Beginner-Friendly Introduction to Google Search Console for Small Business

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free service provided by Google, helping you maintain and monitor your site presence and performance on Google. This in turn helps to fine-tune your SEO strategy and increase traffic to your blog. With Google Search Console, the keywords of your website will be ranked on the search engine results page and you will be able to determine the low-hanging keywords, which are the phrases or words that still allow you to get ranked on the search engine but not at the top of the results page.

Google Search Console for Small Business Owners

Google Search Console plays a crucial role in enhancing the marketing strategy of small businesses in Google search market. Having an updated search console will also help to significantly reduce the hefty workload of small business owners.

Google Search Console has three main functions:  

• Content optimization: It offers insights to small business owners on which are the search queries that are driving users to the website and you will be able to track search impressions and monitor clicks and rankings for specific terms.
  

• Get alerts and information from Google: The search console is an effective means of communicating with Google, as you will receive alerts related to indexing, spam, and other issues regarding your website.
  

• Ensure content is indexed:  Google can crawl your sitemaps and URLs, speeding up the entire process and ensuring that the important and relevant pages are indexed.

Benefits of Google Search Console

1. Improve Search Appearance

One key component to your digital marketing strategy is making use of Google Search Console to improve the search appearance of your website. With this tool, you will be able to see how your pages appear in Google’s search engine results page. As you continue to improve the search appearance of your website, it is also important to properly access how the results look. Do make sure that the titles, site links, meta description, URL are accurate. This will allow you to see how a potential visitor views the search engine results.

2. Increase Organic Search Traffic

Many small businesses using Google Search Console have a common goal, which is to increase their website traffic. There is a whole section of this free tool specially targeted to search traffic. You will have access to many insightful reports that will give you a better understanding on the various ways people are landing on your website through organic search results.

3. Receive Website Notifications

How great and effective would it be if you received a notification from Google whenever there are issues with your website? With Google Search Console, this is now possible. You will get messages and alerts when your sites are not crawling properly or if there are security risks found.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Google Search Console

Here is a breakdown of the various functions of Google Search Console:

1. Optimize your content with Search Analytics

Google Search Console provides a number of reports showing a detailed analysis of your website performance in Google search. You will have access to the actual keywords that are driving organic traffic to your website as well as your Google search rankings.

2. Troubleshoot indexing errors

The index coverage report is another crucial feature of the search console, as it allows you to find and resolve any errors regarding indexing and crawling.

3. Get alerts when there are issues with the site

After you have registered your website with Google Search Console, you will receive alerts for any Google manual penalties or security issues. Once the necessary corrective actions are taken, you can let Google know it has been resolved through the security issues report.

4. Use the URL inspection tool

The URL inspection tool is one of the most popular uses of the Google Search Console and allows you to troubleshoot errors when needed. It is not difficult to use; you simply need to enter your URL and you will see all the relevant information about that specific page.

5. Analyze your link profile

Another important feature is the Links report, where you will see all the links Google know about, including internal and incoming links. You can also use the disavow tool to get rid of any bad backlinks from Google.

6. Troubleshoot AMP and mobile friendliness issues

A mobile friendly website is not only useful for SEO, but also for an amazing user experience. Google Search Console has mobile usability tools which you can use to troubleshoot any errors relating to Accelerated Mobile Pages and your mobile site.

Start Using Google Search Console Today

Whether it is troubleshooting, resolving index issues, or optimizing site presence, Google Search Console is a great tool to help small businesses perform several tasks effectively and simultaneously. Ultimately, your marketing efforts do play a key role in the business strategy.

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Other than the many free tools offered in the market such as the Google Search Console, the Aspire Corporate Card is also a great way to enjoy more savings as they offer cashbacks on digital marketing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) spend.