If you are wondering how to successfully expand your website’s reach toward target customers at zero cost, your answer lies in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO will increase your website’s natural position on a search engine results page in a way that cannot be substituted or achieved through paid advertising and social media. Thus, it aims to promote your website as one of the top answers to a user’s related query, thereby maximizing the quality and quantity of your website’s organic traffic.
Since the majority (more than 50%!) of online traffic still relies on organic search engine performances, paid advertisements or social media alone are incapable of maximizing your website’s digital presence and opportunities. Thus, you should get familiar with Google Search Console (GSC) - a free service created with a singular intent in mind: search engine optimization (SEO).
By locating trouble spots and providing constructive recommendations, GSC focuses on enhancing your website’s Google ranking for relevant search keywords. Note that this tool is not a quick-win solution, but rather, a slow burn that offers instead cost-effectiveness, and adds real long-term value to your business.
Follow the steps below to set up Google Search Console for your website. At the end of this guide, you will be able to start monitoring your website’s organic search presence on Google.
1) Head over to Google Search Console and select between two property types:
For example, if you choose to track URLs domain-wide, simply enter “example.com” without the protocol or any slashes
For example, if you choose to enter “http://example.com” under the URL prefix property type, GSC will only track that specific URL, and not any other permutations, such as “ htttp://example.com/ “ or “**https://example.com/**”
Source: Nguyen, George. 2021. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/guide/google-search-console
2) Verify your google website ownership.