Find SEO Keywords Using Google Search Console

“Which keywords should we target?” is one of the first questions any business asks when it starts with SEO. Before you go hunting for lists of thousands of terms, look at what Google already knows about your own site. Google Search Console shows you which searches your pages appear in, how often, and how many people click.

It doesn't replace proper market research, and it doesn't show every search. But it's free and based on real data from your own site, which makes it the best place to start.

Step 1: Choose a country and a date range

Open Performance → Search results. Make sure you've selected the right site, the Web search type and a period with enough data, for example the last three months. If your customers are mainly in one country, add a Country filter for it.

Without that filter, it's easy to get excited about impressions from countries where you have no customers at all. And if you compare periods with a different number of days, compare the daily average rather than the totals.

Step 2: What the four numbers mean

Clicks are visits from Google's results. Impressions are the times your site appeared in the results. CTR is the share of impressions that turned into clicks. Average position shows where your result sat on average. None of the four tells the whole story on its own.

Take a search with 300 impressions, average position 82 and no clicks. The problem there is that the page is far too low; a better meta description won't change a thing. A page that consistently appears near the top but gets few clicks has a different problem, and needs a different kind of investigation.

Step 3: Look at queries and pages together

The Queries tab shows what people type. The Pages tab shows which of your pages appear. Click on a page, then go back to the Queries tab: you'll see which searches that particular page shows up for, and whether they match what it's about.

If a general blog article appears for a search like “emergency plumber Manchester”, your service page probably isn't clear enough or isn't linked from enough other pages on the site. Don't try to “optimise” the article for a job it wasn't written to do; strengthen the page that should be showing up.

Step 4: Three kinds of opportunity

• Almost on page one: searches where you're already somewhere around positions 8 to 20. A real improvement to the page has the best chance of showing results here.
• Lots of impressions, few clicks: check the position first. If it's good, look at the title, the description and whether the page matches what the searcher wants.
• Searches that bring customers, but you rank low: this calls for work on the service or category page itself and on how it connects to the rest of the site.

These are categories for organising your work, not ranking promises. Ten searches that can bring you customers are worth more than two hundred that have nothing to do with you.

Step 5: Compare periods carefully

Compare the last 28 days with the previous 28 and look at the same searches and pages. A seasonal search can drop simply because demand drops: hardly anyone shops for air conditioners in November. If your business is strongly seasonal, compare with the same period last year.

If you've changed page addresses, check whether impressions simply moved from the old address to the new one, or disappeared because the old one now returns a 404 error. Search Console gives you the clues; finding the cause takes a technical check as well.

Step 6: Turn the analysis into a to-do list

For each search worth pursuing, note: the search, the page, the position, what the searcher wants, what's missing, what you'll change and when you'll check again. An example for a furniture shop: “small sofa bed” → sofa bed category → add open and closed dimensions and a length filter → check again in four weeks.

Don't automatically write a new article for every keyword. Very often the right move is to improve a page you already have.

From searches to customers

Combine Search Console data with what happens on your site: contact forms, phone calls, quote requests, orders. To see those, you need conversion tracking set up properly in Google Analytics. That's how you separate searches that just bring traffic from those that bring business. If you run an online shop, look at which categories and products bring sales, not just visits.

Have Search Console data but not sure what to do with it?

At Hot Web Design we can analyse your Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 data, single out the searches with real commercial value and turn them into a concrete, prioritised plan of work.

We implement the changes on your pages, set up conversion tracking where it's missing and monitor how each page performs, so every next step is based on the data.

See our SEO services or contact us so we can analyse your site's search data.