How to use Google Search Console? What are the benefits of Google Webmaster Tool?

Google is the most popular website on the Internet. It helps users to find the right thing on the Internet by indexing every page it could.

Basically, Google is a search engine.

So it must take care of indexing all the webpages on the Internet.

Search Console is a Google Webmaster Tool that provides insights on your website on Google search. It shows impressions and clicks of your website on the Console.

Note: You will be only able to view the search traffic if you maintain the website. For viewing the search data related to your website, you need to verify the property.

How do I verify my website with Google Webmaster Tool?

Basically, you have two options to verify the ownership of the domain. According to the property type, you will be able to view the insights of the website.

Domain Verification in Search Console

Domain verification is the best choice to verify your website. It is fast and easy with adding a TXT DNS record in the DNS settings of your domain.

Benefits of Domain Verification

1. You will be able to view insights on every subdomain.
2. Able to access HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
3. You will be the owner of the domain. And you can let your users manage a particular subdomain using the URL prefix method.

How to verify using Domain Verification?

1. Enter your domain name and continue in the first place.
2. You will get a TXT record. Copy the TXT record.
3. Now you need to sign in to your domain name provider website.
4. Add the TXT record with the specified one provided in the Search Console.
5. In the final step, you can click on the verify button to verify the domain property.
6. That's all. If the domain doesn't get verified for the first time. Check back later.

Note: Sometimes it takes time for DNS change effects. You may need to wait a day at least if your verification got failed for the first time.

 URL prefix verification in Search Console

This is useful for users who own a subdomain. For example, a Wordpress subdomain. URL prefix will be the best option for you in that case.

But if you have your own domain name with a domain registrar, its always better to verify your website using Domain verification method.

Benefits of URL prefix verification

1. Can view URLs under the verified address only.
2. We need to separately verify for HTTP and HTTPS versions of the address.
3. There are many ways to verify your property.

How do I verify my web address using URL prefix in Search Console?

You have five options to verify using the URL prefix method. They are as follows:

1. By uploading HTML file: You just need to upload a specific HTML file to your website to verify the property.
2. Adding an HTML tag: You will need to add the HTML tag in the header section of the HTML document to verify the ownership.
3. Google Analytics option: If you have already connected your website with Google Analytics. You can verify the ownership using that.
4. Using Google Tag Manager: This is another method to verify the web address.
5. Using DNS change: By adding a TXT record in the DNS settings of your domain, you could verify the property.

You can choose any one of the option to verify the ownership of the specific web address to view the insights.

What are the tools available in Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is not only used to view the insights of the search data related to your website. But it can be used to do other tasks. 

This includes submitting the sitemap to Google, inspecting URLs, enhancing the website, and it also helps us to detect and fix any security issues related to our website.

That's why we recommend you to connect Google Search Console with your site.

Insights tab available in Search Console

I would say there are two tabs, one is "Performance," and the other is "Links." 

In the Performance tab, you could see the number of impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and the average position in Google search for your website.

The Performance tab also filters and order website pages based on queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance, and dates.

This will give you a brief idea of how your website performs in past days on Google search.

When you come to the Links tab, you get information on top internal, and external links also will tell you about the top linking sites and linking texts to your website. 

URL inspection in Search Console

Here, you can check if particular URLs on your website are indexed or indexable.

If not indexed, you can also request indexing the URL, if the robots.txt doesn't block you from indexing or if meta tag in HTML document allows indexing by search engines.

This particular section also lists out the issues related to the URL you are checking.

Coverage, Mobile usability, Desktop usability, and any AMP issues will be shown after checking.

Indexing section available in the Google Webmaster Tool

There are 3 subsections, which include Coverage, Sitemap, and Removals.

1. The Coverage section shows the errors, warnings, valid and excluded links of the property.
2. In the Sitemap section, you will be able to add or delete the different sitemaps of your domain.
3. Finally, in the Removals tab, you can add URLs which you need to remove from search results for a particular period. 

How the Search Console will help you enhance your website?

When you navigate to the Enhancement section, the Search Console will provide you with different tools, according to your website. 

Like the AMP tab, Breadcrumbs, etc.

These tools present in the Enhancement section will show all the errors and warnings. And you can fix the issues and submit the fix to the Console to get it updated correctly.

Security and Manual Actions in the Console

Sometime you may need to take manual actions like removing the phishing and spam-related contents from your website.

The Console will surely warn such issues.

Note: Sometimes if you do not fix these issues, there might be a chance that Google will not show your website on the search results.

 

Finally the Settings in the dashboard

Here, we could set permission for other users to view the property data.

And it will also display if the indexing crawler is a Googlebot Desktop or Googlebot Smartphone.

These are the different options available in the Google Webmaster Tool as of today. And it is being updated, modified by the Google team.

 

Conclusion

When I conclude, I need to tell you that you need to analyze your search traffic from Google to improve the content on your website/blog.

And it will also help you to choose the right keywords for your next article. It also helps you to identify which all contents are outdated and need to be updated to get more traffic.