An In-Depth Guide to Google Search Console: Everything you need to know

 Google Search Console and its purpose 

Google Search Console is a verification tool. Its earlier name was Google Webmaster Tool. 

The published blog gets verification by using this tool. 

Verification is the process of proving Google that we own a property called a website.  

There are several steps in this process. At first, copy the URL of the blog website. The following steps are:

• Open Google Search Console and press the start now option. Use the same Gmail ID of the blog to enter the site.

We arrive at Google Search Console page with two options: Domain and URL prefix. As the webpage is subdomain, we can't use Domain. 

So move on to URL prefix section and paste the copied item( URL of blog).

• A page appears which says ownership auto verified. Click Go to property.

• We arrive at the Search Console dashboard that deals with our blog.
• Click the icon Welcome to new Google Search Console. Press Start button.
• On the left side, just below Performance, click URL inspection. Paste URL of the blog and click search icon.
• Google is crawling. If URL is not on Google, click Test live URL. URL is available and click request indexing beside that. Press got it.
• Go to the blog again and copy the URL of blog post. The same process is repeated. Open Google Search Console and paste it into the URL inspection. Then click search icon.
• If URL is not on Google, Test live URL
• URL is available to Google, request indexing and click got it.
• Finally it's auto verified.

We have finished three processes. Blog verification in Search Console, Submission of blog address to catch in the Google and finally finished requesting  the web page to index in the Google.

After these steps, go to the main URL of the blog and type /sitemap.xml after .com. Then submit and press got it.

Sitemap 

Sitemap is an xml format document to submit in the Google as a part of SEO. It contains URL of the website and details like last modified date, change frequency etc. 

This sitemap contains  the document's URL and its modifications. If we submit sitemap, Google can easily crawl and identify the changes that we made in the website. 

In a sitemap, maximum 50,000 URL is possible. The file size of the document should be maximum 10 Mb. When compared to html, xml page can be crawled easily by Google. 

There are five verification methods in Google Search Console to verify a website or any blog in WordPress or Tumblr.

1. html file verification method: Download html file and upload it into the root directory of Google website and verify. This is the first method.
   
   
   
2. html meta tag: if we click here, Google gave a meta tag. Copy it and paste it into head section of homepage of the website(Google) and verify.
3. Google Analytics: It's a tracking tool which helps to identify how many visitors visited our website, how much time they spent into it and how did they enter the blog/ website.
   
   
   
4. Google tag manager: Google tag manager helps to add and update our own tags for conversion tracking or site analytics. Instead of log into the control panel of website, just add tracking code into our website and submit.
   
   
   

5. Domain name provider: Add DNS( Domain Name System) data to the account from where we take the domain name for our website and verify.

Google Search Console Dashboard

After the verification processes, let's move on to Google Search Console Dashboard. On the left side, there are several options available.

• Overview: In this part, we can see the search results of our different webpages.
• Coverage: The Index Coverage report shows the Google indexing status of all URLs that Google knows about in your property.
• Sitemap: Sitemap is an xml format file that we need to submit to the Google. It contains URL of the website and details like last modified date, change frequency etc.
• Removals: Removals option can be used if we found URL error in our website after submitting and catching it in the Google. Removal request can be submitted by copying and pasting the URL that we need to remove.
• AMP: AMP means Accelerated Mobile Pages. It was introduced after 2017. AMP optimization is essential to quickly load webpages in mobile phones. For this purpose, CSS file size must below 50 kb. And this file should be saved as AMP file. AMP optimization can be done only in mobile friendly web pages.
• Breadcrumb: A breadcrumb trail on a page indicates the page's position in the site hierarchy and it helps users to effectively found and explore their site. Breadcrumbs report appears under the enhancement section in the search console. It can be found like a tiny arrow pointing leftwards in the snippet portion of a website. 
  
  
  
• Link: In this section, we can see how many inbound and outbound links that the website get.
• Manual actions: If our website is hacked or practices any link building activities without our consent,  Google will report about this in Manual actions and take proper action against that. Manual actions are actually warning signs by Google.
• International Targeting: When we use different language versions for different webpages in our website, we should join that language versions by using the meta tag named hreflang tag. Then our website will be separately listed to different languages. 

To conclude, Google Search Console is a basic tool of Google. SEO can be done in a controlled form if we verify our website by Google Search Console. 

We can submit sitemap related to the webpage and Google can report any issue/error found in our website. 

In that way, Google and the user can communicate each other.

Check out History and Evolution of SEO and SEO On page Optimization