How Google Search Console Can Boost Your Marketing Strategy

Google Search Console is a powerful tool that can help you improve your website's performance and enhance your marketing strategy. You can make data-driven decisions to optimize your content and improve your online presence by providing valuable insights into your website's search traffic and performance. 

Users form an opinion about a website in 0.05 seconds

In North America, 51.2% of web traffic comes from mobile devices

47% of users won’t wait longer than two seconds for a website to load

40% of users will leave a site if take more than three seconds to load

88% of online users won’t return to a site after a bad experience

Source: Top Website Statistics For 2023

This is why it is critical to your business success to understand the user experience with your website!

Understand the basics of Google Search Console.

Before diving into how Google Search Console can boost your marketing strategy, it's essential to understand the basics of the tool. Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that allows website owners to monitor and maintain their site's presence in Google search results. It provides valuable data on search traffic, search queries, and website performance, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and optimize your content for better visibility in search results.

Use the Performance report to analyze your website's search traffic.

The Performance report in Google Search Console is a powerful tool that allows you to analyze your website's search traffic in detail. You can see which queries drive the most traffic to your site, which pages perform the best, and even which countries and devices your visitors are coming from. This information can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your content to meet your audience's needs better.

Additionally, you can use the Performance report to track the impact of any changes you make to your website or marketing strategy, allowing you to refine and improve your approach continually.

You can drill down to look at Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices and Search Appearance to gain deeper insights as to how your website is meeting your marketing goals.

Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric used in online marketing to measure the effectiveness of a particular campaign. It represents the percentage of users who click on a specific link, typically displayed as a hyperlink, out of the total number of users who view the page.

CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on a link by the number of impressions it receives and multiplying the result by 100 to express it as a percentage.

The formula for CTR is:

CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) x 100

For example, if a query or webpage receives 1,000 impressions and generates 50 clicks, the CTR would be:

CTR = (50 / 1000) x 100 = 5%

A higher CTR indicates that  link is compelling and resonating with the target audience, encouraging them to click and engage further.

It is often used as an indicator of the content's relevancy, attractiveness, and overall performance.

A low CTR may suggest that the content needs improvement or that it is not reaching the right audience effectively.

Pro Tip: Take a close look at high Impression queries and compare to the clicks.  If you see high impressions and low clicks this is an opportunity to improves your content.

Optimize your website's content with the Enhancements report.

The Enhancements report in Google Search Console provides valuable insights into how you can improve your website's content to make it more search engine friendly. This report highlights any errors or issues with your website's structured data, which is the code that helps search engines understand the content on your site. By fixing these errors and optimizing your structured data, you can improve your website's visibility in search results and attract more traffic.

The Enhancements report also provides recommendations for improving your website's mobile usability, which is becoming increasingly important as more and more people use their mobile devices to browse the internet.

What is AMP on a website?

AMP stands for "Accelerated Mobile Pages." It is an open-source framework developed by Google that aims to improve the performance and speed of web pages on mobile devices.

The main objective of AMP is to deliver a fast and optimized user experience for mobile users. It achieves this by employing a stripped-down version of HTML and specific guidelines and restrictions on using CSS and JavaScript. AMP pages can load significantly faster than regular web pages by simplifying the code and removing unnecessary elements.

AMP pages are designed to be lightweight and prioritize speed over complex functionality. They utilize a limited set of pre-approved tags, and certain features that could slow down page rendering, such as third-party JavaScript, are restricted. Additionally, AMP implements pre-rendering, where the content is loaded before a user clicks on a page, further enhancing the perceived speed.

While AMP primarily targets mobile devices, it can also be used on desktop browsers. However, it is essential to note that AMP is not a ranking factor for search engine optimization (SEO). While AMP can potentially improve a website's performance and user experience, achieving high search engine rankings is not required.

Using AMP is optional, and website owners can choose to implement it on their sites. AMP is typical for news articles, blog posts, and other content-focused pages that benefit from fast loading times and enhanced mobile usability.

Monitor and improve your website's mobile usability with the Mobile Usability report.

With more and more people using their mobile devices to browse the internet, optimize your website for mobile use. The Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console provides insights into any issues with your website's mobile usability, such as text too small to read or clickable elements too close together.

By fixing these issues, you can improve the user experience for mobile users and potentially boost your website's search engine rankings. The Mobile Usability report also provides recommendations for improving your website's usability, such as using responsive design and optimizing images for mobile devices.