Search Console and Analytics are free Google tools that every website should have. They answer different questions, and the video explains how they fit together.
Search Console: how Google sees your site
- Performance: the searches that show your pages, clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position.
- Pages (indexing): which pages are in Google's index and which are not, with reasons.
- Sitemaps: submit your sitemap and see if Google reads it.
- Experience: Core Web Vitals and HTTPS.
- Manual actions and security issues: warnings you must fix.
Analytics: what visitors do on your site
- Where visitors come from: search, social, ads, email, direct.
- Which pages they view and how long they engage.
- Key events such as form submissions, calls and purchases, once you set them up.
A monthly routine
- In Search Console, compare clicks with the previous month and the same month last year.
- Check for new indexing errors.
- In Analytics, look at enquiries by channel.
- Note what changed and why.
Tag links in your emails and social posts with our UTM link builder so Analytics shows exactly where visitors came from, and use the percentage change calculator for month-on-month comparisons. To set both tools up, watch our setup video.
Want the full picture? This article is part of SEO: the complete guide, our in-depth guide with everything in one place.
