Google Search Console: The Complete Guide and Your Prioritized Checklist for SEO Success in 2024

If you’ve been a reader for any length of time, you know how much I enjoy the challenges of SEO and the plethora of SEO tools available. As I worked with clients over the years, my organic search platform budget was extensive, and I believe the ROI was there. When I decided to focus beyond SEO and work as a CMO for hire, I couldn’t justify the expense of all the tools… so I cut back and started focusing more on Google Search Console reporting.

And something fascinating happened. After years of my site losing search engine visibility, the focus I was making on ensuring a great user experience (UX) – per Google – I started to increase my organic search engine visibility and traffic.

The importance of organic search in marketing cannot be overstated, particularly due to the high purchase intent of users conducting research. When people use search engines to find information about products or services, they are often in the consideration phase of their buyer’s journey, making them valuable potential customers.

Organic search results continue to be seen as more trustworthy than paid advertisements, and ranking well can significantly boost a brand’s credibility and visibility. However, the search landscape is rapidly evolving with the rise of voice search and AI-powered assistants. This shift presents both opportunities and challenges for businesses.

The Future of Search

As AI systems increasingly mediate search results, there’s a growing concern that only the top-ranked result may be presented to users, potentially rendering lower rankings far less valuable. In a scenario where AI assistants provide singular answers, being the second or third result could mean receiving virtually no visibility or traffic.

This potential future underscores the critical need for businesses to adapt their SEO strategies, focusing on ranking well and becoming the authoritative source that AI systems are likely to recommend. The future of search remains uncertain, and businesses must stay agile, continually optimizing for both traditional organic search and emerging AI-driven platforms to maintain their digital presence and reach their target audience effectively.

Still, Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful free tool that provides invaluable insights into your site’s search performance with the massive search user base that Google continues to attract.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a web service offered by Google that helps website owners monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site’s presence in Google Search results. It’s an indispensable tool for any marketer or webmaster looking to optimize their site’s organic search performance. Here’s a recent video that provides five reasons to use the tool.

By leveraging Google Search Console, you gain direct access to data from the source – Google itself. This allows you to:

1. Identify which queries are driving traffic to your site
2. Discover how Google views and crawls your pages
3. Find and fix technical issues that may be hindering your search performance
4. Submit new content for indexing and monitor its status
5. Receive alerts about critical issues affecting your site’s search presence
6. Understand how your site appears in search results and improve its visibility

Limitations of Google Search Console

While Google Search Console is an essential tool for SEO, it’s important to understand its limitations:

• Data Sampling: GSC provides data based on a sample of your site’s pages and queries, which may not always represent the full picture, especially for larger websites.
• Limited Historical Data: GSC retains data for only 16 months, challenging long-term trend analysis.
• Known Google Profiles: GSC only provides data on users logged into their Google accounts while searching. This can lead to incomplete data, especially in regions with less prevalent Google account usage.
• Keyword Data Limitations: GSC groups similar keywords and may not provide data on all individual keyword variations.
• Limited Competitor Insights: GSC focuses solely on your website, offering no direct competitor comparisons or industry benchmarks.
• Basic Reporting Features: While informative, GSC’s reporting capabilities are relatively basic compared to some third-party tools.

Third-Party SEO Tools

These limitations often lead marketers and SEO professionals to supplement GSC with third-party platforms. Here’s why:

1. Comprehensive Data: Third-party tools often provide more extensive data sets, including estimated search volumes and metrics for keywords you’re not currently ranking for.
2. Advanced Analytics: Many third-party platforms offer more sophisticated analysis tools, including predictive analytics and AI-driven insights.
3. Competitor Analysis: Unlike GSC, third-party tools often allow you to analyze competitor performance and conduct gap analyses.
4. Extended Historical Data: Many third-party platforms retain historical data for more extended periods, enabling more comprehensive trend analysis.
5. Integrated Workflows: Some tools combine various aspects of SEO work (keyword research, rank tracking, content optimization) into a single platform.
6. Custom Reporting: Third-party tools often offer more flexible and customizable reporting options to suit specific business needs.

While third-party platforms can provide valuable additional insights, Google Search Console remains essential due to its direct connection with Google. The most effective SEO strategies often involve using GSC with carefully selected third-party tools to get a complete picture of your site’s search performance.

Essential Google Search Console Reports

Let’s dive into the key reports available in Google Search Console and how they can impact your search visibility:

Performance Reports

Performance in the context of Google Search Console refers to how well your website pages are doing regarding visibility and user engagement in Google Search results. It typically includes metrics such as clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position, providing insights into how often users see and click on your pages in search results.

