Ep 201// 3 Simple Steps to Use Search Console to Rank Higher the Easy Way

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ep 201 – 3 Simple Steps to Use Search Console to Rank Higher the Easy Way

Podcast Title: Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Host: Faith Hanan, Marketing Strategist, Copywriter, Christian Business Coach, Barrel Racer
Release Date: November 12, 2024

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Introduction to Search Console

In Episode 201 of Simple SEO & Marketing, Faith Hanan delves into the practical uses of Google Search Console—a vital tool for enhancing website performance in search engine results. Faith begins by demystifying Search Console, emphasizing its accessibility and importance for entrepreneurs seeking sustainable traffic growth.

“Search Console is Google's web service that allows webmasters to monitor and optimize their website's performance in Google Search.” [00:00]

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The Significance of SEO and Organic Traffic

Faith underscores the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a cornerstone for driving organic traffic. She addresses common frustrations entrepreneurs face with SEO, presenting Search Console as a straightforward solution to simplify and enhance their marketing strategies.

“Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of Search Engine Optimization—and want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business?” [00:00]

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Understanding Search Console Features

Faith provides a comprehensive overview of what Search Console offers, comparing it to other SEO tools but highlighting its unique advantages as Google's proprietary service. She explains how Search Console can identify indexing issues, traffic patterns, and page performance, making it an indispensable tool for optimizing search rankings.

“Search Console is Google's version of SEO tools that show you indexing issues, traffic or page load issues, analyze your traffic, give you some things to fix, and overall just help you move up in the search results.” [02:30]

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3 Simple Steps to Rank Higher Using Search Console

Faith outlines a three-step process to effectively utilize Search Console for improving search rankings. Each step is designed to be actionable and easy to implement, enabling entrepreneurs to maximize their website’s potential without getting overwhelmed.

Step 1: Accessing Performance Metrics

Faith instructs listeners to log into Search Console and navigate to the Performance section. Here, users can view a graph displaying clicks versus impressions, which are essential metrics for understanding how often their site appears in search results and how many people are clicking on it.

“In your Search Console, I want you to log in and then... click on performance. And what you're going to see is... queries, and then... clicks versus impressions.” [05:14]

Step 2: Evaluating Top Queries

The next step involves analyzing the top 10 to 20 search queries that are driving traffic to the website. Faith emphasizes the importance of assessing whether these queries align with the business’s current focus and SEO strategy.

“I want you to evaluate your top 10 to 20 queries that you're showing up for... Is this something that you want to show up for?” [07:15]

Faith shares a personal example where she noticed her site ranking for “spiritual copywriter,” a term she hadn’t intentionally targeted. This highlights the necessity of ensuring that the keywords driving traffic are relevant and intentional.

“I often rank for the term spiritual copywriter. I've never once used those words... Google has decided to mesh the two and has ranked me for spiritual copywriter.” [08:14]

Step 3: Optimizing Content and Requesting Re-indexing

Faith guides listeners to select three search terms they wish to improve their rankings for. She advises incorporating these terms naturally into key pages and existing blog posts, emphasizing quality over keyword stuffing. After updating the content, she recommends using Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to request re-indexing, prompting Google to recognize and rank the refreshed content higher.

“Pick three search terms that you're already getting impressions for that you want to rank higher for... list out your pages and blogs that you could use that term on... make a plan to refresh your relevant pages and relevant blogs for those three terms.” [09:12]

“Ask Google to re-index each of those pages when they're refreshed. Boom. Done.” [12:38]

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Additional Tips and Homework

Faith reiterates the simplicity of her three-step approach and assigns practical homework to ensure listeners can implement these strategies effectively. She encourages regular engagement with Search Console, suggesting monthly reviews to stay updated on traffic trends and keyword performance.

“If you listen, take notes and do the things that I'm telling you in this, you will learn to love Search Console first of all.” [13:54]

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Conclusion and Encouragement

Faith wraps up the episode with motivational insights, reaffirming that optimizing existing content can yield significant traffic increases without the constant need for creating new material. She emphasizes the importance of working smarter, not harder, and invites listeners to share the episode and engage with her community for ongoing support and learning.

“You're going to work smarter, not harder. All right, y'all have a great rest of your week...” [14:39]

Faith closes with a heartfelt call to action, encouraging entrepreneurs to leverage SEO tools like Search Console to amplify their impact and better serve their audiences.

“Can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts.” [14:30]

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Key Takeaways

1. Utilize Google Search Console to monitor and optimize your website’s performance.
2. Analyze Top Queries to ensure they align with your current business objectives and SEO strategy.
3. Optimize Existing Content by integrating relevant keywords naturally and requesting re-indexing to boost search rankings.
4. Regular Engagement with SEO tools can lead to significant traffic growth without the need for excessive content creation.
5. Work Smarter, Not Harder by leveraging the content you already have to maximize its potential.

