With so much accessible in the form of tools and knowledge, SEO might feel daunting.
When used by inexperienced individuals, the plethora of suggestions provided by these tools can frequently lead to time wastage and few outcomes.
Thankfully, Google Search Console (GSC) provides precise diagnostic data regarding traffic and rankings on your website.
Better outcomes can be achieved by concentrating on optimizing areas that are operating effectively.
Compared to chasing perfect keywords for months or years, this strategy is more realistic.
Knowing GSC will enable you to use this knowledge to create an SEO strategy and a basic SEO plan based on the concrete details of your existing circumstance.
This post provides a three-step procedure for planning, evaluating, and enhancing your SEO with Google Search Console data. The intention is to assist you in locating the most crucial data for immediate SEO gains.
Google Search Console: 3 simple steps to successful SEO
There are three easy steps in the process:
Step 1: Examine Google Search Console’s traffic, rankings, and opportunities.
Step 2: Examine the current rankings and search for openings.
Step 3: To gain some quick wins, optimize and enhance your material.
With this easy-to-use method, you can rapidly rank the jobs based on their potential, allowing you to focus your time on the most important tasks and get real results as soon as possible.
You must first set up Google Search Console before you can analyze it. This Google help document will walk you through the process and teach you the fundamentals.
Additionally, you can download our opportunity tracking template here:
Template for “Search Console Easy Wins”
Examine further: Google Search Console introduces suggestions
Step 1: Examine your opportunities, traffic, and rankings.
Examine your traffic and visibility in Google Search Console as a first step. You can use this information to gauge your performance and make adjustments to your strategy.
Go to https://search.google.com/search-console to log in to Google Search Console. To examine your traffic and indexing summary, select Performance > Search results.
By default, two out of four possible metrics are enabled on this screen:
Total of clicks (activated).
overall impressions (activated).
CTR on average (disabled).
Position average (disabled).
You have filters above the main metrics that display web search results for the last three months by default.
Adding more filters
Add a few more filters to make the data here as relevant and accurate as possible. Generally, you would look to:
Remove traffic from branded searches.
Toggle the filter to the main target region.
Don’t include brand traffic.
You will filter anything that mentions “hat” to include variations like “bowler hat,” “bowlerhat,” “bowler hats,” etc. because my company is called Bowler Hat.
You will create a new filter (beside the kind and duration) to accomplish this.
Select New > Query > Uncontained Queries.
After typing “hat,” click Apply.
GSC filter to omit brand traffic: Inquiries with
Do this right now for your brand name. In the results, there shouldn’t be any branded traffic visible.
Apply a filter to the main target region.
Your results may be skewed because by default, everything will be displayed here. The best way to filter this is to look at the UK solely for this account by using your primary geography.
Select New > Country.
Click Apply after choosing your nation (I’m choosing “United Kingdom” in this case).
GSC filter to the main area of interest
As a result, the data is now filtered to just show you the countries you are interested in (far more accurate clicks, impressions, CTR, and ranks).
Note: This type of filtering, which eliminates all organic brand traffic and foreign traffic, can show some harsh realities if you’re just used to reading regular rank reports and the like.
I would have a huge jar of cash if I had a dollar for each time you looked over a client’s search dashboard and saw almost nil unbranded organic traffic.
If nothing else, you will begin to accurately comprehend your traffic, which may cause you to reevaluate some of your assumptions about what attracts clicks and works.
If your needs are a little more intricate, you can also learn about regular expressions and make filters to focus or exclude certain words.
Actual traffic data analysis
What remains after you apply the aforementioned filters is your actual exposure and traffic from Google Search.
Enabling the four important KPIs and reviewing each one separately comes next.
GSC’s actual traffic data analysis
If you run PPC and SEO efforts, make a note of any keyword and landing page combinations that could work well for your Google Ads ads.
Click-throughs
The primary objective and final target are clicks.
You may check exactly how many clicks you receive for your desired search phrases here.
First impressions
The number of times you appeared in search results is your impressions.
You can estimate the extent of the opportunity by comparing the number of clicks you receive to the number of impressions.
There are some fascinating instances in the screenshot below:
12,743 impressions yielding 305 clicks at a 2.4% CTR in position 6.5.
In position 4.6, there were 53 clicks out of 10,687 impressions with a 0.5% CTR.
GSC perceptions
While there is potential for development with both of these keywords, the second line requires more research because of a dismal CTR (0.5%) from a fairly respectable rank (4.6).
CTR
Click-through rate, or CTR, is an additional indicator that frequently indicates the overall opportunity.
With a click-through rate of 2.4%, the first keyword has an average ranking of 6.5. Even though it ranks higher, which would normally increase click-through rate, the second term has a horrifying 0.5% CTR—that is, only one click out of every 200 searches yields a result.