• Search Results Report: This report shows your site’s performance in Google Search results. It displays metrics such as total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position for your pages and queries.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility: By analyzing this data, you can identify high-performing pages, queries, and opportunities to improve underperforming content. This insight lets you focus your optimization efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

• Discover Report: This report shows how your site’s content performs in Google Discover, a personalized content feed. It displays metrics such as total clicks, total impressions, and average click-through rate (CTR) for your pages in Discover.
  
  Impact on Content Strategy: By analyzing this data, you can identify which types of content resonate with Discover users, understand trends in content performance over time, and gain insights into how your content performs in an interest-based, non-query-driven environment. This information helps refine your content strategy to better align with user interests and increase visibility in Discover feeds.

Indexing Reports

Indexing is how search engines organize and store information about web pages in their database. It allows search engines to quickly retrieve and display relevant results when users enter search queries, creating a map of the internet that can be efficiently searched and accessed.

• Pages Report: This report shows which pages on your site are indexed and which have issues preventing them from being indexed.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility: Ensuring all your important pages are indexed is crucial for search visibility. This report helps you identify and fix issues preventing Google from indexing your content.

• Video Pages Report: This report provides insights into how your video content performs in Google Search results, including video-specific features like video thumbnails. It displays metrics such as clicks, impressions, average position, and click-through rate (CTR) for your video content across different search types (web, image, video).
  
  Impact on Video Strategy: By analyzing this data, you can understand which video content is most visible and engaging in search results, identify opportunities to optimize video titles and descriptions, and refine your video SEO strategy. This information helps you create more discoverable video content and improve its performance in search, potentially increasing traffic and engagement with your video assets.

• Sitemaps Report: This report provides information about the sitemaps you’ve submitted to Google and how they’re processed. It displays metrics such as the number of URLs submitted, the number of URLs indexed, and any errors or warnings encountered during sitemap processing.
  
  Impact on Indexing Strategy: By analyzing this data, you can ensure that Google knows all the critical pages on your site and identify any issues preventing proper indexing. This information helps you improve your site’s crawlability and indexing efficiency, potentially leading to better visibility in search results and a more comprehensive representation of your site in Google’s index.

• Removals Report: This report provides an overview of the content you’ve requested to be temporarily hidden from Google Search results or outdated content you’ve asked Google to update. It displays information about URL removal requests, including their status (active, pending, or expired) and the type of removal (temporary or outdated content).
  
  Impact on Search Presence Management: By utilizing this report, you can effectively manage your site’s visibility in search results, quickly address sensitive or outdated content issues, and monitor the status of your removal requests. This tool helps maintain control over your online presence, ensuring that search results accurately reflect your current content and comply with privacy or legal requirements.

Experience Reports

Experience in Google Search Console refers to a set of reports that focus on how users interact with your website in terms of usability and performance. These reports include Core Web Vitals, which measure loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of your pages, as well as mobile usability insights. The Experience section helps website owners identify and fix issues that could negatively impact user experience, ultimately improving the site’s performance in search results and enhancing overall user satisfaction.

• Page Experience: This report includes Core Web Vitals (CWV), Mobile Usability, and other user experience metrics.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility: With user experience (UX) being a ranking factor, addressing issues highlighted in this report can directly improve your search rankings and visibility.

• Core Web Vitals Report: This report provides insights into how your website performs in terms of user experience based on Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. It displays data on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for both mobile and desktop versions of your site, categorizing URLs as Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor based on these metrics.
  
  Impact on User Experience and SEO: By analyzing this data, you can identify specific pages and elements causing poor user experiences, such as slow loading times or unstable layouts. This information helps you prioritize technical improvements to enhance overall site performance, potentially leading to better user engagement, higher conversion rates, and improved search engine rankings. Google considers these metrics as ranking factors.

• HTTPS Report: This report provides an overview of your website’s security status, focusing on implementing HTTPS across your site. It displays the percentage of URLs served over HTTPS, identifies any issues with SSL/TLS certificates, and highlights pages that may have mixed content problems (secure and insecure elements on the same page).
  
  Impact on Security and User Trust: By analyzing this data, you can ensure that your website is properly secured, identify any pages that are still being served over HTTP, and fix mixed content issues. This information helps improve your site’s overall security posture, enhances user trust, and potentially boosts your search engine rankings. Google considers HTTPS a ranking factor and may warn users about insecure pages in search results.

