Google Search Console (GSC) is a crucial tool for anyone with a website, and it is particularly useful for SEO specialists, marketers, business owners, site administrators, web developers, and app creators. The tool allows users to monitor how Google views their site, optimize its organic presence, and perform tasks such as viewing referring domains, mobile site performance, rich-search results and highest-traffic queries and pages. This article provides an extensive guide on how to use Google Search Console professionally.
The first step to using GSC is to sign up and add your website to the platform. The process involves signing in to your Google account, choosing the property type (website), and verifying ownership of your site. The article goes into detail on various verification methods such as HTML file upload, domain name provider, HTML tag, Google Analytics tracking code, and Google Tag Manager container snippet code. It also outlines the importance of choosing the preferred domain (www or non-www) and setting up a 301 redirect for the non-preferred domain.
The article explains the importance of GSC users, owners, and permissions, outlining the differences between owner and user roles, and how to add and remove owners and users. It also discusses the third role, an associate, and how to associate a Google Analytics property with a Search Console account.
Additionally, the article covers whether a sitemap is necessary for a website to show up in Google search results, indicating that while it is not necessary, it can improve a site’s crawlability in certain situations. The process of submitting a sitemap using the GSC sitemaps tool and monitoring the sitemap in the GSC Sitemaps report is also detailed.
Furthermore, the article provides an explanation of key GSC dimensions and metrics, including queries, impressions, and clicks, which are crucial for understanding how users interact with a site’s search results. This information is exclusive to GSC and is not available in Google Analytics.
Overall, the article is a comprehensive and informative guide for users looking to utilize Google Search Console to optimize and monitor their website’s performance on Google search. It covers everything from setting up the tool to understanding key metrics, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to use GSC like a professional.
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