While there is potential for improvement with these keywords, the second one offers a great possibility and needs more research. Why aren’t more people clicking on it?
GSC CTR
SEO mix: position, clicks, impressions, and CTR
Examine your keywords carefully, taking into account ranking position, click-through rate, impressions, and CTR to find areas that could use optimization.
Optimization goals
Make a list of the terms you want to improve on as you go through this list.
Increasing ranks and CTR can help us achieve our goal of getting more clicks.
Select about three keywords, add them to the SEO easy wins template, and proceed to the following stage.
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View terms.
Step 2: Examining the landscape
Examine your target terms’ search landscape before beginning any optimization. You can identify possibilities and focus areas by understanding the page layout.
Since a real-world example gives the greatest overall impression, I’ll use a term from a new company we’re supporting called Stairfurb.
Analysis of the landscape for “glass banister”
322 hits.
8,636 views.
3.4% conversion rate.
2.6 in terms of ranking.
This term ranks reasonably strongly between Positions 2 and 3, has a respectable volume, and has an average CTR of 3.4%.
This is exactly where the intent is. Given that the company offers glass banister kits for sale, we would prefer to see more hits than just three out of every 100 queries. Let us examine this situation.
Results found for “glass banister”
Results found for “glass banister”
The entire page is organized as follows, but the image above only displays the first few results:
Eight advertisements for shopping.
8 Natural Buying (lists of merchants).
One organic.
One natural (StairFurb).
One organic.
One organic.
Six pictures.
4 People enquire as well.
One organic.
One organic.
One organic.
Eight entries for merchants.
One organic.
Eight entries for merchants.
One organic.
one text advertisement.
This collection of combined search results is really intricate. Among other things, there are shopping advertisements, organic shopping listings (three sets of them for 24 organic products), organic results, photos, and user inquiries.
Even so, this site still has eight paid and eight organic shopping listings above the organic, meaning that even with the strong showing in the second organic placement, there are still 17 links above (including the organic listing in Position 1) that could lead a user in a completely different direction.
Prospects
Raising your organic rating from position 2 to position 1 will help.
Boost visibility in listings for organic buying.
Luckily, the Performance report’s Search Appearance page (Performance > Search Results > Search Appearance tab) in Search Console also provides some information on product listings.
Product summaries and vendor listings are part of the landscape analysis.
Here, the information is displayed in two rows:
Product snippets: These are a standard listing with a few details about the product. You can view the pricing, return information, and stock in the image below.
Example of product snippet in SERP
Merchant listings: With three blocks on Page 1 and 24 organic products mentioned, these are the organic shopping results that show up prominently for this search query.
SERP – sample merchant listing
The 34% CTR is now the truly intriguing part of this. It’s significant that one in three people who view the listing will click on it.
You can see how changes made here can significantly increase your traffic by contrasting that with some of the organic CTRs you observe.
Study of the landscape for the keyword “B”
sixty clicks.
630 views.
9.5% conversion rate.
Place 1.
This keyword is a little different, with a CTR of about 10% and a strong Position 1 ranking.
Here, CTR is the only lever you need to press. Looking at the outcomes, you can see:
Eight advertisements for shopping.
listing in first place.
Prospects
Boost CTR.
Below those annoying magnetic shopping advertisements, make sure you have the best possible page title, meta description, and all the schema data to make this listing as appealing as possible.
Study of the landscape for the keyword “C”
25 mouse clicks.
Nine thousand impressions.
0.3% conversion rate.
Place 7.
Once more, this one is a little different. There aren’t many clicks—just one out of every 300 searches will get you to this valuable page.
Landscape research reveals:
Eight advertisements for shopping.
8 organic food stores.
4 People enquire as well.
8 natural.
8 Buying organic (second time around).
two natural.
Prospects
Make your website organic shopping-friendly.
Also, target people inquire / snippets.
Boost your rating.
Boost CTR.
There is a lot of room for improvement in all the different sections of the page.
Step 3: Enhance
You will become acquainted with the Search Results area and discover a wealth of opportunities if you spend time in GSC in this manner.
Just follow the procedure; the specifics will always depend on your area, industry, and keywords.
Eliminate the brand and concentrate on the target region.
Examine poor CTR, large volume, etc.
Examine the outcomes.
Seek out trends.
Here are some general strategies to try:
Positions 2, 3, 4, and 5 contain keywords for simple optimization adjustments.
the top three keywords for metadata adjustments with a poor CTR.
Analyzing, making notes (with the help of this helpful paper), and seeing trends are crucial.
You can gradually hone your approach after you realize what works for you.
Get the most out of Google Search Console for SEO
SEO can be complicated, and using commercial solutions frequently results in laborious, ineffective technical fixes.
Discover easy-to-achieve optimization opportunities by utilizing Google’s diagnostic data.