Shopping Reports

The Shopping Reports section in Google Search Console provides insights into how your product listings perform in Google Shopping and other Google surfaces. These reports show data on impressions, clicks, and click-through rates for your product listings and information about issues affecting your products’ visibility. By analyzing these reports, you can optimize your product feed, improve your listings’ performance, and address any problems preventing your products from appearing in relevant search results.

• Product Snippets Report: This report shows how your product information appears in rich results on Google Search, typically displayed as enhanced listings with details like price, availability, and ratings. Search results display metrics such as impressions, clicks, and average position for your product snippets.
  
  Impact on Product Visibility: By analyzing this data, you can identify which products perform well in search results and which might need optimization. This information helps you improve your structured data markup, enhance product descriptions, and prioritize efforts to increase your products’ visibility and click-through rates in search results.

• Merchant Listings Report: This report provides insights into how your product listings perform across various Google surfaces, including Search, Shopping, and Images. It displays metrics such as clicks, impressions, click-through rates for your merchant listings, and details on any issues affecting their visibility.
  
  Impact on E-commerce Strategy: By analyzing this data, you can identify top-performing products, spot trends in product interest, and address any issues preventing your products from appearing in relevant results. This information helps optimize your product feed, improve listing quality, and refine your overall e-commerce strategy to increase visibility and sales through Google’s platforms.

• Shopping Tab Listings Report: This report focuses on how your product listings perform in the Shopping tab of Google Search results. It displays metrics such as clicks, impressions, and click-through rates for your listings in this specific context, along with information on product status and any issues affecting visibility.
  
  Impact on Shopping Campaign Optimization: By analyzing this data, you can understand how your products compete in the Shopping tab, identify opportunities for improvement, and address any issues preventing optimal performance. This information helps refine your product titles, descriptions, and pricing strategies to improve your visibility and competitiveness in Google Shopping results, potentially leading to increased traffic and sales.

Enhancements Reports

The Enhancements Reports in Google Search Console provide insights into how your website’s structured data and special features perform in search results. These reports cover rich results and search enhancements, such as FAQ snippets, how-to markup, or AMP pages. By reviewing these reports, you can identify opportunities to improve your website’s visibility in search results by implementing structured data and other search enhancements and troubleshooting any issues that may be preventing your content from appearing with rich features in search results.

• Breadcrumbs Report: This report provides insights into how Google interprets and displays your website’s breadcrumb markup in search results. It shows the structure of your site’s breadcrumbs as Google understands them, including any errors or issues in the implementation. The report displays the number of URLs with valid breadcrumbs, those with errors, and specific details about the breadcrumb hierarchy for each page.
  
  Impact on Site Navigation and Search Appearance: By analyzing this data, you can ensure that Google understands your site’s structure correctly and displays accurate breadcrumbs in search results. This information helps improve your site’s navigation for both users and search engines, potentially enhancing your site’s appearance in search results and making it easier for users to understand the context and hierarchy of your pages. Proper breadcrumb implementation can lead to better click-through rates and improved user experience on your site.

• Review Snippets Report: This report provides insights into how your website’s review markup is performing in Google Search results. It displays metrics such as the number of pages with valid review snippets, pages with errors, and specific details about issues affecting your review-rich results. The report also shows impression data for pages where review snippets are being displayed.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility and User Trust: By analyzing this data, you can identify opportunities to improve your implementation of review markup, fix any errors preventing your reviews from appearing in search results, and understand which pages benefit most from review snippets. This information helps enhance your search result appearance with star ratings and other review details, potentially increasing click-through rates and building user trust before they even visit your site. Properly implemented review snippets can significantly improve your visibility in search results and provide valuable social proof to potential customers.

• Sitelink Snippets Report: This report provides insights into how Google displays sitelinks for your website in search results. It shows the number of pages that have generated sitelinks, the total impressions for these enhanced search results, and any issues preventing sitelinks from appearing. The report details which pages generate sitelinks and how often they are shown.
  
  Impact on Search Result Visibility: By analyzing this data, you can understand which pages your site Google considers most important and relevant for sitelinks. This information helps you optimize your site structure, internal linking, and content strategy to encourage more sitelinks for key pages, potentially increasing your site’s visibility and click-through rates in search results. Effective use of sitelinks can significantly enhance your search presence, providing users with direct access to important sections of your site and improving overall user experience from the search results page.

