Devstars
Blog
Date: 26/02/2026
Stuart WatkinsWe use a ton of premium paid tools at Devstars to analyse and improve traction through sites. Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, the lot. But my number one go-to is free and relatively easy to use.
Google Search Console is genuinely the most underrated tool in your digital marketing arsenal. While everyone’s wrestling with Google Analytics 4’s labyrinthine interface, GSC sits quietly offering clear, actionable data that can directly impact your bottom line.
The beauty of it is its simplicity. No complex event tracking to configure. No attribution modelling to debate. Just straightforward information about how Google sees your site and how searchers find you.
Here’s our Google Search Console tips to turn that data into actual sales.
This is your fastest path to more traffic. Seriously.
Head to Performance > Search results and filter for queries where your average position sits between 10 and 20. These are pages ranking on page two, sometimes just one or two positions away from page one visibility.
Here’s the thing: the top 3 organic results capture roughly 75% of all clicks. If you’re sitting at position 11, you’re basically invisible.
What to do:
Export these queries and their landing pages. Identify which ones have commercial intent, the ones that could actually lead to a sale. Prioritise based on impressions. High impressions with position 10-20? That’s untapped demand sitting right there.
Strengthen those pages with better content depth, improved internal linking, and targeted backlink outreach.
We had one client see a 40% increase in organic leads within 8 weeks simply by focusing content improvements on their top 15 striking distance pages. Pretty good going for work that’s essentially free.
Your pages are appearing in search results. People just aren’t clicking.
Filter the Performance report for queries with high impressions but click-through rates below 2-3%. These represent missed opportunities where Google thinks you’re relevant, but searchers disagree.
The problem is usually your title tag, meta description, or both. They’re not compelling enough to win the click.
What to do:
Rewrite title tags to include the primary keyword and a clear benefit. Make meta descriptions action-oriented with specific outcomes. Add numbers, dates, or qualifiers like “2025 Guide” or “Step-by-Step”. Test schema markup to enhance your listing with star ratings, FAQs, or other rich results.
Worth remembering: CTR is a ranking signal. Improve your click-through rate and you’ll often see positions improve too. Two birds, one stone.
The Performance tab’s comparison feature is criminally underused.
Click Date and select “Compare”. You can measure against the previous period, the same period last year, or custom date ranges. This tells you whether your SEO investment is actually paying off, or if you’re just treading water.
What to look for:
Impressions increasing month-on-month means Google is showing your pages more often. This typically precedes ranking and traffic improvements.
Clicks lagging behind impressions? You’re gaining visibility but not conversions. Time to work on those titles and descriptions.
Year-on-year decline? You may have lost rankings to competitors, or search demand for your keywords has dropped.
The impressions-to-clicks relationship follows a pattern. Impressions rise first as you climb from page three to page two. Then, as you break into the top 10, clicks start materialising. Understanding this lag helps you stay patient and know when to intervene.
GSC’s Links report shows which pages receive the most internal links from your own site. This is gold dust that most people ignore.
Navigate to Links > Internal links and examine which pages top the list. Are they your money pages? Services, products, key landing pages? Or are they blog posts and support articles?
What we’re seeing across most sites is they accidentally funnel link equity to low-value pages through sitewide navigation, footers, and sidebars. Meanwhile, the pages that actually generate revenue sit orphaned with minimal internal support.
What to do:
Identify pages with high backlink authority (check the External links tab). Add internal links FROM those authoritative pages TO your key conversion pages. Find pages with zero or minimal internal links. These orphan pages struggle to rank. Ensure your most important commercial pages appear in your main navigation or are linked contextually from high-traffic content.
A simple internal linking audit can improve rankings for target pages within weeks, without acquiring a single external backlink. Low effort, high impact.
The Links > External links section reveals which sites link to you and which of your pages attract the most links.
This matters for sales in two ways.
First, you can identify content types that naturally attract backlinks, then create more of them. Second, you can spot partnership and outreach opportunities among sites already linking to you.
What to do:
Review “Top linking sites” for quality. If you see spammy domains, monitor whether they’re affecting your performance. Look at “Top linked pages” to understand what content earns links organically. Check “Top linking text” to see how others describe your content. This influences how Google categorises your pages.
Consider reaching out to sites that link to you once. They’ve already shown interest, making them warm prospects for additional links or partnerships. Much easier than cold outreach.
If Google can’t index a page, it can’t rank. Simple as that.
The Pages report shows exactly what’s indexed and what’s not. More importantly, it tells you why pages aren’t indexed.
Common issues that hurt sales:
“Crawled but not indexed” means Google found your page but decided it wasn’t worth including. Usually a quality signal, sometimes duplicate content. “Blocked by robots.txt” means you may have accidentally blocked important pages. Redirect issues create chains or loops that confuse crawlers. Canonical problems mean Google is consolidating pages differently than you intended. Soft 404s are pages returning 200 status codes but with thin or no content.
What to do:
Prioritise fixing issues on pages with commercial value first. For “crawled but not indexed” pages, improve content quality or consolidate with similar pages. Check that your XML sitemap only includes pages you actually want indexed. Use the URL Inspection tool to understand how Google sees specific pages.
The report also shows how often Google crawls your site. If crawl frequency is declining, it may indicate technical issues or a perception that your content isn’t fresh.
Core Web Vitals directly affect both rankings and conversions. GSC provides real-user data on how your pages perform.
