I hope you have enough knowledge of how to write SEO optimized articles, how to make proper backlinks and other SEO related tasks but do you know that you can use Google Search Console data to boost SEO power. Yes, you read it right you can easily use Google Search Console data to boost SEO power, but how? This article will solve your problem.
First, let me tell you about from actually where you can fetch useful SEO data.
Login to your Google Search Console and Go to Crawl Section> Crawl Stats.
When you see it for the first time it will not seem so useful and it will make you like how can it be useful.
This not actually an analytics of your website well for that you have a different tool, so what it is?
Actually, the data you are going to measure is crawl rate. This data will tell you about Google’s search bots activity.
If you have fast crawl rate then it’s a good sign because it means that your website is user and bots friendly and Google is loving fetching data from your website. It is a clear sign from Google that you are going to rank higher in SERP.
Now, remember that if your crawl rate is too low then you are doing something wrong with SEO and on the other side if your crawl rate suddenly boosts then don’t feel happy too much because it is an indication that something is going fishy in your website.
Here I want to tell you that you need to monitor your crawl rate. Maybe for the very first time, you will not understand how to read them but this guide will tell you how to use Google Search Console data for maximizing SEO power.
Below are three sections which will clearly show you how to read data.
- Pages crawled per day
- Kilobytes downloaded per day
- Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)
1. Pages Crawled Per Day
This page shows exactly how many crawls you get every day. Here you can see the result of three months.
Just hover your mouse in the graph and it will let you view result for each day.
On the right side of the page, there is High, Average and Low text with some numbers. It is the number of crawl amounts.
2. You need to optimize it but how?
First, know that crawl rate is something which you can’t control like Domain Authority.
You need to understand the fluctuation graph especially if it showing really down from high in two or three days.
Crawl rate all depends on how fast bots are crawling your website. It will easily tell you whether your website is easily crawlable or not.
It simply means that your website needs a consistent crawl rates. Now you don’t need to worry if it has some ups and downs. Just make sure all crawl rates in an average position.
If you have a look at your graph then most probably you will see something similar data but that’s not the only thing you need to focus. Just have a look on pages crawled per day graph.
Here if you notice some sudden spikes or drops then you need to worry about it. There is a solution for both scenarios.
If you a see a sudden drop then check if following things happen with your website.
You might have unsupported content or broken code in your pages.
If you have added some new code to your website then this could be one of your reason. So use this tool to validate your codes.
Check whether your website’s robot.txt file blocking too much.
If you have modified your robot.txt file then make sure you actually didn’t block too many resources. If your robot.txt look like something this then revise it now.
3. Your Website Has Stale Articles
It is a well-known fact that Google loves fresh content. Now it really doesn’t mean that you need to keep publishing new articles. Know that if you even republish your old articles Google will send bots again to your website and crawl the article again and the good part is it will reindex the updated article again.
Now don’t just run for updating your old article unnecessarily until and unless you really don’t have something valuable to add. If you update your old blogs with quality content then you will definitely get a ranking boost.
If your website has stale content then it will get obsolete, they become less engaging which is the main reason for lower rankings. In analytics, you will get high bounce rate and flat or lower search traffic.
Now if you have an up-to-date website then it will achieve better rankings, lower bounce rate, and higher search traffic.
Hope you got it that new content will fetch more visitors to your website so keep writing a new article and republish your evergreen stale content.
If you a see a sudden spike then check if following things happen with your website.
4. You’ve just messed up with coding
If you added something new to your website in terms of coding or upgraded your theme or plugin then you must have a look on an error and properly validate your code.
5. You are allowing robots.txt to crawl all content
robots.txt file let you control what kind of content you want to crawl in your website or in simple words you can decide which pages you want to get indexed in SERP.
Now if you touch your robots file then most probably bots are crawling your all content. Above I told you if you blocked too many things in the robots.txt file then it will show a sudden drop in Search Console and vice versa. So optimize your robots.txt file for a better result.
Now let me tell you that how can you optimize your crawl rate.
If everything is fine then you might be not reading this but if you are the one who has sudden drop or spike in Search Console then obviously you want a solid plan to deal with it.
I will tell you how you can fix crawl rate but before know that how you can optimize your website for getting long term good crawl rate.
Remember fresh content? Well, this is the first thing you need to do, more you publish more crawl rate you will get. So is it enough? Not really. So what are other tricks?
The second thing which increases your crawl rate is republishing your old articles. Yes, it is a proven strategy which will definitely work for you.
6. Kilobytes Downloaded Per Day
Maybe you are wondering what the heck is kilobytes?
Friends, kilobytes is simply what you’ve guessed, KB. Well, each time when search bots crawl your website it downloads some data.
The bigger is your site the more data it will show and vice versa. This is one of the most underrated things in Search Console. Now I will tell you how you can use this Google Search Console data to maximize SEO power.
A high number of downloads means your website is crawled frequently which is a good thing but let me tell you that it is a kind of double-edged sword, how?
This also means that bots are taking the time to crawl your website and on the other side if you have less download then it means your website is fast to crawl because it is lightweight.
Now let me tell you a secret which might be a bit misleading for you but you can use below Time spent downloading a page (in ms) graph.
If you are thinking now how it can be useful then know that it takes bit time because it is complicated but once you get it you will love to use it.
Compare the both graph and check if Googlebot spends lots of time on your website then you need to immediately block unnecessarily pages using robots.txt.
The other thing you can do is remove unnecessary codes and content from your website which really don’t add any value to your website.
Hope you understand how to use Google Search Console data to maximize SEO power. Now start implementing the guide and feel free to tell whether it helped you or not? Apart from this if you have any query then feel free to drop your question in the comment box.
