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21 Tips for Using Google Search Console to Grow Website Traffic

Are you wondering how to use Google Search Console to grow your website traffic?

Google Search Console is a powerful free tool created by Google to help website owners understand how the search engine sees their websites. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t know how to effectively use the full power of Google Search Console to increase their organic traffic.

In this article, we will show you how to properly use Google Search Console to improve your website SEO and get more visitors.

Use Google Search Console to grow website traffic

What Is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.

It provides essential marketing data that you need to start tracking from day one. It also lets you know about errors, security issues, and indexing problems that may affect your website’s search rankings.

You can use all this information in your WordPress SEO strategy to increase your website traffic.

The sad thing is that most businesses don’t utilize the full power of Google Search Console because most of them think that just adding their website to Google Search Console is enough.

There’s so much more that you can do with the tool.

If you are not leveraging all of the powerful features that Google Search Console offers, then you are missing out.

Luckily, we are here to help. We have created this ultimate Google Search Console guide to help you grow your website like a Pro.

Since this is a comprehensive guide, we have added a table of contents for easier navigation:

Setting Up Google Search Console

Fixing Crawling Issues

Growing Your Website

Useful Google Search Console Tools

1. Adding Your Website to Google Search Console

If you haven’t already done so, then you need to go ahead and add your website to Google Search Console. It is really simple and will only take a few minutes.

Simply go to the Google Search Console website and click on the ‘Start Now’ button.

Click the start now button

You will be asked to sign in using a Google / Gmail account. Once logged in, you will need to enter your website URL.

Google Search Console offers 2 methods for site verification, including domain name or URL prefix. We recommend using the URL Prefix method as it provides more flexibility.

Choose a property type

Keep in mind that Google considers HTTP and HTTPS as two different protocols. It also considers https://www.example.com and https://example.com as two different websites.

You will need to make sure that you enter the correct URL for your website.

If you are unsure, then simply log in to your WordPress admin area and go to the Settings » General page. There, you will see your website’s URL in the Site Address field.

View your site address URL

After entering your website address, click on the ‘Continue’ button.

Next, you will be asked to verify ownership of your website. There are several ways to do that, but we will show the HTML tag method because it is the easiest one.

Verify ownership

Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it.

Next, you will need to add the code to your WordPress website so that Google can verify the ownership. However, this requires coding, which can be tricky for beginners.

An easier way of adding Google Search Console to WordPress is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It’s the best SEO tool for WordPress and is used by over 3 million users.

First, you will need to install and activate the AIOSEO Lite plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to the AIOSEO » General Settings page and then click the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab. Next, select the ‘Google Search Console’ option under Webmaster Tools Verification.

Webmaster tools in AIOSEO

After that, go ahead and enter the code you copied earlier from Google Search Console into the ‘Google Verification Code’ box.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

You can now go back to Google Search Console settings.

You need to click on the ‘Verify’ button.

Click the verify button

Google Search Console will now look for the HTML tag in your website code.

Then, it will show you a success message.

Verification success

That’s all. You have successfully added your site to Google Search Console. You can now click on the ‘Go to Property’ link to visit your Google Search Console dashboard.

Note: If Google Search Console cannot verify your website after you have added the code, then you need to make sure to clear your WordPress cache and try again.

2. Adding an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a way for website owners to tell search engines about all the pages that exist on their website. It also tells search engines which links on your website are more important than others.

Adding an XML sitemap to your website helps search engines better crawl your content. While it doesn’t give you a boost in search rankings, it can definitely help search engines index your content more efficiently.

Plus, if you installed All in One SEO (AIOSEO) in the first step, then the plugin automatically adds an XML sitemap to your site.

To see the sitemap, you can head over to All in One SEO » Sitemaps and make sure that the toggle for ‘Enable Sitemap’ is switched on.

Enable sitemap

The plugin will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website, and you can find it at the URL that looks like this:

http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name. You can now submit this URL in Google Search Console.

Just head over to the Google Search Console dashboard and then click on the ‘Sitemaps’ option from the left column. After that, you can paste the URL and click the ‘Submit’ button.

Add a new sitemap

Google Search Console will now check your sitemap and use it to improve your website’s crawling. You can go through our guide on how to add a sitemap page in WordPress for more details.

3. Connecting Google Search Console to Google Analytics

Connecting Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account helps you analyze search console data in Google Analytics. This provides you with a new perspective on your top-performing content and keywords.

If you haven’t already done so, then you will need to install Google Analytics on your WordPress website.

We recommend using MonsterInsights for this. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and it will automatically show your top keywords from Google Search Console in your WordPress admin area.

Viewing Google Search Console Report in MonsterInsights

However, if you wish to see the Google Search Console report on the Google Analytics website, then you will first need to connect the two services.

You can connect Google Search Console to your Analytics account from either the Google Search Console or Google Analytics website. For this tutorial, we will initiate the connection from Google Search Console since we are already there, and it’s easier.

