Digital Marketing Postcard: What is Google Search Console? [Video]

Welcome to the September edition of the Umami Digital Marketing Postcard!  This month’s video was filmed along the beautiful beaches of Maui, Hawaii, which was a perfect spot to visit just as fall started to hit Vancouver!

In this edition, Victoria Chemko will be talking about Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools), and why it is so important to set up this tool for your business.  Check out the video below to find out all the answers to your Google Search Console questions:

Rough Video Transcription:

Today’s question comes from subscriber Tamara at Rentitfurnished.com.  She said that she’s heard a lot about Google Search Console, but doesn’t really get what it is or why she should be looking at it to help in her search engine optimization and general online marketing effort.

So what is Google Search Console?

It’s a free tool provided by Google to help you monitor and track your website, providing data and various configuration controls to do so.  Once it has been setup properly, you can then use it to look into different factors that will impact your SEO, so that you can ensure that your site is running as optimally as possible.

There are a lot of features in GWT, but some of the key areas that I recommend using it for include the following:

Diagnosing and Fixing Errors on Your Website

Google Search Console will allow you to access a list of HTML site errors so that you can locate and improve them.  It will also list crawl errors impacting your website, and it will also detect any malware that you might want to get rid of right away.  It also provides you the ability to set up notifications, so if there are any major issues are on your site, so you can be alerted right away and lessen the impact to your website.

Links to Your Site

Google Search Console will identify who links to your site, what content they are linking to, and which sites are linking to your site the most.  It will also help you to determine any negative links that should be removed.  This will help you in your continual link building optimization efforts, as you can use the information to add more links to authoritative sites.

Uncover Top Search Queries & Keywords

Google Search Console monitors which keywords and top search queries are driving traffic to your site and provides reporting so that you can target the most relevant keywords in your website content, as part of your ongoing search engine optimization (SEO).  It will also display the top landing pages that visitors are landing on, when they are searching for specific keywords, so you can make sure you optimize those landing pages properly, as well as improve your overall user experience.

In summary, Google Search Console is a great free tool that everyone should have setup for their website, in order to help them diagnose and fix errors, determine and evaluate links, and uncover your top search queries and keywords, as part of your ongoing search engine optimization efforts.

To find out more about Google Search Console, be sure to head on over to the Umami Marketing Blog and check out our other posts on the same topic: Google Search Console – Setting Up Your Account; and How to Get the Most Out of Your Google Search Console Account.

Thank you for the question, Tamara!  We hope this month’s answer will help you and our other visitors with your website and enhancements.  If you liked this edition of the Digital Marketing Postcard, please subscribe to the Umami Marketing YouTube channel to get more tips on the road!

For more information on digital marketing, check out: https://umamimarketing.com/blog/