Christian, Private, and Independent school marketers, you are responsible for your school’s social media, PR, content strategy, inquiry generation, etc. To say that you wear a lot of hats is an understatement! In addition to all the other roles you fill is updating your school’s website and managing search engine optimization (SEO). Even if it’s handled by another staff member or your school outsources SEO to an agency specializing in private Christian K-8 and LCMS Schools, you may need to work with them.
Whether working with an agency or going alone, you should use Google Search Console. It is a FREE resource that gives you access to tools and reports that help you measure your school’s website search performance and traffic, fix technical issues, and help you rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs).
How to Set Up Google Search Console
To begin using Google Search Console, sign in with your school’s Gmail account, which you also use for Google Analytics and other Google Webmaster tools.
Once logged in, look for the red button that says “Add a Property.” Click the button after entering your URL (https://yourschool.com/).
The next step is to validate your website. While there are several approaches to this, the easiest by far is if you already use Google Analytics. With this method, you use your Google Analytics tracking code.
Suppose you don’t have a Google Analytics account. In that case, your second option is to add an HTML tag using your Google Tag Manager account, contact your website developer, or contact your website hosting provider to install it for you.
Moz had an excellent beginner’s guide to Google Search Console with full instructions.(Alternate Source)
9 Ways Private Schools Should Use Google Search Console
You can use Google Search Console to improve your website once you can access it. Here are the nine most important ways private schools should use Google Search Console.
1. Submit an XML Sitemap
Now you may be asking yourself, what is an XML sitemap? The short answer is that it is a file that provides information about your school’s website pages, files, videos, etc., and the relationship between all of them. All of the search engines will look for and read this file to help crawl and index your site more efficiently. It also tells them which pages and files are the most important and provides valuable information about them.
Don’t worry; most content management platforms will generate this for you. But if you are wondering if your site has one, you can try one of these options:
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap_index.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap-index.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap.php
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap.txt
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap.xml.gz
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap/
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap/sitemap.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemapindex.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap/index.xml
- https://yourschool.com/sitemap1.xml
If your site does not generate an XML sitemap automatically, you can create one with Screaming Frog’s XML Sitemap Generator.
After you’ve created your sitemap or know the URL, enter it into Google Search Console by going to Sitemaps > Add a New Sitemap.
2. Learn common keywords people use to find your website
When someone searches for you organically (by typing a search term into the search bar), they use a specific search term(s). Google Search Console displays the most popular keywords that lead people to your website.
This information can be found by selecting Performance from the main left sidebar menu. Scroll down to see the “Queries.” You should be aware that you can
- Change the type of content people are looking for (web, image, or video).
- You can compare two types of content.
- You can change the date range and compare different periods (i.e., the last three months with the previous three or three months last year).
One feature of this report that I like is that you can see how many clicks each keyword phrase received and how many impressions each term received, giving you insight into how many people actually clicked through to your site versus how many viewed your link and meta description.
You can learn more about each keyword phrase by drilling down on it in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can even see which countries people are visiting and what kind of device they are using. You can also see how various keywords fare in terms of clicks, impressions, and click-through rates.
This page provides information about how well your SEO efforts are working to attract visitors to your site. It will also reveal any keywords people use to find your site that you did not intend to target.
3. Identify Your Schools Most Popular Pages
Every website will have pages that rank higher on the SERPs than others. Google Search Console will help you determine which web pages get the most traffic.
Click Performance > Pages to find your most popular pages. Pages is a tab within the Queries section.
You’ll see a list of all the pages people have visited, sorted by popularity, with your most popular pages at the top. You can also see which pages have the highest click-throughs and impressions.
This is beneficial information for determining the type of content your audience prefers. You can generate new blog post topics and other website content.
4. Identify the Type of Device Your Prospective Parents or Students Uses
Are your website visitors accessing it via a desktop, smartphone, or tablet? Apple or Android?
It’s critical to understand the type of device your prospective parents or students are using because it can affect the design and functionality of your website.
Go to Performance > Devices to see what devices your audience is using to access your website. The device types will be displayed based on the number of click-throughs and impressions your audience has had on your website.
