How to use Google Search Console for Keyword Research

Using the “Performance” reports inside Google Search Console can help you uncover insight and opportunity around question keywords that are highly relevant to your business.

However, It is not a replacement for other keyword research tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, that help you tap into topics that you are not familiar with. Use both of them wisely to get a better overview of the search landscape.

In this tutorial, I will show you how I use Google Search Console for keyword research and find keyword opportunities. 

How to use Google Search Console for Keyword Research

To use Google Search Console for keyword research, you can analyze the “Performance” report to discover which search queries are driving traffic to your website and identifying opportunities for optimization and content creation based on those queries.

1. Open Search Performance Report in Google Search Console

Go to Google Search Console and select the domain property you want to study. Then choose the search performance report in the left-hand menu.

Google Search Console’s Search Performance Report provides valuable insights into how your website is performing in Google search results. The report shows you data on clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and average position for specific search queries or pages on your site.

2. Select the date range

Then select your date range, simply click on the date filter and select what you need. I would recommend using at least 12 months of data if possible so that you could also avoid seasonality and get a more accurate result. 

You can also customise the date range if you would like to see the performance of  a specific period, such as tracking the result of a seasonal marketing campaign.

3. Filter Query or Page (optional)

Depending on your goal of the keyword research, you can narrow your report by adding conditions to suit your need. Click the “+ New” and select “Query” from the drop-down menu. 

For example, if you want to work on a specific topic, filter the query to contain only the seed keyword to show only relevant keywords.

If you want to optimise your existing page and looking for keyword opportunities, filter by the URL of the page.

4. Export your data

Next export your data to your desired format – open as Google Sheet or download as .csv or Excel file. When you open the exported report, you will find different tabs – Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices, Search appearance, Dates and Filters. 

Usually I will just keep the queries tab but that’s up to you.

5. Analyse the search queries by keyword grouping

Just like doing regular keyword research, you can organise your list of search queries by grouping them based on search intent and topic. You can also further divide them into sub-topic so you know how to structure your

You can either do this manually by using the Sort and Filter function of Google Sheet or Excel, or using Google Sheets formula like Index Match if you have a huge list of keywords.

After categorising your keywords, you can start to map your keywords to your page (either create a new page to cover a new set of keywords or optimise existing page). 

Sort your CTR in ascending order to see if you need to optimise meta title or meta description

How to use Google Search Console to find question keywords

Question keywords are often a quick win when optimising articles. By creating content that answers these questions that you are already ranking for, you can provide valuable information to your audience and increase the chances of your content being ranked higher in search results.

Also, when users search for a question, Google often displays a featured snippet or People Also Asked that provides a direct answer to their query. If you can optimise your content to appear in the rich result, you can increase the visibility of your content and attract more traffic to your website.

1. Go to Google Search Console Performance Report

Login to your Google Search Console and select the domain. Head over to the Performance Report in the left-hand panel.

2. Select the date range

I would recommend using last 12 months data if possible so that you could also avoid seasonality and get a more accurate result. If you are trying to optimise a specific URL, click the “+ New” and select “Page” to filter it.

3. Click “+ New” and select “Query”

Click the “+ New” and select “Query” from the drop-down menu. Then select Custom (regex) in the first filter, and make sure you are using “Matches regex” in the second field.

4. Enter the Regex in the Custom (regex) Filter

Enter your regex to find out what question words your website is currently ranking for. The expression can be modified to suit your need – for example, if you want to create some how-to guides, you can start with filtering out all the queries that contain “how”.

This is my usual Regex for filtering question keywords:

^(what|where|when|why|who|how|do|does|is|are|was|did|if|will|can)

To help you understand what’s going on in the Regex, let’s see the syntax of the regex:

• ^  : This limits matches to the start of the target string, so you will only see the query that start with the target question word
• () : This capture the group of question keyword
• | : This is the OR operator, so it will match the question word before or after the operator.
• Inside the () is the list of question keywords separated by the OR operator

Regex can also be useful to filter keywords for specific topics or URL, so learn Regex to ensure you are fully utilising the data from Search Console.

5. Export data from Google Search Console

Next, export your data to your desired format – Google Sheets or download as .csv or Excel file. Open your file and start playing around with it.

Here are some tips to identify some quick wins:

• Group your keywords by topic
• Sort by impression
• Filter ranking between 10-20 position

These will inform your next step – you create new articles to target a group of keywords, or you can optimise your content with keywords you are ranking for.

Conclusion

Google Search Console can help you identify the keywords driving traffic to your website. By analysing this data, you can identify keywords that are performing well and optimise your content around those keywords.

You can also discover new keywords that your website is already ranking for but you may not have optimised your content for. This provides an opportunity for you to create new content around those keywords and update your existing content.

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