You don’t need to be technical to keep an eye on how your website’s doing, and you don’t need to pay for anything either.
Google gives away three free tools that answer three simple questions every business owner should want answered: can people find me, what do they do once they arrive, and is my site fast enough to keep them there. Here’s what each one actually does, without the jargon.
Google Search Console: can people find you?
Google Search Console tells you how your website is showing up in Google’s search results, which is worth knowing whether you’ve ever set it up or not. It shows you which searches are bringing people to your site, which pages are appearing and which aren’t, and flags up any technical problems stopping Google from reading your site properly.
If you’ve never heard of this one, it might be because it used to be called Google Webmaster Tools, and plenty of people still search for it under that name. It’s the same tool with a new name, and it’s free to set up, so it’s worth doing even if you never look at it again after the first month.
Once you’re set up, here are the five things worth knowing it can do for you.
- Submit your sitemap, a simple file that lists every page on your site, so Google knows what’s there and finds it faster than it would by chance.
- Check which pages are indexed, meaning actually included in Google’s search results, and which ones aren’t showing up at all.
- See the exact searches bringing people to your site, so you know which words your customers are actually typing before they find you.
- Get flagged on technical problems, like a broken page or a mobile display issue, often before a customer even notices it themselves.
- Ask Google to look at a page again, which is handy the moment you’ve published something new or fixed a mistake and don’t want to wait.
Google Analytics: what are people doing once they land?
Once someone’s found your site, Google Analytics tells you what happens next. It shows you how many people are visiting, which pages they spend time on, and which ones they leave from quickly, which is often the clearest sign that something on that page isn’t working.
You don’t need to dig into every report it offers, and most business owners never will. Checking in once a month to see whether your most important pages are holding people’s attention is enough to catch a problem early, long before it costs you real business.
Here are the five things worth checking when you do log in.
- See how many people are visiting, and whether that number’s growing, shrinking, or staying flat over time.
- Find out where people came from, whether that’s a Google search, a social media link, or typing your web address in directly.
- Spot which pages people leave quickly, which is often the clearest sign that a page isn’t giving people what they expected.
- See which device people are using, since a site that works beautifully on a laptop can still be a nightmare on a phone.
- Track specific actions, like someone filling in a contact form or clicking through to buy, so you know which pages are actually earning their keep.
PageSpeed Insights: is your site fast enough?
A slow website loses customers before they’ve even seen what you’re offering, and PageSpeed Insights tells you exactly how slow yours is, and why. You put in your web address, and it comes back with a score along with the specific things slowing your site down, whether that’s a large image or something more technical.
You won’t need to fix everything it flags, and some of the more technical suggestions are worth passing straight to your web developer rather than tackling yourself. But knowing your score gives you a starting point, and a clear way to check whether changes you make are actually helping.
Here are the five things worth paying attention to in the results.
- Get a score out of 100, separately for mobile and desktop, so you can see straight away where the bigger problem sits.
- See exactly what’s slowing you down, whether that’s an oversized image, a font loading slowly, or something more technical underneath.
- Get suggestions ranked by impact, so you know what to tackle first instead of guessing where to start.
- Compare mobile against desktop, since most sites perform differently on each, and most of your customers are on their phones.
- Track your score over time, so you can check whether a change you’ve made has actually helped, rather than just assuming it has.
Getting started
All three are free, and none of them need any technical skill to set up an account and take a first look. If you’d like a hand getting them running on your site, or making sense of what they’re telling you, just ask.