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By following Faith Hanan’s actionable steps, entrepreneurs can harness the full potential of Google Search Console to drive more targeted traffic, generate high-converting leads, and ultimately grow their businesses sustainably.

Transcript

[Faith Hannon]

Well, hey there pals. Today we're going to talk all about Search Console. And if you just heard that and you're like search wuddle, then listen in. I'm going to make it simple. I'm going to give you the simple, easy to understand explanation of what Search Console is, why you need it, and then three steps to simply use Search Console to improve your ranking in the search engine results pages. And if any of those things sounded like gibberish or you've heard them before and you're like, I need to know more, then stay tuned and be prepared to take notes because I've got some really step by step instructions for you. So listen in, y'all. We're gonna get into it. Hey there fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads. High converting lead. Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist, and barrel racer. And for the eight years I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic. And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take note. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. Okay, y'all. So Search Console. I'll be real. Real. I didn't know what Search Console was for a long time and then I finally discovered it and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is the most underutilized tool and it's faux free, so why not use it? But essentially what Search Console is is. It is Google's web service that allows webmasters, which is Just a fancy word to say whoever's taking care of your website, usually it's you, right? It allows whoever's taking care of the website to monitor and optimize their website's performance in Google Search. Now, obviously there are a ton of SEO tools out there that look at where you're ranking, help it, help you understand it, help make it mow better, all the things. But Search Console is Google's version of that. And in there it'll show you indexing issues, traffic or page load issues, it'll analyze your traffic, give you some things to fix, and overall just help you move up in the search results, search engine results page, or the serps as it's called. But sometimes it's a tool that I think people overlook. I know it's one that I overlooked for a long time. So I'm gonna help y'all do better. Because when you know better, you do better. And then you tell all your friends right now, I've been actually using Search Console for years and it is honestly a tool that I feel like you could dig into more and more and more and more and more. It is more simple to use than Google Analytics. It's, it's simpler, but it still isn't like as simple as it could be. I'll put it like that. You do have to sign up for Search Console and you have to sign up for it separately from your Google Analytics setup, which is dumb. I wish they would just do it all in one fell swoop. But at the time of this recording, you do have to sign up for that separately. If Google's listening, would you please make it one thing, but once you are signed up for Search Console, it absolutely needs to be a tool that you use on a regular basis. Ideally, I would love it if you looked at Search Console once a month, if not once every three months when you're signed up for it, you will actually get monthly updates. I think it's actually every 28 day updates on, you know, how much traffic you're getting and what the top phrases that you're getting traffic from. But it's still worth going into the actual Search Console to, to dig deeper and get some more usable data. So in an effort to keep this podcast less than three hours, because you honestly could spend that much time explaining Search Console. But I'm not gonna do that. So don't you worry. I'm gonna give you to you a quick dirty three tips. Okay, so three steps to get more out of Search Console to help you rank up the search engine Results pages.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So in your search console, I want you to log in and then if you're like me and you manage multiple pages or have access to multiple pages, you need to make sure that you're looking at the right page because I have looked at the wrong page before and then be like, oh my goodness, what's going on? But you're going to go to your search console, make sure that you're looking at the right page. And then on the far left hand side, I want you to click on performance. And what you're going to see is you're going to see a graph with a purple line and a blue line. Now what you're going to see here is you're going to see queries, and then in this data you're going to see queries, top queries, and then you're going to see clicks versus impressions.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

Now like I said, there's a ton of other things you can look at, but this is where I want you to live for this assignment, okay? I want you to live in the queries section, okay? And I want us to pay really close attention to the clicks versus impressions. So clicks means when you show up in on the serps, when you show up in the results, people are. That's how many clicks you're getting when somebody types in that term.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

The impressions is how many people are actually seeing, seeing you for that. So if there is a big disparity between clicks and impressions and it's something that you want to get found for, there's something wrong, or should I say someplace that you can improve there.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So I want you to just take a gander at that.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

The top 10, 20, 100, like whatever you have the mental bandwidth for is fine, but at least the top 10 to 20.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So step, step one is to get into your search console. Okay? Go to performance. Step two is I want you to evaluate your top 10 to 20 queries that you're showing up for on these criteria.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

Our number one. The number one criteria is is this something that you want to show up for? Maybe you have pivoted your business in the last year and you're like, I don't really want to be known as a newborn photographer anymore because that's not what I do anymore. But you're still showing up for newborn photographer. If that's not something you want to rank higher for, then you can ignore that term.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

I'm not telling you to go in and delete that right now. That's not the assignment right Now. Okay, but I want you to evaluate these top 10 to 20 queries that you're showing up for. And the first thing I want you to evaluate on is, is this something that you want to show up for? Yes. Great. No, ignore it.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then I want you to ask yourself or look back at your content or look at your SEO strategy if you have it written out like you should. And I want you to ask if you're. Ask yourself, have. Hey, Sal, have you intentionally created content and an SEO strategy around that keyword phrase?

