Hello everyone, my name is Lucas Dantas and my goal with today’s blog article is to show you how you can find out the keywords your website is ranking for and what position it’s showing up on Google search results. Certainly, reading this article will help people who have just launched a website, however if you have had one for a while and you have no clue what are your ranking positions, it can definitely help you too. Here I explain everything about Google Search Console which is a free tool you can use it to find the keywords your website is ranking for on Google.
Google Search Console
Google has a platform called Google Search Console. This is a free Google product for anyone with a website to monitor measure search traffic and performance. Using its data and reports you can optimize your website’s organic presence and improve your rankings on Google Search results.
How To Add A Website To Google Search Console
To get a Google Search Console account is very easy and I will show you how. If you already have an account, skip to the next step.
For this tutorial, I will be using my test website called myprivatelab.xyz. Follow the steps below carefully to complete your account setup. In the last few years, I have been managing several websites so my screen will look a bit different from what you see in yours.
- Sign into your Google Account using your business email. Normally, I recommend people to keep their personal and business account separate from each other for security reasons, but you can still use your personal one for this setup.
- Go to Google Search Console
- Click on Add Property
- Choose “URL” on the next screen and enter the URL of your website. Make sure you use the URL that appears in your browser bar.
- Click on “Continue”.
- Now choose a way to verify your own website.
There are two easy ways to do that, the first one is through WordPress, and if you are using it, watch this quick video below and learn how to verify your ownership quickly.
If your website is not on WordPress, choose Domain name provider.
This option shows a list of popular hosting services and give clear instructions on how to do it.
Sign into your domain registrar (like GoDaddy, NameCheap or HostGator), and verify your site directly by adding a DNS TXT record.
This process should take a few minutes as DNS takes some time to propagate.
Checking The Keywords Your Website Is Ranking For
To show you how you can see what are the keywords your website is ranking for, I am using as an example one of my clients, Smokin Willies BBQ, a barbecue restaurant located in Galesburg, Illinois. The business only have had their website for one year and since the age of a domain is an important factor for Google, take that into consideration while looking at the keywords and ranking positions.
On Google Search Console, this is what you will see:
On this screen, you will click on “Performance” located on the right of your screen on the dashboard.
Now make sure you have the selected Total clicks, Total impressions and Average position.
It should look like this:
If you keep scrolling down, you will see the options: QUERIES, PAGES, COUNTRIES, DEVICES, SEARCH APPEARANCE, DATES.
This is where you can check the keywords your website are ranking for.
| Column | Description |
| Top Searches | The keywords your website is ranking for |
| Clicks | The number of clicks each keyword is generated |
| Impressions | The amount of time your website shows as Google Search result for the keyword |
| Position | Your website’s average position for each keyword |
Using the graph above this table you can filter the date range and see if your ranking is improving or not. With Smokin Willies BBQ in 12 months, they went from an average of 44th position to the 7th on Google.
Your first step to rank higher on Google is to have Google Search Console installed on your website. If you’re looking for something with faster results for your business, you should look into my blog article where I teach how to do Google Business Profile SEO in 2022. Read carefully and start using the techniques I have shared here.
If you would like to keep learning more about digital marketing, stay tuned on my blog. Get in touch with me if you need any type of assistance and feel free to suggest content ideas in the comments section of this post.
Hope you have an amazing day!
