Learning the basics to get keen insights to your site
Setting up a website is not a one-off process.
In many ways, it’s like having a plant.
Building your website and optimising it to be found is like setting up the nutrient-rich soil.
Hitting publish for the first time is like planting a seed.
Now you just sit back and see what happens right?
No, much like that little seed, if you ignore it, it will wither away, much like your website traffic.
You have to monitor it, remove any bugs, and give it plenty of water and sunshine. I’ll leave the plant metaphor there.
So how do we keep it healthy and thriving? The answer? Well, one answer is Google Search Console. I often describe it as Google Analytics ugly cousin, but in fact, it’s a rich source of website nutrients, helping you diagnose, and understand your website, and if necessary bring it back to life.
Today we’ll look at the benefits of using Google’s Search Console as a tool in your SEO garden shed to keep traffic high and problems low.
Tune in to learn
Today we’ll cover:
- What Google Search Console is
- Two metrics to focus on when you’re getting started
- What Sodiq thinks of Search Console Insights
- Where to start looking when your traffic is way down
- More advanced ways to use Google Search Console
- Sodiq’s tips for getting acquainted with Google Search Console
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And big thanks to J B Writes from the United Kingdom for their lovely review:
“SEO made simple. Kate has an innate ability to turn technical information into straightforward advice. I love how she gets experts on the show and translates anything too techie so the rest of us can get the gist. And her personality shines through, always making me smile. I took her Recipe for SEO Success training course in 2022 (it was superb) and listen to this podcast to stay up to date on the topics covered.”
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Connect with Sodiq Ajala
About Sodiq Ajala
Sodiq is a SEO Analyst. He was trained by Aleyda Solis as part of the FCDC Technical SEO program. And actively learned and been in high-level conversations with industry experts like John Mueller, Lily Ray, Martin Splitt, Crystal Carter, Areej AbuAli, Mordy Oberstein, Sam Torress, Simon Schneider, Tom Pool, and other Tech SEO greats.
Certified by Semrush, BlueArrays, HubSpot, Facebook, LinkedIn, and IDEO. Sodiq’s over 10 years of experience spans Business Intelligence and Innovation, Education, and Corporate Learning Development.
He runs SACC Digital. A technical consulting company in Nigeria.
Fun fact: Sodiq loves spoken word poetry and would pay any amount to watch Messi play live.
Transcript
Kate Toon
Setting up a website is not a one off process. In many ways, it’s a bit like having a plant, building your website and optimizing it to be found is like setting up nutrient rich soil, hitting published for the first time. It’s like planting a seed. Now you sit back and see what happens right now, much like a little seed, if you ignore it, it will wither away. Much like your website traffic, you have to monitor it, remove any bugs, and give it plenty of water and sunshine. Okay, I’ll leave the plant metaphor there. So how do we keep our websites healthy and thriving? The answer, while one answer is Google Search Console, I often describe Google Search Console as Google Analytics ugly cousin. But in fact, it’s a rich source of website nutrients, helping you diagnose and understand your website. And if necessary, bring it back to life. So today we’ll look at the benefits of using Google Search Console as a tool in your SEO garden shed to keep traffic high, and problems low. Hello, my name is Kate toon. And I’m the head chef at the recipe for SEO success. An online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization can say it then, and Digital Marketing and today I’m talking with Sodiq Ajala, Hello Sodiq.
Sodiq Ajala
Hi, Kate Toon. Thank you very much for having me.
