Are You Using Google Search Console? It’s a Full-on Game Changer
I’ve been blogging for just over 4 years now and I’ve been doing it “properly” for around 2 years. When I mean properly, I mean 2 years ago I changed my theme, had a huge revamp and started taking SEO seriously.
I added the Rank Math SEO Plug-in and I found it revolutionary!! I loved how it basically listed everything I needed to do in each blog post (I do like a list and instructions) and over a week or two, went back over all my old blog posts and updated them for SEO.
The results were plain to see, my page views went from an average of 1,000 up to 1,700 in a very short space of time with some of my best daily page views nearly topping 3,000.
This was 6 months ago and I have been plodding along since then. My blog regularly gets around 60k monthly page views and I have been earning a decent amount of money through my ad revenue.
However, recently I’ve decided that it’s time to take my SEO to the next level and get to grips with it.
Why?
I have to admit it, I do not enjoy social media as much as I used to. For the last 5 years I have been posting regularly to my Instagram account (I can’t believe in the beginning, I was posting up to twice a day, every day! Seriously, who has time for that?) and recently it has just felt like a chore. I still enjoy decorating and styling my home, but I no longer enjoy taking photos and trying to come up with Reels that will get no views, likes or comments.
In the last year or so, every time I have posted to Instagram, I have done it with bated breath as there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what post will do well and what post will bomb like a rock into water.
For me, social media has all just become a bit boring, repetitive and highly competitive and I do not (or ever have) enjoy this side of it.
So SEO….
I started listening to some Podcasts over the weekend and getting some really good information and advice about how to take my SEO to the next level. I have been reading all the information I can get my hands on and the one thing that has stuck out for me so far is Google Search Console.
As a full-time blogger, HOW did I not know about this invaluable tool? I mean, I knew about it. Sometimes I might even dip in and out of it, but I never used it as a tool for my blog.
The phrase that keeps coming up time and time again when it comes to SEO is keyword research. I have never had a keyword research strategy. I would write blog posts about what I was painting/DIYing or thinking about that week and write them.
No wonder my blogs weren’t coming up in Google search to begin with. No one was searching for what I was writing!
Again, I knew what keyword research was but I couldn’t be bothered to do it. My blog and Instagram were dawdling along, earning me enough money to pay myself a wage each month. But income from Instagram seems to be on a downward spiral at the moment, so I knew it was time to concentrate more on my blog.
Google Search Console is a free tool which helps you track the performance of your blog through Google and can have a huge impact on your SEO. It breaks down how people are finding you via Google and you can monitor your performance via Total Impressions, Total Clicks, Average Click Through Rate and Average Position, amongst other things.
This is an amazing tool to find out what people are searching for which leads them to your site.
From the above search results over the last 3 months, you can see that my website is on the first page of Google for the above 10 queries.
This is what people are looking for and Google believes my website is the best for answering their query! So the SEO on these pages is working :)
This information can tell you so much and Google Search Console is such a huge subject, I will definitely need to learn a hell of a lot more.
It has already shown me what I should be writing about and what I need to improve on.
Such as —
- The CTR or Click Through Rate. Even though I was showing up on the first page of Google results, some of my CTR was less than 50%. I need to work on these posts to make sure more people click through to my pages.
- I can see posts that have nearly made page 1 and who looks beyond page 1 on Google? By optimising these blog posts that have almost made the top spot, I can get more clicks.
- Don’t forget the posts that are already doing well. How can I improve? Can I write about more subjects that are similar?
- Keywords keywords! One thing I’ve found invaluable is finding keywords that I have ranked for in GSC, but I haven’t written a blog post for it. That’s the next 10 blog posts sorted…
- Find your worst-performing posts and either improve or delete them if it isn’t worth saving.
These are just a few things I will be working on in the next couple of weeks, which will hopefully have a huge impact on my monthly page views.
Currently, Pinterest is my biggest traffic driver. But with all the changes social media websites and apps keep making, it is becoming more difficult to be seen and grow and people are starting to switch off.
