Presented by Tony Tellijohn at the 2017 MN Blogger Conference (http://mnbloggerconference.com) Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a seemingly often overlooked free service provided by Google, which provides insights into your site’s presence in Google Search results. This session will explore how to set it up on your site, and what the most useful information may be for you as a blog owner to help your site grow. Recommended/helpful audience prerequisites: Ideally for people who have their blog up and running. Would plan to spend just a few minutes showing how to setup Google Search Console, and most of the time going through some of the information in the Console, and how to use it. Key session takeaways: -How to setup Google Search Console, and integrate it with Google Analytics. -How to find what keywords & pages are the driving the most traffic from Google, and where some new opportunities lie. -Identifying technical issues with your site (that Google is interested in). Information on internal & external links on your site. -Other information to be on the lookout for within Search Console

1. Think Digital. Take Aktion.

2. ı Introduction
ı Setup & Verifying your Profile
ı Features & Functionality of Search Console
ı What should you be looking at as a Webmaster
ı What should you be doing for SEO
ı Questions and/or Live Walkthrough
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
Agenda

3. ı Co-founder of Aktion Interactive
ı 17+ years of digital experience
ı Enterprise, Agency, Startup & SMB
Background
ı Blogger (www.zoneblitz.com, amongst
many others)
ı Co-Founder, Former President of
MnSearch (www.mnsearch.org)
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
Tony Tellijohn
• @toonces51
• tony@aktioninteractive.com

4. ı Former Google Webmaster Tools
ı Free Service
ı Monitor the Health & Performance of Your
Website (in Google’s eyes)
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
What Is Google Search Console?

5. ı Go to
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
Setup & Verify Your Profile

10. ı Go to
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
ı Enter URL and follow verification prompts
ı Make sure to setup & verify all relevant
formats of your site
ı http://yourdomain.com
ı http://www.yourdomain.com
ı https://yourdomain.com
ı https://www.yourdomain.com
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
Setup & Verify Your Profile

12. ı Preferences = Email notifications
ı Site settings = Display URL & Crawl Rate

14. ı Preferences = Email notifications
ı Site settings = Display URL & Crawl Rate
ı Change of Address = Moving domains
ı Google Analytics Property

16. ı Preferences = Email notifications
ı Site settings = Display URL & Crawl Rate
ı Change of Address = Moving domains
ı Google Analytics Property
ı Users & Property Owners
ı Verification Details

19. ı Preferences = Email notifications
ı Site settings = Display URL & Crawl Rate
ı Change of Address = Moving domains
ı Google Analytics Property
ı Users & Property Owners
ı Verification Details
ı Associates

27. ı Structured Data, Rich Cards, Data Highlighter—great for
event listings, review ratings, etc
ı Consistent data that Google will call out in a different format in the
SERPs
ı These sections have great info on how to utilize/implement on your
site
ı HTML Improvements & Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

28. ı Improvements that can be made for usability (which will also
help with SEO)

29. ı Discover whether or not you’re using AMP on your site…

30. ı Or what kind of issues you may be having with AMP…

31. ı And what to do about them.

34. ı These last two sections are where I spend most of my time.

35. ı Pages that are issuing Error codes (404, etc)
ı Redirect them (301), Mark as Fixed

37. ı Check the frequency and volume of data being consumed by
Googlebot

38. ı Confirm that you have a robots.txt file, and there are no
issues with it
ı Check individual pages to see if they are blocked by Googlebot,
including the News, Image, Video, Mobile and Adsbot

39. ı How does Google see your page/site?
ı How does that compare to how users see your site?

42. ı Pray that you NEVER see anything different than this on this
page.

43. ı Use hreflang tags to tell Googlebot what language your
site/page is targeting
ı Also just flat out tell them what Country your site is targeting here.

44. ı Mobile first indexing is coming….soon (was supposed to roll
out in 2017, now likely coming in 2018)
ı Google will use the mobile version of the page for indexing content
ı **Shouldn’t** impact rankings if content is the same
ı A mobile only index may follow…

45. ı Find all of the internal links that Google knows about for your
site
ı Find more opportunities to link internally to key/new pages

46. ı Find information on links TO your site
ı Find out who is linking to your site
ı What pages generate the most links
ı Anchor text used
ı Jumping off point to Disavow bad links

47. ı What keywords are people using to find your site?
ı What keywords are you appearing for in results, but not getting
clicks on?

48. ı Isolate specific phrases/keywords with Query filters
ı Then see what pages are generating those impressions

49. ı Reverse that, see what pages are generating clicks/impressions
ı Then see what keywords are generating those impressions
ı Change targeting for pages based on data

50. ı Data only goes back 90 days (and is usually 1-2 days
delayed)
ı Only the top 999 keywords will be displayed
ı Reports are downloadable
ı Data does flow into Google Analytics (conversion data
included)
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
Search Analytics

51. ıThank you!
Think Digital. Take Aktion.
Questions?