In my years of practice, I haven’t met a single person or company who thinks of Google Search Console as anything more than an afterthought, and that’s a mistake.
The One Reason Why
Google Search Console is your way to have a two way conversation with Google, the largest search engine on the planet, and the greatest source of business leads and revenue of all time.
Google can and will tell you if there are problems with your website. Google will give you information through which you can improve your presence online. Especially if you’re making big moves, such as server or domain migrations. There are tools and guides within the console that will shepherd you through technical processes that could potentially ruin your search engine rankings.
What To Do Next & How To Set It Up Properly
This quick tip will save you a lot of grief. You want to make sure you set up Google Search Console properly.
Add all of the “versions” of your website like so:
- https://site.com
- https://www.site.com
- https://site.com
- https://www.site.com
Search Console will treat each one of these as different properties, even though they all (should) refer to the same website. Don’t be confused or intimidated by this. One way to make this easier on yourself is to ensure that no matter how someone navigates to your website, they always get properly redirected to the canonical version of your website which I always recommend to be https://site.com if you’re still able to make the choice.
Make sure all of the different versions redirect to the canonical https://site.com. There are technical tasks that need to be performed to properly implement this, but once you have that set up (we can help) properly you can simply use the https://site.com Search Console property and set and forget the rest of the properties. All of your important messages, stats, and so on will appear in your https://site.com Search Console property.
Be sure to get settled in and explore the dashboard… And if you really want to get on the gas, you should associate your Google Analytics property with your Search Console site.
Good luck,
Marcel