.

Sitemaps

Submitting a sitemap through the Sitemaps section shows Google your website’s structure and how to crawl it efficiently. Check the “Add XML Sitemap” section for specific steps.

Page Experience

The Page Experience section gives insight into how users perceive the experience of a page, including all the Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals

Here, you delve deeper into metrics that impact user experience, like loading time, interactivity, and visual stability.

Mobile Usability

The Mobile Usability section highlights any issues affecting your site’s performance on mobile devices.

Breadcrumbs

The Breadcrumbs section allows you to monitor the structured data of breadcrumbs on your site, aiding user navigation.

Sitelinks Searchbox

The Sitelinks Searchbox section helps in managing the search box that may appear in Google’s search results for your site.

Manual Actions

Manual Actions alert you if Google has taken any action against your site due to policy violations. This is a crucial section to keep an eye on.

Security Issues

It shows you any security threats to your site, like hacking or malware.

Links

Lastly, the Links section is your overview of all internal and external links, a vital part of your site’s SEO strategy.

Understanding and regularly checking these menu items in Google Search Console is part of mastering how to use Google Search Console effectively. Each section provides unique insights and actions that can help drive better performance and security for your website.

The Pages Section: Understanding Indexing Statuses ∞

The Pages section within Google Search Console provides a comprehensive view of how Google interacts with your pages. Here’s a breakdown of some entries you might come across.

Sections that you “probably” have nothing to worry about since they’re intentional in most cases:

Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag: Pages tagged with a ‘noindex’ directive are intentionally left out of Google’s index. It’s a way to tell search engines to skip indexing that page.

Page with redirect: This entry signifies that a specific page redirects to another page. Redirects are common for pages that have moved to a new URL.

Blocked by robots.txt: If a robots.txt file blocks a page, the page is not accessible to search engines. It’s a way to prevent search engines from crawling specific parts of your site.

Sections that you have nothing to worry about since Google is in the process of adding the pages it discovered to the index, and it takes time:

Discovered – currently not indexed: Google has discovered the page but hasn’t indexed it yet. This could be due to several reasons like crawl budget or low priority.

A section that may be temporary:

Crawled – currently not indexed: This entry means that Google has crawled the page but is in the process of indexing it. There could be various reasons, such as duplicate content or other quality issues. If you see this error for long, try to understand what is wrong and request recrawling.

Problematic sections that you should handle immediately and ask Google to recrawl the page once finished:

Not found (404): A 404 status indicates that the page doesn’t exist. It’s essential to fix or redirect these pages to improve user experience and site health.

Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than…: In cases of duplicate content, Google might choose a different canonical (original) page than the one you specified. It’s Google’s way of managing duplicate content by selecting the version it thinks is most helpful to users.

Pages section thoughts:

By understanding these entries in the Pages section, you get a clear picture of how your pages are treated by Google, which helps strategize your SEO efforts. This section is crucial for identifying and fixing issues that could hamper your site’s visibility in search results.

Crawled – currently not indexed: Addressing & Fixing Issues ∞

When utilizing Google Search Console, a vital tool in SEO strategy, it’s crucial to monitor the status of your URLs under the ‘Pages’ section. If you notice that URLs have remained in the ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ status for over a month, it indicates a potential issue that demands attention. This prolonged status can hinder your website’s visibility and search engine performance.

To effectively use Google Search Console for SEO optimization, it’s essential to investigate and identify the cause of this issue. Possible reasons could range from content quality and website structure to technical SEO problems. Once the root cause is determined, implement the necessary fixes.

After making these adjustments, use the ‘Validate Fix’ feature in Google Search Console. This action prompts Google to re-crawl and re-evaluate the URLs. Successfully addressing these issues helps get your pages indexed and enhances your overall SEO efforts, ensuring that your website fully benefits from all the capabilities of Google Search Console.

RSS Feeds – /feed/ – URLs

In the realm of SEO and when learning to use Google Search Console effectively, it’s essential to understand specific nuances, particularly with URLs’ ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ status. A notable exception in this category is the RSS feed URLs, such as

https://www.yoursite.com/some-category/some-post/feed/

Unlike other types of content, Google is adept at handling these RSS feed URLs. The search engine doesn’t typically index these feeds as they are meant for syndication rather than direct user traffic. Therefore, when these feed URLs appear in the ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ section, it is usually not a cause for concern.

Google categorizes them here for informational purposes, acknowledging their crawl but deeming them unnecessary for indexing. This understanding is vital when using Google Search Console for SEO, as it helps webmasters prioritize their efforts on pages that genuinely require attention for indexing issues rather than focusing on RSS feed URLs that Google is appropriately processing.

