Google Search Console

You don't need Search Console to appear on Google. It is a window onto what Google already knows about your site, with a few tools to fix what it finds. The parts a small business uses most:

• Performance: the searches that showed your site, with clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for each one.
• Pages: which of your pages are in Google, and the reason for each one that is not.
• URL Inspection: the current status of one address, and a way to ask Google to look at a new or updated page.
• Sitemaps: where you give Google the list of your pages, which can help it find them sooner.
• Email alerts when Google runs into indexing, spam or other problems on your site.

1. Sign in to Search Console with a Google account and choose Add property.
2. Pick Domain if you can. It covers every version of your address in one place: with and without www, http and https, and subdomains such as a blog.
3. Prove that the domain is yours by adding the DNS record Google gives you, in the account where you manage the domain.
4. Submit your sitemap in the Sitemaps report, so Google gets the full list of your pages.

Google suggests a look about once a month, or after you change the site, and it emails you when it finds a new problem, so there is no need to log in every day. On a small site, two checks cover most of it.

In Performance, see whether clicks and impressions are steady or growing, and which searches bring people in. In Pages, make sure your important pages are indexed. If they are not, our guide to why a site is not on Google goes through each reason.