Constructing Your SEO Foundation—How to Set Up Google Analytics and Search Console

Amy Prindle

The Center for Online Evangelism is a missionary project devoted to developing online mission stations.

​Edits and additions by Jamie Jean Domm

It’s the feedback you’ve always wanted! Finally, you’ll be able to see how your audience is using your website.

This section is all about getting you connected to the right data that will continually fuel your SEO strategy. You no longer have to guess what your audience likes or doesn’t like about your website, your content, your products, etc.

As mentioned in the beginning checklist of SEO fundamentals, if you want to further improve both search-engine-findability and user experience, you first need to see how your website is currently being used.

It can be risky to change a link, move a page, or even change a title or headline without considering how many people are already visiting that page and how they’re getting to it.

The information you get from Google Analytics and Google Search Console (previously called Google Webmaster Tools) helps you quantify specific goals and objectives to include in your overall SEO strategy. You can learn a lot about your audience!

Yes, this is a lot to learn, and it is highly technical. But skip this chapter at your own risk—all the SEO techniques you will learn in the following chapters only work well if your actions are being driven by data from these free, behind-the-scenes tools.

We’ll cover:

• How to set up Google Analytics
• How to set up Google Search Console​
• Beginner Tutorial for Google Analytics
• Beginner Tutorial for Google Search Console