A Legal Marketer’s Guide to Google Search Console

Legal marketers need to take advantage of all the tools available at their disposal, including the seemingly endless tools from Google. If you do not already use Google Search Console to report on your marketing campaigns, you are missing out. Best of all, this is one of the many Google tools that is completely free. Marketers can take advantage of Google’s free tool to gain a deeper understanding of the individual keyword and page performance of their firm’s website. Learn how to create better reports with our guide on how to use Google search console for legal marketers.

Use the Overview

Start using Google Search Console on the overview screen. When you select the performance tab, you will be able to see a quick overview of the performance of your law firm’s website, including the average click-through rate, total clicks, total impressions, and average site position. Underneath your overview graphic, you will spot information on each individual page of your site. Tabs let you look at additional data points, focused on devices people use, pages visited, ranking search terms, and more.

Export Page Keywords and Impressions

You likely want to have your firm’s keywords in a convenient location. Google understands this, which is why it lets you export the page keywords from the pages tab onto Google Sheets. You can use the various features in Google Sheets, like sorting to easily spot the pages with the largest impact on your website’s traffic.

Download Keywords

You can also easily download the keywords from Google Search Console to analyze them. Choose “new button” and “page.” Paste the URL you want information on and select “apply.” Choose “queries” in the table menu and then export it to Google Sheets. Marketers can also sort these keyword queries by impression in Google Sheets.

Use Conditional Formatting

For further analysis of the information in the Google Search Console, apply conditional formatting to identify keywords that should be your focus. Conditional formatting lets you do things like color-code rows based on the average number of impressions. Find this option in Google Sheets under the main menu and “conditional formatting.” This will allow you to determine if a page has low, medium, or high impressions at a glance, making your analysis much easier.

Incorporate Your Research Into SEO and Content Plans

Finally, it is time to put your analysis from Google Search Console to good use. The above steps should have let you identify high-ranking search terms. You should then incorporate these into your firm’s blog and page content and meta descriptions to maximize your ranking. Make sure to review the impact that the changes have had to your law firm website. Ideally, you will want to check for any improvements two weeks following meta description updates and three months following updates to existing content.

Takeaway

Google search console is a powerful tool for legal marketers tasked with keeping a keen eye on their firm’s digital marketing performance. Reporting analysis should be done at least once a month to shed light on a firm’s marketing effectiveness. If you need help translating your Google search console reports into actionable insights for your law firm, contact us today. Our team is adept at using data to inform effective strategies that will grow your law firm’s success online.