What You Need to Know About the Search Console Content Keywords Report

One keyword feature that Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller critiqued in a recent hangout video was the content keywords significance report. If you click on “Content Keywords” in the Google Index section of your Search Console you’ll get a list of keywords. Beside each keyword is a bar. The bar indicates how frequently a keyword is used on a page. John actually stated he’d like to have the feature removed all together because it’s misleading.

Many users have worried that a full bar indicates over-saturation or keyword density, which isn’t the case. In fact, it doesn’t indicate ranking factors at all. John noted this in a 2012 forum discussion about the content keywords report. The only real benefit John noted was being able to easily see if strange keywords are being registered. That’s a sign your website may have been hacked.

What this really boils down to is the fact that no single tool is going to be the end-all be-all SEO solution. Google Search Console is a powerful resource for analyzing keywords and pages, however webmasters should still parse out the most important information.

Use Search Analytics Reports Instead

Over the years Google has fine-tuned its Search Analytics to help SEOs and website owners understand which keywords are getting the most visibility in organic search.

You can run a number of reports to gauge how well your SEO efforts are paying off. In regards to your keyword selection, the Search Analytics Report can show you:

• Clicks per keyword
• Impressions per keyword
• Click through ratio
• Search position for a keyword
• How keywords compare to one another
• Keyword ranking by geography

The only downside to Search Analytics reports is that you can only view 90 days of historical data. If you wanted to look further back, unfortunately you can’t find them in Search Console and the keywords get filtered in the ‘not provided’ section in Google Analytics.

If you need help analyzing your keywords and making improvements please don’t hesitate to reach out to SearchRPM.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/searchrpm/

IG: @searchrpm - https://www.instagram.com/searchrpm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/searchrpm

Website: https://www.searchrpm.com/

By Michael Ramirez
SearchRPM Founder

Michael Ramirez is the Founder of SearchRPM, an Austin, TX based search marketing company that’s well-versed in Search Engine Optimization best practices. You can follow Michael Ramirez on Twitter @openmic0323 or on Google+ to see what he’s up to next.