Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a free online tool by Google consisting of a series of dashboards showing you how your site is performing on Google.It allows you to access a wide range of important data about your website. For example, you can:<ul><li>see how your page is performing in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for various keywords</li><li>find out if you have any problems with content appearing on Google (or indexing, to use the technical term)</li><li>check out what sites are linking to your content</li><li>see how your website is performing by the device used</li></ul>

What is Google Search Console?

Setting up Google Search Console is quite easy. Head over to its welcome page and log in with your Google credentials.After signing up, you will be asked to enter your web address in one of two boxes. The left-hand box is for a Domain Property and the right-hand box is for a URL Prefix Property.

Setup Google Search Console

Most people using Search Console select the domain property option. You’ll get the information on how your whole website is performing on Google. This includes all the URLs, subdomains and web protocols (http://, https://, www).In the past, you had to verify all the protocols separately but thanks to the domain property option, all you need is to enter your domain and all the variations will be included.

Domain Property

You should use this option if you only want to cover an exact URL format. For example, if you enter https://www.website.com/blog into the required field, only this URL format will be tracked. This option is often used for targeting a specific language mutation on a multilingual website, e.g. https://en-gb.example.com

URL Prefix Property

There are three different permissions levels in the Search Console:Owners: This will probably be you. Owners can view all the site’s data and use all the tools. They can also give other people access to the Search Console. You can also create delegated owners, who have the same control over Search Console as you.Full Users: Can view all site data and use most of the Search Console tools. They can’t change permissions. Neither can they share access to other G-suite accounts or change the web address.Restricted Users: Can only view Search Console data and generate basic reports.

Users, owners and permissions

The Overview Report is the first page that loads when you access Search Console. The dashboard contains a snapshot of key information about your site.<ul><li>Site performance report: How many people have clicked on your website from Google</li><li>Coverage report: Information whether your pages are indexed properly on Google</li><li>Enhancements report: Provides information about enhancements (such as AMP) you’ve made on your site</li><li>Manual actions report: This will show you if Google has given you a manual penalty</li></ul>

Overview

There are 3 main sections you can adjust or click on to show the data you need:<ul><li>top filter</li><li>4 main metrics</li><li>data tabs</li></ul>The various variables you can add include:<ul><li>Search: Choose to filter the results by web, image, or video</li><li>Date: Filter the results by date range. You can also compare date ranges.</li><li>Query: Filter by specific keywords, or even exclude keywords</li><li>Page: Select a page that you want to focus on</li><li>Country: Filter search results by country</li><li>Device: Filter search results by the device used</li><li>Search appearance: Filter by looking at Rich Results and other variables</li></ul>

Performance report

There are four metrics above the graph:<ul><li>Clicks: number of people who visited your site from Google</li><li>Impressions: total number of times your content was seen on Google</li><li>CTR: what %age of impressions resulted in a click</li><li>Position: avg ranking your content has in Google SERP</li></ul>There are 5 tabs you can select:<ul><li>Queries: keywords your content is ranking for</li><li>Pages: how pages & blog posts on your site are performing on Google</li><li>Countries: how your website is performing by country</li><li>Devices: what device do people use to access your website</li><li>Search appearance: whether your structured data appear in the search results</li></ul>

Performance report (contd.)

The index report shows the total number of pages that appear in the search results. If everything is green then things are good.The red box is where problem pages are displayed. You want the number of problematic pages to be as low as possible, ideally zero.Under the details section, you can sort issues by status, type, validation, & pages. If you notice sudden spikes or drops in your indexed pages, there’s probably a technical problem.It’s important to keep on top of these problems and resolve them quickly. Issues with technical performance will affect your visibility on results pages.

Coverage report

A sitemap is an XML document that outlines how your website is structured. Your sitemap will help Google crawlers navigate your site. This helps Google find and index your content quickly.You can tell Search Console where your sitemap is located on your site by entering the URL.An extra benefit to providing a sitemap in Search Console is that you’ll be alerted of any issues. These include differences between the structure of your site and what Google sees.

