Someone set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console for your website, maybe you, maybe your web designer. You logged in once, saw a wall of charts and haven’t been back since. That’s completely normal.
You don’t need to understand every report. Fifteen minutes once a month, looking at five things, will tell you most of what a small business needs to know.
What Google Search Console and Analytics each do
The two tools sound similar, but they answer different questions.
- Search Console shows how your site appears in Google search: which searches it shows up for, how often people click and whether Google has any problems reading your pages.
- Google Analytics shows what happens once people arrive: how many visit, where they came from, which pages they look at and whether they get in touch.
Put simply, Search Console is about getting found, and Analytics is about what visitors do next. You need both for the full picture. If you’ve never used Search Console, Google’s Search Console overview explains what it does and how to get started.
The five monthly checks
Menus in both tools change from time to time, so the exact names may differ slightly. The ideas stay the same.
1. Is Google finding your pages?
In Google Search Console, open the report that shows which pages are indexed, meaning Google has them on file and can show them in results.
Look for any important pages listed as not indexed. Your home page, service pages and contact page should all be there. A few pages being left out is normal, such as thank-you pages or old drafts. But if a main service page is missing, it can’t appear in search at all.
While you’re there, check for any messages about security issues or manual actions. Most months there won’t be any, but if there are, they need attention quickly.
2. What are people searching to find you?
The Performance report in Search Console lists the searches your site appeared for. For each one, you’ll see:
- Impressions: how many times your site showed up in results.
- Clicks: how many times someone clicked through.
- Average position: roughly where you appeared in the list.
Compare this month with last month. Are you showing up for the services and towns you want? If you’re a Kingscliff electrician and most of your impressions are for areas you don’t service, your page wording may need a tweak.
Look out for searches with lots of impressions but very few clicks. That often means your page title or description isn’t convincing people. Our guide to local SEO basics for Northern Rivers businesses covers how to make your pages clearer about where you work.
3. How many people visited, and where did they come from?
Switch to Google Analytics. Look at total visitors for the month and compare it with the month before, and the same month last year if you have it. Many businesses are seasonal, so a dip at certain times of year may be perfectly normal.
Then check where visitors came from:
- Organic search: people who found you through Google or another search engine.
- Direct: people who typed your address or used a bookmark.
- Social: visitors from Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
- Referral: people who clicked a link on another website.
If you’ve been posting on social media but almost nobody visits from there, that’s a useful sign to rethink what you share or how you link to your site.
4. Which pages are people looking at?
Analytics will show your most visited pages, which tells you what people care about most. If one service page gets far more visits than the others, make sure it’s up to date, has good photos and offers a clear way to get in touch.
Also look for pages that get visits but where people leave almost straight away. That can mean the page doesn’t answer the question they had, or it loads slowly on a phone.
5. Are visitors getting in touch?
This is the one that matters most. Visits are nice, but enquiries pay the bills.
Analytics can track actions such as contact form submissions, taps on your phone number and clicks on your email address. These usually need to be set up as events, so if you can’t see them, your site may not be tracking them yet. Once they’re in place, you can see which pages and which sources lead to real enquiries.
Make it a monthly habit
Pick a regular day, like the first Monday of the month, and keep a simple note of five numbers: pages indexed, search clicks, total visitors, your top page and enquiries.
Over a year, that small spreadsheet will tell you far more than any single report. You’ll spot seasonal patterns, see whether website changes made a difference, and notice problems early.
Getting the setup right
All of this depends on the tools being set up properly in the first place. Common problems include Analytics installed twice so every visit counts double, Search Console never verified, or accounts registered to a former staff member’s or old web designer’s email address.
If you don’t know who owns your accounts, it’s a good idea to find out now. We cover why in who owns your website.
Our digital setup service connects Google Search Console, Google Analytics, your Google Business Profile and your social media accounts to your website, in your name, so they work together. And every website we build includes on-page SEO foundations, so there’s a solid base to measure from.
Want someone to look at the numbers with you?
If you’d like a hand making sense of your reports, or you’re not sure your tracking is set up correctly, book a free website health check. We’ll spend about 30 minutes reviewing your site and explain what we find in plain English. Call us on 02 6610 9202, Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 4:30pm.
