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Google Search Console for B2B SaaS

22 October 2024

Executive Summary

In today's digital age, there is an assumption that anyone working in the B2B Digital space, knows all there is to know about everything from websites, to SEO, to Pay-Per-Click and so on.  But you an I know that's not true.  If it were, businesses woujld not be going bust at their current rate and we'd all be millionaires - right!

Businesses in the technology, SaaS, or professional services sectors must ensure that their 'digital' i.e., their web pages are effectively indexed by Google to achieve better visibility, targeted traffic, and ultimately, increased profitability. This article delves into the importance of web page indexing, the use of Google Search Console (GSC), and offers valuable tips for businesses in these sectors to optimise their online presence.  If you know, you know.  If you haven't been made aware about this topic, read on.

It is important to note that the suite of SaaS available from Google includes Google Analytics and Tag Manager; these work in unison to provide the necessary data to help your business act upon the information provided.

The final section includes key takeaways, FAQs, and a conclusion urging the reader to learn more from salesXchange.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Understanding Web Page Indexing
  3. The Importance of Web Page Indexing
  4. Introduction to Google Search Console
  5. Using Google Search Console for Web Page Indexing
  6. Additional Tips for Improving Indexability
  7. Key Takeaways
  8. FAQs
  9. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Google Search Console plays a crucial role in ensuring online visibility for businesses in the technology, SaaS, and professional services sectors. It is vital for these businesses to have their web pages indexed by Google to appear in relevant search results. This article explores the importance of web page indexing and how to utilise Google Search Console to improve your website's online presence and will help when correlating data and analytics for marketing.

2. Understanding Web Page Indexing

Web page indexing refers to the process where search engines like Google add web pages to their searchable database. This process involves:

  1. Crawling: Search engines send out web crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, to discover new and updated web pages.
  2. Rendering: Search engines process the content and layout of web pages to understand the information they contain.
  3. Indexing: The web pages are added to the search engine's index, making them available for users to find in search results.

Factors affecting the indexation process include:

  • Technical; Page speed, load time, mobile speed (mobile is priority not desktop)
  • Sitemaps; ensuring your website generates an XML sitemap to instruct where and wehn the robots will crawl
  • Robots.txt file to confirm the location of the sitemap and the access or restricions available for 'bot' traffic
  • Structure; Ensuring keywords appear in the URL, Page title, Article Title, Title Tags, Body Content and internal linking
  • Semantic content quality, keyword frequency, and relevance - 

3. The Importance of Web Page Indexing

Web page indexing is crucial for businesses in the technology, SaaS, and professional services sectors for the following reasons:

  1. Ensuring online visibility and discoverability
  2. Impact on search engine rankings
  3. Enhancing user experience and satisfaction
  4. Attracting targeted traffic and potential customers

Irrespective of how many articles you have written for your website, if they're not being indexed on Google, they're invisible.  This is an essential element of B2B SEO and many marketers profess to know what they're doing in this regard but do not, hence the reason why so many companies fail at digital marketing.

As a rule of thumb, I say if a page has not been indexed, it's not 'worthy' to be presented to your prospects!

4. Introduction to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that helps website owners, digital marketers, and SEO professionals monitor their site’s performance in Google search results. It provides insights into how your website is indexed, performs, and what issues might be hindering its visibility. By offering detailed reports and data, it allows users to make informed decisions to enhance their site’s performance, improve search rankings, and fix technical errors.

Google Search Console Explained

  • Overview
    The Overview section provides a snapshot of your site’s general performance. It summarizes key metrics like total clicks, impressions, and search positions. You can quickly see how your website is performing and if any critical issues need to be addressed.

  • Performance
    The Performance report shows how your site performs in Google Search. It provides data on the number of clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position in search results, broken down by query, page, and country. This helps you analyze which pages and keywords drive the most traffic.

  • URL Inspection
    This tool allows you to inspect specific URLs on your website to see how Google views and indexes them. You can also use it to request re-indexing of updated pages. It provides details about whether a page is in Google's index and if there are any issues affecting its indexing or display.

Indexing

  • Pages
    This report shows which pages of your website have been indexed by Google. It helps you track pages that may be blocked, crawled, or excluded from the index, offering insights into why certain pages might not appear in search results.

  • Video Pages
    This is a specialized section that focuses on video content, showing you which of your video pages are indexed. It’s particularly useful for websites with a strong focus on multimedia content to ensure videos are searchable.

  • Sitemaps
    Sitemaps help Google understand the structure of your website and which pages to prioritize for indexing. This section shows the status of any submitted sitemaps, along with any errors or issues encountered by Google when crawling them.

  • Removals
    The Removals tool allows you to temporarily hide specific content from search results. It’s useful for sensitive content or pages that need to be taken down or adjusted before being re-indexed.

Experience

  • Page Experience
    This section provides insights into how users experience your site, focusing on factors like loading speed, mobile usability, and security. It combines Core Web Vitals data, mobile usability tests, and HTTPS reports to assess the overall user experience.

