SEO for a New Website: Your First 90 Days
SEO for a new website, step by step: what to do before launch and in days 1–90, what results are realistic and which launch mistakes to avoid.
Key takeaways
- Google Search Console is a free tool that shows how Google finds, indexes and displays your site; the data comes straight from Google, not from estimates.
- The performance report shows clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, with 16 months of history, split by query, page, country and device.
- The Pages (indexing) report explains why some URLs are not in Google, and URL Inspection shows how Google sees one specific page.
- Positions are averages, not exact values, and a Search Console click is not the same thing as an Analytics session.
- A 15-minute weekly routine covers most of what a beginner needs to know.
Contents
- What Search Console is and what it is not
- How to set it up correctly from the start
- The performance report: clicks, impressions, CTR, position
- The indexing report and URL Inspection
- The other reports worth your attention
- How to read the data: three simple analyses
- A 15-minute weekly routine
- Common mistakes when using Search Console
- Limits: what Search Console cannot do
- Conclusion and next steps
Google Search Console is the free tool through which Google shows you how it sees your website: which pages it found, which are indexed, what searches you appear for and how many clicks you get from results. The data comes straight from the source, which makes it the most important SEO tool you can have. This guide takes you from setup to a simple weekly routine, covering only the reports that matter.
What Search Console is and what it is not
Search Console is a control panel for your site's presence in Google Search. It is not a general traffic analytics tool, and it is not an "optimization wizard" that tells you step by step what to do. It reports what Google observes and lets you send a few signals back: sitemaps, reindexing requests, removal requests, domain moves.
The difference from Google Analytics matters. Search Console sees what happens before the visit: impressions in results, clicks, indexing. Analytics sees what happens after the click: who arrived and what they did on your site. Together they show the whole path from search to conversion.
One more limit to remember: Search Console only shows data for sites you have verified, and only for Google Search. It does not show competitors, it does not show how many people search for a term, and it does not show traffic from other search engines.
If you want help turning the data into decisions, our SEO consulting is designed for teams that have the data but lack direction.
How to set it up correctly from the start
Setup takes under half an hour. Choose the property type carefully, because it determines what data you see.
- Go to search.google.com/search-console with a Google account that will stay with the company (not a temporary personal one).
- Add the property. You have two options: Domain, which covers all subdomains and protocols (http, https, www or not) and is verified with a DNS TXT record; or URL prefix, which covers one exact address and is verified by an HTML file, meta tag or other methods.
- Verify ownership. For most sites the Domain type is better, because you do not lose data when address variants exist.
- Add users. There are owner, full user and restricted user roles. Give colleagues and your agency the minimum role needed, and revoke it when the engagement ends.
- Submit your sitemap. Go to Sitemaps and enter the file's address. If you are not sure what a good sitemap looks like, read our XML sitemap guide.
- Note the start date. Data generally starts accumulating once the property is added and verified, so do not count on seeing the earlier period.
If you used a plugin or a platform, check whether it already created a property; sometimes duplicate properties exist, created by different people.
The performance report: clicks, impressions, CTR, position
The performance report (in the menu: Performance > Search results) is where you will spend most of your time. It shows four metrics, which Google defines like this:
- Clicks: how many times users clicked through to your site from Google Search results.
- Impressions: how many times your site appeared in results.
- CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions.
- Average position: the average position of your site's topmost result for that search.
Data is kept for 16 months, which allows year-over-year comparisons. The default view shows a shorter period, so change the date range. The latest days can be marked as preliminary and may change.
We recommend always using:
- Period comparison, for instance the last 28 days against the previous 28 or against the same range last year, to remove seasonality.
- Filters by page, query, country or device.
- Dimensions such as Queries, Pages, Countries, Devices and Search appearance, to see the same number from different angles.
According to Google's documentation, clicks and impressions from AI features in Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode) are counted in this report under the Web search type. In June 2026 Google also announced separate Search Generative AI performance reports, which show impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. Google is rolling them out gradually, starting with a subset of sites, so you may not see them yet; that does not mean something is broken. If that topic interests you, see how to appear as a source in AI Overviews.
The indexing report and URL Inspection
The Pages report (in the Indexing section) tells you how many URLs Google knows about and which are indexed. The useful part is the list of reasons why some URLs are not indexed. Statuses documented by Google include: blocked by robots.txt, marked noindex, server error (5xx), not found (404), soft 404, page with redirect, "Discovered, currently not indexed" and "Crawled, currently not indexed."
