We’ve burned through a lot of great topics here on our blog, and there are 3 very important heavy aspects of SEO that we can definitely say, gives a better fighting chance against competing websites.
The Google Search console (previously known as the Google Webmaster Tools) is essentially a free tool that (obviously) is offered by Google to help monitor and maintain your website’s presence in the search results. In real life, you really don’t need to have it to run a website and make it be seen on search results, but there are certain benefits in actually having to utilize this which we will discuss in a bit.
The short version of it is, imagine the Search Console as your car’s side and rear view mirrors. Unless you’re a Steve McQueen type of driver, you will surely crash your car one of these days if you don’t have these.
So what can you do with the Search Console? Well, you can, like what was mentioned above, monitor the performance of a website. You can see in this tool if Google is actually able to see your content. Because, let’s face it, as it is, yes we can see the content, we can open the website, but we really won’t be able to see what the POV is for Google’s eyes unless we get to use this console.
If in case you’re still new in creating Schema Markups, you can actually still use the Search Console, to highlight the important parts of your website much like creating Markups with the Data Highlighter. Which in hind sight, looks exactly like the Markup helper tool. You simply won’t get lost with the Search Console.
In the Google Search Console, you’ll be able to see sites that are linked to your site.
You can also check both your Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt if they’re working fine.
Last but definitely not the least according to my recent post, you can check how your site performs on mobile. AMP and how the site is viewed through mobile. And again, placing importance on mobile use, you should really pay attention to this part as well. Which brings us to…
Accelerated Mobile Pages.
These are essentially, mobile versions of your pages that are trimmed down to load faster.
Remember the good old days when you’re browsing with your phone and it takes forever for you to get to read that really interesting article but you gave up because you got really bored?
This is exactly what the AMP is trying to prevent. All that effort in creating content but no one gets to read it, all that is in the past now most especially when, today, we’re already experiencing a change in which mobile phones are becoming more and more important.
However, you can’t just stick that on all your pages. The most strategic way for you to utilize AMP is to apply it only for blog or article posts. People tend to read and share all the time using their phones. So it’s the blog content that you need to focus on.
In the trio, AMP is like the new character that’s equally important. It’s the new kid that will help us the old guys survive the weird future of mobile.
The last of the trio is somewhat of a favorite of mine. Mostly because it has been a mystery for me when I was a young SEO. But now has a helper tool that can ease my pain.
Creating and applying schema markups today is now easier thanks to its new tool. Like in the Data Highlighter tool from the Google Search Console, you can highlight and tag the important parts of your website to be displayed on search.
This however requires you to have these certain elements present on your website, preferably on the home page. Things like the name/brand of the website, the address, phone number email and if you’re good at it, a star rating, can be added in to the tags for the markup to display these rich snippets.
Having all three working for you gives you, valuable insight, speed and better access to parts of your site all displayed to your visitors both new and returning. To keep yourself afloat, you need to take care of your visitors and that’s what these three can help you with.
