The tools to eliminate Search Traffic errors section of Google Search Console (GSC) is a big one. Last week, we explored the Search Analytics Report but that was only one of the many tools available in this section such as: Links to Your Site, Internal Links, Manual Actions, International Targeting, and Mobile Usability.
Links to your Site
When another website links some of their content to content on your website, Google looks at it as a vote of confidence from the linking site to the quality of the content on your site. Google uses its PageRank tool (which is no longer public) to demonstrate the importance of that linked page.
On the dark side are other websites who are spammy or have low quality content linking to your website through black-hat SEO techniques. When black-hat sites link to content on your site, Google lowers their view of your website which also lowers your site’s PageRank. To disassociate your pages from such websites, you can check who has linked to your site using the “Links to your Site” tool in Google Console. This action will allow you to disavow sites that look suspicious. It tells Google that you also disapprove of these links and Google will not associate them with your site in the future.
Internal Links
Writing new blog posts and articles for your website keeps your content fresh and what you write is most likely related to other content you have written. Linking to past articles on your website that are relevant to the current article you are writing demonstrates to GSC that those pages are still important. The amount of internal links, which point to a piece of content, demonstrates the value of that content. This continues to build as you link posts together showing consistency of your overall subject. For example, at Netsville, we write about anything and everything to do with Internet Property Management, which is defined as managing websites, social media, analytics, digital marketing, etc. Because all of those topics come under the same umbrella, we can link many of them together.
Manual Actions
Google wants you to follow their quality guidelines. With the Manual Actions report, Google will let you know if anything on your site has been marked as spam or using black-hat techniques. In these cases, Google can demote or remove your content in search results. The best way to avoid these issues is to follow their Quality Guidelines.
Watch this video from Google’s Search Quality Team to understand more about Web Spam Content Violations.
International Targeting
If you are pursuing an international community on your website, the International Targeting tool is a necessity. The purpose of this report is to ensure that your site delivers content to the correct language and geographic preference of the user (i.e. making sure users in France are receiving the content intended for them).
Google recognizes hreflang tags in your content to serve the pages that are relevant to the user’s language. The International Targeting report checks the accuracy of the hreflang tags in your content plus further instructions on how to fix and optimize the code.
Mobile Usability
Remember Mobilegeddon from 2015? It was like Y2K all over again, only this time the warnings were for real. The Mobile Usability tool tests the usability of your website on mobile devices. With mobile web traffic growing faster than desktop traffic (having recently overtaken it globally), it is imperative that every metric in this report comes out positive.
The Mobile Usability report checks your pages for mobile friendliness such as readability and responsiveness among other indicators. If your pages do not conform to these conditions, it is likely that users may not return. In addition to utilizing this report, you can test your pages on Google Developer’s Mobile-Friendly Test page by individually entering the URL’s of your web pages.
Based in Rochester, New York, Netsville is an Internet Property Management company specializing in managing the Digital Marketing, Technical, and Business Solutions for our customers since 1994. For more information, please click here.