Attempting to master search engine optimization (SEO) as a busy HVAC business owner can feel impossible. Luckily, you have many helpful tools at your disposal for tracking search performance, optimizing keyword rankings, and locating problems before they drag your entire site down. With a quick Google search, you’ll find that many experts recommend Google Search Console (GSC) for its comprehensive indexing.
If you go this route, you’ll need to learn how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO, as the tool can seem a bit intimidating at first. At Relentless Digital, we offer leading HVAC SEO services. Below, we discuss everything you need to know about using Google Search Console to optimize your HVAC website in organic traffic rankings.
Understanding Google Search Console
To understand GSC, let’s talk a bit more about SEO first. When you optimize your website for search engines, you don’t always know how it’s going to perform. Google’s crawlers typically index websites every few days to every couple of weeks to update the search platform with any changes you’ve made to your site.
What does this have to do with SEO tools? When you edit your website to rank well in search results, it can feel like a guessing game. As a busy HVAC professional, you likely don’t know whether the new blog post has the correct relevant keywords, if your website code has errors, if you have broken links, if you’re missing any metadata, and so forth.
SEO tools act as Google algorithm crawlers, performing an immediate site index to provide you with a full SEO report of your website so you can view key analytics, locate errors, and optimize accordingly. Google Search Console not only performs this action but does so following Google’s latest indexing updates, ranking criteria, and more.
Essentially, you can use Google Search Console as your own private secret weapon for optimizing your site’s performance.
How Google Search Console Compares to Other SEO Tools
Google Search Console is not your only option for measuring SEO performance or locating critical website problems. Other popular indexing tools include Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz.
While these tools may provide relatively comprehensive data, you cannot receive fully up-to-date and complete keyword ranking data. Such websites are usually limited to indexing around 30% to 40% of your website’s total keywords because they can only crawl a limited number of pages on a daily basis.
Google Search Console can index 100% of your keyword rankings for a clear, unfiltered, and up-to-date picture of your site’s performance. The best part is that Google Search Console is entirely free to use.
Using Google Search Console for Your HVAC Business SEO
Now that you understand what GSC is, let’s dive back into the topic at hand: how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO. GSC offers many practical functions for improving your HVAC company’s web rankings. You can:
Monitor Key SEO Metrics
One of the main functions you can take advantage of with GSC is key metric analysis. Google Search Console makes it easy to view how your search performance changes over time in terms of various data points, like your overall organic search traffic or position for different target keywords.
For example, you can measure how your website ranks for the target term “AC repair near me” over time to ensure that your efforts go toward improving your average position. You can also check to see that your website gains more users each day who will ideally convert into new repair clients.
When you view the Performance Report in the search console, you can view metrics like the following:
- Organic traffic: The number of total visitors your website pages gain from unpaid Google rankings
- Keyword rankings: How your specific pages rank for specific keywords
- Click-through rate (CTR): Number of users clicking through your advertisement or web search listing
- Average position: How your website in total ranks for various keywords
If your data trends up, you know you’re doing something right. If your traffic, average position, or click-through rate begins trending down, you may need to adjust your strategy.
Check Web Page Indexing
If you aren’t seeing the staggering traffic growth you expect, you likely have a problem with your website. One potential issue could be that Google crawlers cannot properly index your web pages. The search console offers an Index Report to help you identify issues with your indexing or Google visibility so you can ensure that your pages are being correctly indexed.
At the top of this report, you’ll see an easy-to-understand index coverage status informing you of how many site pages Google can or cannot index. If Google cannot accurately recognize a specific page from your website in search results, it will not perform, and your hard work will go to waste.
The Index Report will flag each specific page using a color-coding system to inform you of the severity. As you’re learning how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO, we recommend addressing the most critical problems first. Doing so can offer an immediate SEO boost for your site’s presence.
Monitor the Health of Each Site Page
So, what do you do if your site pages aren’t indexing correctly? With the URL Inspection Tool, you can receive full insights on specific site pages to learn indexing statuses, rankings in search results, and potential errors so you can troubleshoot the concerns flagged above. For example, this SEO tool may help you identify issues with the HTML file, the page’s JavaScript, slow page speeds, or mobile usability.
All you need to do is paste the URL into this Google Search Console report tool, view any errors that arise, and then resolve them to see more traffic to your website.
Manage Disavows, Deletions, and Penalties
Many unintentional or minor mistakes can lead to indexing issues or poor visibility with your website. For example, if you choose to disavow linking sites to your website or delete pages, your rankings could go down. You can manage all deletions, disavows, and sitemaps relating to your website to verify website visibility and ensure that you don’t have any errors.
The search console also provides the Manual Action report, which displays any penalties against your website. You may receive a penalty if your site does not comply with Google’s requirements, which can ultimately harm your rankings. For example, if you attempt to stuff too many search terms, like “HVAC technicians,” into one target page, you may receive a penalty.
Identifying and addressing any penalties on your Google Search Console report can help you quickly resolve issues harming your organic traffic so you can restore your rankings in search results.