In the bottom left corner of the Google Search Console screen, click on the ‘Settings’ button. Then under ‘General settings’ you should click on the > arrow next to ‘Associations’.

Google Search Console Settings

This will open a page where you can see a list of services you previously associated with Google Search Console, if any. However, if you have not already associated with Google Analytics or any other Google service, then the list will be empty.

Under that, you will see a link where you can associate Google Analytics with Google Search Console. Simply click the word ‘Associate’ to get started.

In Google Search Console, Click on Associate

You will see a popup asking you to select the Google Analytics GA4 property you wish to associate. After that, you will see another popup asking you to select the GA4 web stream.

Finally, you will see a third popup asking you to confirm the association. Simply click the ‘Associate’ button to confirm.

Confirm the Association Between Google Search Console and Google Analytics

That’s all. You have successfully connected your Google Search Console data to your Analytics account.

You can now see on the Google Analytics Search Console settings page that Google Analytics is an associated service.

Google Analytics Is Now Listed as an Associated Service in Google Search Console

Google Search Console data is available 48 hours after it is collected, and will go on being available for the next 16 months.

Now you can add the Google Search Console report to Google Analytics.

You need to visit the Google Analytics website and make sure you are logged in. Once there, you need to click the second icon at the left of the screen, which is ‘Reports’.

After that, you should click ‘Library’ in the menu on the left of the screen.

Opening the Reports Library in Google Analytics

Now, under ‘Collections’, you need to find Search Console and click ‘Edit collection’.

You don’t need to make any changes on the next screen. Simply click the ‘Back’ button at the top of the screen.

Google Analytics Customize Collection Page

Now, you can click the 3 dots at the top of the Search Console card to show more options.

A dropdown menu will appear, and you should click ‘Publish’.

Publish the Search Console Report in Google Analytics

This will add a new Search Console section to the navigation menu for Google Analytics Reports.

Now, you can view your Google Search Console report in Google Analytics by navigating to reports and then expanding the Search Console section.

Search Console Report Found in Google Analytics Navigation Menu

4. Finding and Fixing Search Indexing Issues

The most helpful feature of Google Search Console is that you can troubleshoot indexing errors.

These errors can affect your organic search rankings by stopping search engines from crawling and indexing the pages on your website.

You can easily locate these errors in the Pages report (previously called the Coverage report).

It shows you which pages from your website are indexed by Google and which pages resulted in an error or a warning.

When you scroll down, you will see a detailed list of all the errors. Clicking on a link will open the detailed view, where you will also find the link to learn more about the error and how to fix it.

Google Search Console Pages Report

The following are a few common indexing errors you may see:

  • 404 error – This error means that the crawler followed a URL and saw a 404 error.
  • Soft 404 error – This error occurs when the crawler sees a 404 error page, but the page’s status code sends a 200 (success) message to the browser.
  • Server error – This means that your website server timed out or didn’t respond. This could happen if your website was under heavy traffic, under maintenance, or unavailable for any other reason.
  • Not followed – This error occurs when Google is not able to follow a content type. This could be a flash, JavaScript, iframe, or other resources that the crawler cannot fetch.

Now, let’s take a look at how to fix some of these crawl errors.

5. Fixing 404 Errors in Google Search Console

First, you need to keep in mind that not all 404 errors are equal. You can safely ignore some of them and only fix those that are actually errors.

For example, if you deleted a blog post and don’t want to redirect users to a newer post, then it is ok to let Google see a 404 error page. Google will eventually deindex that page if it keeps seeing the 404 error.

However, the reason Google wants you to look at those 404 errors is that you may not be aware of them. For example, you accidentally deleted something or forgot to redirect users to the new, updated version.

Simply click on the error in the Pages report, and it will show you all the pages displaying that error. Carefully review the pages, and if you see a page that shouldn’t be there, then copy its URL and open it in a new browser window.

If you see a 404 error page in your browser, then this means that you need to fix this page.

Now, if it is a page that no longer exists, but you have a newer or similar version of it, then you will want to redirect users to that page. See our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress.

However, sometimes, 404 errors may occur due to a misconfiguration in the WordPress permalink structure.

To fix this, simply visit Settings » Permalinks and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button without changing anything.

Save changes in permalink

6. Fixing Soft 404 Errors in Google Search Console

Soft 404 errors are a bit tricky to troubleshoot.

Basically, these errors occur when the Google bot sees what looks like a 404 error document instead of content. However, your server is sending a 200 (success) code.

Normally, your server sends a 200 success code when a page is displayed without an error or redirect.

Soft 404 errors

To resolve soft 404 errors, go ahead and click on the errors in the Pages report to view the list of affected pages.

Now, you need to open the page in a new browser tab to see what’s happening. If the page displays correctly, then you can safely ignore the error.

On the other hand, if the page is showing a 404 error document, then you may want to investigate further.

Start by clicking the ‘Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404’ link from the Pages report. Next, you can open the link in a new tab to check if it’s not a false alarm.

