[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post:\u002Fblog\u002Fposts\u002Fanalyze-seo-performance-with-google-search-console":3,"blog-order":257},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":242,"description":243,"draft":244,"extension":245,"image":246,"meta":247,"meta_description":248,"meta_title":249,"navigation":250,"path":251,"seo":252,"sitemap":253,"stem":254,"updated":255,"__hash__":256},"posts\u002Fblog\u002Fposts\u002Fanalyze-seo-performance-with-google-search-console.md","How to Analyze Your SEO Performance in Google Search Console",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":221},"minimark",[9,13,16,21,24,29,32,61,65,68,72,75,79,82,86,94,104,108,111,114,117,121,128,132,135,139,151,158,162,165,171,175,178,182,185,214,217],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Google Search Console (GSC) is the best free source of SEO performance data you have — it comes straight from Google. The catch is that the raw Performance report is a firehose: thousands of rows and no obvious place to start. This is a practitioner's checklist of the concepts that turn that firehose into an audit you can act on.",[10,14,15],{},"Work through it in Search Console yourself, or skip to the two fast shortcuts at the end that run the most valuable passes for you.",[17,18,20],"h2",{"id":19},"know-your-money-pages","💸 Know your money pages",[10,22,23],{},"Identifying your top-performing pages and keywords — often called money pages — is where any SEO analysis starts. Your money pages are the ones that bring in the users and account for the lion's share of your revenue.",[25,26,28],"h3",{"id":27},"identify-your-rankings-using-the-8020-principle","Identify your rankings using the 80\u002F20 principle",[10,30,31],{},"The quickest way to find your top performers is the 80\u002F20 rule (the Pareto principle). Applied to your site, it means roughly 20% of your pages (and keywords) drive about 80% of your traffic and revenue.",[10,33,34,35,39,40,43,44,47,48,43,51,54,55,60],{},"To run this, open ",[36,37,38],"strong",{},"Performance → Search results",", turn on ",[36,41,42],{},"Total clicks"," and ",[36,45,46],{},"Total impressions",", and export the ",[36,49,50],{},"Pages",[36,52,53],{},"Queries"," tabs to Google Sheets. Then find the cutoff where your top rows add up to 80% of clicks, and again for impressions — the two lists usually overlap heavily. For the full walkthrough, see ",[56,57,59],"a",{"href":58},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fhow-to-identify-your-top-performers-with-keylogs","how to identify your top-performing pages",".",[25,62,64],{"id":63},"keep-a-close-watch-on-your-money-pages","Keep a close watch on your money pages",[10,66,67],{},"Once you know them, watch them. If a money page slips even a single rank you can lose a meaningful chunk of traffic and revenue. Note the page and its main queries and re-check their average position every few weeks so you can react fast at the first sign of a slide.",[25,69,71],{"id":70},"focus-your-seo-efforts-on-your-top-portfolio","Focus your SEO efforts on your top portfolio",[10,73,74],{},"Make sure your money pages rank on the first page, ideally in the top five. If they don't, that's where your effort belongs. Start with on-page work — sharpening the content and adding internal links — then pursue earned backlinks if you've exhausted what's on the page. These are your money pages; they're worth it.",[17,76,78],{"id":77},"branded-vs-non-branded-traffic","🙈 Branded vs. non-branded traffic",[10,80,81],{},"If you have any established brand name, you almost certainly rank #1 for it. That's great — but it isn't really SEO. A big brand like Levi's would rank #1 for \"Levi's\" even with a hopelessly unoptimized site. That's why brand traffic distorts your analysis.",[25,83,85],{"id":84},"brand-traffic-flatters-your-seo-stats","Brand traffic flatters your SEO stats",[10,87,88,89,93],{},"If you've never separated brand traffic before, you may be in for a surprise: a lot of what makes your numbers look healthy is brand search. That makes it close to worthless for judging your ",[90,91,92],"em",{},"actual"," SEO performance, for two reasons:",[95,96,97,101],"ul",{},[98,99,100],"li",{},"Click-through