• Video Report: This report provides insights into how your video content performs in Google Search, explicitly focusing on video-rich results. It displays metrics such as the number of pages with valid video markup, pages with errors or warnings, and specific details about issues affecting your video-rich results. The report also shows impression data for pages where video rich results are displayed, including key moments if implemented.
  
  Impact on Video Content Visibility: By analyzing this data, you can identify opportunities to improve your video markup implementation, fix any errors preventing your videos from appearing as rich results, and understand which video content performs best in search. This information helps enhance your search result appearance with video thumbnails, durations, and key moments, potentially increasing click-through rates and driving more traffic to your video content. Properly optimized video markup can significantly improve your visibility in both general search results and video-specific search features, helping you capture more of the growing audience for video content.

Security & Manual Actions

The Security & Manual Actions section in Google Search Console provides critical information about security issues and manual penalties affecting your website. It includes reports on security problems like malware, hacking, and deceptive pages, alerting you to potential threats that could harm your users or your site’s reputation. The Manual Actions report informs you if Google has taken any manual action against your site for violating their guidelines, which could negatively impact your search rankings. These reports are crucial for maintaining your site’s health, security, and search visibility.

• Manual Actions Report: This report informs you if Google has taken any manual action against your website for violating its webmaster quality guidelines. It details the type of manual action (such as unnatural links, thin content, or cloaking) and the pages affected and guides resolving the issue.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility and Reputation: By reviewing this report, you can quickly identify and address any serious issues that are causing Google to penalize your site. This information is crucial for maintaining your site’s search rankings and overall visibility. Promptly resolving manual actions can help restore your site’s standing in search results and prevent long-term damage to your online reputation and traffic.

• Security Issues Report: This report alerts you to any security problems detected on your website, such as hacking, malware, or deceptive pages. It provides details on the type of security issue and the affected pages and offers guidance on how to clean up and secure your site.
  
  Impact on User Safety and Site Trustworthiness: By monitoring this report, you can quickly identify and address any security vulnerabilities or malicious content on your site. This information is vital for protecting your users, maintaining trust, and preventing Google from flagging your site as unsafe in search results. Promptly resolving security issues helps maintain your site’s integrity, protects your visitors, and ensures that your site continues to be indexed and displayed in search results without warnings.

Links Report

• Links Report: This report provides a comprehensive overview of the links pointing to and within your website. It consists of three main sections: External links, Internal links, and Top linking sites.
  
  Impact on SEO and Site Authority: By analyzing this data, you can understand your site’s link profile, identify valuable linking opportunities, improve internal linking structure, and address potential link-related issues. This information helps enhance your site’s authority, improve navigation, and potentially boost your search engine rankings.
  
  It consists of three main sections: External links, Internal links, and Top linking sites.
  • External Links: This section shows the pages on your site that have the most links from other websites. It displays metrics such as the number of external links and the top linking sites. Impact on Domain Authority: By identifying your most linked pages, you can understand which content attracts the most external attention and potentially replicate that success. This data helps you focus on creating more link-worthy content and building relationships with sites that frequently link to you.
  • Internal Links: This section provides information about how your own pages link to each other. It shows which of your pages have the most internal links pointing to them. Impact on Site Structure and User Experience: By analyzing your internal linking, you can improve your site’s navigation, distribute link equity more effectively, and ensure important pages are easily accessible. This data helps optimize your site structure for both users and search engines.
  • Top Linking Sites: This section lists the external websites that link to your site most frequently. It shows the domains linking to you and the number of links from each. Impact on Link Building Strategy: By identifying your top linking sites, you can nurture these relationships, find similar sites for outreach, and potentially uncover new partnership opportunities. This data helps refine your link building strategy and focus on acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks.

URL Inspection

• URL Inspection Tool: This tool allows you to check the index status of specific URLs and request indexing for new or updated content.
  
  Impact on Search Visibility: Ensuring your most important pages are indexed and up-to-date improves your chances of appearing in relevant search results.

How to Get Started with Google Search Console

1. Sign up for a Google Search Console account.
2. Add and verify your website property
3. Set up email notifications to stay informed about critical issues
4. Explore the various reports and tools available
5. Regularly review your data and take action based on the insights gained

Google Search Console

By following this guide and consistently utilizing Google Search Console, you’ll be well-equipped to make data-driven decisions that significantly improve your site’s performance in organic search results. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process, so regularly review and act on the insights provided by Google Search Console.

With the size of Martech Zone, I’m in Google Search Console daily, identifying and clearing issues.