Google Search Console vs. Rio SEO

There are lots of tools and platforms that help us rank well on search engines. While that is helpful, we do need to know how those efforts paid off. This is where Google Search Console comes in. It is vital for every business or website trying to rank well on search engines to have Google Search Console so that they can track their performance and make necessary adjustments.

Incentivized

If you have a business with more than 20 locally serving locations you know how important local searches are. RIO SEO will help syndicate your information and their robust toolkit will help those types of businesses be successful online. Their all in one dashboard lets the user control every location without having to log in to multiple dashboards to make a change in Google, then Bing, then Yelp, etc.

Incentivized

• You can also submit your sitemap directly to Google and get it crawled.
• You can also index and crawl you updated and new webpages.
• It also displays errors that are preventing your site pages to get indexed in Google.
• You get a list of all the keywords for which your site is ranking.
• You can track its position, CTR and impressions.

Incentivized

• Their software is really amazing and does the job well and in a routine manner.
• Their support staff is beyond amazing, hands down the best support I've gotten from any company in any industry.
• The proactively find issues and bring them to our attention so we can work with our clients on getting results.
• The renewal process is painless and they help us with reporting to build a case for renewal and retaining the client.

Incentivized

• It can be a little difficult to navigate
• More training resources would be an asset. A beginner is given the power to completely destroy a sites search results at the push of a button. Likewise it is a powerful tool to enhance search results also.
• An option to take care of multiple versions of the same site simultaneously would be helpful. An option to use the same validation script across all versions and administer them simultaneously would be a time save (i.e. non-www, www, http://, and https:// versions of the same site).

Incentivized

• The dashboard could be a bit more user-friendly. It takes some training to get used to.
• Keys/legends in the sidebar and in exports to help explain what different sections are for the "laymen" that aren't in this industry 24/7.
• Having a "suggested changes" like what Moz.com/local has in their backend for photos/additional categories. Something that can help the user be more proactive rather than "here's where you're at" a "here's what you can do to improve" would help.

Incentivized

It's easy to use, but some features are lacking a clear explanation. Somethings don't always match up. For example, the Core Web Vitals often doesn't match what you would see in the Chrome Lighthouse report or the Google Page Speed Insights tool. The tool itself is a little too basic and has to be used alongside other SEO tools and other Google properties such as Analytics

Incentivized

As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.

Incentivized

SEMRush is a supplementary tool we use to provide competitive analysis. While it does, or should, provide the same data that Search Console does, but I only fully trust Search Console when it comes to basic performance in Google for the sites we develop and own. SEMRush, and other products like it, does provide much more in-depth insights that can help drive business decisions, including site performance on other search engines, along putting organic and paid search performance in one spot. However, SEMRush costs money while Search Console is free.

Incentivized

RIO SEO is heads, shoulders, the entire body, ahead of Local Market Launch. We used Local Market Launch before RIO and it was one of the worst years of my life. The support was non-existent, their syndication was lackluster and they messed up our contracts enough times to frustrate us and the clients. I cannot express in enough words my disdain for that service and how much of a refreshing change it was to work with a company like RIO that cared as much about our client success as we did.

Incentivized

• Given that this is a free tool, the return on investment has been particularly high - we've identified and addressed a few site issues that could have meant a reduction in search traffic.
• Our organic search traffic has been on the rise in part due to the insights gained from the search traffic analytics provided within the console.

Incentivized

• They have helped us retain several big clients over the years which in turn has helped bring in several other clients.
• Their tools allow us, a small boutique agency, to operate like a big agency.
• Our local listing clients have been much happier with our switch to RIO which has allowed us to focus on other areas for them instead of just the syndication.

Incentivized