Google Search Console has been a best friend of web-developers and SEOs throughout the years. If you have a little bit of SEO knowledge, then you definitely know about the GSC (Google Search Console). If not it’s OK. You can learn it.

In SEO industry Google Search console is known as GSC. In SEO industry there is a garden of SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush and you name the rest. But if you are not using Google Search Console then you are missing a lot.

You should live in the Google Search Console although it is not a living space.

Fortunately, after a long time, Google has announced the new Google Search Console out of beta testing. Now the new Google Search Console is the default option. You can roll back to the old version as well.

So how you can benefit from this new search console? Let’s starts.

Step -1. Add your site to GSC

The first and most important step is to Add your site to the New Search Console.

When you Log in to new Google Search Console dashboard, Google shows you a welcome message.

Then Head to the dropdown list at the top left of your dashboard. You will find an option in this list named “add property.”

 

Keep in mind that, you should enter your website’s URL exactly as it appears in the browser. If your site support both the protocols (http:// and https://) you should add both sites differently.

In the same way, if your site has multiple domains (example.com, www.example.com, m.example.com or any country-specific domain) add each as a separate property.

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Step -2. Verify your site

After adding the site or sites in GSC, You have to verify that you are the owner of this site.

You will see a pop-up like this. In this, I am adding a site for example.

 

You can choose the verification method according to your wish. You can find more option by scrolling this pop-up. Any method you can choose to verify the ownership. There is no limit here.

Once you add your site and verify it successfully, Google Search Console will begin collecting data. It may take time to reflect the data on the dashboard.

Now you are ready to use the new Google Search Console. But wait, there is one important thing to do.

Step – 3. Submit a Sitemap

After verifying your site then the most important task is to submit a sitemap. But what is sitemap and how to generate it and submit it in the new Google Search Console?

Simply, a sitemap is a list of pages of a website. This structured list provides detail information about the content to the search engine.

This improves the indexing process of your website by search engines. So it is always a good practice to submit a sitemap to the search console.

Don’t know your site has a sitemap or not? Don’t worry, just head to yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. If your site has a sitemap, it’s usually here.

If not, it’s ok. You can create one.

There are some sitemap generator online tools. You can generate and submit that sitemap to GSC.

If you are using CMS platform like WordPress then it is easier. You can use the Yoast plugin. Just ON the XML sitemap setting and it will generate and submit it to search console.

You can submit it manually if you are not using any CMS. It is easier with the new search console.

Head over to “Sitemaps” option in the left bar.

 

Then you will see an interface like this.

 

Enter your sitemap URL in the blank box and hit submit.

After that, you will a popup notification saying:

 

After submitting sitemap successfully you are now ready to live in the house of the new Google Search Console.

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Step – 4. Index Coverage Status

The new search console gives an option to see the index coverage status report right on the dashboard.

Head over to “Coverage” in the left sidebar.

Then it will show a nice looking Index coverage status report.

 

 

As shown on in the photo, the index coverage contains four sections like Error, Valid with warnings, Valid and Excluded. Let’s see it in details.

Error: These errors include redirect errors, server errors, robot.txt errors, 404s, and other variety of errors.

Valid with warnings: This section shows the pages which are indexed, but blocked by robots.txt. If you want, you can block a page from the indexing. Google can’t index a page with ‘noindex’ tag over robots.txt. Still, a blocked page can still be index if other pages link to it. With this section, you can identify it and correct those de-index pages.

Valid Pages: This shows all the index pages. If you see the message like “Indexed, not submitted in sitemap status”, make sure to add those URLs to your sitemap. “Indexed, consider marking as canonical” message means that two or more pages have duplicate URLs. So, you can easily detect it and make a correction.

Excluded: This shows the pages that have been blocked from the indexing. This pages usually contain a ‘noindex’ tag. This includes a robots.txt, a crawl anomaly, page removal tool, by virtue of being duplicate content, etc.

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If you have any error page then it will show the URL also. You can correct it. This Index coverage report is the most useful thing you should analyze and improve the ranking.

Step – 5. Performance report

New search console comes with a new looking performance report. You can know the total organic click, total impression, Avg. CTR, Avg. position.

Below this report, you will find the top ranking pages and queries. You will also find the impressions and clicks of that pages also. Then click on any link of that list shows you additional information.

Step – 6. Mobile usability

As the number of mobile users is increasing day by day, Google crafting their search result according to that. So there is a buzzword Google mobile first indexing.

This report tells about the troubles mobile users might face while using your site. The mobile usability issues consist “Content wider than screen” and “Clickable elements too close together”.

By improving the mobile SEO you will get more mobile search traffic.

Step – 7. Links

Links are super powerful in SEO. Both internal linking and external links are powerful.

This report shows you the number of external links to your site with the link text. This report also gives you a list of internal linking pages. Hit the “More” button to get the full list.

Bonus step

With the new Google Search Console, you will find a section for URL inspection in the top. Here you can check any URL of your site.

 

This shows you whether the particular URL is on Google or not. This also shows the mobile usability report.

Conclusion

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So, the new Google Search Console is here. Google has a lot of enhancement and brings some new features also.

To get success in this competitive SEO world, one should use the power of this free SEO tool. Moreover this the tool of Google itself. There are tons of SEO tools out there, but I think Google Search Console is number one.

In this article, I have defined the most out of it. But these are not the only thing. Dig dipper into it and you will find a lot more interesting stats and reports. Also, apply the filters and get more precise data.