Setting Up Google Search Console

I want my articles to rank high on Google so people come over to my website and read my blogs. I’m going to dive into my Google Search Console and show what I would do. Here we are in Google search. I’ve just typed Google Search Console. It brings you out onto this page and you can just click Start now. This takes me straight to my home page because I’ve logged in before. If you haven’t, you’ll need to add a property first, so you’ll see that page. And if you already have your domain, you can add it here, click continue and follow their setup wizard. If you haven’t got a domain yet, you need to go and sort that out before you can do anything more. As you can see, I’ve already done that, and you can add more than one property to your Google Search Console. Google Search Console is just a way of feeding back to you. It’s like a dashboard of how you rank on Google, how SEO-friendly and discoverable your articles and blog posts are, and how many views and clicks you get. It’s a good way to monitor the performance of your website.

Add a Property

That’s the first thing to do, add a property.

Add a Sitemap

Next, add your sitemap.A sitemap tells Google how your website works. It lists all your pages.To find yours, go to your website and add /sitemap.xml at the end. For example: yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xmlPress Enter. You will see a page with code. That code shows all your pages – your blog posts, privacy page, about page, and more.Copy that sitemap URL. Go back to Search Console, paste it in, and click Submit.I will not submit mine now. I checked it today, September 12th, and Google already read it. It says Success and shows 78 pages. That means Google found all my content.

Performance

Here you can see how your website performs over time. I like to check the last 6 or 12 months.You will see two important numbers: total clicks and total impressions.First, Google needs to index your page. Indexing means Google saves your page. Then you can get impressions. An impression means someone saw your link on Google. A click means they clicked it and visited your blog.This takes time. It can take up to 6 months to rank on Google. It is a long-term game. As you can see in my chart, my impressions grow every month because I keep posting.

Impressions and Clicks

Look at the last six months or the last 12 months and you’ll see that as I’ve paid more and more attention to this, I’m getting more and more impressions. This is still a very junior account. I haven’t been blogging for all that long. In Google terms it is a long-term play, and that’s the biggest takeaway here. In my experience it can take up to six months to start ranking on Google. Then look at your total clicks. These are the clicks you receive from people discovering your articles and blog posts, clicking over and reading them on your website.

URL Inspection and Requesting Indexing

This step is very important.When you publish a new blog post, Google does not find it right away. You have to tell Google to index it.Copy the URL of your new post. Go to Search Console and click URL Inspection. Paste your URL there.If Google says “URL is not on Google,” you need to click Request Indexing.I do this for every new blog post. I publish the post, then I request indexing right away. Google will test the URL and add it to the crawl queue. Then you just have to wait.

Checking Back and the Priority Crawl Queue

Check Google Search Console often. Test your URLs and track your views and clicks. After you request indexing, Google adds your URL to the priority crawl queue. Google will crawl your site soon and pick up your URL in the next crawl. That is all you can do for now. You can also check other pages, like your video pages, to track their performance.

Pages Not Indexed

Look down at the pages listed as not started or not indexed and go into those. I currently have 23 pages not indexed, so I regularly come in here and request indexing for some of these that I know are blog posts. Let’s take this one. I inspect the URL again and see how it’s doing. It will probably show as not indexed, and then I’ll request indexing again. All you can do is keep at Google to help it build a good picture of your website, so it can first index it, then rank it, and then you can get free traffic to your website.

The Point of SEO Work

Why do you do SEO work? If SEO is your main focus, check Search Console every day. If it is a side focus like mine, check it once a week. My goal is simple. I want people to find my blog on Google and read a post. Then I offer them a free gift. They join my email list, and I build a relationship with them over time. I want that, not just one quick sale. This is just one of the systems I use to run my business.

Needs Review

• The original said you can “register your domain at this site” (Google Search Console). Search Console verifies a domain you own and doesn’t register domains, so I changed it to say you need to sort out a domain first. Please confirm that matches what the speaker meant.
• “Not started or not indexed” looks like a transcription of Search Console’s status labels (possibly “Discovered, currently not indexed” or “Crawled, currently not indexed”). I left it as is because I can’t confirm the exact wording.