If the page is valid and you want it to appear in the search results, then simply click the ‘VALIDATE FIX’ button. Google will then recrawl the page and change the status error.

Fix soft 404 error

If the WordPress search function causes the soft 404 errors you are seeing, then the easiest solution is to stop the Google bot from crawling search URLs.

To do that, you need to add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /?s=
Disallow: /search/

Usually, Google Bot doesn’t crawl search URLs. However, some spammers might try to spam Google search console reports by linking to search URLs with random strings. This way, they hope you will see their link in your Search Console report and click on it.

If the affected URLs are not searched queries, then you may want to redirect them to a proper page on your site.

7. Fixing Server Error in Google Search Console

Server errors in Google Search Console are caused by a number of reasons. The most common cause is when your server times out during a crawl, throws an unexpected error or does not appear to be online.

You can use the ‘URL inspection’ tool to make sure that the affected URL is working.

If it is working, then you can ignore the error. If you are on a reliable WordPress hosting provider, then most server errors will disappear automatically.

However, if you can confirm the error by visiting the URL, then there are several things you can do to fix it. See our list of the most common WordPress errors guide to find a fix for the specific error message you are seeing.

8. Finding and Fixing Security Issues

Security issues not only stop Google from crawling your website, but they could also cause a sudden drop in search traffic. Google may temporarily remove affected pages, show a warning to users, and drop a page’s ranking.

Security issues will be highlighted on the overview screen when you log in to your Google Search Console account. The most common WordPress security issue is a website affected by malware and trojans.

Google Search Console Security Issues

To fix this, see our guide on how to clean a hacked WordPress website for step-by-step instructions.

You can also see our article on how to fix a website after getting de-indexed by Google.

9. Finding Manual Actions and Requesting a Review

While security issues are automatically triggered, manual actions are the penalties that are imposed by human staff from the Google Search team after a careful review. If a manual action is taken against your website, then this is pretty significant and can immediately take away all your search traffic.

These manual actions usually occur when a website is involved in illegal activities, spamming, and other fraudulent or fishy activities.

Search Console Manual Actions

Clicking on the ‘Manual Actions’ link will show you the actions in your search console report. You will also find detailed information about the issue that triggered it and how to clean it up.

Once you have removed the objectionable content, you can click on the ‘Request review’ button. Your website will now be reviewed and reconsidered by the Google Search team, and they can decide to remove the penalty.

10. Using Google Search Console to Grow Traffic

Now that we have covered the technical bits, let’s get to the fun part of growing your website traffic by using the data available in Search Console.

Google Search Console helps you uncover keyword data, find out your top-performing keywords, and discover hundreds of potential keywords where you can easily rank and get more traffic.

We will also look at links and how to use them to improve search performance.

Ready? Let’s get started.

11. Mining Keyword Data in Google Search Console

Keywords are the search terms users type in search engines to find information.

Marketers and website owners can optimize their content to target desired keywords and improve their chances of appearing on top in search results.

You can also view the keyword data in your Google Search Console reports.

It gives you a full view of the keywords your website is ranking for, average position, clicks, and impressions (number of times your site appears for that keyword).

You can see this information in your Google Search Console reports under the ‘Performance’ tab.

Performance report

On the top, you will see a graph of your website’s performance in search results.

Below that, you will see the keyword data, which you can filter by position, impression, and click-through rate.

Top keyword in search console

You can sort this data by clicking on any column.

You can also use the filter option to narrow down the results.

Filter top keywords

Just switch to the ‘Pages’ tab to see the performance of your pages in search results.

Clicking on any page in the list will filter the results for that page. You can then switch to the ‘Queries’ tab to see the keywords that bring the traffic to that particular page.

Now that we have covered how to browse and view this data, let’s see how to actually use this in your SEO and content planning.

12. Finding Low-Hanging Keywords Where You Can Easily Rank

A lot of your pages may be ranking on page 2 or 3 of Google search results for different keywords. These are the keywords that you can quickly work on to rank higher and get more traffic.

Let’s find those keywords.

In your Performance report, click on the filter icon and then select the ‘Position’ option. Next, you will be looking for keywords where the average position is higher than 7.

Use filter by position

Search Console will now only show the keywords where your site appears on an average position of 7 or higher.

Now, click twice on the ‘Position’ column to sort the list in ascending order.

Sort positions

As you scroll down, you will find tons of keywords that rank between 7 and 30. All these keywords are low-hanging fruits where you can easily rank higher.

To view more results, scroll to the bottom and select a higher number for ‘Rows per page.’

Rows per page

When choosing the keywords to work on, you will want to pick them based on the number of impressions. Higher impressions mean more search traffic for those keywords.

To do that, you can export the data in CSV format and then open it in spreadsheet software.

download data

Now that you have mined the low-hanging keywords with higher impressions, the question is, how do you improve your rankings for those keywords?

Here are some tips to help you improve your rankings for those keywords.