Not all of these are problems. A page with a redirect, or one whose canonical points elsewhere, should not be indexed. The problem appears when an important URL shows up on the exclusion list. To diagnose it, use URL Inspection: paste an address and see whether it is in the index, which canonical Google selected and how the rendered page looks. The live test checks the current state.
Causes and fixes for each status are in our article on pages not indexed. Remember just two rules: do not abuse "Request indexing" (it does not speed up indexing of weak content), and after a fix, use "Validate fix," which restarts the check. According to the documentation, the process can take around two weeks.
The other reports worth your attention
| Report | What it shows | When to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Sitemaps | Whether the file is read and how many URLs it found | After launch and after big changes |
| Core Web Vitals | URLs grouped as good, needs improvement or poor, on mobile and desktop | Monthly; see Core Web Vitals |
| Enhancements (rich results) | Errors in structured data such as breadcrumbs or products | After markup changes |
| Links | Who links to you, most linked pages, anchor text | Quarterly |
| Manual actions | Whether a Google reviewer penalized the site | As soon as you get a notification, then periodically |
| Security issues | Malware, compromised pages | On notification |
| Crawl stats (Settings) | How many requests Googlebot makes, response times | On large sites or after migrations |
Some reports appear only if the site has that type of content. A services site without products will not have a product section, for example. If you do not see a report, that does not mean something is broken.
How to read the data: three simple analyses
Data becomes useful when you ask questions. Here are three analyses you can run on day one.
1. Pages with many impressions and low CTR. In the performance report, sort pages by impressions and look for those with CTR below your site average. Either the title and description fail to persuade or they do not match the search intent. Rewrite them and preview how they look in the SERP simulator. Our guide to title tags and meta descriptions helps with wording.
2. Queries in positions 8–20. Filter queries with an average position between 8 and 20 and meaningful impressions. This is usually where the cheapest wins are: a page that almost reaches page one can get a better title, a new section or more internal links.
3. Several pages for the same query. Select a query and switch to the Pages dimension. If two pages alternate in results, you may be competing with yourself; read about keyword cannibalization.
A 15-minute weekly routine
A small habit beats a big analysis done once a year. Here is the routine:
- Performance: compare the last 7 days with the previous 7; note large drops by page.
- Pages (indexing): check whether an unusual number of errors or new exclusions appeared.
- URL Inspection for newly published pages: are they found and indexable?
- Notifications: manual actions, security, coverage problems.
- One decision: pick one page or query to improve this week.
Monthly, add Core Web Vitals and a glance at rich results. For choosing which indicators belong in the report for management, see the SEO KPI guide.
Common mistakes when using Search Console
- Treating average position as an exact ranking. Position is an average across queries, devices and locations, so a page can show "6.3" even though nobody sees it exactly there.
- Comparing directly with Analytics. The tools define and measure differently; use each for what it knows.
- Ignoring anonymized queries. For privacy reasons Google omits some rare searches from the query table, so the table total can be lower than the chart total.
- Submitting "Request indexing" for everything. That does not fix a weak page; fix the cause instead.
- Letting ownership drift. If you lose access, you lose the data and the notifications.
- Drawing conclusions from two days. Recent data is preliminary and can vary; compare longer periods.
Limits: what Search Console cannot do
Search Console does not tell you who your competitors are, nor the search volume of a term. It does not replace a traffic analytics tool and does not show what users do on the site.
The interface limits the number of rows shown and exported, so for large sites you may need the Search Console API or the BigQuery data export, which allow more detailed analysis. Also, the performance reports cannot show visibility in AI chat applications, which are not Google Search. For that you need other methods, which we describe in the article on measuring visibility in ChatGPT and AI search.
On very small or very new sites, data volume is low and swings from day to day; do not draw statistical conclusions from a handful of clicks.
Conclusion and next steps
Search Console is the only direct source of data about what Google does with your site. Verify the Domain property, submit the sitemap, give access only to those who need it and adopt the 15-minute routine. Within a few weeks you will see which pages grow, which stagnate and where you lose clicks.
If you want someone to help turn the numbers into priorities and a work plan, see our SEO consulting service. For the full list of terms, keep the SEO glossary at hand.