Eliminating The Mystery of SEO Reporting with Google Search Console

by | Apr 5, 2021 | Google, SEO, Training

 

A good search engine optimization (SEO) strategy leads to a higher ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), increased traffic to your website, more eyeballs on your online content, and ultimately, more paying customers. SEO is the application of various content-creation principles defined by Google. These principles are designed to build readership trust and authority with search engines, which in turn builds credibility for your content.

But it takes time and involves keyword research, review and listings management, and content marketing. The more pages where content from a business shows up, the better. You want your content to appear on listing sites, maps like Google, Bing, and Apple, and any other niche directories like Yelp for example. Everything from social media to blog writing and even the wording on your website matters if you seek the Number 1 ranking on Google search.

Small business owners have turned to technology and SEO experts for help because they can’t do it all themselves. They need to know that the money and effort they spend on SEO will pay off. This is exactly the purpose of analytics tools and platforms like Google Search Console (GSC). Chris Beckwith-Taylor, Chief Strategist at GREENstick, says he relies on analytics tools to prove that his clients are getting positive results.

 

When working with small- and medium-businesses without the right tools and data, you can feel blind as to the impact you’re actually having on the business. The goal with all SEO strategies like blog writing, review management, and listings management, is really just to show up where people are searching. In order to see the impacts it’s having on a business, you need some way to measure how the business appears in search results.”

SEO Reporting Tools

 

Data reporting can be tedious at best. It’s a matter of deciding which metrics matter, and then figuring out how to uncover and manage those numbers. The information available is endless once you start digging, and the effort can be overwhelming for many small business owners. However, metric numbers are proof that SEO work is delivering results. SEO needs to be monitored closely and measured on a regular basis in order to determine if what you’re doing works.

Google Search Console is a free platform that helps eCommerce businesses monitor and optimize their search performance. Chris says, “search console is the best tool currently available for getting as close to that truth as possible.” It includes an index coverage report that provides a list of all the website pages Google tried to index on your site. Indexing is how Search organizes information. Google crawls the internet looking for links called backlinks that tie back to your website. More links generally mean higher authority with Google resulting in a higher ranking on SERPs.

The Mobile Usability Report in GSC shows errors that Google has determined will affect user experience on a smartphone. Errors hurt your authority with search engines (as well as humans), so it’s essential to remove any that exist. This is another example of an extremely helpful tool within GSC. It provides countless reports for marketers, SEO experts, web designers, and small business owners who wear multiple hats.

The GSC platform tracks SEO performance and provides measurements of SEO activities. Google has provided the following list of actions that contribute to good SEO in their explanation about Search Console.

  • Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.
  • Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
  • View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.
  • Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
    Show you which sites link to your website.
  • Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features.

According to Chris, the majority of business owners don’t know about the analytics tools and platforms available to them. Furthermore, if they are aware of platforms like Google Search Console, they probably don’t know how to use them effectively. Anyone with a website will undoubtedly have data to analyze. Small business owners should be asking ‘am I being found online easier because of my reviews, listings, and social marketing?’ This knowledge helps to understand the power of analytics.

 

How GREENstick Simplifies The SEO Story

 

From Chris’ past experiences, the SEO big picture is generally a complicated hot mess. Image having all the necessary metrics and completed SEO tasks reported on a single dashboard. The GREENstick Executive Report is automated and provides a simple to read, first-hand look at those metrics. The GREENstick team has simplified and eliminated confusion by narrowing down the reports to just those most important to small business owners.

“There’s data in Google My Business, Google Analytics, reviews, and all of the listing sites. If a small business owner was to sit down and try to figure it out themselves they would be overwhelmed. They would give up and wouldn’t understand what data means once they’ve found it. With the executive report, we’ve created an easy-to-understand overview of all this data in a simple format.”
With a simplified analysis of your data, you can determine which metrics are related to which SEO activities. This is where you begin to see how the small pieces of the story fit together. Until the small pieces are assembled, it’s difficult to explain the big picture.
 
If your review rating goes up, for instance, it’s difficult to see the overall picture and why a business owner should care. They need to know what it’s contributing to and what they’re getting out of it. This SEO reporting gives small business owners a better understanding of what they’re getting by putting money, time, and effort into their reviews and listings. It shows a more tangible outcome of all these things combined and how it may be moving a business from ranking Number 35 in Google search results to Number 12.
 
For example, if you own a local restaurant that receives multiple five-star reviews Google sees this as an activity that builds authority. By ensuring your listing sites are filled out and updated with correct information, you continue to build authority. This then increases your ranking in SERPs.

Delivering Only The Key Search Metrics

 

Agencies have made SEO so complicated that it can be difficult for business owners and marketers to decipher which measurements matter. At GREENstick, we wanted to Google Search Console simpler by showing the analytics behind FIVE key metrics.

  1. The number of queries for which your business appears on the first page of Google Search Results.
  2. The number of clicks a website receives.
  3. The number of impressions a website receives
  4. The queries that receive the most clicks
  5. The top pages on a website that receive the most clicks and impressions.

The metrics are allowing our customers to track website rankings on Google and the number of visits and page impressions received over a given period of time. It’s a way to quantify the value of investments made in SEO and other online search improvements.

With a platform like Google Search Console, business owners can measure exactly how their SEO work pays off. Focusing on the five metrics outlined will cut back the vast number of available reports. You can always dig further into the metrics and analytics from this starting point.

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