If Google Analytics tells you what people do once they’re on your site, Google Search Console tells you whether Google can even find your site in the first place. It’s the less glamorous cousin, but honestly just as important.

Enter Google Search Console – your direct line to how Google actually sees your website. It shows you what’s indexed, what’s not, and exactly how people are finding you in search. And like Analytics, it’s completely free.

What Is Google Search Console?

Think of it as Google’s report card for your site. Instead of tracking visitor behavior, it tracks Google’s relationship with your website:

• Which of your pages Google has actually indexed (and which ones it’s missing).
• What search terms are bringing people to your site.
• Your average position in search results for those terms.
• Any technical issues (broken links, mobile usability problems) that might be quietly holding you back.

If Analytics is your website’s camera crew, Search Console is more like its report card from the teacher who decides who shows up on the honor roll.

Why Google Search Console Is Essential for Your Showit Website

Showit builds beautiful sites, but it doesn’t automatically guarantee Google finds and indexes every page. Search Console closes that gap.

Here’s what it does for you specifically:

Confirms Google can see your site. Not every page gets indexed automatically – Search Console shows you exactly which ones did and didn’t.

Shows you what’s actually working in search. You’ll see the real search terms bringing people to your site, which is often more useful (and more surprising) than any keyword research tool.

Flags technical problems early. Broken links, mobile display issues, and crawl errors all show up here before they quietly cost you traffic.

Speeds up indexing for new content. Every time you publish a new post or page, submitting it here nudges Google to notice sooner instead of waiting for its own schedule.

How to Set Up Google Analytics for Your Showit Site

1. Create your Search Console account
Go to search.google.com/search-console, sign in with your Google account, and choose “URL prefix” as your property type.

2. Verify site ownership
Enter the https:// version of your domain. Choose the HTML tag verification method — Google will give you a small snippet of code to paste into your site’s head section.

3. Add the code to Showit
Log into Showit → Site Settings → SEO → Advanced → Header embed code, and paste in the verification tag. Publish your site, then go back to Search Console and click Verify. OR if we’re working on your website together, send me the code and I’ll take care of it.

4. Find your Showit sitemap
A sitemap is just a list of all your website’s pages, bundled into one file that Google can read. The good news: you don’t have to build this yourself — Showit already made it for you, automatically, the moment you published your site.

Here’s how to find it: open a new browser tab and type in your website address, followed by /siteinfo.xml. So if your site is yourwebsite.com, you’d type yourwebsite.com/siteinfo.xml and hit enter. You’ll land on a page full of website-looking code — that’s totally normal, you don’t need to read or understand any of it. Just copy the full web address from your browser’s address bar. That’s your sitemap link.

5. Submit your sitemap to Google
Head back over to your Google Search Console tab. On the left-hand side, you’ll see a menu — click the word Sitemaps. You’ll see an empty box that says something like “Enter sitemap URL.” Type in siteinfo.xml (just that part — Search Console already knows your website address, so you don’t need to type the whole thing again), then click the Submit button.

You should see a little green “Success” message appear. If you don’t, don’t panic — sometimes it takes Google a few minutes to check it. Refresh the page and look again before assuming something’s wrong.

6. Submit your blog’s sitemap too (if you have a Showit + WordPress blog)
Here’s something easy to miss: your main Showit pages (Home, About, Services) and your blog posts actually live on two slightly different systems behind the scenes, even though they look like one seamless website to visitors. That means they each need their own sitemap submitted.

Your blog’s sitemap comes from a plugin called Yoast. If we’re working together, I’ll already have Yoast installed and set up for you as part of your site build — you can skip straight to grabbing the link below. If you’re doing this on your own, you’ll need to install the free Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress blog first (it’s a quick install from your WordPress dashboard under Plugins → Add New), then come back to this step.

Once Yoast is in place, open a new tab and go to yourwebsite.com/blog/sitemap_index.xml (swap in your actual domain). Copy that link the same way you did before.

Then go back to the same Sitemaps section in Search Console and submit this one too, as a second, separate entry — right underneath the first one you added. Now Google has a map to both halves of your site: your main pages and every blog post.

What Metrics You’ll Actually Care About

Search Console has a lot going on. Here’s what’s worth checking first:

Coverage/Indexing: How many of your pages Google has actually indexed, and whether any are being excluded.

Performance — Clicks & Impressions: How often your site shows up in search (impressions) versus how often people actually click through (clicks).

Average Position: Roughly where you’re ranking for your top search terms.

Queries: The actual words people typed to find you — often the most useful section on the whole dashboard.

Mobile Usability: Whether Google sees any display issues on mobile devices.

How to Use Search Console Data to Improve Your Showit Website

See what you’re already ranking for, and lean in. If you’re already showing up for a term you didn’t expect, that’s a page worth strengthening rather than starting from scratch elsewhere.

Find the gap between impressions and clicks. Showing up often but rarely getting clicked usually means your title tag or meta description isn’t compelling enough to earn the click — an easy fix once you know it’s happening.

Resubmit your sitemap after big updates. Every time you publish a new service page, blog post, or category (hi, if you’re setting up those new blog categories we talked through), come back and make sure your sitemap’s still current.

Cross-reference with Analytics. Search Console tells you how people find you; Analytics tells you what they do once they arrive. Together, they’re the fullest picture you’ll get of your site’s real performance.

Now You Know Exactly How Google Sees You

Setting up Search Console might feel like one more tech task on the list, but once it’s done, you’ve got direct insight into your site’s relationship with Google — not a guess, the actual data.

You don’t need to check it obsessively. You just need to know it’s there, working quietly in the background, so you’re never left wondering whether your work is actually being seen.