The Complete Guide to Google Search Console

Introduction to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is earlier known as the Webmaster Tool. It is used to check indexing status and optimize visibility of websites. It is the most important tool for an SEO analyst. It provides a controlled form of SEO. That means we have control for website language, target country, crawl rate, and errors. 

Features of Google Search Console

• It helps to crawl websites.
• Used as a communication link for Google to communicate with webmasters about website issues.
• It helps in submitting and checking of sitemaps. 
• And also helps the webmasters to find out any errors with their sitemap.
• Check and set the crawl rate.
• Google also crawls without search console but it is an uncontrolled form of SEO.
• Reports and errors of websites seen in the search console.

Different Methods of Verification

If a web page is created by a webmaster and caching in search console is done using another google account. Then Google shows different methods for verification.

1. HTML File verification method 
   It is the recommended method by Google, other methods are alternatives. You can verify ownership of a site by uploading an HTML file to your site. Removing this HTML file from your site will cause you to lose verification for the site. 
2. HTML Tag verification method
   You can verify your ownership of a site by attaching a <meta> tag to the HTML of a specified page. Google verify that the meta tag exists in the correct location. If Google can't find the tag, Google gives you information about the error encountered.
3. Google Analytics method 
   Google Analytics is another verification method used to track your site's traffic. You can verify your site using the Google Analytics tracking code associated with the site. To do this, "edit" permission for the web property is needed because the tracking code is used by that page.
4. Google Tag Manager method
    If you have a Google Tag Manager account, you can verify ownership of the site using this Google Tag Manager container snippet code. For this, you must have View, Edit, and Manage container-level permissions in Google Tag Manager.
5. DNS Record method
   This is to verify ownership of a property at the domain level. It is done by adding a DNS record in your domain name provider. For this, you must sign in to your domain name provider. For example, GoDaddy.com or networksolutions.com. And add a new TXT record. Google will verify that your personal record is present and this record is assigned to your domain.

INDEX

It consists of the tools related to indexing. The tools are,

• Coverage
• Sitemaps

        1. Coverage

It shows the coverage issues related to your website. We have to fix the occurred coverage issues, otherwise, it will affect your website negatively. Coverage issues may be warnings, errors, etc...

        2. Sitemaps

A sitemap is an XML file that consists of the URLs on a website. It allows the search engine to crawl the details of the site more efficiently and highspeed. An XML file is easily scanned by google bots in a highspeed manner than an Html file. One sitemap can contain 50,000 URLs. More than the limit can be included in separate sitemaps. We can also add a sitemap as a zip file.

Enhancements

It shows the improvements needed for your website. Like improvement of the website to a mobile-friendly stage.

       1. Mobile Usability

It is another feature in Google Search Console. It shows the issues and improvements related to your mobile sites. So you can fix the issues and make the site mobile friendly.

       2. AMP

AMP is Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is used for making the website more faster and quick loading on mobile devices.

Security and Manual Actions

       1. Manual Actions

It is the actions taken by google against the spammy websites that are not punished by google algorithms (Panda, Penguin, etc...). So the google manually take actions against spammy website and removes those web pages.

       2. Security Issues

It shows security issues like hacking, malware, etc... on your website. And we can take the necessary steps and fix the issues.

Legacy Tools and Reports

It consists of,

• International Targeting: We can select the target country for business.
• Removals: Removing the unwanted URLs from the google search results. There are some URLs that don't require indexing and also URLs with any mistakes. So we can remove those URLs from indexing. The removal request is only for 6 months.
• Crawl Stats: Shows the rate of crawling by Google.
• Messages: Shows the messages related to your website.
• URLs Parameters: Using special parameters in URLs, that helps to show important site changes.
• Web tools: Other tools that are useful to your website.

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