You can read more about WordPress RSS Feeds, URL variations, and types.

Possible Fixes

When addressing the ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ status of URLs in Google Search Console, an essential aspect of learning how to use Google Search Console for SEO, several strategies can be employed:

1. Enhance Content Quality: If your content is brief or ‘thin,’ it may not be indexed. Enrich your posts by adding more detailed, relevant content. Research your topic further to ensure you’re covering all aspects. Search for your topic and utilize the ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) section in Google search results to understand common queries related to your topic. Answering these questions in your content can make it more comprehensive and valuable.
2. Add External Links: External links to relevant, quality, and authoritative websites can bolster the value of your content. These links provide your readers with additional, detailed information and demonstrate to Google that your content is well-researched and informative. In addition, you can Include links to explanatory YouTube videos that can enhance user experience and value.
3. Strengthen Internal Linking: Adding internal links helps Google understand the structure of your site and the relevance of your content. You can improve user engagement and distribute page authority across your site by linking to other relevant pages within your website.
4. Acquire Quality Backlinks: Backlinks from authoritative websites are a strong indicator of your site’s credibility and usefulness to Google. Focus on building relationships and creating content other reputable sites want to link to.
5. Leverage Social Media: Sharing links to your content on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X (ex Twitter), Pinterest, and others can increase visibility. These platforms are viewed as authoritative, and sharing content here can drive traffic and potentially lead to natural backlinks.
6. Ensure Originality of Content: Duplicate content can negatively impact SEO. Use tools like Grammarly to check the uniqueness of your content and for Plagiarism. Be aware that sometimes, more authoritative sites might replicate your content, and Google might credit them instead of your site, so it’s crucial to establish your content’s originality and authority.

Implementing these strategies will not only help address the ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ status but also contribute to the overall SEO health of your website, an essential part of mastering how to use Google Search Console.

Add XML Sitemap ∞

To add XML Sitemap, you should set it up on your website. If you have a WordPress site, you can use the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin to create XML Sitemap. Your URL to XML Sitemap should look like this:

https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

In the Google Search Console, on the left side menu bar, find the [Indexing] section. Under it, click on [Sitemaps].
In the “Add a new sitemap,” paste the sitemap link.
Click [SUBMIT].

Remove URLs from Google Index – How to Use Google Search Console ∞

First, you must hide the page URL or post you want to remove from the Google SERPs. This is done within a day by the “Removals” tool. It’s crucial to note that this removal does not permanently delete the pages from the web, nor does it remove them from Google’s index. Instead, it hides them from the search results for about six months or until the page’s URL is reindexed.

In addition, this tool removes the cached page from the Google crawler.

After that, you can remove the page from your website, serving the 410 “Permanent Removal” status code for this URL from your site/server. When Google crawler revisits your site, it will understand that the page was removed and will remove the URL from its index.

Also, you can add a “noindex” tag for the URL. When Google crawler revisits the site, it will not be added to the index again.

Reindex can take up to a month, so be patient.

Accessing the “Removals” Tool

On the left side menu, click on [Removals].
On the “Removals” page, navigate to the [TEMPORARY REMOVALS] tab.
Click on the [NEW REQUEST] button.
Make sure you’re in the [TEMPORARILY REMOVE URL] tab.

How to hide a single post URL Using Google Search Console

Paste the full URL to the page on your site into the [Enter URL] textbox. Example:

https://www.yourdomain.com/post-you-want-to-remove

Note: All the versions of the URL will be hidden: HTTPS, HTTP, with and without WWW.

Select “(*) Remove this URL only.”
Click [Next].

How to hide all the posts in a category or a tag

Paste the URL to the category or a tag that contains all the posts you want to remove into the [Enter URL] textbox. Example:

https://www.yourdomain.com/tag-name
https://www.yourdomain.com/category-name

Note: Again, all the URL versions will be hidden.

Select “(*) Remove all URLs with this prefix.”
Click [Next].

Read More about the Removal Tool

You can read more about the Removal Tool on Google Developer’s Docs and Google Search Console Removal Tool on Google Webmaster’s Docs.

Optimizing Webpage Crawling and Indexing: Mastering Google Search Console ∞

If you’re encountering issues with Google not crawling or indexing your web pages, it’s crucial to address these problems to improve your site’s visibility and performance in search results. A valuable resource in this situation is the Google Search Console help page about diagnosing and resolving indexing issues with optimization tips, ensuring that your content reaches its intended audience.

If you find any mistakes or have ideas for improvement, please follow the email on the Contact page.