1. Improve the Content by Adding More Useful Information

The #1 reason your page isn’t ranking for a keyword is that Google finds other content more valuable. To counter that, you need to review your article or blog post and add helpful content.

Look at the articles ranking in the top 5 positions for that keyword and cover all the information that your article is missing in more detail.

We are not saying that you should just add more text to it. You need to make it more useful, informative, and comprehensive.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to write a great blog post.

2. Evaluate On-Page SEO

Using All in One SEO (AIOSEO) can improve the on-page SEO score for your article. It gives practical tips on improving a page by analyzing the content, keyword density, title, readability, links, and more.

AIOSEO's Action List for Improving Readability

You can also check out our SEO audit checklist to boost your rankings.

3. Increase the Time Users Spend on That Page

Google considers it a success when users click on a search result and spend time viewing it. This means your content needs to be highly engaging and instantly provide users with the information they are looking for.

Here are some crazy simple things you can do to increase user engagement:

  • Use images – Users find images much easier to look at than text. Adding more images makes it easier for users to scan the information and keeps them engaged.
  • Use videos – Videos are the most engaging form of content available. Adding video to a page significantly increases the time users spend viewing that page.
  • Make text more readable – Use smaller paragraphs, lots of white space, simpler sentences, and keep your style casual and conversational. All these things make reading easier for users.

For more tips, see our article on how to increase the time users spend on your site.

13. Using Link Reports in Google Search Console

Links play an important role in WordPress SEO. Search engines use them as a metric to determine how important a page is and where it should rank in search results.

The Links report in Google Search helps you see your website’s performance in terms of links.

It shows you external links, internal links, top-linking sites, and top-linking text. More importantly, it shows top linking sites, how often they link to your site, and how many pages they link to.

Let’s see how you can use these reports to get more backlinks, improve internal links, and boost your rankings.

Google Search Console shows third-party websites that have linked to your site in the ‘Top linking sites’ report.

You can expand the report by clicking on the ‘More’ link at the bottom.

Top linking sites

If you click on a domain name to expand the report, you will see all the pages they have linked to. Next, click on each page to get the exact URL linked to that particular page.

You can now use this data to get more backlinks for your site. Simply visit the website and see how they have linked to you. After that, see what other content they have where your site can be linked from.

Next, simply reach out to the website via email or the contact form on their website.

First, thank them for linking to your article and then politely mention that they may want to include a link to an article of yours.

Now, this direct approach may not always work. In that case, you need to be creative. You can offer them to write a guest post for their blog, leave comments on their articles, follow them on social media, or retweet their articles.

Repeat the process for all important external links on your website. With consistent effort, you can get proper backlinks without spending any money.

15. Improving Internal Links to Boost Rankings

It is harder to get third-party websites to link to your content. However, it is way easier to link to your own content from your own site. This practice is called internal linking.

Internal linking helps search engines understand the context and relationships among different pages on your website. It also helps them understand which pages are important based on how often you have linked to them.

This is why you should make internal linking a habit when writing new content on your website or blog.

Now, let’s see how to use the links reports in Search Console to help you build internal links.

In Google Search Console, click on the Links report and then click on the ‘More’ link in the ‘Internal Links’ column. The report shows how often you have linked to other pages on your site.

Go ahead and click the filter icon and then select the ‘Target page’ option.

Filter internal links

Search Console will now show you how many pages are linking to this page. You can now compare it with other pages and see whether pages with more internal links are ranking higher than posts with many internal links.

If that’s the case, then go ahead and start adding internal links to pages that you want to rank higher. Make sure you are only linking to the article when it makes sense. Adding links where they don’t make sense would create a bad user experience.

Related: To make internal linking even easier, you can check out our picks of the best internal linking plugins for WordPress.

16. Using Core Web Vitals in Search Console

Did you know that Google considers your website loading speed as a ranking factor?

In 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals, which measure how fast your website is and helps the search engine measure your site’s user experience.

In Google Search Console, you can view the ‘Core Web Vitals’ report under the Experience menu on your left. It provides a complete report about your site’s speed score for mobile and desktop.

The best part is that you also get recommendations on how to improve your Core Web Vitals scores and improve your site’s load time.

Core web vitals report

For more information, please refer to our guide on how to boost WordPress speed and performance.

Viewing Google Search Console Data Inside WordPress (Bonus Tip)

Searching through Google Search Console reports can be time-consuming, especially if you are a beginner.

Luckily, AIOSEO has a Search Statistics addon that lets you view important insights from Google Search Console right inside the WordPress dashboard.

This will save you tons of time, as you won’t have to switch between Search Console and your website to find the data you need to grow your business.

After connecting Search Statistics with Google Search Console, simply click on ‘Search Statistics’ under the AIOSEO menu in the WordPress admin dashboard.

AIOSEO Search Statistics dashboard

This will bring you to the Search Statistics dashboard. Here, you can view search stats like impressions, total clicks, average click-through rate (CTR), and the average position of all your content for the date range you have set.