Kate Toon
I’m so excited. So I actually discovered Sodiq on LinkedIn, where he posts some really insightful, great content. So I will put a link to his LinkedIn on LinkedIn at the end so you can follow him. But I love discovering new people and city you’re over in Nigeria. So I think you’re my first Nigerian guest, which is pretty cool. It’s really exciting. So let me tell everybody who you are and what you do, because it’s pretty impressive. This bio get ready people. Sodiq is an SEO analyst and he was trained by Aleyda Solis. That’s pretty cool. She’s a bit of a legend as part of the F CDC technical program, and actively learned and has been in high level conversations with industry experts like John Mueller, who’s been on the show, Louis Ray, who really should be on the show. Martin split crystal Carter, I read a Bharati Mori oversight Santera, Simon Schneider, Tom Paul and lots of other Tech Tech SEO greats. certified by sem rush, blue arrays, HubSpot, Facebook, LinkedIn, and I eat IDEO. So do Sodiq is over 10 years of experience spans business, intelligence and innovation, education and corporate learning development. He runs prolific SEO as technical consultation company in Nigeria. Wow. That is some bio. Fun fact. Sodiq loves a spoken word poetry and we’ll pay any amount of money to watch Messi play live spoken word poetry, or you’re gonna give us some poetry and like us. Can you do spoken word poetry?
Sodiq Ajala
Yeah, it could do a little bit of poetry.
Kate Toon
Can you give me a poem about SEO? Go on then, let’s do it.
Sodiq Ajala
I didn’t think about that, anything about SEO could be very
Kate Toon
I should have prepared you for this. Did you know city I actually have a whole book of poetry. That was my first book that I published was a book-
Sodiq Ajala
No
Kate Toon
Of poems and haikus. So there you go. We’re both poets
Sodiq Ajala
I also have a poetry book on Amazon, it’s called The Three Trees.
Kate Toon
Oh, well, I’m gonna find that after that. I’m gonna link to it in the show notes. We can be we can be boring technical SEOs. But we’re also poets. We can be both.
Sodiq Ajala
Oh absolutely
Kate Toon
Well, one of the least poetic things possible. I’d say it’s probably Google Search Console. For people who don’t know anything about it. Imagine you’re brand new, and you’ve never heard of it. How would you describe Google Search Console?
Sodiq Ajala
So I would, I would say Google Search Console is a platform, you know, that shows you or tells you about how your website is doing on Google. Because just as the name implies, Google Search Console. So Google search console that shows you how your your website is leaving, you know, also understand that your website is performing out to know about how you can improve your websites bring more traffic to your website, everything is on that console. Because it is the exact data coming from google it is the field data as compared to other data from other tools that are technically lab data, you know. So Google for Google Search Console, for me is an environment where everything that you need to know about your website’s ranking on search engine, you can find every information that pertains to that.
Kate Toon
Yeah, I love it. I think that’s a great. It’s funny. I’ve never really thought of the word console. As for what it really means. I mean, it really is being able to look at your site from Google’s point of view. I mean, yes, there’s other tech tools that are using API’s and all kinds of things, but this is literally Google saying And this is what we want from you. And this is what you’re not achieving, or this is what you are achieving. And I think the important thing to say here is that, once you’ve verified on Google Search Console, which can be a bit tricky for some people, but you’ll get through it, believe me, you can’t break your sight playing with Google Search Console, a lot of people are like, Oh, I don’t want to touch it. And I want to fiddle with it. Because what if it breaks something? What if I annoy Google, but it is just a reporting engine, you know, that doesn’t affect your site, you then go and fix things on your site and come back to Google Search Console, right? Absolutely,
Sodiq Ajala
absolutely. It’s just an environment where you literally know what’s wrong with your site’s go back elsewhere to fix it, and then come back to like, you know, tell Google So take, for instance, your detailed kind of, you know, schema, on your website, you cannot go back to Google and say, you know, request index, and I need to index this particular page, because I’ve corrected, what you asked me to correct is basically, you know, just like that,
Kate Toon
yeah, I love it. And what the great thing about that is, is if you are getting these emails saying, oh, you know, this is broken, this is broken, you can go to Google Search Console, and it’s a source of truth, you can go actually, it’s not broken. They’re just making that up. But the problem I think a lot of people have with Google Search Console is when they first go in there a little bit overwhelmed, you know, visually, they’ve changed it a little bit. Visually, it can be a bit overwhelming. If you’re not a data person, if you’re not a techy person, you kind of open it up and go hook. So what would be the first two things if you’re new to Google Search Console, the first two things you would tell people to look at?
