How To Do Keyword Research With Google Search Console

Hi everyone, and welcome! In this post, we’re going to look at how you can leverage the power of Google Search Console (GSC) to perform keyword research. Now, let me give you a quick caveat. GSC is a great tool, but it’s only as good as your landing page copy and the keywords you are already using on your website, landing pages, blog posts, and in all of your content. Think of GSC as a way to learn what your site is already optimized for. If you don’t have relevant keywords on your pages, it’s unlikely they’ll surface in the console.

How To Access Google Search Console

Regardless of which browser you’re using, you want to start by typing this into your address bar:

search.google.com/search-console

That’s search dot google dot com slash search – console. It should look something like what’s here.

This should then take you directly to the Google Search Console where you can view sites that are connected with GSC.

Connecting Your Site to Google Search Console

If you haven’t connected your website to GSC, I have a video that shows you exactly how to link your website to Google Search Console. Once you have it set up, your website data will start to gather and you can start digging deeper.

Navigation to Find Keywords

One of the great things about GSC is that you can hook it directly into your Google Analytics to provide a much deeper look into how organic website traffic behaves (in relation to Google Searches).For now, let’s focus on the performance report, so we don’t get lost with other functionality.On the left-hand side of the screen click “Performance” – this will open up the report overview.

Performance Report Overview The performance report provides high-level data on the traffic Google searches are sending to your website. Let’s look at what we can control from here.

Filtering Your Keyword Data The first, and critical, way to customize your keyword research data is to choose your date range. You can go back as far as the last 16 months.

• First, choose “last 16 months” from the date range menu
• Select “Web” as the search type
• Click on the “Add Filter” button.

It’s also worth noting that Bing has its own webmaster tools to find the same information. If you want to rank highly on multiple search engines, check that one out too.

The first filter that I always set is for the Country. I choose my target country. You should also choose yours. The next step will be to do a search by query. There are a few options, including ‘Queries Containing,’ ‘Queries Not Containing,’ ‘Exact Query,’ and ‘Custom (RegEx).’

I like to go to Custom Regex. This allows me to refine my searches the most. A quick note: regex isn’t for everyone; but it is an incredibly powerful way to pull specific data. Once the Custom Regex panel opens, let’s say that we’re looking for keywords containing two keywords, I’d do something like: (keyword1|keyword2) and hit apply. This would pull all keywords that contain either keyword1 or keyword2.

Interpreting Results

Okay, now that we have that set, let’s focus on what we’re actually ranking for. If you have a blog, or some other form of content, you’ll likely see a big list. That’s good, but it’s time to get focused on interpreting what Google Search Console keyword data tells us.

At this point, a lot of folks may simply grab those keywords and move on, but let’s actually do some keyword research! Click the column title for “Position” so that it lists from top to bottom (lowest to highest ranking). This will show you what you’re on page one for, as well as those keywords that may not be doing as well, and that you may want to optimize for.

Let’s keep digging. Click that same “Position” column again, and it will filter results from highest to lowest. This will show you the keywords that your website has been found for, but isn’t on the first page. Now you can see keywords that are relevant, but that you are not ranking that well for.

Advanced Filtering

Okay, if you want to find out how you can find even more relevant keywords, you can add even more filters.

Let’s say that you have the query filter set, the country set to the United States, then click “Add Filter” again, and scroll down to “Position”. Now you can set your filter to anything that is greater than ‘10’ (or page 1). This is what I’m going to do.

These are what you should be looking at when you’re wanting to grow your website.

I’m going to take a look at my own keyword results. For my personal brand, which is Jodie Mason, I know I haven’t worked much on it for over a year. The clicks have really gone down.I see that my highest volume, non-first-page key is “ecommerce for nonprofits”. This means Google sees that my site is relevant for this, but I’m not in the top spots.

When we go through the queries listed, you can also note what keywords aren’t a good fit for your business, or aren’t something that you want to put more effort into. You can use the reverse logic and “filter out” certain words that are a waste of time. Good keyword research means knowing ignoring keywords that don’t fit the brand or content piece.