You can also see easy-to-read reports on your keyword positions, keyword rankings, content rankings, and more.

You can even view your ‘top winning’ and ‘top losing’ keywords, which are the keywords that have seen the biggest position change in search results.

Search Statistics keyword performance table

This report, along with AIOSEO’s built-in SEO recommendations, makes it easy to nudge your losing keywords back to the top of search results and ensure your winning content continues to rank well.

In addition, AIOSEO offers a Content Rankings report to help you easily spot content decay. It includes details like the date a URL was last updated, the rate at which your content is decaying, SEO data about each individual URL, and more.

AIOSEO Content Rankings report

This will help you quickly identify what content needs to be updated and optimized so that you can drive more traffic to your website.

17. Creating Rich Snippets for Your WordPress Pages

Rich snippets or schema markup allows Google to display additional information in its search results. These include star ratings, prices, reviews, and more.

Rich snippets make your page more noticeable in the search results. As a result, you can get more clicks and website traffic.

An example of a rich snippet, created using AIOSEO

Many WordPress themes automatically include some basic structured data. If you publish recipes, run a reviews site, or have an online store, then rich snippets can give your site an SEO boost.

Google Search Console makes it very easy to find pages that are displaying rich snippets. It also shows the type of rich snippets for your website.

You can view them by going to ‘Overview’ and then scrolling down to the ‘Enhancements’ section.

Enhancements section in search console

The really useful thing is that the report allows you to quickly look at pages that have errors while displaying rich snippets so that you can fix them.

If you want to learn more about setting up rich snippets, then please see our guide on how to add schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce.

18. Using Search Console to Improve Mobile Usability

Nearly 63% of all Google searches in the United States come from mobile devices. That’s why Google gives an SEO bump to mobile-friendly websites in the search results.

Google has a Mobile-Friendly test tool called Lighthouse that allows you to quickly examine a page. The Mobile Usability report in Search Console also tells you how Google sees your entire website in mobile performance.

Mobile usability

If you see errors on this page, then this means that these issues may affect your site’s rankings.

To see the affected pages, you can scroll down to the ‘Details’ section and click on the error.

Mobile errors in search console

Poorly coded WordPress themes or plugins cause most mobile usability issues. The easiest way to fix those issues is by using a responsive WordPress theme.

19. Using the URL Inspection Tool in Search Console

The URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console provides information about a page and whether it’s in the Google search results or not.

You can check the status of a page and also request Google to recrawl a page. To start, simply enter a URL in the top search bar.

URL inspection tool

Google Search Console will then show you the status of the page that is indexed by Google. If it’s not indexed, then you will see a message saying, ‘URL is not on Google.’

You can click the ‘Requesting Indexing’ button and request Google to manually fetch the page from your website.

Besides that, you can scroll down and see more details in the Pages report. It will show information about sitemaps, crawl history, and indexing.

Detailed coverage report

You can also live-test a URL and see if there is an indexable version available.

If there is, then simply click the ‘Request Indexing’ option.

Live test URL

20. Removing URLs From Google Search

So far, we have focused on using Search Console to get your content indexed and improve rankings in Google Search. However, sometimes you may want to remove content from Google Search as well.

One way to do this is to add a noindex meta tag to the page you want to remove from search results. However, depending on how often Google crawls your website, it could take some time before your page actually disappears from search results.

Search Console’s Remove URL tool allows you to request a URL to be removed from the search results. Simply click on ‘Removals’ under Index in the menu on your left.

Removals requests

Now click on the ‘New Request’ button, and a popup window will appear.

Go ahead and enter the URL you want to remove, select whether you want to remove this URL only or with this prefix, and click the ‘Next’ button.

New removal request

Google will now block the URL from its search results for about 6 months. You can add as many URLs as you want and see them in the Removals section in Search Console.

21. Adding Users to Access Google Search Console

If you have a marketing team or you have hired someone to help you with SEO, then those users may also need access to Google Search Console data.

Search Console allows you to easily add users and give them access to view all reports without sharing your Google account credentials with them.

To add a new user, simply click on the Settings » Users and permissions option under Property settings and then click on the ‘Add User’ button.

Add new user

Next, you need to provide the user’s valid Google account email address.

Then, select a permission to grant them.

Enter user email

There are two types of permission levels. The full permission level will give them access to everything, including the ability to add new users. Restricted permissions will allow them to view the data but not add new users.

After choosing a permission level, click on the ‘Add’ button to save your changes.

The user who you added will now receive an email notification so they can log in and view Google Search Console data for your website.

Helpful Resources

The following helpful resources on WPBeginner will help you further improve your website’s performance in search engines:

  • Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide – Our complete step-by-step WordPress SEO guide will walk you through setting up WordPress SEO like a pro.
  • WordPress Performance Guide – Step-by-step guide to improve your WordPress speed and performance for higher search rankings and better user experience.
  • WordPress Security Guide – Keep your WordPress site secure with this complete WordPress security guide for beginners.
  • Tracking User Engagement – This guide helps you learn how to track user activity on your website and use it to plan your growth strategy.
  • Convert Visitors into Customers – If you run an online store, then this guide will show you how to convert search traffic into paying customers.

