Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your site appears in Google Search. Analytics tools tell you what visitors do after they arrive; Search Console tells you what happened before that, on the results page. For a small site, one report in it, Performance, is enough to find your next three things to fix.
The four numbers, in plain words
The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR) and average position. Google’s help pages define them like this:
- Impression: your link was on the results page where a searcher could see it, even if they did not scroll to it.
- Click: a searcher clicked through to your site.
- CTR: clicks divided by impressions.
- Position: for each query, the topmost position your link held, averaged across queries. Ads do not take a position.
Because position is an average, treat it as a direction rather than a rank. Google itself suggests focusing on impression and click trends rather than position alone.
Find pages that show up but do not get clicked
Google’s own “common tasks” guide describes this workflow for high-impression, low-CTR pages:
- Open the Performance report and click the CTR scorecard above the chart.
- Open the Pages tab.
- Sort by CTR, ascending.
- Consider rewriting the title and description, or adjusting the content to match the queries that show it.
A page with plenty of impressions and few clicks is being seen but not chosen. A better title is often the cheapest fix; our guide to titles and meta descriptions walks through it. Keep in mind that a low CTR is normal for pages sitting far down the results, so start with the pages that have real impressions.
See what people searched to find a page
Open the Queries tab, click a query, then open the Pages tab to see which of your URLs appeared for it. Or filter by one page and look at its queries. Those search phrases tell you what readers wanted. If a post gets impressions for a phrase it barely mentions, that is a clue for your next update.
Check whether a change helped
After you edit a title, compare the period around the change with an earlier, similar period using the comparison feature, and annotate the date so you remember. Give it a few weeks. Small sites have noisy data, and one good day proves nothing.
Slice the data by device and country
The report also groups data by countries, devices and search appearance, as well as by queries and pages. Two slices are worth a look on a small site. Devices shows whether most of your visitors arrive on phones, which tells you where to check your page layout first. Countries shows whether your audience matches the readers you write for, for example US readers if your advice is about US taxes or US platforms.
A 20-minute monthly routine
- Set the date range to the last three months and note total clicks and impressions.
- Sort Pages by clicks and list your top five. These are the posts to keep fresh.
- Sort Pages by CTR, ascending, and pick one high-impression page to retitle.
- Open the Queries tab for one page and add a missing phrase to a heading if it fits naturally.
- Write down what you changed and the date, so you can compare later.
Keep the routine small on purpose. A site with a handful of posts will not have much data, and that is fine. The goal is to build the habit of looking before you guess.
Know the limits
The default view covers the past three months, so a brand-new site may show very little for a while. Rankings move for reasons outside your control, and Search Console does not tell you who your readers are or whether they bought anything. Pair it with a simple analytics setup; see our guide on simple analytics for a side business.
If you use WordPress and an SEO plugin, you may be able to verify your site in Search Console from the plugin’s settings, but the exact steps vary by plugin and host, so follow the documentation for yours.
Do this today
Open the Performance report, set the date range to the last three months, follow the four steps above and write down the three pages with the most impressions and lowest CTR. Rewrite the title of just one of them. That is the whole task, and it should take well under an hour.
More on Totally Relentless
- Write Titles and Meta Descriptions That Earn the Click
- Simple Analytics for a Side Business: What to Track and How
- How to Update Old Blog Posts So They Stay Useful
