The major concern for businesses these days is getting quality leads. Once you have established a website, the next step is to focus on its performance. Most of us want to increase the number of visitors and know how well our website is doing in search rankings.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a tool that helps you know the performance of your website in the Google search results. GSC is also your answer to the question of ‘how to drive more traffic to your website’.
GSC is one of the best SEO tools, businesses must optimize this free platform to rank higher in the search results and/or to attract organic traffic to their website. This tool has loaded features that assist with everything related to your website. Use it to understand how Google and its users view your site.
GSC has a wide range of features, many times it can get complicated and overwhelming, especially when using it for the first time. Knowing its complexity, we recommend you to establish a purpose before using it. Your purpose can range from improving SEO to knowing about the other websites linking to your website. If your aim is to attract more traffic to your website using GSC, continue reading this post below.
To start using this tool, you need to select either the ‘domain’ option or the ‘URL prefix’ option and verify your website. You can also start using it by linking it to your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager account.
Once the account is set up and keeping in mind the aim of driving more traffic, your focus will be on gauging the information from the search analytics tool to improvise on your content and revise the website’s strategies. The search analytics tool enables you to know the queries that get users to your site.
- Collect data from Search Analytics
Look for data in Search analytics that will help you get insights for improving the number of visitors you have. Here are a few of the options that you need to focus on to make strategies:
- Clicks – shows the number of people who have clicked on your website link on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).
- Impressions – presents Google’s count of SERP results in which people have seen your site.
- Click-through-rate (CTR) – a metric that illustrates the ratio of how many people have actually clicked on the website link to how many people have seen your website in their search result, i.e. the click count upon the impression count.
- Queries – sketches the list options that attract the viewers to your website.
- Page – which pages of your website were the most referred.
- Country – gives the geographical location of all the searches that have come for your website.
- Device – enables you to know which device was used by the visitor to search for your website.
- Search type – provides details of the type of search mode (web, video, image, etc.) used by the user.
- Date – delivers data from the selected range of timeframe. You can select the data range and compare the data to any previous period also.
- Position – makes you aware of the average position of the highest result of your website.
- Optimize results that don’t get clicks
Focus on the search queries that get high impressions but fewer clicks and low CTR. You get to know of the keywords that many people are searching for and therefore have high visibility. Using this, you can work on improving the pages that have a high impression to increase your SERP presence and get more clicks from the users.
In search analytics, using a combination of various filters as described above, you can get to know about the performance of each keyword in detail. Figure out the ones that match the criteria of what you are looking for. Think over and know the reasons why actually are these keywords not getting enough clicks despite the high impressions.
Go to Google Incognito and search using each of those keywords, evaluate the things that can affect the user’s decision of not clicking on your site. Check the title, meta description, photo, or even your competitors. Once you know what is not working, start to develop strategies around those things and improve the traffic to your website.
- Improve your title tags and Meta description
In Google’s search result, your URL, title tag, and meta description are visible to the user. On the basis of these three, the user decides on whether to click on your website link or not. Therefore, it is of prime importance to pay attention to re-working on the title and the meta description in case you are not driving the desired traffic. The trick is to think from the user’s point of you and you will figure out the answer.
A unique title will make you stand out from the various other options on the search result pages. Keep your title as close and specific to the keywords as possible. It should be clear and well-formatted. The string should be short for the audience to gauge in a limited amount of time, but also descriptive to convince them to click on it.
If the user likes your title, the next thing they look at is the meta description to get more details about your website. Keep your meta description crisp and to the point. It is a pitch to convince the user to click on the website. You need to summarize all the key points related to your content. Provide what the user is looking for, however, make the user curious of what your website is. Make sure to include the keywords and keep it short, otherwise Google cuts-off long descriptions.
- Work on mobile SEO strategy
The device option enables you to filter keywords that users use to find your website on mobile. Mobile these days is the most convenient option. A lot of businesses are building their SEO strategy around mobile. Optimize your website for mobile, by working on keywords that the mobile users are specifically typing to find your website in SERP. By accessing a large audience you can get more traffic to your website and have an advantage in terms of SEO. Know that Google will crawl and index your site’s mobile version first instead of its desktop version.
The main thing to contemplate when wanting to drive more traffic is improving your website’s content along with working on the above-mentioned points. If people do not like your content, remember that they are not going to come back.
GSC is a comprehensive tool that not only helps you to drive more traffic but brings along a lot of added advantages. Do not be afraid of the data, make it a part of your SEO strategy. When used as a supplement with other tools, GSC can prove to be one of the most powerful asset for your website.
Author Bio:
Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. He has helped some renowned technology companies with their product. In this blog, Ashutosh shares some tips and tactics on how to use Google Search console to drive more traffic.