Sodiq Ajala
I would ask you to, like, you know, check your clicks and impressions. And basically, the reason is that the clicks tells me that somebody is from, you know, the Google SERPs, click into my websites. That’s number one. And number two, the impression tells me that Google is actually bringing my content as part of the use valuable or useful content, you know, for people searching for that keyword. So literally, those two things, clicks and impressions. For me, they’re kind of a big deal. There are things that I look deep into and I can always improve them.
Kate Toon
Yeah, it’s really interesting. You say that, because save your impressions are really high. But your clicks are really low than what’s going on? Maybe your meta type, your title isn’t very engaging, or your description isn’t very, yeah.
Sodiq Ajala
Yeah. So with that, you can always, you know, look for lots of things. So you have very high impressions, but your clicks are very low. So you want to like, take a look at your, you know, your title, you know, write them in a better compelling way, your meta description, because those are like the first few things that Google shows, you know, to people. So if Google deem your content feeds, based on all of what you have in there, and then bring it out for people, but people are not convinced enough to, you know, click and like, see what’s exactly in there. That doesn’t make sense. So it’s just about that snippets that? How do I put it? That’s first look, yeah. So first
Kate Toon
impression, your impression? Yeah, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And often what I recommend I recommend to my students is if it’s quite a kind of conversion, ie keyword, have a look at the ads, what copy are they using in the Google ads? Because they will have optimized the crap out of those? So is there anything you can borrow from those ads and bring it into your organic title tag and meta description? Let’s not I want to ask you a question which wasn’t in the list, I apologize. One of the things that really throws people with the clicks impression and the rankings, you can also toggle on the ranking, is that the ranking? You know, the ranking is a bit misleading, isn’t it? Because it’s like a weird Boolean average of whatever so you see, you got all come number three, and then you go to the search results, and you’re not number three? And because it’s an average over a period of time, how does that ranking work? It’s a bit confusing for for newbies.
Sodiq Ajala
Yeah, so the way the ranking works for me is that I think Google just look at each of the pages and see which meets all the requirements you know, so so stick for instance, I have about five different pages. And then I did a kind of ranking based on how each of these you know, Mark meets my requirements and then I just, you know, order them in such a in such way so in the past where people just literally do some kind of keyword stuffing, put certain keywords at the beginning you know, go you know, maybe at the may do insert the keyword and all of those and before you know Google go to like create an algorithm to like, erase that many times you see a content that doesn’t make sense that has quite a lot of you know, keyword stuffing showing up At the top, or the second, and this is because based on Google’s standards at that point in time, you know, they felt okay, this is what should be at the top. And when they, you know, made their, you know, their boards, much more intelligent, you know, to like go through content better and all of those. So they were able to, you know, critically see that no, such content should not be there. But for me, what I always advice is, you know, have super great contents, like have super great content that meets all of the requirements. And when that happens, Google, you know, obviously backlinks and all of those when people see your content, the links to it, you know, backlinks is also a very good ranking factor. So all of those will just put themselves together to put you at the top of the Google SERPs. So literally, the way ranking works for me, I think Google just sees the pages that meets their guidelines, and they like just pop them up on the rank.
Kate Toon
Yeah. Okay, great. So you know, we’ve got clicks, we’ve got impressions, we’ve got click through rate, which I think is a really useful percentage. And then we’ve got the position, which as I said, is a bit confusing sometimes, because it’s kind of an average. But let’s talk about some of the other elements. Because again, even if you’re looking at all of that, it can be a bit overwhelming one tool that I find super easy to help understand is Google Search Console insights, you know, where you can actually get some ideas from Google have, you know, it shows you things like, well, you know, your search traffic is up, or this has happened, or I’m gonna give an example, I’m looking at mine right now, I’m going to tell you what the first insight is. So if you go into the little report, you get a site overview, you can see your most popular content, how people find you, I actually find that report a lot more digestible, don’t you?
