Using GSC – A Free SEO Tool to Enhance Your Optimization
Every business must consider how their business ranks with search engines. Search Console is a free Google SEO tool, and one of the most powerful resources available to businesses, their owners, and marketers.
Organically ranking a page for competitive terms isn’t easy and reflects a long-term investment. However, utilizing the right tools to help collect data can help ensure that an SEO strategy plays out correctly over time.
Although several providers offer “paid” tools that can help a company with their SEO efforts, the first two tools any quality marketer will implement are Google Analytics, and one of the best tools for SEO in 2021, Google Search Console.
For this reason, our team from GOA-TECH wants to break down some information on GSC and how marketers can use it to improve their organic search ranking performance.
Ok, So What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console, or GSC, is a free Google SEO Tool intended to track search data while helping users optimize their website to achieve better organic rankings.
Search Console offers a plethora of relevant SEO data to marketers. For example, the SEO tool will display keywords/phrases, in addition to queries a site ranks for. It will also show the average position for each page on a site, click-through and bounce rates, and many more trackable data points.
This may appear similar to the benefits that the Google Analytics tool can offer. A good summation of their similarities and differences is that GSC displays data regarding how users interact with a website before they click a link to the site. Consequently, Google Analytics demonstrates data analyzed after users click on the website.
Common Uses for the Free Google SEO Tool
Most marketers will use a combination of Google Search Console and Google Analytics. With its unique benefits, some of the most common GSC uses include:
- Backlink data analysis
- Mobile usability verification
- Sitemap submission
- Tracking search metrics
- Average Position Impressions
- Click-Through and Bounce Rate
- Keyword Rankings
- Organic Traffic
- Verifying correct search indexing by Google crawlers
Google also recently rolled out their new Page Experience and Core Web Vitals features. We can find both sections present within Google Search Console as a part of their algorithm update. These remain focused on helping webmasters improve user experience on a site. Although GOA-TECH doesn’t cover this update here, you can check out our other recent article if you want to learn more.
Improve Your Search Engine Optimization with Google Search Console
- Creating Content Authority Through Top Page Performance
The “Top Pages” tab in the Google Search Console outlines where Google may already view a site as an authority. Marketers can work with content creators to produce content around these “Top Ranking” areas, helping to rank new pages faster.
- Identify Pages with High Impressions and Low Average Position
Before beginning a fresh link-building campaign, marketers can use GSC to find pages with a high number of impressions but an average or low position. These pages demonstrate many of the necessary elements to rank higher on Google but may need an additional push for the best ROI.
- Determine Under-Optimized Content
Google can help a marketer find an easy win by looking for search queries that a page already ranks for. However, in many cases, these pages may not yet be fully optimized. We can use the “Queries” tab to find search phrases that drive traffic.
If we can determine that these keywords are not present on the page, this is a great opportunity for a marketing team to rank higher for these phrases.
Google Search Console | The Best SEO Tool in 2021 | GOA-TECH
As we mentioned before GSC is a powerful tool that can help owners and marketers alike to improve their search engine optimization. Dissimilar to Google Analytics that works to provide data after users visit the site, Google Search Console offers useful data for everything that occurs before users land on the site.
The most successful marketing initiatives begin by analyzing the ways that marketing can go beyond simple performance metrics like “how many clicks” or “where did we make impressions”.
Regardless of if these enhancements mean improving a page’s mobile usability or something as simple as submitting an updated sitemap, the platform can offer extensive performance opportunities for organic search ranking improvement.
If you manage SEO campaigns for clients or looking to improve your own business website, a dedicated SEO marketing team and full-service agency like GOA-TECH could substantially benefit your return on investment. To learn more, reach out to our team today.
