Google Search Console which was earlier known as Webmaster Tool is nothing but Google’s suite of tools, data and diagnostics. The basic idea of Google Search Console is to make your website healthy and Google-friendly. From this place, you get all the information related to search engine optimization related to your website directly from Google.
Google Search Console comes for free and any website can make use of it. But you also need to understand that if you are just installing it then it is not going to uplift the SEO of your website or the organic traffic. Therefore, in order to use Google Search Console effectively, you need to understand its functionalities.
The Google Search Console was in beta till the first week on September and they have finally rolled it out of beta. According to a Google blog post, this new Google Search Console gives you the following things:
More data:
- Get an accurate view of your website content using the Index Coverage report.
Review your Search Analytics data going back 16 months in the Performance report.
- See information on links pointing to your site and within your site using the Links report.
- Retrieve crawling, indexing, and serving information for any URL directly from the Google index using the URL Inspection Tool.
Better alerting and new “fixed it” flows:
- Get automatic alerts and see a listing of pages affected by Crawling, Indexing, AMP, Mobile Usability, Recipes, or Job posting issues.
- Reports now show the HTML code where Google thinks a fix is necessary.
- Share information quickly with the relevant people in your organization to drive the fix.
- Notify Google when you’ve fixed an issue. Google will review your pages, validate whether the issue is fixed, and return a detailed log of the validation findings.
Simplified sitemaps and account settings management:
Let Google know how your site is structured by submitting sitemaps
- Submit individual URLs for indexing.
- Add new sites to your account, invite and manage users.
How to use the New Google Search Console 2018?
Optimize your site’s technical SEO
SEO is something that needs continuous attention and there are always some of the other problems faced by the SEO experts. And therefore, if you do not know how Search Console can help you then do read this carefully.
Make use of the new “Index Coverage” report
Nothing to worry about. The Index Coverage report makes you aware of the site pages which are in Google’s index. The report will showcase all the technical issues which are there on your page because of which your page is not getting indexed.
A few months back Google launched its URL inspection tool through which one can inspect the live version of the page. This tool is really helpful if you are looking to debug or fix issues on your page. If the issue is getting fixed in the live version of the page then you can again request Google to index your page.
Drive organic traffic
Getting organic traffic is really a task for the marketers and finally, Google Search Console has the perfect solution for you. Search Console gives you a Performance report that showcases the complete performance of your website. The report carries things like the number of clicks that you are getting, click-through rate and average ranking position.
Security alerts become a priority
Since the digital space filling fast, the cyber threats are increasing, the hackers are free to do everything that they want. Therefore, taking into consideration this scenario, Google Search Console is going to display the critical alerts related to your website directly at the front. So basically all the security issues will be displayed directly on the overview page of the new Goole Search Console. Through which you will be able to know what is troubling your website and how to fix those problems.
So these are the few things that you need to keep in mind while using the new Google Search Console 2018. It is now out of beta and you can make complete use of it. It is really good and keeps your website healthy.
There are new elements added on the new console and it’s nice that you have shared these points. It’s good that you have added some samples. The coverage part is truly helpful in determining the URLs or pages which have errors.