If you have only one tool for your site, make it this one. Analytics tells you what people do WHEN they arrive; Search Console tells you how Google sees you and why they arrive at all — or do not.
Setup (10 minutes)
- 1. Go to search.google.com/search-console with your Google account
- 2. Add property → choose Domain (covers everything, with and without www) or URL prefix (easier)
- 3. Verify ownership: for Domain — a TXT record in DNS (we add it in a minute, just ask); for URL prefix — an HTML file, a meta tag or via Google Analytics
- 4. Submit your sitemap: Sitemaps → enter sitemap.xml → Submit
- 5. Wait 2-3 days for the first data
The four reports that matter
1. Performance (the most important)
Four numbers: clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. But the real value is below: Queries — the exact terms people find you by.
Expect surprises: you appear for terms you never planned. That is gold — write an article for those terms and you climb immediately.
2. Pages / Indexing
Which pages Google has and which it rejected and why. If an important page sits under Crawled — currently not indexed, Google saw it but did not consider it valuable enough — a sign the content is thin.
3. URL Inspection (the speed tool)
Paste a new article address → Request indexing. Instead of waiting weeks, Google comes in a day or two. Do this after every new post.
4. Experience / Core Web Vitals
Speed and stability as Google measures them from real visitors. Red means a problem that affects rankings.
The most useful trick
In Performance filter to positions 8-20. Those are terms where you are on page two — closest to winning. A small improvement to that article (a better title, more content, an internal link) often means a jump to page one. It is the cheapest SEO there is.
What to check monthly (20 minutes)
- Are clicks growing versus last month
- New terms in Queries → ideas for your next articles
- Coverage errors (404s, redirects) → fix them
- Which pages bring the most → dig deeper there
For our clients: we set up Search Console during the build and explain what you are looking at.