We hope this article gave you some good tips on using Google Search Console more effectively to grow your site. You may also want to see our guide on how to do an SEO content gap analysis and our expert picks for the best keyword research tools for SEO.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 21 Tips for Using Google Search Console to Grow Website Traffic first appeared on WPBeginner.

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14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist)

Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?

Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.

In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.

WordPress technical SEO framework checklist

Why Do You Need a WordPress Technical SEO Framework?

Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.

That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.

Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.

For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.

Similarly, you might have mistakenly added nofollow tags and prevented search engines from crawling and indexing your content.

How to Evaluate Technical SEO in WordPress

There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.

The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.

It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.

SEO analysis

Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.

Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.

View advanced SEO and performance

You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.

That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:

1. Ensure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines

The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.

You can simply enter site:example.com in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.

Perform site search

If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.

Go ahead and visit the Settings » Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.

Search Engine Visibility Setting in WordPress

This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.

2. Uncover Crawling and Indexing Issues

If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.

Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.

A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.

If you haven’t connected to the webmaster tool, then see our guide on how to add a WordPress site to Google Search Console.

In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.

Page indexing in search console

Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.

Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.

Why pages are not indexed

Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.

Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.

URL inspection tool

If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.

3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure with HTTPS

Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.

Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.

You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.

Look for padlock sign

Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.

For more details, please see our guide on how to move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS.

Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.

Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.

Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.

The MonsterInsights custom 404 error design

With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.

It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.

404 error logs in AIOSEO

To learn more, you can follow our detailed guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

5. Look for Duplicate Versions of Your Site

It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.

Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:

https://www.example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://example.com

Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.

This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.

You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings » General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.

Look for primary URL

With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.

6. Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures

After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.

URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.

Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:

https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012

Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:

https://www.example.com/blog/how-to-start-a-wordpress-website

You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.

Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future

7. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.

With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.

You can check your site’s mobile responsiveness by using the free Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Mobile friendly test

Simply enter your website URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

The tool will then show results for your website. You can see if it is mobile-ready or not.

See mobile friendly test tool results

If your site is not mobile-friendly, then you can start by changing to a responsive WordPress theme.

You can also follow our guide on how to change your WordPress theme without losing any data or traffic.

8. Check Your Website Speed and Improve Performance

Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.

You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.

You’ll first need to install Google Analytics to your WordPress site using MonsterInsights.

After that, you can head to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.

Site speed report

The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.

If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.

Recommendations for improving speed

To improve website load time, you can see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.

The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.

For more details, you can check out our guide on how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress.

9. Improve Your Internal Linking Structure and Remove Orphaned Pages

Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.

AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.

It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on your WordPress website and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.

AIOSEO Link assistant dashboard

You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.

Find internal link opportunities and orphaned pages

10. Generate XML Sitemaps and Submit Them to Search Engines

Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.

It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.

You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.

AIOSEO sitemap options

Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.

For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.

Submit sitemap to Google

Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.

11. Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets

The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.

You can use schema markup for recipes, reviews, events, organizations, FAQs, blog posts, product pages, multiple locations for local businesses, and more.

Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.

For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.

Recipe schema markup

You can easily add a schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce using AIOSEO.

The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.

Schema markup settings in AIOSEO

With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.

AIOSEO Custom Schema Generator for WordPress

12. Optimize Your Robots.txt File for SEO

Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.

Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/
 
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.

This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.

You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.

On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.

A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.

Optimize robots txt file

To learn more, please see our guide on how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt for SEO.

13. Make Sure Google Doesn’t Flag Your Site for Malware

Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.

If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:

Google safe browsing malware warning

This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.

To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.

You can also take a look at our guide on how to fix ‘this site ahead contains harmful programs’ error in WordPress, if Google flags your site for malware.

14. Use Server Side Rendering vs Client Side Rendering

Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.

Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.

Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.

With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.

One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.

That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.

We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress technical SEO framework. You may also want to see our comparison of the best keyword research tools, and our proven tips on how to increase your blog traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist) first appeared on WPBeginner.

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How to Get Google Sitelinks for Your WordPress Site

One of the questions we often get asked from readers is: how do I get additional links to appear under my site’s search results in Google?

Sometimes when you search for a company name in Google (like “wpbeginner”), you may notice that the search listing is larger than others because it contains sitelinks to other important pages from the website.

These sitelinks in Google helps your brand stand out and get more exposure. In this article, we will share how you can get Google sitelinks for your WordPress site.

How to Get Google Sitelinks in WordPress

Since this is a comprehensive guide on adding Google sitelinks, we have created a table of content for easy browsing:

Google sitelinks are additional sub-pages that appear under the first site in search engine ranking results (SERPs). These are often internal links to the most popular pages of that website. Google sitelinks are often shown when you search for a specific brand keyword because they help the user easily navigate around the website.