Sitemaps

The Enhancements page allows you to view the enhancements you have made to the site.There are many reports you can find under Enhancements, and many of them will appear only if you have the specific feature implemented on your site.The 3 most basic reports:<ul><li>Mobile usability report: how your site works on mobile</li><li>The Accelerated Mobile Pages report: AMP are stripped-down versions of a page designed to load very quickly on mobile</li><li>Structured data report: Structured data allows you to present additional information in Google SERP</li></ul>

Enhancements

Hopefully, you will never have to view this report. By default, it will show No issues detected. If a manual penalty has been applied to your site by a Google employee, then the penalty will appear in this tab.Google will apply manual penalties to your site if they think you have been doing anything shady. For instance, you might get a manual penalty as a result of buying backlinks.A penalty from Google can harm your search rankings or result in your site being de-indexed. It is crucial to resolve any manual link penalty if you want to avoid SEO problems.

Manual actions report

You can view the backlinks pointing to your website. From the table, you can see the pages that have the most internal and external links.You can see the top linking sites and anchor texts.The report is a great starting point to find:<ul><li>which pages of your website have the most links</li><li>what websites link to you the most</li><li>what are the most common anchor texts</li><li>what pages have the most internal links</li></ul>In the Top linked pages report, you can click on a specific page to see who links to it.

Links report

These are some features from the old Search Console. They are not available for domain property so we won’t go into much detail here.The legacy tools include:<ul><li>International targeting – you can set a specific target country (used for hreflang)</li><li>Removals – you can remove URLs from the search results</li><li>Crawl stats – you can view and regulate the frequency of crawls by Google</li><li>Messages – messages from Google</li><li>URL parameters – you can let Google know about various parameters you use</li><li>Web Tools – access to other tools</li></ul>

Legacy tools and reports

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Metasearch engines are a way to get a wide range of search results from different search engines. The theory is that you can get a wider breadth of answers and information to inform your decisions better.Metasearch engines matter because you don't just get all your information from one channel. We’ve seen from regular media outlets that one data source can be skewed, and you may not get a balanced point of view.

What Is a Metasearch Engine?

In simple terms, a metasearch engine takes the query you've entered and gathers results from multiple search engines online, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more. They aggregate the results for you so you can choose the best information from the search results provided.Metasearch engines are known for keeping a user’s privacy - they keep your details private and out of the data-gobbling hands of search engines.

What Do Metasearch Engines do?

A search engine sends out queries to websites to see if the website’s content best matches the search query entered into the search engine. It returns with a results page, ranked from most relevant, according to algorithms.A metasearch engine submits queries to multiple search engines and aggregates the results into a list. The search engine can sort this list they came from, by subject, or by relevance. The user can then choose which results best match their intent.

What Is the Difference between a Search Engine and a Metasearch Engine?

The pros of using a metasearch engine include the potential to be anonymous online and not have your user data vacuumed by Google.Meta searches give you a much bigger picture of what is out there online. You’re not influenced by one search engine and past user history.In addition, metasearch engines can be quick in finding you a wide variety of results. While they give an overview, they don’t provide detailed results, so they are so speedy.

What Are the Advantages of Metasearch Engines?

One of the disadvantages of metasearch engines is they sacrifice detail in the name of speed. They can give you a broad range of results but not a detailed result for your search query.You cannot always guarantee a wide net of search results with a metasearch engine. They may limit themselves to specific search engines, and you may not know which ones they are pulling from. A limited search engine reach can skew results.

What Are the Disadvantages of Metasearch Engines?

Discover how metasearch engines work, how to use them, and the best search engines available right now.

What Is a Metasearch Engine? How You Can Use Them to Your Advantage

Market research is an important tool for assessing industry landscapes and gathering customer insights, which can ultimately allow you to make more informed decisions for your business. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/242477/global-revenue-of-market-research-companies/"> </a>New data shows that the global market research industry’s revenue surpassed $73 billion in 2019 (up from $46.09 billion in 2014), which suggests to me that the industry is booming and that more companies are aggressively investing in third-party research to understand their markets.