rate is far higher on branded queries — you rank #1 and people already intend to click, so branded terms inflate your overall CTR and hide how your content is really doing.",[98,102,103],{},"People who google \"yourbrand\" already know you; they're just too lazy to type the URL. That's navigation, not discovery. They were always coming to you.",[25,105,107],{"id":106},"the-catch-with-search-intent","The catch with search intent",[10,109,110],{},"Why does this matter for performance? If \"yourbrand\" is where all your revenue comes from, fine — skip ahead. Otherwise, consider:",[10,112,113],{},"Person A googles \"Levis\". Person B googles \"Levis 501 34\".",[10,115,116],{},"Which one is closer to buying? New customers come from the long tail — \"blue jeans\", \"slim dark denim\" — far more often than from your brand name. That non-branded demand is the SEO you can actually grow.",[25,118,120],{"id":119},"filter-out-brand-traffic-when-analyzing-content-performance","Filter out brand traffic when analyzing content performance",[10,122,123,124,127],{},"Brand and inspirational traffic isn't worthless, but you get cleaner insight with it removed. In the Performance report, click ",[36,125,126],{},"+ New → Query → Queries not containing"," and enter your brand — use just a distinctive fragment of it to also catch misspellings. Now your KPIs reflect the content you're trying to grow instead of the name you already own.",[17,129,131],{"id":130},"homepage-vs-non-homepage-vs-blog-traffic","🏠 Homepage vs. non-homepage vs. blog traffic",[10,133,134],{},"This is the same idea as branded vs. non-branded, but focused on pages instead of keywords. It works even without a strong brand, and it pairs well with the brand filter. It's the fastest way to see how your content marketing is really performing.",[25,136,138],{"id":137},"segment-your-traffic-by-section","Segment your traffic by section",[10,140,141,142,145,146,150],{},"The cleanest way to isolate a section is to filter by page path: in the Performance report, click ",[36,143,144],{},"+ New → Page → URLs containing"," and enter ",[147,148,149],"code",{},"\u002Fblog"," (or whatever your section folder is). That instantly scopes every metric and tab to that section.",[10,152,153,154,157],{},"For a deeper split, set up a ",[36,155,156],{},"separate property"," for your blog or other major content areas. Google records data per property from the moment you add it — you can't split history retroactively — so create these before a campaign starts, not after. If you use subdomains you're effectively doing this already; submit a sitemap for each, since Google treats subdomains as separate sites.",[25,159,161],{"id":160},"better-deeper-insight","Better, deeper insight",[10,163,164],{},"Segmenting like this is especially useful when you're running content marketing on a blog or maintaining dedicated content areas — you see each section's real performance instead of a blended average.",[10,166,167,168,170],{},"It also sidesteps a reporting limit. The Performance report shows up to 1,000 rows per view (the Search Analytics API returns up to 25,000 rows per request, and the bulk export to BigQuery is effectively unlimited). Scoping to ",[147,169,149],{}," — or to its own property — means those 1,000 rows describe just that section, so more of your ranking keywords surface. That matters most on large sites.",[17,172,174],{"id":173},"conclusion","Conclusion",[10,176,177],{},"No tool gives you better data on your site's SEO performance than Search Console — it's straight from the source. The friction is that the raw report doesn't tell you where to look; the concepts above are the lens. Find your money pages, strip out brand noise, and segment by section, and the same data that felt like a firehose becomes a short, honest list of what to fix.",[17,179,181],{"id":180},"the-60-second-audit-two-shortcuts","The 60-second audit: two shortcuts",[10,183,184],{},"The passes above are worth doing by hand once — they teach you what the numbers mean. But two of them are slow to grind out across a whole site, and both have a free tool that does the pull for you:",[95,186,187,203],{},[98,188,189,192,193,197,198,202],{},[36,190,191],{},"Are