Google Search Console vs. Topic

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.

Incentivized

Great at providing content briefs as well as for seeing the types of topics that rank well competitively. It's also good with finding content that needs to be refreshed which is a super easy way to drive near term SEO results.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Content Brief
• Competitive SERP ranking analysis
• Grouping content topics together to see related keywords/ content clusters easily
• Analyzing Google Search Console data for content refresh opportunities

• 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

• Using the GSC data to find new, adjacent content opportunities.
• They are using GPT-3 for title generation and would love to see it used to provide more content suggestions beyond the titles/descriptions
• Sometimes it doesn't surface 'questions' that people are asking related to lower volume terms but not sure of a way to solve that

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 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.

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

Topic was way less costly than MarketMuse with similar functionality. It was agnostic to CMS (WordLift is designed for Wordpress only). So it was priced well with all the functionality we needed.

• 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

• It has greatly reduced the number of hours our SEO team has to review content
• Has sped up our content briefs by hours per brief
• Great for helping us to see what content is performing well / needs help via the Google Search Console integration