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30 Comments

  1. Thanks for this information! I am verified with each of the four variations you recommend. Each time I chose “add property,’ I got a message “auto verification” and I did not get a message to get the ” HTML and copy the code.” I checked in my Yoast>General>Webmaster Tools hoping that I could figure out where to find the code you mention but no such luck! It looks really complicated ;(. Any advice you offer would be much appreciated! I have read so many of your posts and am grateful for all the help you offer!!

    1. Hi Cindy – thanks for this – so pleased you are finding my advice helpful! In answer to your question – if all 4 of your properties are already verified then you should see them in the dropdown menu in the top left. If that is the case then you don’t need to do anything else – you are all set and you should be seeing data about your website on the right hand side. If you don’t see them there then they are not verified and you need to follow the steps in my tutorial. If you are not getting a message about adding the HTML tag then you are most likely already verified by another method, which is why you are getting that “auto verification” message. Hope that helps – let me know if anything is still not clear. Eb 🙂

      1. Thanks Eb! I guess that was kinda obvious – that I was already verified ;). For the most part, I only work on my blog once a week – I forget what I have accomplished in that stretch of time! I am able to see the data! Thanks again – now to go back and work my way through your information in this post!

        1. No worries – glad you can see the data, that’s the main thing! Good luck with it all and don’t hesitate to yell if you have any other questions. 😀

  2. I’ve used Google Search Console to find keywords that have high impressions but low click through rates for a particular page. Problem is, the keywords that have low CTRs and high impressions ARE being used on my page (not in a spammy way), and still not getting any clicks. What steps would you take next? How would you optimize your page if it’s already optimized for a high ranking keyword – just not getting clicks?

    1. Hi CK – if you have high impressions, but low clicks and your post is well optimised for the keywords then the most likely culprit is your meta description. I would work on making this more enticing. Google the keyword and see how your post looks on the search results compared to its competitors – this should help you to pinpoint why searchers are choosing other results over yours. I would also use your meta description as your first paragraph as sometimes Google chooses the first paragraph over the meta description you have specified in Yoast. If your keyword is a question, make sure you have a paragraph early in your blog post that specifically answers this question in one or two sentences. This will help you get the snippet at the top of the search results. Finally, I would check your title is enticing too. Again, look at how your blog post looks in Google search results to help you with this. Hope that helps! Eb 🙂

  3. Great work! This post is really valuable and gives a clear idea about how to get the most out of the Search Console tool. Identifying low performing webpages and ranking near first page webpages and optimizing them can be a turning point in SEO. Keep up sharing!

  4. Hi Eb,

    Great post and nicely explained! I have been following your posts for just a few months now and they have been particularly helpful. The point that you are so passionate to help fellow Bloggers with such detailed explanations is inspiring. I am still a small blogger but your posts give a lot of motivation. Thank you!
    I will be sure to take more help from your blogs soon!

    1. Aw, thanks for this lovely comment! I am passionate about helping bloggers fulfil their blogging dreams. I am so pleased that has come across. Wishing you all the best with your blog! Eb 🙂

  5. Hi Eb,

    I have a question regarding what you wrote under “ADD A PROPERTY” TO GSC. You suggested submitting 4 variations of your URL. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but if I choose “Domain” as opposed to “URL Prefix” when I add a property on GSC, wouldn’t I just submit the URL in its most basic form, as example.com, and not submit any variations (www, http, https, etc)?

    Many thanks!!

    1. Hi Frank, You are absolutely right that you can select ‘Domain’ and submit the URL in it’s most basic form. However, using this method requires DNS verification, which is a different method to the one I use in this tutorial. I have had readers and students who have encountered problems when using the DNS verification method, which is why my tutorial uses the HTML tag / Yoast method which is much simpler to do and seems more reliable / less prone to problems. However, with this verification method, you need to select ‘URL prefix’ and submit all 4 versions. Hope that helps! Eb 🙂

  6. Hi , does submitting 4 variations for one website is too much, and should in check rank and keywords for 4 properties or data will be collected in one website,because i couldn’t understand it, and I have checked many youtube tutorials for search console and no one adds 4 variations so we need more explanation for data show

    1. Adding all 4 variations to GSC has been considered best practice in the SEO world for years. I continually check reliable and authoritative sources to check my advice is still correct. Here’s a direct quote from an article in Search Engine Land ‘For any website on its own domain and being served from the HTTPS protocol, at a bare minimum, four versions of your domain need to be present in Google Search Console’ (https://searchengineland.com/seo-101-url-versions-add-google-search-console-282463) And here’s a quote from a more recent article in Search Engine Journal which corroborates this >>> ‘If you have more than one variation of your domain, especially in a situation where you have migrated from http:// to https://, you must have all of your domain variations added and verified in Google Search Console.’ (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/definitive-list-reasons-google-isnt-indexing-site/118245/). As mentioned above, I am always keen to keep my advice up-to-date, so if you have seen anything more recent, from a reliable and authoritative source, that says this is no longer necessary please do share it with me. But please take care when looking at YouTube tutorials – not everyone there is a reliable source!

    1. Click where it says ‘indexed but not submitted to sitemaps’ and see what URLs it shows. Usually the reason for this is it’s something that doesn’t need to be included in a sitemap. But the fact that it has been indexed means Google has found it anyway. Unless you are seeing lots and lots of ‘normal’ content (posts, pages – the stuff you want Google to index) marked as ‘indexed but not submitted to sitemaps’, don’t worry about it.

  7. Hi Eb, thanks for this awesome and super-helpful post. I have a couple of questions. When I go to Add a Property, I can now just put in the back of my url (no www or http) and it pulls all the data. I did that and assume that will be sufficient rather than adding all 4 variations as noted in your post. Yes?

    Also, when I scroll down to Pages and try to find info to rank the top 10 posts for CTR and position for the month, it looks like I have to drill down to each individual post to gather that data. Am I missing a quicker way? If not, is there a way to narrow down which posts I should look at to gather the info? I only have 20 or so posts now but I can see this being cumbersome when I have a lot more. Thanks for your help!

    1. You are very welcome – glad you found it helpful!

      #1 Yes, you can do that. The advantage of my way is it helps you to identify if any traffic is going to the wrong version and not being redirected to your ‘main’ version.

      #2 You can toggle on CTR and position by clicking on the white squares above the line graph (they will turn coloured, like clicks and impressions). Then you can sort the table using CTR and position.

      Hope that helps!

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