Importing Search Console data into SEO by Zaweba

Google Search Console knows how your own pages actually perform in search: the queries they appear for, their positions and clicks. SEO by Zaweba can read that data. On the Logs and Search Console page, drop in Search Console export files, or paste a CSV, and click Import. It recognises each file by its headers and reports quick wins and problems you'd otherwise have to dig out by hand.

It works from exports, so there's nothing to connect. If you'd prefer a live link, the optional Search Console API integration gives performance data without CSV exports, but the import does the job on its own.

Which exports to use

SEO by Zaweba accepts the Performance export (a zip containing Queries.csv and Pages.csv), the Links export and the Crawl stats export. The page explains where each one lives in Search Console, so you don't need to remember the menus. In the guided audit, Search Console exports appear in Step 5's extra tasks list for your own sites, with the time they take and the accuracy they add.

You can drop the files one at a time or together. Recognising them by their headers means you don't need to say which is which.

Quick wins on page 2

Page-2 quick wins are queries where your pages sit at positions 11 to 20. They're close to the first page, and small improvements can move them up. The report lists them so you can pick the most promising and run a full audit on the page that ranks.

Weak click-through and the wrong page

Weak click-through for the position flags queries where you appear but people don't click as often as they would expect at that position. The usual suspects are the title and description, which the page checks look at in detail, including the title's length in characters and estimated pixels.

Queries ranking with the wrong page are a sign of keyword cannibalisation or of a page that's accidentally relevant. If a blog post ranks for a term your service page should own, that's the place to start.

Links and crawl stats

From the Links export, the report shows your top linked pages, the sites linking to you and the anchors they use. From Crawl stats, it reports how Google has been crawling the site. Together with the server log analyser on the same page, that gives a solid picture of how search engines see your site.

Fitting it into an audit

A good routine is to import Search Console data first, pick a page-2 query or a weak click-through query, and then run the guided audit on that page and term. The audit compares your page with the ones above it and finishes with the single most important fix. Next month, import fresh exports and see whether the query has moved.

Everything stays on your PC. The data is stored locally alongside the project, and nothing is sent anywhere by the import. That suits anyone handling a client's Search Console data, who'd rather it didn't pass through yet another online service.