How do you use Google Search Console in your daily SEO work?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Performance report: clicks, impressions, CTR, position by query and page
- Page indexing report and URL Inspection
- Sitemaps submission
- Core Web Vitals and manual actions or security issues
Model answer
Search Console is my main source of first-party search data. In the Performance report I check clicks, impressions, CTR and average position by query, page, country and device, and I compare date ranges to spot drops or new opportunities, like queries where we rank on page two. In the Page indexing report I look for important pages that are excluded, for example due to noindex, redirects or "crawled - currently not indexed". I use URL Inspection to test a page and see how Google renders it. I submit and monitor XML sitemaps, review the Core Web Vitals report for mobile and desktop, and check for manual actions or security issues. I also export data to Looker Studio to share regular reports.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed easy round and get scored on every answer.
More easy SEO Specialist questions
- Explain in simple words how a search engine like Google finds and ranks pages.
- What is search intent, and why does it matter for SEO?
- What are the key on-page SEO elements you check on a page?
- What are backlinks, and what makes a good backlink?
- What are Core Web Vitals, and why do they matter?
- What is the difference between robots.txt and a noindex tag?
- What is local SEO, and how would you improve a local business's visibility?
- What is structured data, and how do you use it for SEO?
- How do you write good title tags?