Must-Have SEO Tool
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Google Search Console (GSC) to check which keywords are driving traffic to our website, check our average rankings, make sure pages that we want to be indexed are being indexed, and making sure pages that we don't want to be indexed are not, fixing errors, checking to make sure our schema markup is working, and monitoring core web vitals. These tools help us determine what's working for SEO, what's not working, and address any issues that pop up.
Pros
- Gives you a sample of keywords associated with actual clicks to your website
- Is user-friendly and easy to create reporting
- Contains explanations around definitions making it easier for new users to understand
Cons
- Full access to keyword click data is not available
- While you can see the source URL for where Google found a particular URL, it doesn't tell you where on the page it's finding it
- Lookback window should be longer for Performance reporting
Likelihood to Recommend
Google Search Console should be used by every website to monitor your visibility in Google, see where you're getting traffic from, look for errors to fix, and find opportunities where pages may not be ranking well or pages that have low CTR, etc. I don't think there is any case where a website should not have a GSC account.
