Be Friends with Google Search Console
All business owners should utilize Google Search Console. It's free and helps you learn more about how your site appears in searches and what you can do to improve upon that. Here are the steps to get you started.
What is Google Search Console?
Put simply, Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. It’s a way to help you understand and improve how Google sees your site.
Verify Your Domain
This process proves that you own the site that you claim to own. Google Search Console requires this to confirm ownership because once you are verified for a site, then you have access to its private Google Search data, and can affect how Google Search crawls the site.
Login to your Google Search Console at search.google.com.
Add a property (the URL of the site you want to verify).
Select which way you'd like to verify your site. The domain step seemed easiest to us. Insert the URL of your website.
The final step is the Google Verification Code. This needs to be added to your DNS records on your domain. All you have to do is copy this code and create a new TXT record on your domain, but you'll need access to where your domain is housed. Once you do this, in another web browser tab, come back to this page and click "verify." If it doesn't work right away, no worries. Verify it later. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time.
Why Connect with Google Search Console?
More In-depth Analytics
You'll be able to see analytics (different from Google Analytics) on the web, images, videos, news and more. You'll see the impressions on images and videos, too, as well as clicks on each.
You Can Submit a Sitemap
A sitemap is an important way for Google to discover URLs on your site. Most sites generate a site map for you and you have nothing to worry about. However, if you make a lot of critical updates, we suggest submitting a sitemap.
Learn of Site Issues
The Search Console provides warnings from issues with your website. These warnings do not disqualify your rich results from being shown in Google Search, but they can provide a somewhat reduced experience for your users. So, fix them.
Get Alerts
Google Search Console sends you alerts when it encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site. This is great in a situation where malware has taken over your site or other issues.
Take Control of Your Website
With the help of Google Search Console, you'll be able to get a better handle on how your site appears in searches, what gets customers there and more. It's up to you on how you use this new knowledge.