The exact number of Google sitelinks may vary for each website. A typical brand name search in Google can contain two, four, or six sitelinks displayed underneath the website name.

Here’s an example of what a Google sitelink looks like:

What are Google Sitelinks?

Google sitelinks are chosen by their algorithm to provide the best user experience because it allows users to head directly to the top pages without extra clicks.

If your website is brand new or does not get a lot of traffic, then Google may not display any sitelinks for your keyword.

Don’t worry, we’ll share some tips on how to influence Google sitelinks for your website. But before we do, let’s talk about why Google sitelinks are important.

Google sitelinks are coveted by business owners and SEO professionals because they help your brand stand out. Here are the top 5 reasons why Google sitelinks are important.

1. Google Sitelinks Improve Your Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Studies show that the top 3 spots in Google get the most clicks. When sitelinks are shown for a specific brand, it takes up the same amount of space as three regular search listings.

This significantly increases your overall click-through rate. Simply put, more visitors will visit your website from the keyword.

Google Search Click-Through-Rate by Position

2. Google Sitelinks Help Build Trust and Credibility

As we mentioned earlier, Google Sitelinks are not shown for all websites. When Google display sitelinks for a brand, it means that a website is popular, well-optimized, and/or that Google believes the results are useful for the visitor.

Google sitelinks take up a lot of screen space (a.k.a digital real-estate). This tells the user that Google believes the #1 result is a lot more relevant than others on the page.

Google Sitelinks Above the Fold (Digital Real Estate)

On mobile, the same sitelinks take even more screen space, further highlighting the brands credibility.

3. Google Sitelinks Can Increase Product Awareness

Google sitelinks highlight the most important pages on the website. This is based on what Google’s algorithm believes to be the most relevant to the user’s search intent.

For a company like OptinMonster, this works out great because it lets new users quickly become aware of their product, features, pricing, and even blog content.

Google Sitelinks Key Product Pages

A new user may not know that the OptinMonster blog has the best conversion optimization tips, but because of Google sitelinks they’re more likely to check it out.

For an eCommerce website or online store, Google sitelinks may even show more personalized results to help users quickly discover and purchase available products.

For example, when we search for Apple, Google sitelinks are personalized to not only show the top Apple products but also the closest physical Apple stores.

Google Sitelinks Personalized Results

This lets us easily discover Apple’s top products, and even have one-click access to the stores, hours, and directions. This is extremely helpful and makes it much more likely for the user to make a purchase.

4. Google Sitelinks Allow Users to Discover Top Pages

Google sitelinks can also act as a great “Start Here” point for websites with a lot of content. This makes it easier for users to discover the top pages on your website.

For example, if a new user searches for WPBeginner, they will see our most popular (and most helpful) content first such as our Start Here page, our guide on How to Start a Blog, How to Make a Website, our 200+ WordPress tutorials category, our WordPress Beginner’s Guide category, and of course our popular WordPress blog.

WPBeginner Google Sitelinks

5. Google Sitelinks Search Lets Users Browse Deeper Pages

For some websites, Google sitelinks may be accompanied by a dedicated site-specific search box. This Google sitelinks search box allow users to search within the specific website directly from Google.

This is an extremely powerful feature, so Google only adds it for websites with a lot of content because they believe that including a search box will be the most useful for the user.

Google Sitelink search box only appears with sites that contain a lot of content like WPBeginner, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.

What are Google Sitelinks?

Now that you know the importance of Google sitelinks, let’s take a look at how you can add Google sitelinks to your website.

There’s no guaranteed way to get Google Sitelinks for your website. Unlike other SEO features, there’s no button that you can click in Google Search Console to enable sitelinks for your WordPress site.

Google sitelinks are automated, and they are displayed entirely based on Google’s algorithm. However you can follow certain SEO best practices to significantly improve your chances of getting Google sitelinks for your website.

Let’s take a look at the 8 best practices to get sitelinks for your website.

1. Your Website Name Must be Unique

Google sitelinks are primarily displayed on brand specific search queries, and they’re only added for the site that ranks #1 for that search results.

If you have a generic brand name like “Global HR Expert Consulting”, then you will likely struggle to rank at the top. Even if you get to position #1, Google still has a hard time deciding if the user is really searching for your company or the general topic.

This is why generic brand names don’t have sitelinks:

No Google Sitelinks for Generic Brands

Unless of course your brand becomes a household name like Apple, in which case Google knows the search intent is for people interested in the tech company, Apple, and not the fruit.

Since most companies will not have the marketing budget like Apple to become a worldwide brand, its better to select a more unique name for your company like WPBeginner, OptinMonster, etc.

Now if you already have an established brand, we definitely don’t recommend changing it just to get sitelinks because this is a very complicated task, and it has its own risks. For more details, see our guide on: how to move your site to a new domain.

