Google Search Console is another free tool from Google that allows you to see exactly what phrases people are searching in Google that cause them to land on your site.
How to Set Up Google Search Console
Use the following steps to set up Google Search Console for your website:
Step 1: Go to the Google Search Console Home Page.
You will be presented with the following screen:
Step 2: Verify your site.
To set up your site on Google Search Console, you will need to verify that you own the site. Google offers several ways to do so, but I’ve found the easiest way to be:
1. Type in your domain name in the URL prefix box (e.g. https://mydomain.com) and then click CONTINUE.
2. You will be presented with a new screen that gives you an HTML file to download. Click the button to download the file. Then go to your WordPress dashboard for your site and on the left hand side click Media, then click Add New.
Upload the HTML file. Then return to the Google Search Console and click VERIFY. It should only take a few seconds for Google to verify your site.
Your site is now set up with Google Search Console, but it will take 2-3 days for Google to actually gather data on your site.
How to Use Google Search Console
Here are my 3 favorite ways to use Google Search Console:
1. Analyze which queries are leading people to my articles.
Google shows you the exact “queries” people are typing in to find your articles:
For example, this screenshot displays the last 7 days of traffic for Statology. I can see that the people searched for and clicked on one of my calculators 1,135 times in the past 7 days after searching the phrase “central limit theorem calculator” in Google.
2. Analyze which “image search” queries are leading people to my articles.
In the top left corner of Google Search Console I can specify the Search type to use:
By changing it from Web to Image, I can see which queries people are typing in to find my articles on Google image search:
Once I click APPLY, a new set of queries shows up:
I can see that the query “f table” lead to 521 clicks on one of my articles purely from people searching Google images.
If I type in “f table” into Google image search, I can see that one of my articles with an image of an f distribution table is indeed showing up as the number one search result:
3. Analyze which search queries are leading people to specific pages on my site.
Lastly, I like to look at the various queries people are searching that lead to specific pages on my site.
For example, I can click on the PAGES tab and then click the page called statology.org/central-limit-theorem-calculator/:
This will bring up a new screen that only shows the total clicks for that specific page:
If I then click QUERIES, I can see all of the different queries people are searching for that lead them to this specific page on Statology:
The actual title of the article on my site is “Central Limit Theorem Calculator” but as you can see people are searching for many different variations of this phrase and still finding my article.
By using Google Search Console you can gain a better idea of the phrases people are searching for to find your articles and you can even get some new ideas of phrases you may want to include in your articles that you’re currently missing.
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