Market Research Is Crucial

Before determining what research method is right for your business, it’s important to conduct frequent preliminary internal research to understand your market and its white space. This will provide a starting point and assist you when you’re outsourcing formal market research.This research can also prepare your team for initial conversations with market research firms and allow you to communicate your expectations and needs.

What To Do Before Reaching Out To Market Research Firms

Now that market research teams can integrate artificial intelligence into their survey strategies by leveraging third-party technologies, results may now be more reliable and more transparent, which could make this option a preferable choice for C-suite executives. Survey results can also reveal details about your target audience, which can help you tailor your sales funnel and pipeline. Surveys also reveal market perceptions and provide guidance on how companies should reposition, market or rebrand themselves.

Opting In To Surveys

Once you have the results of your market research, it could allow your company to scale more quickly and mitigate risks along the way. New insights may reveal problematic pathways or negative perceptions of your company but could also reveal where there is white space and an opportunity for growth. To optimize cost and maximize reach, you can and should utilize these results throughout the fiscal year and use them to help shape your business strategy.

The Value Of Data

Market research is a longer-term investment. The ROI can pay dividends over time, but measuring prematurely could dampen expectations. Companies can use market research to inform business and marketing strategies and to maintain strong and loyal customer relationships over time.

Market Research: Important Strategy

Results from market research are invaluable and can have lasting impacts. Companies can repurpose and leverage them to build credibility in the media and with investors while also using them to reveal more about competitors.

Stashed ideas

Council Post: Why CMOs Should Include Market Research In Their Strategies

Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly literature at major academic publishers & university presses that lets you find articles/citations on the topic of your choice.It ranks documents based on the number of times an article has been viewed, printed, or downloaded within a set period of time (usually around 1 yr). Its aim is to rank documents the way researchers would: based on relevance & popularity.Documents are added to its library when publishers submit them to the GS Metadata Program. From there, documents are indexed, ranked, & made available to searchers in search results.

How Does Google Scholar Work?

<ul><li>Search by Year/Date to Find Trending Topics</li><li>Explore Related Articles to a Certain Topic</li><li>Follow Citations for Additional Ideas</li><li>Explore the Most Popular Articles & Publications: Browse the top 100 publications, ordered by 5-yr h-index & h-median metrics. Click the h-index number to see the article & citation metrics. The h-index is a number that represents the highest number of papers in the publication that have been cited at least that many times. The h-median metric is the median of the citation counts in its h-core. Articles in the top 50% of citations count towards this metric.</li></ul>

#1-#4

<ul><li>Narrow Your Results by Field Using Google Scholar’s Advanced Search: Fields are controlled by the Advanced Scholar Search function, which lets users can input keywords, phrases, & places where they occur. One can also segment results by authors, publishers, & dates.</li><li>Use Keyword Research to Inform Your Search: The more relevant satellite keywords you add, the more likely is it that Google Scholar will return good results for your topic.</li></ul>

#5-#6

<ul><li>Find Industry & Competitor Topics: You could use Google Scholar to find content ideas is to look at what your competitors and other industry leaders are doing. Alternatively, you could use Google Scholar results to write about topics that are relevant to your industry. Lastly, you can use Google Scholar to find ideas for your product or service. </li></ul>

<ul><li>Use Google Scholar to Expand Your Customer Base: Search for topics relevant to your industry & see who’s writing about them - this can help you find new people in the industry to do business with. You may also find relevant searches that focus on market research or lead generation strategies for companies within your niche - these could turn into potential prospects or partnerships in the future. You’ll also be able to gather in-depth knowledge about how other players in your industry are creating & interacting with content - this can give you new ideas for content topics of your own.</li></ul>

Google Scholar is a great tool for informative content marketing research. Follow this guide to get the most out of your search.

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Council Post: Why CMOs Should Include Market Research In Their Strategies

How to Use Google Scholar to Find Content Ideas and Research

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