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

Because sometimes Google will rank you based on phrases around phrase that you've used, like semantic phrases or LSI keywords, just because Google thinks that they're similar. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. For instance, I often rank for the term spiritual copywriter. I've never once used those words.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

I just. Because of my faith. Like, I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian copywriter. I'm a Christian business coach. Typically, the term spiritual copywriter is more like woo, woo, not me.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So I'm not trying to rank for spiritual copywriter, right? But I do have content around spiritual growth, and I do have content around being a copywriter and copywriting tips. And so Google has decided to mesh the two and has ranked me for spiritual copywriter.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So that's not something that I want to try to rank for. So I'm going to ignore that phrase for now.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

Now, in looking through these top 10 to 20 queries, I want you to pick three search terms that you're already getting impressions for that you want to rank higher for.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So here's where the rubber meets the road. Pick your three terms. Write them down on your little piece of paper, okay? And then your homework is to list out your pages, your main pages that you could organically use that term on.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

Like, could you use that term in your about page? Organically? Could you use that page or that phrase in your services page or on your homepage? Like, list out the pages that you could just very easily and naturally use that term on. And then I want you to list out the blogs that you've written around that seed keyword, which is that main keyword, right? So the shortest form of that keyword, list out the blogs that you've written around that. That idea, okay? And then I want you to make a plan to refresh your relevant pages and relevant blogs for those three terms. Now, I don't want you to spend 500 years refreshing content here, okay? I don't want this to take the next 45 working hours, right? I want you to list out some pages and then I want you to use that term on those pages, okay? Use it in H2 or H3 text if it fits. Right? We, we write copy for people first and then for search engines second, okay? So don't go throwing that keyword everywhere you can just because you want to rank for it when it doesn't actually fit and it doesn't serve your people well, okay? And then in your blogs, if you have used that keyword in a blog or you have written a blog just strictly around that keyword that you really want to rank for, maybe what you need to do is you need to go in and really further optimize that blog and update that blog around that keyword phrase, okay? And while you're in there, make the blog better, okay? Give it some fresh content. Give it some fresh, you know, some, some fresh insight, right? Like make it better. Don't just throw in the keyword phrase a few times and not actually improve it, okay? And I actually have an entire podcast episode 169. I go into detail about how to refresh content to rank up the search engines. Because what you're essentially doing in all of this homework today is you're taking the work that you've already done and you're making that work work harder for you, okay? Because as much as I love creating new content, and I truly do, I love creating new content. Sometimes we work too hard when we really don't have to. Because if you have content that's ranking, you're just not getting as many clicks as you would like for it. But you're too busy creating new content all the time. Then you're missing out on some really easy to grab low hanging fruit.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then I guess this is four steps, step four, whatever. I want you to ask Google to re index each of those pages that you've refreshed. So you're going to go into search console, okay? And you're going to go into URL inspection and you're going to put the URL in there, okay? And then you're going to ask, you're just going to say request indexing. Even if it says that it's already indexed because it is already indexed, you're going to go ahead and request indexing again because we want Google to recrawl that specific URL and be like, oh, this content fits the search query better and hopefully bump you right on up. Will Google tell you that that's what you need to Do? No, but this is your pal Faith telling you that. That it's a little hack that you should do. Okay? So I know this was a really technical episode today, but I promise you, if you will listen, take notes and do the things that I'm telling you in this, you will learn to love Search Console first of all. And you'll start to see the content that you've already created working harder for you instead of just constantly creating more and more and more and more and more content.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

So I'm going to give you that list again.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

You're going to go into Search Console, click on performance.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Faith Hannon]

Evaluate the top 10 to 20 queries that you're already showing up for. I want you to decide are they things I want to show up for? And ask yourself if you've intentionally created content and an SEO strategy around the keyword phrase.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then I want you to pick three search terms that you're already getting impressions for that you want more clicks for.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then you're gonna list out the pages, like your main pages, and list out the blogs that you've used that you could use that more or that you've already used that term.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then I want you to make a plan to refresh that relevant content, those relevant pages, relevant blogs for those three terms.

[Unknown]

Okay?

[Faith Hannon]

And then you're gonna ask Google to re index each of those pages when they're refreshed. Boom. Done. I promise it's not that hard to do. And it's not. It's not that complicated. Once you do it, you're gonna be like, oh, faith, that's so simple. But it really will help. And it's gonna help streamline your work and help you work smarter, not harder. All right, y'all have a great rest of your week and we'll be coming back at you next week. Love ya. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website, faith hannon.com until next time. God bless and I'll talk to you soon.