2. Rank at Position #1 for Your Brand Name

As we mentioned earlier, Google sitelinks are only assigned to the first search result, so you need to work on ranking #1 for your brand term.

This can take some time for a new company, but with enough promotion you can get there.

For example, our new website, WP Mail SMTP, doesn’t rank #1 for its keyword, so we don’t have Google sitelinks yet.

Whereas our other new website, RafflePress ranks #1, so it has Google sitelinks.

RafflePress Site Link Example

To improve your website’s ranking, you need to follow our WordPress SEO guide and implement the best practices. You also need to do keyword research and write quality blog posts that are optimized for SEO. After that, you need get backlinks to your site.

3. Use Proper Structured Data for SEO

Search engines use automated bots to crawl and index your website. These search engine bots look for structured data to better understand what is the website and the specific page is about.

Structured data can help improve your chances of getting a Google sitelink, featured snippet, and even appear in the answers box.

You can set this up by using a WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, or another similar plugin that lets you add meta data and other schema elements.

Again like with anything else, Schema markups or Structured Data doesn’t guarantee that Google will add sitelinks, but it definitely improves your chances.

4. Have Clear Website Structure and Navigation

As a website owner, it is your job to make sure that Google and other search engines can easily find their way around your website.

You can do this by organizing your top pages in well-thought out hierarchical dropdown WordPress menus.

You can add breadcrumb navigation on your website to make it easy for users and search engines to see the site structure.

You also need to make sure that you have the important website pages like About, Pricing, Contact, etc created and linked from various areas of your website.

5. Create a Sitemap and Add Your Site to Google Search Console

Google and other search engines rely on XML sitemaps to properly discover and index all pages from your website.

You need to create an XML sitemap, and then submit it to Google search console.

This will make it easier for Google to discover all the pages on your site, and it can also help increase your chances of getting a Google sitelink.

6. Make Internal Linking a Habit

Internal linking is one of the most important part of on-page SEO. You need to make sure that you’re frequently linking to your top internal pages on your website.

Since Google uses backlinks as a ranking signal, internal linking helps Google see which pages are the most important on your site.

You can see how we have linked to various of our internal website content from this article.

7. Improve Page Titles and Make them Relevant

Page titles are probably the most important on-page SEO element. You need to make sure that your page title is relevant to the keyword you’re trying to rank for.

Google uses page titles to generate the sitelinks, so you need to make sure that your page titles are relevant.

TrustPulse team has done a great job with their page titles:

Google Sitelinks Generated from Page Title

You can define the post or page title inside your WordPress SEO plugin settings for that respective page.

8. Increase Your Brand Awareness

As we mentioned earlier, that Google sitelinks are typically shown for established websites.

You don’t have to be a big brand like Apple or WPBeginner, but you need to raise enough awareness for Google to notice you.

Your website’s authority and presence online plays an important factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Here are few things you can do to boost your brand awareness:

  • Create social media profiles for your brand and make sure they link to you
  • Get positive business reviews about your brand on Facebook, Yelp, Google, and other review aggregators.
  • Guest blog on popular industry websites
  • Participate in community discussions and/or give interviews
  • Do press releases and reach out to news outlets to cover your brand

Brand awareness helps increase the number of brand search which is an indicator Google uses to determine if Sitelinks should be added for that particular term.

Just like Google sitelinks, the search box with sitelinks is also added based on Google’s discretion. The Google sitelinks search box is typically dedicated to websites with a large number of content such as WPBeginner, Wikipedia, YouTube etc.

What are Google Sitelinks?

With that said, you can add some code snippets on your website to encourage Google to display a site search box along with your Google sitelinks.

If you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin, then it adds the JSON+LD markup for site search automatically.

If you’re not, then you can use the Sitelinks Search Box plugin to add the relevant JSON LD schema markup.

Frequently Asked Questions about Google Sitelinks

In our Facebook Group and support channels, we have received many questions related to Google sitelinks. Below are the top ones.

How do I remove sitelinks from Google?

In the past, Google allowed webmasters to “demote” sitelinks from the Google search console. However that option was removed to simplify things. The only way to remove a specific page from Google sitelinks is to either delete the page or set it to noindex. There’s no way to disable Google sitelinks once they’re added unless you de-index your entire website which is not recommended.

How do I change Sitelinks in Google?

There is no way to change Sitelinks in Google. The Google algorithm automatically selects the relevant pages on your site and add it to the sitelink. You can customize the page titles, but it’s entirely up to Google as to what text they display. There’s no way to edit the text on Google sitelinks since it’s automated.

Can I pay to get Google sitelinks?

Sometimes beginners can confuse Google sitelinks with the Google Adwords Sitelink extension. When you’re paying for ads, Google lets you use the sitelink extension to add additional sublinks as part of your ad. This does not influence the Google sitelinks on your organic listing.

We hope this article helped you learn how to get Google sitelinks for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to increase your blog traffic and how to monetize your blog.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Get Google Sitelinks for Your WordPress Site appeared first on WPBeginner.