Google Search Console for WordPress: The Reports You Should Check Weekly
Most people who run WordPress websites install Google Search Console once and never visit it again.
That’s a waste. This dashboard has loads of valuable info that can help you see your site through Google’s eyes. It can also show you what’s killing your traffic.
You don’t have to spend hours upon hours inside Google Search Console. But spending 5 minutes each week checking out these reports can help you spot problems before they become disasters. Not to mention, they’ll keep you ahead of your SEO game.
Here are the reports that you should be checking:
The Search Performance Report
This report should be your starting place. It’ll show you the queries that bring users to your site, how many clicks you’re receiving, and your click-through rate.
Filter by queries that have a high number of impressions, but zero or very few clicks. That means your title tag or meta description needs work. Those are queries where Google showed your page in search results, but nobody clicked. Make that title click-worthy.
Filter your search terms with your brand name. That tells you how much traffic is driven by people who are already searching for your brand. If you clear that filter, you’ll see your true SEO traffic—the amount of queries and traffic you should be analyzing weekly and tracking over time.
The Page Indexing Report
This report is widely overlooked. Here you can see which pages Google indexed for your site and which ones it didn’t.
Run this report weekly. Indexing issues can slowly erode your rankings before you even know it. If Google doesn’t index a page, it won’t rank that page. Period. Whenever you fix an issue on your website, click the Validate Fix button in Search Console and force Google to re-crawl that page. Please do not skip this step.Â
The Page Experience Report
Your pages’ experience as reported by real visitors. Things like how fast your page loads, whether it’s mobile-friendly, and other signals Google monitors.
See some poor scores? Better take action quickly. Pages that take a long time to load irritate your visitors. They also don’t rank as highly in Google search. Improve the experience, and you double up on benefits.
Your Weekly Checklist
Keep it short and simple:
- Open the Search Performance report. Look for drops in clicks or impressions.
- Find queries with high impressions but low clicks. Update those page titles.
- Check the Page Indexing report. Resolve any new errors right away.
- Review the Page Experience report. Flag anything that looks off and fix it.
One More Thing Worth Doing
Export your data to Google Sheets or Excel regularly. Google Search Console only retains the past 16 months of data. When it’s gone, it’s gone forever. With your own copy, you can see long-term trends and do year-over-year comparisons.
If you use a WordPress SEO plugin like SEOPress, you can even pull Search Console data directly into your WordPress dashboard. Clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position all appear right alongside your pages and posts. No more tab switching!
Ten minutes a week. Open Search Console, review these reports, and make the necessary changes. It is a small habit, and it makes a big difference.