SEO Company in Hopkins MN | How to use Google Search Console for your Small Business

September 1, 2022
SEO

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SEO Company in Hopkins MN

SEO Company in Hopkins MN | How to use Google Search Console for your Small Business

Are you looking for some tips on how to make your site more visible on Google? Here are 10 things that are easy to do, and can help improve your site’s ranking. SEO Company in Hopkins MN

1. Sign up for Search Console

To sign up, you’ll need a Google account. If you already have one, then you can log in to the Google Search Console site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/#manage-your-site without having to create a new account or reset your password—this is handy if you have multiple sites that need tracking!

If this is the first time using the site and/or if you haven’t used it for awhile, it might take a few minutes for your account to load after entering your details on the signup page.

2. Add your site

Sign up for Google Search Console
Add your site to search console
Verify your site in search console
Set a preferred property to track (optional)
Link Google Analytics to search console

3. Verify your site

If you haven’t yet, verify your site in Google Search Console. After verifying your site, you can use the new tools to gain insights into how users are finding and interacting with your brand online.

Adding a verification file to your root directory (such as /html/ or /www/) ensures that it is picked up by Googlebot and helps us understand how search works on your website. To verify your site:

Add the code to the section of an HTML file on your root directory (for example, index.html).
Add the code to the section of an HTML file on your root directory (for example, index.html).

4. Set a preferred property

If you’re running a site with multiple pages, it’s important to make sure that Google knows which page to list in SERPs. To do this, you can set a preferred property for each page.

For instance, if you have an article about body language at your website’s blog and another article about body language at your site’s main URL, then users may want to see two different articles in the search results for a particular query. If one of those articles is linked from another source like social media or featured on another website (throughout this guide we’ll call these external links), then it will show up first when someone searches for “body language.”

To let Google know which page is more relevant than the other, create separate listings within Search Console using different URLs as preferred properties.

5. Link Google Analytics

Link Google Analytics
Create a Google Analytics account and link your Search Console to it. The website you’re trying to track needs to be registered with a valid domain name, but if you have an existing site, this step should be pretty straightforward.
Add tracking code to your website. You’ll need to add the appropriate code snippet into each page of your website—this is where things get tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing! This is also why we recommend hiring an SEO expert when setting up Google Search Console for the first time: it can take hours or days of research just trying to figure out how exactly all the pieces fit together, which may end up being more expensive than hiring someone who knows what they’re doing in the first place!

6. Optimize your site SEO Company in Hopkins MN

You can also optimize your site to make it easier for Google Search to crawl and index all of your content. This includes:

Making sure the content on each page is readable and easy to scan
Using a keyword research tool such as Keyword Planner to find the right keywords for your website. You’ll want to include these in your title tags, meta descriptions (if you have them) and throughout the body of text on each page. Make sure that you’re using different variations of these keywords so that Google keeps finding new pages when someone searches for related topics.
Using a sitemap file so that Google knows about every single page on your site—even if they’re not linked from other pages or from an internal navigation menu at the top of each page listing all of those links.

7. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

It’s important to make sure your site is mobile-friendly. Google’s algorithm will penalize mobile sites that aren’t fully functional, and it can also hurt the ranking of any websites that are linked to yours. Mobile-friendliness is not just about making sure your website looks good on a small screen; it also means making sure the layout functions well, including images and videos as well as text content.

If you want to know how Google sees your website when viewed from a mobile device (as opposed to a desktop computer), you can do this by installing the Mobile-Friendly Test tool from Google Search Console onto your own phone or tablet:

It will tell you whether or not any pages need work in order for them to be considered “mobile friendly” by Google standards.

8. Enhance your structured data and link markups

Structured data and link markups are two of the most powerful tools you can use to help Google understand what your website is about. Structured data allows search engines to show rich snippets in their results pages, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for. Link markup helps Google understand the relationship between different pages on your site and how often they are linked together by other websites.

There’s a lot of technical information here, but thankfully we have some guides that can help you get started:

9. Submit a sitemap for indexing SEO Company in Hopkins MN

A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website, and it tells Google how to crawl and index those pages. You can create a sitemap by entering your site’s URL into Search Console. This will prompt Google to generate a sample sitemap in HTML format, which you can then edit and submit as needed.

Sitemaps help you improve crawl efficiency: for example, if you’re using multiple URLs for the same content (such as /news_and_events/2018/04/22-05/ instead of /2018/04/22-05), submitting a sitemap will let search engines know about these duplicate URLs so they can focus their crawling efforts on only one of them.

In addition, submitting a well-designed XML Sitemap helps prevent issues with duplicate content—for example, if Google were to find two different versions of an article or page with identical content but slightly different URLs (like http://www.examplewebsite1/?p=123 vs http://www.examplewebsit2/?p=123).

10. Review any problems, warnings or errors in Google Search Console

Review any problems, warnings or errors in Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides a wealth of information about how your site is doing on Google. If you see a warning or error message here, fix it as soon as possible. You can also use Search Console to make sure your site isn’t being blocked by Google due to some sort of problem with its content, and this will improve the ranking of your website.

Great content that is optimized for the search engines means you are more likely to get found when someone searches for information on Google

Use a variety of keywords in your content.
Use the right keywords in your title tags and meta descriptions.
Keep your content fresh and updated.
Use the right keywords for your images.
Use keywords in your links, especially as anchor text on internal links that point back to other pages on your website (e.g., “Learn more” or “Click here”). You can also add a nofollow attribute to these links so they don’t pass link juice!
Add some important keyphrases at the top of each page (header tags).

Conclusion

Now that you’re up to speed with Google Search Console, you can start making use of its many features. By following the steps we outlined above, you can improve your site’s SEO and help it rank higher in search results. If you are looking for a company to help you with your Google Search Console, contact Portkey SEO Solutions. We can help with your SEO to help you make the best of your website to bring in leads. Reach out to our Hopkins Minnesota company today!

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