Analyze Core Web Vitals and Page Experience
By analyzing your core web vitals, you can uncover metrics affecting your website’s experience. Core web vitals include your website speed, responsiveness, and stability, which can all affect how potential HVAC customers interact with your website. If your landing pages load slowly, people may give up and choose other websites for their heating repairs or AC installations.
You can access Google Search Console data for core web vitals by visiting the Page Experience report. Here, you’ll also find information on mobile experience usability and HTTPS usage.
To make it easier for Google Search Console users, the platform ranks a website’s core web vitals into one of the following categories:
- Good
- Needs Improvement
- Poor
Diagnose Mobile Usability Issues
Because the Google search platform now prioritizes mobile experiences, site owners must do so as well as they learn how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO. Luckily, the SEO Google Search Console offers an entire Mobile Usability report to help you enhance your website’s mobile experience. With these Google tools, you can see how your site pages perform in the responsiveness test to adjust elements as necessary.
Not only does the report display mobile issues, but it offers you guidance on how you can resolve them. For example, you may discover that you have a few internal links that are too small for users to click on when using small screens. The report will help highlight things like font sizes, site speed, and overall usability for all different device types.
Locate Security Threats
Google aims to provide a safe, secure experience for all users typing in search queries. If your website has security threats, you will not rank well because Google does not want to place its users at risk. You may not realize that your website server poses such security threats, but the Google Search Console can help you identify these concerns.
With the Security Issues Report, you can locate problems like compromised content, malware, unwanted software, social engineering, and more. If you have such issues, your potential HVAC customers will likely see a warning as they attempt to visit your website, informing them of the security threat. Not only does this warning impact your ability to gain new clients, but it also significantly harms your rankings in search results.
We recommend monitoring your Security Issues Report and quickly responding to any flags that arise. As a best practice, your website should be served on HTTPS for the most secure connection.
Find HVAC Business Keyword Opportunities
Most of the tips we’ve gone through thus far cover using GSC to address website problems, but what about using the search console to unlock new digital marketing opportunities? You can conduct valuable keyword research using the Performance Report provided by the search console. Under the “Queries” section, you’ll find all of the search terms that your website currently ranks for, allowing you to locate potentially high-yielding opportunities that you can incorporate into your content.
You can also use the click-through rate metric to find which terms deliver the most traffic to your website. By viewing this structured data, you can adjust your keyword strategy accordingly so your relevant pages have the correct keywords to appear higher in search queries. For example, you may discover that you’re already ranking well for the term “Broken compressor technician in Santa Cruz,” so you may decide to incorporate this keyword on other pages rather than a minor blog article.
Leverage Backlinking Tools
As you learn how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO, you’ll discover that the tools work hand-in-hand with Google ranking factors, like link-building. The internal links and external links on your website greatly impact your search results.
Google Search Console offers a comprehensive Links Report where you can assess all of your external and internal links to analyze top-linking sites, low-quality or harmful links, anchor text strength, and potential SEO strategies. By focusing on your internal linking and backlinking strategies, you can ideally increase the average position of your site pages in search results, as Google prioritizes websites that have links pointing to them from other high-quality entities.
You can view your top-linked pages in the Links Report to better assess your internal linking strategy. Doing so can help you see how search engines or users may access your site based on the navigational structure you’ve built. For example, the more internal links that point to your air quality service page, the more crawlers will prioritize it.
As you analyze your backlinks, you can view top-linking sites or potentially harmful links. For example, if a scammy website address links to your HVAC site, you may need to disavow the link so it doesn’t harm your rankings.
Identify Poor-Performing Keywords
Not only can you use the search console to locate keyword opportunities, but you can also leverage the structured data to identify your poor-performing terms. First, you can use the search console to identify negative, irrelevant keywords.
When you analyze terms under your Performance Report, you may notice keywords that are not relevant to your site. You should adjust your copy accordingly to avoid attracting users who aren’t interested in your HVAC content, as this will lead to high bounce rates.
You can also use the search console to locate keyword cannibalization concerns. When you use the same term across too many pages of your site, Google will force your pages to compete, which results in negative cannibalization. You can use the search console query filter and search result tool to see how many of your site pages rank for the same target term.
Creating a Google Search Console Account for Your HVAC Business
Now that you know how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO, let’s go over how to create your HVAC business account:
1. Set Up Your Account
Visit the GSC website to create an account. Add your site address to the domain or URL prefix property tab.
2. Verify Site Ownership
GSC requires you to verify ownership of your website, which you can do by adding your Google Analytics tracking ID. You can find this Google Analytics tracking ID by visiting the property settings tab in your Google Analytics account. After pairing, you’ll be able to access GSC from your Google Analytics dashboard.
3. Add a Sitemap
Next, you must add your XML sitemap to GSC, as this allows the tool to properly crawl your site. Simply paste the URL of your sitemap when prompted and hit submit.
After adding new users to your account and finalizing any last details, you can explore the dashboard or use the search bar to find any search result you need.
Need Help Improving Your Rankings in Google’s Search Results?
Now that you know how to use Google Search Console to improve SEO, learn strategies to get more HVAC customers. If you need help reaching new HVAC clients, contact Relentless Digital today to book a strategy session.