Sodiq Ajala
Have? Absolutely. Unfortunately, I’ve not, you know, really at the time to go deep down, you know, to demystify the Google, Google’s search, Google console insights. And, and this is because I work with very large data that already have, you know, lots of content. So I’m, like, doing some other technical stuff, Stan go in the bones, and I enjoy about the Google console insight is that, you know, it literally shows you how a particular page is doing, you know, your, your best performing content, you know, so if you put up new pieces, you know, how are those content pieces, you know, performing, you know, how do people, you know, get to search, you know, for? So, yeah, exactly the the people search on Google that I linked them to like that page, so it gives a lot of insights. And for me, I think with that you can, you know, tweak your your search intent and say, This is exactly what people are looking for. So if I haven’t written my content, to address that intent, I think I’d better go back and like, you know, maybe the maybe the first or second paragraph, how do I tell a story to ensure that it relates to, you know, search intent alone, and all of those. And also it, you know, it also talks about which article, like, refers users to like,
Kate Toon
yeah, the referring the referring links, like even just looking at mine right now. Yeah, I haven’t looked at it. And I just found a whole blog post about me on there, in my referring links, where someone’s written about me and linked to my posts. Thank you very much. It’s, who is it? Man, see, Parashar. Thank you very much. So yeah, some really useful stuff in there as well. So let’s give a little example of how we could use Search Console say, my traffic has fallen down, you know, like, I’m really noticing I’m not getting as much traffic to my site. How would you use a tool like Google Search Console to investigate that? Where would you look? And what would you do?
Sodiq Ajala
Absolutely. So when that happens, that for instance, like the website just drove, many times, I always want to see that. If it’s a new website, and you just, you know, plugged it into Google Search Console, I would want to like see the domain property. So is it properly defined? You know, am I defining HTTP or HTTPS, you know, which of these because I’ve worked with the client before that, literally have their website in HTTP. And then when they got to me, you know, advise that, you know, this website has to be secured. And when that was secured, literally, so we could have you make a mistake of plugging the HTTP to Google Search Console instead of you know, the secured ones. And at that point in time you like just see that you know, nothing is happening. And a lot of work has been done on the secured ones pushing content out of design, you do not see anything happening. So it’s always very important that one check if it’s properly blocked. And then also, you know, there are lots of ways that that when you like, check, do your URL inspection. You know, you want to see exactly, so it shows you that lots of times that recently I did, I did a URL inspection of a page. And then the page told me that the URL inspection told me that I have a problem with the FAQ schema. So I went on schema validator, I checked my schema validator to schema validator told me that I’m fine. But Google Search Console keeps telling me that something is wrong, right. And then when I deeply did a deep dive of, you know, what’s happening with the page, I eventually found that I have, you know, two FAQ schemas. Ah, okay. So competing, one is just mixing up the other one is correct, or is incorrect. So I just had to, like, just take one off, right, then requests. And when I even did that, in like, two days, I was expecting a result, there was a results total, I remember that, um, I haven’t gone to like, request Google to crawl it again, to to, like, recrawl the page and like, so when that was done, I saw, you know, I saw an immediate change. So also, your cells could even be missing, you know, due to maybe such certain manual action, you know, or Google automatically removed your website. So there are lots of things that could, that could happen. One thing I enjoy about the Google Search Console is that I think I don’t I don’t know, by my own definition. I think Google Search Console made everything. So easy. You know, the, the environments, you know, literally explain itself, you know, and announcements, I know that when I go to an announcement, I’m not just looking for, you know, how I can better enhance that page, you know, in terms of schemas, you know, all of those things. So URL inspection, I know that I literally wanted to, like inspect that you already held. And so for me, I think the the, the, that’s console, that environment is self explanatory. Yeah, I think those are what I want. And
Kate Toon
It gives you everything you need. I mean, I guess, I guess we understand the language of it a little bit better. You know, like, one of the tools that you’re mentioning here, which I think is one of the best tools on Google Search Console is URL inspection, you pop your URL, and it talks about whether it’s been indexed, evaluates the mobile usability still looks at amp, which feels a bit outdated, but there you go, bit of breadcrumbs, all of that kind of stuff. It’s a great little tool. So if you’re having a problem with a particular page, that’s a great place to start. But also now there’s more stuff in there, we’ve got page experience, we’ve got core web vitals, we’ve got mobile usability, so much there that we can look at. We also have manual actions. So you can actually go into Google Search Console, and it will tell you if you’ve had a manual action as well. The call word vitals report is a little bit overwhelming for people, you know, a lot of URLs come up with needs improvement, how have you have you been using that tool with your clients to help them improve?
