Google Search Console for Financial Advisors: See What Happens Before a Prospect Visits Your Website

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google. It shows which keywords make your website appear in Google search results, how often people click, and whether Google can read your pages.

Google Analytics starts counting when a visitor lands on your site. Search Console covers the step before that: the search, the result, and the click. It tells you how people found you, and how Google treats your site.

Set up Google Search Console

Go to search.google.com/search-console, add your website, and verify that you own it. Your web person can do this in a few minutes. Choose the Domain option, so the data covers every version of your address (with and without www, http and https).

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists every page on your website. Submitting it tells Google where your pages are, so it does not have to find them one link at a time. This is the next step once your site is connected.

Most website platforms create the file for you. It usually lives at yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml. Open that address in your browser first. If you see a list of your pages, the file exists. On Webflow, turn on the automatic sitemap in your site's SEO settings.

Then submit it:

1. In Search Console, open Indexing > Sitemaps.
2. Paste the URL of your sitemap in the box under Add a new sitemap.
3. Click Submit.

The status should change to Success within a few minutes. Google may take a few days to read all your pages. If the status says Couldn't fetch or shows an error, check that the address opens in your browser, and send the error to your web person.

You only submit the sitemap once. Google checks it again on its own, so new pages are picked up without further work from you.

Give it time to collect data

Search Console starts recording on the day you verify your site. It does not fill in the past, so the sooner you set it up, the sooner you have numbers to compare.

Expect the first days to look empty. That is normal. After a few weeks you will see early patterns. After two to three months, you will have enough data to act on.

A newer site, or one with little content, may show only a handful of clicks at first. Do not rewrite pages in the first week because the numbers look small. Set a reminder for three months from today, and use the wait to check your sitemap and the indexing report below.

Once running, Search Console keeps 16 months of history.

Read the Performance report

This is the page you will use most. It shows four numbers:

• Clicks: how many times someone clicked your link in Google.
• Impressions: how many times your site appeared in results.
• CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions. 20 clicks from 1,000 impressions is a 2% CTR.
• Average position: where you usually show up. Position 1 is the top of page one. Position 11 is the top of page two.

Below the chart, four tabs let you cut the same numbers in different ways.

Queries

Queries are the exact words people typed before they saw your site. Split them into two groups.

Branded queries include your name or your firm's name. Those people already know you. Non-branded queries are topics, like "retirement tax planning" or "Roth conversion." Those people are meeting you for the first time. If nearly every query is your firm name, your content is not reaching new people yet.

Sort the queries by position and look at the ones between 11 and 20. Those sit on page two, where few people click. A better title or a stronger page can move them onto page one. These are often the fastest gains you will find.

Pages

This tab shows which of your pages appear in results and which ones get clicks. A page with many impressions and few clicks has a title or description problem. People see it and pass. A page with no impressions at all is not being found, which sends you to the indexing report below.

Only clicks and impressions are turned on by default. Click the Average CTR and Average position boxes above the chart to turn them on. Now each page shows all four numbers side by side.

How to read position. Position is an average across every search where the page appeared. A position of 8.4 means the page usually shows up around eighth place. Positions 1 to 3 are the top of page one. Positions 4 to 10 are the rest of page one. Anything from 11 to 20 is page two.

The lower the number, the better.

Position matters because it drives clicks. As a rough guide, position 1 gets 25 to 30% of clicks, position 3 gets 8 to 12%, and positions 5 to 10 get 2 to 5%. A page that climbs from 9 to 4 will usually see its CTR rise with it.

The trend to watch is average position. You cannot control impressions. They depend on how many people search for a topic that month. You can control how well your pages rank. If the average position improves month after month, your content is working, even when impressions stay flat.

One caution: position can dip when a page starts appearing for new, broader searches. Impressions rise while position falls. That is not a problem. Check the Queries tab before you worry.

To see the trend, open the date filter, choose Compare, and set the last three months against the three months before.

Countries

This tab shows where your impressions come from, before anyone visits. If a large share comes from places you do not serve, your traffic numbers are inflated. The monthly website check explains how to adjust for that.

Devices

This tab splits your traffic between phones and computers.

On advisory websites, we typically see 40% to 60% of traffic coming from mobile. Check your own split against that range. If your phone share is in it or above it, test your key pages on a phone before anything else.

Then compare CTR and average position across devices. If phones show clearly lower CTR or position than computers, the mobile version of your pages is losing visitors.

Check that Google has your pages

Google can only show pages it has saved. Open Indexing > Pages to see which pages Google saved and which it left out, with a reason for each.

If a page that matters, like your services page or your booking page, is on the Not indexed list, nobody can find it in search. Fix that before you look at any other number.

Not every line on that list is a problem. Old addresses that redirect, and the "www" version of a page that points to the main version, belong there. Focus on the pages you want people to find.

What can go wrong, and how to fix it

Click a reason in the list to see which pages it affects. These are the ones you will meet most often.

• Excluded by "noindex" tag. The page tells Google to stay away. This often happens when a "hide from search" setting used on a draft site is left on after launch. Turn it off in your page's SEO settings. In Webflow, look for the option to exclude the page from search results.
• Blocked by robots.txt. A file on your site tells Google not to visit this page. Ask your web person to check the robots.txt file and remove the rule.
• Not found (404). The address leads nowhere. Either the page was deleted or the link is wrong. Restore the page, or redirect the old address to the closest live page.
• Discovered, currently not indexed. Google knows the page exists but has not visited it yet. This is common on new sites. Make sure the page is in your sitemap and linked from other pages, then wait a few weeks.
• Crawled, currently not indexed. Google visited the page and chose not to save it. The page is usually thin, or too close to another page. Add real content, link to it from related pages, and make it different from the others.

After you fix a page, paste its address into the search bar at the top. The URL Inspection tool tells you whether Google has it. Click Request indexing to ask Google to look again. It can take a few days.

A ten-minute monthly habit

Once a month, open Search Console and write down total clicks, total impressions, average position, and your five best non-branded queries. Compare them with the same numbers from three months ago. The direction matters more than any single month.

With a few months of data in hand, you can judge your site against real benchmarks.