The search console provides more detailed data on actual real-world performance. The search console also helps with submitting new websites for indexing whereas other tools only analyze existing SERP results. The search console also gives additional data of keywords that a page …
The paid software mentioned all provide great insights and areas of opportunity. Those insights coupled with Google's free Search Console allow one to make changes directly into the SERPs. The ability to push a page to be crawled ensures that your changes will be seen by google …
Usually, I use multiple tools and GSC is the first on my list along with Google Analytics since both of these tools are free and are sufficient for monitoring, analyzing and managing digital marketing for a small business. However, there are some limitations to these tools like …
SEOquake provides the basics and high overview. But SEMRush is a more robust tool that gives you the whole gamut of SEO/SEM insights. While SEMRush integrates with SEOquake, SEMRush is by far a more detailed tool providing a stronger SEO focus, stronger competitor analysis, …
It's suited for all use cases, but for big companies, the data might be crippling, so an add-on tool to analyse the data would be a good companion for GSC to solve this issue. Therefore, I think it's suited for any use case with some add-ons and companions needed for analysis.
SEOquake is a great tool to use alongside Semrush with the quick data that it provides on the search results page it's helpful to make quick decisions. The ability to change the SERP locale is also really nice as it helps us analyze the search results page from different locations.
Google Search Console insights is a great feature which provides an overview of my top content, how my new content is performing, etc.
It gives detailed information around backlinks - who is linking to us, how many backlinks do we have, how is the internal linking within the website, etc.
I like the graph feature that shows how the website is performing overall in one month, three months etc. Seeing the graph can help us understand whether it is trending upward or downward and we can shift strategies accordingly.
Gives a ton of SEO info in one area. I usually have to use a few different Chrome extensions that show different areas to get the full picture that this tool gives you up front.
It gives you info on ways to improve the infrastructure of your website.
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).
The high-level parameters are nice to see, but for a new-to-the-tool person, they are confusing and don't provide a lot of explanation, unfortunately.
The keyword density section is somewhat helpful but gives the density in a percentage without rationale as to what an average percentage is or what the website should aim for.
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
As it is a free tool, you mainly have to rely on their knowledge base and forums. Google has provided in-depth guides and KB for every function of the search console. So, you can refer to it in case of any problem. You can also ask questions on their forums but direct support is not available.
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.
SEOquake provides more information regarding backlinks and traffic in general whereas other tools focus more on keywords and their search volume. The backlinks information it provides is also really useful in making quick decisions on which site we can focus on more when it comes to searching for backlink opportunities.
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.