Blog / How To Use Google Search Console For Free SEO Keyword Research
Whether you have heard of Google Search Console before or you have been aware of it for some time, it is often overlooked but is a very powerful tool when it comes to SEO. There are many options out there which analyse your SEO but you can use Googles FREE tools to do your keyword research for naturally ranking keywords and potential new keywords.
Google Search Console is often used for measuring your website’s organic search performance. But you can also use it to find valuable keyword data to assist with your keyword research and on-page optimisation.
In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to use Google Search Console for keyword research using two different methods so you can improve your position on search results without the eyewatering price tag of the usual keyword research tools.
Find Keywords with High Impressions
In this method, we’re going to look for quick win keywords by searching through your queries report to find keywords with high-impressions and a low click-through rate. This means that you are already ranking on Google for these terms but not high enough to win the clicks when most users search for them on Google.
How to use Google Search Console Performance Report
Firstly head over to Googles Search Console and once logged in head over to the performance tab. Here you will find information about how many times you have appeared in peoples organic search results and how many clicked through to your website. This is so important to find out how individual pages are performing in the rankings and also gives you some data to work with. You can also adjust the timeframe to show longer or shorter periods of time. 3 Months is a good start for getting some decent results.
How to Find Naturally Ranking Keywords in Google Search Console?
Below the performance chart you will find some tabs, the one we are looking for is Queries, this shows us a list of keywords which people have managed to come across your website. It is a great start to understanding what your customers are searching and can instantly give you a load of ideas for content. Even simply using some of these keywords in your current pages you will start to see some improvement over time. Remember it takes atleat 3 months to be able to know if it has made a difference.
What is a Click Through Rate?
Continueing in the Queries tab you can also find for each keyword your Impressions, which is how many times you have shown up in search results for that keyword and then how many times people have clicked through to your website or page. The aim here is to spot any keywords which have a high number of impressions but have a low click count. This is also called a low Click through rate. This shows that you need to do some work for this particular keyword if you want to get more clicks.
If you see a higher number of clicks then you are doing something right for that particular keyword. Just keep an eye on this over time and see how it performs and whether you can get even more clicks.
To Test a particular keyword just copy the Query into Google Search and see where you rank, If you are at the top then Congrats you are Doing well for that keyword. If you are not reaching that top spot then take note of the websites showing above you for that keyword. Then you can use these competitors to do some analysis.
Which page is ranking for that keyword?
Now you may be wondering whats page you need to optimise for that keyword? Well Google Search console is super simple. All you need to do is click on the keyword you want to analyse and then click on the pages Tab. This will show you all of the pages that are ranking for that keyword. From this you can then make a decision whether you need to write better contact around this or if you are getting high clicks then maybe you are happy with this and want to move onto another keyword and pages. It gives you the information you need.
Find Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords
In this method, we are going to find low-hanging fruit keywords for specific pages on your website that you want to work on.
These are keywords that you didn't aim to show up for but you page does. You can utilise this to get some quick wins and target even more keywords, even if they are not a perfect match, they still help bring in customers and traffic.
Once again head over to the Performance Tab in Google Search Console. Now you know how to analyse your click through rate and your impressions we can then move onto more keyword analysis.
Analyse your Pages
Instead of focusing on “Queries” first, this time, we’ll head to “Pages”. Here we get to see all of the pages on your website which are ranking in google. Simply find the page which you want to do keyword research and click on it.
Which Keywords does my page rank for?
Once you have found the page you want to research just head over to the Queries tab again for a list of keywords for that page. From this you can find the best keywords based on impressions and Clicks. With this information you can decide to perform some on-page optimisation to help that particular page perform better. Once you updates are crawled by Google, which can take some time, You should start to see an increase in traffic and clicks. This also depends on your webpage design though as a bad design can put users off. For more information on design check out our blog on how to boost conversion rates on your website.
Keyword Research is a great start but there is more you can do…
Althought using Google Search Console can give you amazing keyword information and help you get more traffic and clicks, it is also not the only thing you need to do to make sure you are reaching the top of Google Searches. Here is a list of other useful blogs to teach you all you need to know to get better results:
