Setting up Google Search Console and the 4 reports to read first
Search Console is Google's free tool for seeing your site the way Google does. Setup takes ten minutes. The harder part is knowing which reports to read.
Analytics shows what visitors do on your site. Search Console shows what happened before they got there: which searches Google showed you in, how many people saw you, how many clicked, and which pages have problems.
It's free and it's Google's own tool. Anyone with a website should have it set up.
Setup and verification
Go to search.google.com/search-console and click "Add property". You'll see two options.
The "Domain" option covers every variant (with and without www, http and https) in one go, and it's the one I recommend. It does mean adding a line to your domain's DNS records. You log into wherever you bought the domain and add a TXT record.
The "URL prefix" option is easier. You upload an HTML file or add a meta tag. But you need a separate property for each variant.
If you have DNS access, pick the domain method. You do it once and never have to touch it again.
Submit your sitemap
Once you're verified, open "Sitemaps" in the left menu and enter your sitemap address, usually yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. That one file tells Google which pages you have.
Data doesn't show up straight away. Expect two or three days for the first useful report and a few weeks before the picture settles.
1. The Performance report
This is where you'll spend most of your time. It has four numbers: impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR) and average position.
Switch to the "Queries" tab and find the searches with high impressions but few clicks. Google is showing you for these and people aren't clicking. Rewriting that page's title and meta description usually fixes it.
2. The Pages (indexing) report
Shows which of your pages are in Google, which aren't, and why.
Most reasons in the "Not indexed" list are normal, such as redirected addresses or duplicate pages. If a page that should be live shows up under "Server error (5xx)" or "Not found (404)", though, you have a real problem.
3. The Core Web Vitals report
This one covers your speed measurements. It groups pages rather than showing them one by one, and pages that use the same template land in the same group.
If the "Poor" group has any pages in it, that template has a shared problem. Fix the template and every page in the group improves.
4. Mobile usability
Lists what makes the site hard to use on a phone: text that's too small, links too close together, content wider than the screen. The list is usually short and easy to clear.
How often should you check?
Once a month is enough. Open the last three months in the Performance report. If the impressions line is going up, you're on track.
Search Console will also email you when it finds a problem. Take those emails seriously, because usually something really has broken.