Navigate to Experience > Core Web Vitals to see which URLs pass or fail Google’s thresholds. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) should be under 2.5 seconds. INP (Interaction to Next Paint) should be under 200 milliseconds. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) should be under 0.1.
The business case is pretty compelling. Research from Deloitte found that a 0.1-second improvement in load speed affects the entire buyer journey. One ecommerce study showed a 14% conversion rate improvement after optimising Core Web Vitals.
What to do:
Click through to see which URL groups are failing. Use PageSpeed Insights to diagnose specific issues on affected pages. Prioritise fixing Core Web Vitals on your highest-traffic and highest-converting pages first. Track improvements monthly. The data in GSC comes from real users, so changes take 28 days to fully reflect.
Google uses mobile-first indexing. If your mobile experience is poor, your rankings suffer. That’s just how it works now.
The Experience > Mobile Usability report flags pages with problems that frustrate mobile users. Text too small to read. Clickable elements too close together. Content wider than screen. Missing viewport configuration.
With the majority of searches happening on mobile, and mobile users being particularly sensitive to friction, mobile usability directly impacts your conversion rates.
What to do:
Fix flagged issues, prioritising high-traffic pages. Test key conversion pages on actual mobile devices, not just browser emulators. Pay particular attention to forms, CTAs, and checkout processes. These are where mobile friction kills conversions.
GSC now tracks impressions and clicks from AI Overviews, Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of many search results.
This matters because AI Overviews are reducing click-through rates on traditional results by an average of 34.5%. Some sites have seen 20-60% traffic declines as AI answers queries directly. It’s a significant shift.
While you can’t currently filter GSC data to separate AI Overview traffic from traditional search, you can monitor overall CTR trends. Declining CTR despite stable positions may indicate AI Overview impact.
What to do:
Focus on content that provides unique value AI can’t easily summarise. Original research, proprietary data, expert opinion. Optimise for featured snippets. Content that earns Position 0 is often cited in AI Overviews. Track branded vs non-branded query performance separately. Branded terms are less affected by AI summaries.
GSC’s AI Overview tracking is still evolving, but monitoring your visibility in this new search landscape is essential for long-term traffic planning.
Understanding the split between branded and non-branded queries reveals the health of your demand generation.
Branded queries, searches including your company name, indicate existing awareness. They’re valuable but represent people who already know you.
Non-branded queries, generic searches like “WordPress development agency London”, represent new customer acquisition. This is where SEO drives growth.
What to do:
Use the Regex filter in Performance to exclude your brand name. Compare the ratio of branded to non-branded impressions and clicks. If you’re heavily dependent on branded traffic, you need more content targeting non-branded commercial terms.
Track non-branded traffic growth as a key performance indicator. This is the true measure of your SEO effectiveness.
Healthy businesses typically see strong non-branded growth alongside stable branded traffic. If branded queries are declining, you may have a brand awareness or reputation problem beyond SEO.
Build a simple monthly routine.
Week 1: Check period-on-period performance. Are impressions and clicks trending up?
Week 2: Review striking distance keywords. Update your priority optimisation list.
Week 3: Audit internal links and fix any indexing issues.
Week 4: Check Core Web Vitals and mobile usability. Flag technical issues for your development team.
Document your findings. The clients who get the best results from SEO are those who treat GSC data as a decision-making tool, not just a reporting dashboard.
Our Google Search Console tips tell you everything you need to diagnose, prioritise, and validate SEO improvements, for free. The data is cleaner than GA4, the insights are more actionable, and the learning curve is minimal. Make it your first stop every time you want to improve organic performance.
Next step: Block 30 minutes this week to export your striking distance keywords (positions 10-20) and identify your top 5 optimisation targets. That’s your fastest path to more traffic and sales.
Focus on intent, not position alone. Keywords tied to services, pricing, comparisons, or solutions usually signal buying intent. Cross-check the landing page: if it naturally leads to an enquiry, demo, or sale, it’s a revenue keyword. High impressions + commercial intent = priority.
Improving CTR won’t leapfrog you from page five to page one, but it can move a page from the bottom of page two into the top 10. We often see 1–5 position gains when CTR improves consistently, especially for pages already close to page one.
Most on-page and internal linking changes show early signals within 2–4 weeks. Ranking and click improvements usually stabilise after 4–8 weeks. Core Web Vitals and UX data take around 28 days to fully reflect real-user changes.
Yes — especially for established sites. Redistributing existing link equity can unlock faster ranking gains than waiting months for new backlinks. It’s one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort SEO improvements available. If you’re unsure where to start, this is exactly the kind of audit Devstars helps clients prioritise and execute properly.
Chasing impressions or CTR without commercial intent can inflate vanity metrics without driving revenue. GSC should guide prioritisation, not replace conversion strategy. Always tie optimisations back to pages that support leads, sales, or pipeline growth.
Shift focus toward content that AI can’t easily replace: expert insight, proprietary data, strong brand-led queries, and conversion-focused pages. SEO becomes less about raw traffic volume and more about visibility, authority, and demand capture.
Google Search Console won’t replace premium tools entirely, but it often reveals the fastest, highest-impact SEO opportunities without additional cost.
Tell me what you’re trying to fix. Half an hour, no pitch, no slide deck.
If we’re the right fit we’ll talk about what’s next. If we’re not, I’ll point you to someone who is.
