Google Search Console is helpful to understand what terms customers search for and click onto your website from. However, it's not helpful if you're looking for deep competitive insight on search terms people are using and how that impacts your website.
If you're just getting started and want something simple to get a boost on your SEO, then it is a good place to start. It takes you through the initial steps and show you where you can improve. The paid versions are still pretty cheap compared to the competitors, but some of the others have more features and functional areas. However, bear in mind that the main reason this product exists is to provide leads for NPDigital marketing agency, so you'll get a fair amount of push in that direction.
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).
Some of the tool's features, including backlink tracking and competition analysis, were either lacking or more appropriate for the top-performing websites that already had a lot of traffic. So they should improve in this segment
Google Search Console is a simple program that allows organizations to get a solid understanding of the way their site functions and how users land on it. It can be used for making critical business decisions regarding marketing budgets and that within itself is why it deserves a 10.
It's really easy to use. The interface is nice and tidy, and the learning curve is low. So it's a tool that's accessible for everyone. If not, there are plenty of guides in the tool itself or on the website. You can easily make lists and export data for use or to share, connect Google Drive, and go work with a team.
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.
They have a lot of information on their website, and also training and contact options in the tool. So you can learn on the go while trying the tool. And if you are stuck, support reacts really fast--sometimes the same day, sometimes the next day due to time zones. Payment is easy and easy to cancel.
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.
We use each SEO research platform for different purposes. I believe they complement each other. Ubersuggest strengths, according to my experience, are related to content ideas, comprehensive keyword research to determine competitors' backlinks, and difficulty in achieving the desired results for any given SEO campaign. The Ubersuggest topic ideas tool gives different insights and benchmarks in relation to other similar platforms that fit our marketing needs.
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.
