Let Google Search Console optimize your website

The Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) is a very useful feature used to identify website issues. Created by Google, there are naturally plenty of benefits on offer, for those willing to use it. There’s an online guide as to how to link it to your website, in order that it can probe every web page for possible problems. Here are some examples;

• Crawl errors

When Google crawls your site, it’s looking for issues such as broken links. This most often occurs if for some reason you have altered the URL of a web page, and neglect to change the links from other pages on the site that link to it.

• Top search queries

The Search Analytics section displays the most popular keywords that have been used to find your website in results pages. By identifying what is driving your web traffic, you can build on this by incorporating these terms into your marketing campaign. You can also view the average position of your website for any particular keyword in search results.

• Sitemaps

Sitemaps are an essential tool for allowing search engines to crawl your website more easily. Simply type in “sitemap generator” into a search engine, click on a link, submit your website address, and download the XML Sitemap option. Then go back to Search Console, and upload it there, as well as asking your web developer to add it to the website code. This will give you a small boost in search results pages.

• Demote a web page

In Search Console, you can find this in the Sitelinks section. Google randomly exhibits extra web page links underneath your home page URL. In order to ensure a higher chance that your most important pages are chosen, you can demote pages such as Careers or Meet the Team.

Other Benefits

• Enables you to access useful data and metrics, relevant to any specific aspect of your marketing campaign
• Use it to assist with your link building campaign
• Detection of any security breaches via malware / hackers

Website developers, digital marketers and website owners alike use Google Search Console to help monitor, diagnose and optimize. The overall aim is to make sure that your web traffic isn’t suffering from a bad user experience, and therefore helps to encourage customer growth.