Enhancements

  • Enhancements
    This report identifies potential improvements for your site based on structured data, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), and other factors that can affect search rankings. It highlights opportunities to add structured data, fix AMP issues, or address mobile usability concerns.

Security & Manual Actions

  • Security Issues
    This section informs you if your website has been compromised by malware, phishing, or other security threats. Google also advises on how to address and fix these vulnerabilities.

Links & Settings

  • Links
    This report provides details on internal and external links pointing to your website. It helps you understand which sites are linking to you, the anchor text used, and the overall health of your backlink profile.

  • Settings
    The Settings section includes information about your site, such as domain ownership, user access, and crawl stats. It’s where you can manage who has access to your Search Console and adjust preferences for notifications and data-sharing.

5. Using Google Search Console for Web Page Indexing

To use Google Search Console for web page indexing, follow these steps:

  1. Set up Google Search Console: Create an account, add and verify your website property.
  2. Submit a sitemap to Google: This helps Google discover your web pages more efficiently.
  3. Monitor index coverage and address issues: Identify errors and warnings, resolve them to improve indexability.
  4. Inspect URLs and request indexing: Use the URL inspection tool to check the index status of individual pages and request indexing if necessary.

  5. Utilise performance reports to optimise web pages: Analyse data provided by Google Search Console to make informed decisions on how to improve your website's performance in search results.

6. Additional Tips for Improving Indexability

To further enhance your website's indexability, consider the following tips:

  1. Improve website speed and performance using the Chrome Extension Lighthouse to access Pagespeed Insights
  2. Ensure mobile-friendliness based upon your website CSS and/or template structure.  ensure you make the effort to change the image sizes and specific content fo rmobile and don't simply allow your CMS responsive settig the 're-render' your desktop version for mobile - you'll get penalised for this.
  3. Implement Schema.org structured data as this will enhance every page from providing the search engines with an explanation as to the purpose of your web page to the credentials of the author and information about your company
  4. Maintain content freshness and relevance.  In the same way with sales people; if they fail at selling, they're given some more training.  If they still don't improve, they get a warning and then they're fired.  The same must apply to your content - not all of it is good or worthwhile, so be brutal with it.

7. Key Takeaways

  1. Web page indexing is crucial for online visibility and attracting targeted traffic.  You need to ensure your team have mastered GSC and keep on top of development as page that were once indexed can become de-indexed due to multiple factors, some in your control and some out (mostly in!), therefore you need to aware of your contents 'health'.
  2. Google Search Console is a powerful tool for monitoring and improving your website's presence within Google Search results, but it's also capable of integration with website platform components like WordPress's Yoast SEO and Joomla's Jsitemap Pro.  These components can automatically update GSC when changes are made to your website - making like much easier - trust me on this one.
  3. Continuously optimising your website's performance and especially content will significantly impact your search engine rankings, especially if you have implemented a silo strcuture of daisy-chaining groups of semantically relevant articles to help enhance your keyword visibility.  GSC is an essential ingredient for this.

8. FAQs

Q: How often does Google crawl and index my website?

A: The frequency at which Google crawls and indexes your website can vary depending on factors such as the size of your website, the frequency of content updates, and the overall site authority. Ensuring that your website has a regularly updated sitemap and high-quality content can help increase the crawl rate. Our site seems to be crawled most days, however I only recieve the update reports once a week.

Q: Can I control which pages on my website are indexed by Google?

A: Yes, you can control which pages are indexed by using a "noindex" meta tag or a directive in your site's robots.txt file. It is important to use these methods strategically, as excluding essential pages can negatively impact your website's search rankings.  Noindex can be used in conjunction with 'follow' or 'nofollow'.

Q: How can I tell if my website has indexing issues?

A: Google Search Console provides an "Index Coverage" report that shows the indexing status of your website's pages, including any errors or warnings that may be affecting your site's visibility in search results. Regularly monitoring this report can help you identify and resolve indexing issues quickly.  

9. Conclusion

Proper web page indexing and utilising Google Search Console are essential for businesses in the technology, SaaS, and professional services sectors to succeed in today's competitive online landscape. By following the guidelines and tips provided in this article, you can improve your website's visibility, attract targeted traffic, and increase profitability.

As part of your visibility strategy, it is imperative to apply E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust) to your documentation and monitor your exposure via Google Search Console (GSC).  Once you get indexed, your document will stay indexed, unless someone changes the content.  Worst case is that the article is pushed further down the search engine page results (SERPs).  This is why we recommend consistently monitoring your content as if it were a salesperson.  If they're failing, edit them! An effective way to achieve all-round visibility is to implement Google Data Studio which provides a digital dashboard connecting to the data of Google Search Console and Google Analytics, giving you a full 360 view of your exposure. 

To learn more about how we can help your business succeed online, contact us today.