This article is aimed at small business owners doing DIY SEO, who want a practical step-by-step guide on optimising a blog using Google Search Console (GSC). If you don’t have this free tool set up yet, you’re missing out, so skip over to my quick guide and get that sorted so you can start building up valuable data about your website.
If you have set up Search Console and have at least three months of data to work with, let’s get started!
Why use Google Search Console for optimisation?
Many small business owners write blogs because they’ve heard “it’s good for SEO” but very few actually measure whether these blogs attract relevant visitors. After all, we all want traffic but it’s no good if the people looking at our site are not interested in what we have to offer.
For example, if you’ve written a case study about helping a client solve a specific problem, you’ll want to know whether similar prospects are actually finding that content.
Google Search Console is completely free to set up and use, pulling in data directly from Google’s search engine to show you the exact terms people use to find your site, which pages appear in the search results and how often people click into those pages.
This valuable tool can be a little overwhelming at first though, so below I’ll take you through simple steps to get started using GSC to optimise your blogs.
What you’ll learn:
– How to identify your best performing keywords
– Which blog posts need immediate attention
– Simple optimisation tactics that improve rankings
– How to spot quick wins
Step 1) Navigate to your Performance report
Open Google Search Console and click on “Performance” in the left sidebar.
1. Set the date range: At the top of the report, adjust the date range to 3 months or choose a longer term if preferred. You need enough data to identify genuine patterns.
2. Enable metrics: Next to Total Clicks, Total Impressions, you may also want to click on the Average CTR and/or Average Position to include that in your results (bearing in mind, this is the average position across your date range, not your current position). Each metric tells you something different:
- Impressions = how often your page appeared in search results
- Clicks = how many people actually visited
- CTR (Click-Through Rate) = impressions converted to clicks (higher is better)
- Average Position = where you typically rank (A rank of roughly 1 – 8 will be page 1 of search results)
3. View the queries: Scroll to the bottom where you’ll see the Queries table. These are the actual keywords that people have used on a search engine that have resulted in your website being shown in the search results.
4. Sort the data: You may find it helpful to sort the results by Impression count by clicking the down arrow. This reveals which keywords are generating the most visibility for your site, even if they’re not yet converting to clicks.
Step 2. Identify your target keyword
Scan through your queries and identify a keyword that’s important to your business. Look for terms that represent the services you offer or problems you solve.
1. Click on your chosen keyword to filter the entire report to just that term.
2. Toggle to the “Pages” tab to see which URLs are ranking for this keyword
Your ideal scenario is that you have one relevant page showing up for your keyword with decent impressions. For example, if I’ve decided the query “Marketing Power Hour” is important for me, i’ll click on that and the Pages report is showing that my Power Hour services page is showing for this – which is great, it means my content is focused and Google understands what it’s about.
If however, you find you have lots of different pages showing up for the same keyword, this could be a sign that you have many pages competing for the same keyword. If you think about it logically, if you have lots of pages targeting the same keyword, how would Google know which one to rank?
Example: Imagine I searched for “marketing power hour” and find my homepage, a services page, and a blog post all appearing for this term. Google doesn’t know which page best answers this query, so none of them rank as high as they could. In SEO, this is what we call ‘keyword cannibalisation’.
If you find this is the case on your site, you could:
- Merge content onto your strongest page (the one with the most impressions)
- Edit competing pages to target different, related keywords instead
- Use internal links to clearly signal which page is your “definitive” resource for that topic
Step 3. Manually Google your Keyword & Assess the Competition
As we’ve now filtered the report by our keyword, how does the date look? Perhaps you’re getting some impressions but not many clicks? Let’s see what competition we’re up against.
Start by simply by searching for your target keyword on Google (tip: use an incognito browser to avoid getting results that are personalised to you). Here are some pointers of what to look for:
1. Competition level: What kind of pages are ranking above yours? if you see major brands or long established sites with high domain authority, it’s going to be difficult for you to compete against them.
2. Keyword interpretation: Could your keyword be too broad or open to different interpretations? If the search brings up results that are unrelated to what you’re trying the rank for, you need to consider pivoting to a more specific, long-tail variation of your keyword. Think about related terms or questions people ask.
3. Content type: What format dominates the results? Service pages? How-to guides? LinkedIn articles? Videos? This tells you what Google considers the best match for user intent. If you’ve written a service page but the top results are all video guides, that’s a big clue as to why you’re not ranking higher.
4. Page title patterns: Look at what ranking pages use in their titles. Do they include the current year? Specific numbers? Power words like “complete,” or “proven”? These elements often improve click rate.
5. Content freshness: Check published dates. If every top result is from 2024 or 2025 and your article is from 2022, updating your published date (along with refreshing the content) can give you a boost.
6. People Also Ask section: This area of the search results shows related questions real users are asking. Can you incorporate these questions and answers into your blog post? This helps you rank for multiple related queries.
Step 4. Explore Alternative Keyword Opportunities
Sometimes the keyword you thought was perfect turns out to be too competitive or too broad. Don’t waste months chasing rankings you’ll never achieve—find better opportunities instead.
Back in Google Search Console, remove the keyword filter from the report so we’re back to where we started. In the Queries report, see if there is another related term to the original one you were looking at:
- More specific variations of your original keyword
- Question-based queries (what, how, why, when)
- Long-tail keywords (3+ words) with commercial intent
- Lower competition terms where you’re already ranking on page 2
For example, instead of targeting “marketing power hour” (generic, competitive), I might discover I’m already ranking for “seo power hour for small business.” This longer phrase has:
- Lower competition (easier to rank)
- Higher intent (people know exactly what they want help with)
- Better qualified traffic (more likely to convert)
If you’re not showing up for anything else that’s relevant, do some more keyword research and Google your terms to see what comes up, always thinking about how you can narrow it down to be super targeted and competitive.
Step 5. Target Keywords that are Just Off Page One
Focusing your time on keywords in positions 9-15 is a smart move, as sometimes small improvements can push them up the rankings onto page one, which can lead to significantly more clicks.
How to find quick wins in Google Search Console:
1. In your Performance report, click to sort queries by “Position”
2. Look for keywords ranking between positions 9-15
3. Click each keyword to see which page is ranking
4. Go through the same steps as before, assessing whether that page is truly the best match for the query and check your competition.
To optimise your page:
- Improve your title tag: Make it more compelling and keyword-focused
- Enhance your meta description: This doesn’t directly impact rankings but a better description increases CTR, which signals relevance to Google
- Add more comprehensive content: Really analyse how you can make your content better. Check your competitor’s pages. Do you have a longer word count? Is their content rich with images or diagrams?
- Build internal links: Link to this page from other relevant pages on your site using keyword-rich anchor text
- Update with fresh information: Add current statistics, recent examples, or a “Last updated: [date]” timestamp
Key takeaways: Your Checklist
Hopefully I’ve shown you that using Google Search Console to optimise your blog isn’t complicated. Here’s a summary of what we’ve done:
– Identified our most important keywords using the Performance report
– Checked for keyword cannibalisation
– Manually searched keywords to understand the competition
– Find alternative, less competitive keyword opportunities
– Target quick wins ranking just below page one
Finally – don’t forget to track your results. There are many factors that affect rankings but if you do make major changes to a page, make a note of the date so you can look back at the data and see it’s had an impact. Remember it can take time depending on how frequently Google crawls your site.
