Class 4 - Google Search Console Part 1
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Watch the Full Video : Google Search Console Part 1
Google Search Console Work: Make a smooth connection between your website and Google, and fix the issues between your website and Google.
Google Search Console is a low-priority and low-performance system, it does not show website changes, updates, or issues instantly. Instead, it takes some time to detect and display them.
Domain Property: mitromate.com
Url Prefix Property: https://mitromate.com, https://www.mitromate.com, https://blog.mitromate.com
Add both properties: the Domain Property and the URL Prefix Property, like mitromate.com or https://mitromate.com/
CNAME: It is used to create subdomains.
TTL(Time to Leave): If you delete the record in the future, this determines how long it will remain active before it is deleted. This value is in seconds.
NOTE: The record you add takes some time to be implemented because your hosting provider needs to propagate it to servers around the world. If it is not verified immediately, please wait.
NOTE: If you verify the main Domain Property, then when you add the URL Prefix Property later, it will be verified automatically because the main Domain Property is already verified, and it includes everything under the domain.
Overview: Overview means you get a snapshot of your website’s overall situation, condition, and its current state.
Index: This means how many pages of this website have been indexed by Google. We talked about indexing earlier, which means Google saves a copy of your website’s pages. If Google does not save a copy of your pages, it will not rank them, and you will not get traffic.
Experience: This means what your users’ experience is with your website, experience means, let’s say we open this Mitromate website, it refers to how quickly the website opens. If a website takes too long to open, people will not consider it good. They will not spend much time on it because they have to wait, and no one likes to wait. That is why Google does not rank slow websites well. So, if you want your website to rank well, you should keep it fast.
Here, you can see how many pages of your website Google considers fast and how many pages it considers not fast. You can find all of this in the Experience section. Next is the Shopping overview. It shows how many product pages on your website Google considers valid and how many have problems.
Now, there is one more thing you need to understand. Many times, even experienced SEOs get confused when they are asked, ‘What is the actual traffic of your website?’ How can you find out? Some people say Google Search Console. Others mention Google Analytics. But the truth lies in between. Neither Google Search Console nor Google Analytics has the complete answer.
So, let’s say i go to Google Search and search for ‘MitroMate.’ If i click on this result, then this counts as one click because i clicked it from the Google Search results page. Now, instead of 6,159 clicks, it will become 6,160 clicks.
If i click on one of these “articles” and visit another page within the website, the counter will not increase because Google Search Console only receives data from Google Search. I clicked on the Home page only from Google Search. Once i clicked on that page and entered the website, Google Search no longer receives that information. Now, even if I click on 50, 60, or 100 pages within the website and keep visiting them, you will not see that information here. The information about that internal traffic is available in another tool called Google Analytics.
Performance
Average Position: This means the position of any page on this “MitroMate” website for any keyword. Here, it is showing 10.2 Right now, i searched for ‘MitroMate,’ and it appears at the top because it is a branded keyword. Tomorrow, if i search for a different keyword and the website ranks at a different position for that keyword, it will affect the average position. So, the Average Position shows the average ranking position across all keywords and all URLs on this “MitroMate” website based on all the impressions they receive.
Query Containing: When i keep the Query containing option selected, enter ‘mitromate’ in the keyword field, and then click the Apply button, it will show the results for all the queries that contain the word ‘mitromate’.
Query Not Containing: When i keep the Query not containing option selected, enter ‘mitromate’ in the keyword field, and then click the Apply button, it will hide all the queries that contain the word ‘mitromate’. It will only show the remaining queries that do not contain the word ‘mitromate’.
Exact Query: When I keep the Exact Query option selected, enter ‘mitro’ in the keyword field, and then click the Apply button, I will only see the traffic for that exact query, ‘mitro’.
Search Console in Search results: This is a setting. If you keep it turned on, your website’s results may sometimes appear when you search on Google.
Pages
All Known Pages: All Known Pages means all the pages that Google knows about. In other words, the total number of pages.
All Submitted Pages: This shows how many URLs in this website’s sitemap have been indexed by Google and how many have not been indexed. These are all the pages that the website’s SEOs have submitted to the sitemap.
Impressions section in Index: Let’s say you generate 10,000 pages using AI and publish them on your website. Then, the indexing number here will suddenly increase. Right now, it shows 71, but after you publish those 10,000 pages, the number will increase. Ideally, if all of them get indexed, you can check whether adding those extra pages increased or decreased your impressions. Google will show the views for all those pages. You can check it directly here, there is no need to do any calculations. You will clearly see it here. The indexing count will suddenly increase, and the traffic should also increase. If it does, that’s fine. But if it doesn’t increase or suddenly drops, it means Google has identified that the content is AI-generated. Google is penalizing your website.
What could be another use case? Let’s say you take over a new website. You notice that the website has 1,000 pages, but out of those, 500 pages are of poor quality. They have no useful content, contain random content, or are outdated. So, you remove those 500 pages. This is called content pruning. You are removing low-quality content to make the website leaner. When something becomes lean and fit, it performs better. Now, the number of indexed pages will also decrease because you deleted 500 pages. You will see 500 fewer pages here. But when you check this box and see that the impressions have increased, you will know that your content pruning had a positive impact. You reduced the number of pages, but your impressions increased. That means Google is happy.