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How to Use Google Search Console to Help Improve Search Engine Rankings for Your Content

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Google Search Console is a free tool for webmasters that can be set up on your website. It offers a collection of great tools and information, including:

  • Overall site performance
    • Total search clicks
    • Total search appearances
    • How many URLs are indexed by Google
  • Website issues
    • Pages with potential errors
    • URLs/pages with opportunity for improvement
    • Mobile usability
    • Speed
  • External and Internal Links
    • Overview of what sites link to you
    • Top linked pages on your site
    • Top linking sites that point to you

All of this information is extremely valuable. But in this post, I’m going to focus specifically on how to improve your content and in turn drive better search traffic.

Is content really king?

You’ve probably heard the phrase that content is king. And that is true, but only if your content is optimized appropriately and gets found! One way to drive more results from  your content marketing efforts is to spend some time in Google Search Console to see how it’s performing.

Guide to content optimization with Search Console:

Here is a step-by-step guide to walk you through how to better optimize your content marketing efforts and drive more search results. This is the process we use internally with our blogging and SEO programs to help drive more quality traffic to staffing and recruiting websites:

  1. Make sure Google Search Console is installed and tracking data on your website. Get set up at search.google.com. If Haley Marketing designed your website just reach out to us and we can help.
  2. If the left-hand sidebar, under “Performance” click on Search Results
    Goo
  3. Adjust the results to display Average CTR and Average Position.  CTR stands for click-through-rate which is the percentage of times that your page shows up in search results and gets clicked on. It’s a very important SEO factor and can help indicate future search rank changes – more on that in a minute…
  4. Once you have CTR and Average position data included, click on “queries” in the table below and this will show you how often you show up in search results for different keywords. It will also show you the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and your average position:
  5. From here, you have extremely valuable information you can use to strengthen your SEO and drive more results.  Here are a few ways to approach this:

    Look at high impressions and low CTR.
    In the example above, we rank really well for “recruitment ideas”. We often rank in the 1-2 spot in Google but we only earn 7.3% of all clicks.  This is an issue because we’re leaving traffic on the table AND a low CTR is a signal to Google that maybe you shouldn’t rank well for that term.  To fix this, I’m going to click on that word “recruitment ideas” in search console, see what pages rank well, and then update my Meta Page Title and Meta Page Description to make it more attractive to searchers and hopefully earn a higher CTR.

    Look at positions 5-10.
    If your average search position rank is 5-10, you already earned a bit of authority for that term, but haven’t unseated the incumbent. This is your low-hanging SEO fruit. Look for terms that you really want to rank higher for and focus on those pages. Go back to that page and reoptimize it for the term.  In the example above, we rank in the #6 slot for “we’re hiring images”.  The page that ranks well for this term is a blog post from 2014 with sample templates.  We should go back to that old post and update it (don’t delete it or replace it, just update it).  We can make sure “we’re hiring images” is more prevalent in the title, intro copy, body copy, etc. We can also make sure the meta page title and description are optimized. We could also create other new posts with related content, and link back to this older post.  Doing these things is a simple way to drive that average position rank from the 6th slot, up into the top 3.

    Look at positions 10-30.
    If you’re in this range, it means that you’re starting to gain a bit of traction, but you’re likely not seeing a ton of benefit yet. Identify the terms that matter most to you in this range, see what pages rank there, and then get started on updates. Start by updating that page just like I recommended above (on-page content, keywords, meta title, etc.).  Then start building out a content plan with semantically related terms. For example, we currently rank #17 (on average) for “recruiting SEO“.  Our SEO services pages earned this ranking.  So I could go back and reoptimize that page for “recruiting SEO” but I can also build out a content plan around this topic.  If this is a high-value term I REALLY want to rank well for, I might create the following content:

    – A Step-By-Step Guide to Recruiting SEO
    – What is Recruiting SEO?
    – Can SEO Help With Candidate Recruitment?
    – The Keys to Recruiting SEO in 2020
    – 7 Ways to Make Your Jobs More SEO Friendly
    – Recruitment SEO Tips: How to Make Sure Your Jobs are More Visible
    – Google Jobs SEO – Recruiting SEO Best Practices

    In each of these posts and pieces of content, I would include terms related to “recruiting SEO” and variations of that word – recruiting, recruitment, recruiter, jobs, candidate recruitment, etc.  It’s not about just stuffing the exact term “recruiting SEO” into a post. It’s more so about providing value to the searcher and building a collection of great semantically related content. You can see that serveral of these topics are question based.  Google’s goal is to provide answers to the searcher, so writing content in this format is a great way to rank well. I would then make sure that all of this content is interlinked and connected. Then check back in Google Search Console in a few weeks and see what progress you made!

Or, just get staffing and recruiting SEO help from Haley Marketing!

We have a team of great content marketing and staffing SEO specialists ready to help. We would love the chance to help you build a great content marketing strategy that helps you build visibility, improve search rank and earn more inbound traffic from candidates and clients. Let us know how we can help!

 

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