5. Check to Make Sure Your Website Works Well on Mobile Devices
Your website must be mobile-friendly or responsive, regardless of how your audience accesses it. The reason is that as of March 2021, Google indexes your website as seen by a mobile device. Therefore regardless if most of your prospects use a desktop, Google isn’t.
Therefore, click on Mobile Usability from the main menu to see how Google sees your site regarding mobile responsiveness. Google Search Console will display any errors it discovers, as well as the number of valid elements.
Google is looking for the following types of criteria:
- Loading times (speed)
- File sizes (images, code files, etc.)
- Navigation
- Page design and layout
- Sizes of Content Elements (text, images, buttons, etc.), meaning are they large enough to be clicked with a thumb
- Touch elements
- Web forms
Your top priority should be to create the best mobile experience possible. It’s critical to remember that you have limited screen space to work with and potentially weak data connections. Visitors will access your site with their fingers rather than a mouse.
Responsive design or mobile friendliness boils down to visibility, navigation, and speed.
6. Discover Which Sites Link to Yours
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors; therefore, it becomes critical to know which other websites link to yours. The more authoritative websites that link to your school website, the higher your website will rank on the SERPs.
Click on Links from the main left sidebar menu to see which sites link to yours.
You can see from here:
- External links and the pages they refer to
- Top sites that link to yours
- Anchor text being used to link to your site
- Internal links
You can find more information on each backlink by clicking on the website and clicking on the link. You can then view specific pages that include the link and visit them to see how they’re used.
7. Check for Problems on Your Site
Google Search Console provides valuable information on which pages on your site Google has been able to index and which Google considers to be problematic.
Go to the Coverage link in the main left sidebar to find page issues on your site.
The Search Console Coverage Report will display pages that contain:
- Errors: These pages cannot be indexed, and Google believes you didn't mean for this to happen. These pages frequently have 404 errors, soft 404 pages, or other major issues. These pages must be updated and fixed immediately.
- Valid with warnings: The majority of the time, Google will have indexed this page, but it believes there is a problem. You should review these pages and try to solve the problem Google has identified.
- Valid: These pages are fine. You don't need to do anything with these pages.
- Excluded: These pages have a "noindex tag" in robots.txt, meta tags, canonical tags, etc. Google thinks you intentionally do not want these pages indexed. Common pages you would not want to be indexed include:
- Thank you pages
- Ad landing pages
- Policy pages
- Internal site search results
8. Identify Website Security Issues
Website attacks are, unfortunately, all too common. Even if your school has a small website, hackers will still target it. And being hacked can have serious consequences.
Google Search Console provides a quick and easy way to check the security of your website. Select Security and Manual Actions from the main menu on the left sidebar. From there, click "Security Issues," and Google will notify you if it detects any issues.
9. Get the Most out of the “Inspect Any URL” Feature
URL inspection is a valuable tool that can be found and used via the search bar at the top of Google Search Console. It’s also simple and straightforward to use. Copy and paste any URL you want to work on, then click the magnifying glass icon to have Google Search Console find it for you.
What you can do with the Google Search Console URL inspection tool is as follows:
Get New Content Indexed (in Minutes)
Have you recently added a new page? Enter the URL after copying and pasting it into the search box.
Then click “Request indexing...”, and Google should index your page within a few minutes.
Re-Index Updated Content
I believe in repurposing content and keeping it up to date. You can do it to help:
- Increase organic traffic
- Keep your content up to date
As with a new page, use the same procedure to tell Google to re-index it. And, voila! More traffic to your site!
Identify “Rendering” Problems
You can also experiment with live URLs to see how Google and other browsers perceive your website.
After entering your webpage URL into the search bar, click “Test Live Page” in the upper right to see how Google perceives your page. From there, click “View Tested Page” to see your page in both HTML and a “screenshot” version.
This allows you to make any changes necessary to ensure that your page looks and functions properly.
Final Thoughts
You can do numerous other things within the Google Search Console, such as changing your school’s website address, viewing the Breadcrumbs report, requesting removals, etc. However, the top nine features listed above are the most commonly used by all marketers and should be considered by most private school marketers.