The Importance of ROI in Keyword Research

Now that I see what I have, let’s look at impressions for our keywords. What happens when I reorder by “Impressions”? That’s a critical factor. When I’m targeting a new keyword, it’s easy to chase rankings on small volume queries. It is usually not worth my time or money.

As I scroll through, I see “microsoft clarity” is a term that’s getting a lot of impressions, but is definitely not #1, and it’s not even that many clicks. I wrote an article when Microsoft Clarity first came out, and because it’s getting impressions, Google knows that my page is talking about that topic. And I am definitely not optimizing for that keyword, so I’m not optimizing the keyword for a #1 position.

This is critical. You need to have your primary keywords on your site in order for GSC to show you that your site is relevant. As you do keyword research, make sure that your targeted keywords that you’re adding to your content are actually a fit for your business and your target audience.

Putting it All Together

For today’s purposes, we’re going to really just focus on the performance report. Other aspects of GSC are important, such as indexing, URL inspection, and Core Web Vitals. However, we want to focus on one thing for today.

When doing keyword research, make sure you think about what you’re offering and if a keyword is relevant. Not every keyword will bring the right traffic.

For the first time, let’s just focus on the performance report. Now we know how to get in, we can really look at the data. I’m going to go back to the last 16 months. And I’m going to show you this.

I’m going to add my two filters. My first filter will be to have my country set to the United States. I always add this because I’m not concerned with other countries at the moment.

And then the next filter that I’ll set, is “Query,” and this will allow me to narrow down my search even further. Now you might want to search for keywords containing something, or not containing something. I’ll use regex for custom.

And we’re going to type (ecommerce) into the custom regex filter box. The parentheses allows us to add more than one term. And it shows all of the keywords that contain e-commerce.

Now that we’re here, let’s look at what we have. And here I’m going to sort by position. By clicking that, I can see what’s #1, but that’s not what I want, so let’s hit “position” again, and now we can see results that aren’t #1. These are great for optimization and new content.

I also know that Google is using “semantic” keywords. This is an important piece of information. Google looks at content using context, not just exact keywords. Semantic keywords have the same meaning as your primary keyword.

The last thing we need to do here, is to understand all of this data and why it’s important. And how it can affect our traffic.

I’ll be taking a look at that and seeing what we have, and what we’ve got and how we’re doing.

Here are keywords that aren’t on page 1:

• Ecommerce software for trade associations
• Ecommerce support for associations association

Now, at this point, you have the power to find new content ideas, and know where they’ll best help you.

If you’re looking for the new keywords for a blog post, use filter queries in Google Search Console and exclude keywords that already rank.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics

It also helps to know that you can hook GSC directly into Google Analytics, and get a better look at traffic behavior. That’s a topic for another day. Google Analytics provides insight into user behaviors.

Alternatives to Google Analytics

Option#1. Google Search Console has a data connector with Looker Studio and you can create custom SEO Reports. If you need to better visualize GSC keywords, then Looker Studio is one way to go. But you only will be able to access the past 16 months of historical data.

Option #2. An advance user with SQL skills can setup a BigQuery data export and use third party data to analyze the date. GSC Bigquery data export allows you to create custom data tables, then use those tables in Looker Studio (this is my preferred option) . GSC, BigQuery, and Looker Studio’s (and dare I say, GA4 – BigQuery export) harmonious relationship is the most powerful way to do keyword research and analyze organic traffic. Storing data in BigQuery does incur a monthly cost.

Option #3. If access to Google Cloud is limited, an alternative solution is to use Python, NodeJS, PHP, Google App Script (complicate) or other programming language to code a custom script that dumps the data into a Google Spreadsheet. This is more complex and an even more advance skill than option #2. You will need access to Google Cloud in order to enable this API. However, this option is the almost free choice.

Options #2 and #3 allow you to store Google Search Console Keyword data forever. This allows you do do historical SEO and keyword research analysis with all of your data.

Conclusion There are lots of elements within Google Search Console, like Indexing, Core Web Vitals, and others, but we wanted to hone in on that performance tab and show you how you can get started with keyword research.

When you’re thinking about how you’re going to grow your website, focus on the keywords and how they relate to your customer and their buying journey.