If you’re not sure whether people are finding your website through Google, Google Search Console is the first place to look.
It’s a free tool from Google that shows you how your site is performing in search results: which queries are bringing people in, which pages are ranking, and whether there are any technical issues stopping Google from showing your site properly. Unlike Google Analytics, which tells you what people do once they arrive, Search Console tells you how they found you in the first place.
This guide walks you through setting it up from scratch.
Why Google Search Console matters
Most business owners install a website and assume Google will find it. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t, or it finds it but doesn’t show it for the searches that matter.
Search Console gives you visibility over that process. You can see exactly which search terms are bringing people to your site, which pages are appearing in results and at what position, whether any pages have indexing errors that are preventing them from ranking, and whether your site has mobile usability issues that could be affecting performance.
It’s also where you submit your sitemap, which tells Google your site exists and gives it a map of every page you want indexed.
How to Set Up Google Search Console
Setting it up only takes a few minutes. Follow these four steps:
Step 1: Sign in
Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with your Google account. Use the same account you use for Google Analytics if you have it, as this makes verification simpler.
Step 2: Add your property
Click Add Property. You’ll be offered two options: Domain or URL Prefix. For most small business websites, URL Prefix is the easier starting point. Enter your full website address including the https.
Step 3: Verify ownership
Google needs to confirm you own the site before it shares data with you. The simplest method is through Google Analytics: if Analytics is already installed on your site, verification is usually automatic. If not, Google will provide an HTML tag to add to your site’s head section. Most WordPress themes and plugins have a straightforward field for this.
Step 4: Submit your sitemap
Once verified, go to the Sitemaps tab in the left menu and enter your sitemap URL. For most WordPress sites using Yoast this will be yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml. Submitting your sitemap tells Google to crawl your pages and speeds up the indexing process.
What to Look for First?
Once Search Console is set up and has collected a week or two of data, start with the Performance report. Look at your total clicks, total impressions, and average position.
The most useful thing to look for early on is pages ranking between positions 11 and 20, which means page two of Google. These are pages that are close to page one but not quite there. A targeted improvement to the page title, meta description, or content is often enough to move them up, and the difference in clicks between page one and page two is significant.
If you’re not sure what to do with what you find, that’s where an SEO audit helps. It takes the data Search Console gives you and turns it into a prioritised list of actions.
Want someone to set this up for you?
Google Search Console setup is included as standard in every SEO engagement I take on. If you’d like help getting it right from the start, or if you want to understand what your existing data is telling you, book a free Seed Session and I’ll take a look.
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