Sodiq Ajala
Yeah, so when the call with us comes with, you know, its own stuff. And one of the best things that and of course, it’s this is literally advisable to an income in SEOs, or new business use. If you you know, having a conversation with a client, I think is always very important. You ask them if they are the developer? Yeah. Because your job is not You’re not supposed to, like do the job of a developer. You know, sometimes we do that if we feel, you know, it’s a stain, you know, the job, if it’s something that we can fix, we could immediately fix that. But many times ask them if they update. I’m a developer. So one of the things that I’ve leveraged is that if I work with any clients, I ensure that they have a developer. So when the code VITAS comes with some kind of information that I do not understand. Right? I just literally check the report, do some screenshots, you understand? And then based on my understanding of the LCP and all of those that just say, you see this is supposed to load at certain time, and it’s not loading. And from what I see, I think it’s actually a JavaScript, you know, resource blocking days. Is there a way that we can work this out that I get the same exact result, but this JavaScript link is out of it. So and of course, as newbies, you know, technical SEO, we have to be very Very good when it comes to communication. So, you know, do the communication, ensure that developer understands do the back and forth. Once the developer tells you that he or she has done done, the task is always very important for you to go check and ensure that this person has done exactly what you wanted. Right? And then go back to them. So many times when coworker VITAS comes with issues that, you know, they’re just overwhelming. I try to break them down as much as I can. And then what’s most important for me is that I tried to explain them in the best possible ways for the developer. So now we can move forward.
Kate Toon
Yeah, I mean, it really does take you all the way down, you know, you’re looking cool advisors. The big issue that comes up with everybody really is LCP, largest Contentful, pace, and pay and then first content full pace, because we’ve all got those massive, great big images at the top of our sites, but you can really drill down like they can, in my old site, 120 pages with LCP issues. And then you can go into the group, it’s showing each one, but for each one, you can then click on it, and it takes you to PageSpeed Insights. And then you can get a complete view of your page, the performance on mobile and desktop, all the details, all the metrics, and then you as you said, you can break it down and see, oh, it’s the JavaScript Oh, it’s the images. Oh, it’s the server response time. I think you raise something interesting there, though, which is a big problem in the SEO industry, right? That we want to make our clients feel confident going into Google Search Console, like they shouldn’t feel that they’re not allowed to look at that. And that they can go in and they can understand it, and you can help them work through it. Like it’s not a tool just for SEOs, business owners can use it too. And the job of a good SEO agent is to make people feel confident about SEO not to bamboozle them and to talk in acronyms and, and whatever. So I feel like Google Search Console is a great tool for SEOs to help their clients understand what SEOs do. Because you’ve got Google saying, It’s not you, as a dodgy SEO saying, This is wrong with your site like no, here, literally, Google’s telling you this is wrong with your site, don’t you think? Like, I feel like SEO should show this to their clients more?
Sodiq Ajala
Yeah, many times when I work with new clients, I always let them become comfortable of you know, three important places on Google Search Console. The first is the URL inspection.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, we love it.