pages competing with each other?"," The branded\u002Fnon-branded and double-ranking checks surface pages splitting the same query — the pattern ",[56,194,196],{"href":195},"\u002Fblog\u002Fposts\u002Fwhat-is-keyword-cannibalization\u002F","known as keyword cannibalization",", which isn't always the problem it looks like. The ",[56,199,201],{"href":200},"\u002Fkeyword-cannibalization-checker","keyword cannibalization checker"," reads your Search Console data, finds every query where two of your URLs fight over impressions, and — importantly — ignores the false positives (sitelinks, brand queries, stable double-rankings) that trip up a manual scan.",[98,204,205,208,209,213],{},[36,206,207],{},"Which rankings can you cash in fastest?"," The money-pages and opportunity passes are exactly what the ",[56,210,212],{"href":211},"\u002Fseo-low-hanging-fruit-finder","low-hanging fruit finder"," automates: it ranks every position-4–30 keyword by how much traffic it's leaving on the table, so you start optimizing instead of filtering.",[10,215,216],{},"Both run free on your own GSC data — a 60-second version of the two most valuable passes in this checklist.",[218,219,220],"cta-button",{"href":211},"Find your quick wins — free",{"title":222,"searchDepth":223,"depth":223,"links":224},"",3,[225,231,236,240,241],{"id":19,"depth":226,"text":20,"children":227},2,[228,229,230],{"id":27,"depth":223,"text":28},{"id":63,"depth":223,"text":64},{"id":70,"depth":223,"text":71},{"id":77,"depth":226,"text":78,"children":232},[233,234,235],{"id":84,"depth":223,"text":85},{"id":106,"depth":223,"text":107},{"id":119,"depth":223,"text":120},{"id":130,"depth":226,"text":131,"children":237},[238,239],{"id":137,"depth":223,"text":138},{"id":160,"depth":223,"text":161},{"id":173,"depth":226,"text":174},{"id":180,"depth":226,"text":181},"2018-04-08","A practitioner's checklist for turning the raw Performance report into an audit you can act on.",false,"md","\u002Fuploads\u002F2018\u002F04\u002F08\u002Fanalyze-sep-performance-google-search-console.jpg",{},"A practitioner's checklist for analyzing your SEO performance in Google Search Console — money pages, branded vs non-branded, homepage vs blog, plus the fast audit shortcuts.","How to Analyze Google Search Console (SEO Audit Checklist)",true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fposts\u002Fanalyze-seo-performance-with-google-search-console",{"title":5,"description":243},{"loc":251},"blog\u002Fposts\u002Fanalyze-seo-performance-with-google-search-console","2026-07-15","vZT9PfK1GrNBhVvyi5WxI9HbZ_3QbRKaENH7eX6d-U4",[258,262,265,269,272,273,277,281,283],{"path":259,"title":260,"date":261},"\u002Fblog\u002Fposts\u002Fwhat-is-keyword-cannibalization","What Is Keyword Cannibalization (and When It's Actually Fine)","2026-07-16",{"path":263,"title":264,"date":261},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fkeyword-cannibalization-ahrefs-semrush","How to Check Keyword Cannibalization in Ahrefs & Semrush (and the Faster Way)",{"path":266,"title":267,"date":268},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fhow-to-find-low-hanging-fruit-keywords","How to Find Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords","2026-07-14",{"path":270,"title":271,"date":268},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Finternal-keyword-cannibalization","Internal Keyword Cannibalization — How to Spot Your Pages Competing With Each Other",{"path":251,"title":5,"date":242},{"path":274,"title":275,"date":276},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fhow-to-find-and-fix-keyword-cannibalization","How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization (5 Fixes + a Decision Table)","2018-01-24",{"path":278,"title":279,"date":280},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fhow-to-easily-find-quick-wins-to-boost-your-traffic","SEO Quick Wins: The 15-Minute Playbook","2018-01-23",{"path":58,"title":282,"date":280},"How to Identify Your Top-Performing Pages (80\u002F20) in Search Console",{"path":284,"title":285,"date":286},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftutorials\u002Fhow-to-find-google-ranking-opportunities","How to find and use Google ranking opportunities","2018-01-21"]