Search Console

How to Use Google Search Console to Increase Traffic to Your Site

Google ranks your most popular pages for dozens, if not hundreds, of search terms. Even if you target some of those keywords, you probably don’t know all the terms attracting attention from search engines.

But there’s a free tool that can help you identify these “hidden” keywords and further optimize your content for them. This easy-to-implement, seven-step process can help you develop a strategy that could bring in thousands more visitors every month.

Let’s start with the basics. Over time, Google’s algorithm will rank each page for terms it thinks are relevant to the content. You can access those conclusions through the free Google Search Console. (If you haven’t already connected your site to your account, begin that process here.)

The default setting for sorting is bolded on the page. Click on a different header (i.e., impressions instead of clicks) to sort the pages by that measure.

Now let’s jump into how to evaluate this data. It involves spreadsheets, custom formatting, and a bit of color coding.

Export page keywords to Google Sheets

To understand which keywords your content is ranking for, review each page’s analytics individually.

Select the pages tab and export the data to Google Sheets. You now have the aggregate overview of each page’s appearance in search results.