Sodiq Ajala
Yes. And then the second is the search results.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Sodiq Ajala
So I tell them, you know, if you think that, you just want to have an idea of how a page is doing, no matter whatever it is just going to your Google Search Console, copy that the link to that page, there is, you know, inspect URL at the top of your Google Search Console, plug that link into it, then hit enter. So it’s going to like, it’s very, very understandable, you know, it will show you in the queries pages, it will show you exactly what is happening with that page. And then if you do not understand it’s something I could do a screenshot and then send to us, you know, because we need to gather, I work with about six clients, I may not, you know, up the end may not be checking your site, or looking for what you’re looking for at a particular time. But if you can also figure it out yourself, you know, it’s good for us, you know, we can, you know, achieve the result faster, I could come up to me and say, This is what I am seeing on my blog section. So I similar to understand it, how can we work things out, right. And then the other part is the search results. So the search results tells you the total number of clicks that you have, you know, the impressions, you know, the average CTR, those might not actually make much sense to you. But for me, particularly with the clients that really do not have deep knowledge about on a technical issue, there will be few that we are working, right, that will feel that something is happening at the back end, because they seen a kind of, you know, increase in the number in the total clicks, and impressions. They could say, okay, you know, so these guys must, must be doing something they’ve been working on these websites for, say three months. And then the last time I checked, the total clicks was maybe 40k. And as three months now is about 45k. So that I think these guys are doing something, right. And of course, it could show lots of things like even give them an idea of certain keyword direct, like pitch towards, you know, when they see the query and there was like, Okay, can you guys check something like this? And then if they throw that at us, we could like go to SEMrush or href? Yeah, see how strong that keyword is, you know, work it out and say, Okay, we’ll create the page, you know, to address the social thing because they are the subject matter expert in that field. You might not be the subject matter expert. Right, yeah, and many of the contents may just be content that, you know, that have been outsourced, right. So they also give us a few pushers to like, learn more about what they are doing and getting to understand them better. And that we will like work together to ensure that we deliver the result that you both of us wants, once my clients get the result that he wants, again, more money, it’s a win win for both.
Kate Toon
it’s a win win. I love that. So using search console as a place where clients can come up with ideas. And then obviously, you’re moving to the more advanced tools to do the keyword research and all of that comparative looking at their competitors. I love that Sodiq, I must admit, but while you were talking just then I did go off and Google the three trees, which I’ve now found. So I’m gonna include a link to that in the show notes, as well as a link to your LinkedIn page as well. Where people can follow your posts. I love your posts. They’re really interesting and provide a bit of a different perspective. So I’m so glad that I found you. And I’m so glad that you took time to come on the podcast today. Thank you very much.
Sodiq Ajala
Thank you very much for having me.
Kate Toon
It’s been fantastic. All right. We’ll see you later Sodiq. Thank you. So there you go. I really like Sodiq’s perspective on, you know, using search console as a starting point for clients, getting them to understand what you’re doing. Because it’s yeah, it’s Google’s tool. There’s no lying going on. You can’t hide anything. If the traffic’s down, the traffic’s down and the client can see it. Anyway. Thank you very much Sodiq. As I said, I’ve included links to both his poetry book, which is very cool. And his LinkedIn in the Episode Notes. Oh, strange little beeping noise. I don’t know if you heard that. But anyway, that we do the outro Come on, Kate for yourself together. I like to end the show with a shout out to one of my lovely listeners today’s JB writes from the United Kingdom. Thank you. Kate has an innate ability to turn technical information into straightforward advice. I love how she gets experts on the show and translates anything to techie so the rest of us get the gist. Yeah, it’s a what is my role? I feel I feel like I’m a translator. And her personality shines through always making me smile. Oh, that’s nice. I took her recipe for SEO success training. Oh, it’s Miss bud. I don’t know who it is. In 2022. It was superb and listen to this podcast to stay up to date on topic covers topics covered or Thank you Miss bud for that review. And thanks to you for listening. If you want to learn more about SEO, you can head to the I love Seo group on Facebook or the recipe for SEO success, where you can leave a comment about the show check out links to Sodiq and also his poetry book. Alright, until next time, happy SEOing
