Google Search Console: Best Practices for Use in 2025

Introduction

If you’re running B2B sales in 2025, you’ve probably felt the whiplash.

Google rolls out AI Overviews, zero-click searches keep climbing, and suddenly the organic traffic you used to count on is a lot less predictable. Meanwhile, your SDRs are under pressure to hit ever-higher meeting quotas, and leadership wants to know why inbound isn’t pulling its weight.

Here’s the thing: despite all the noise, organic search still carries a ridiculous amount of weight in B2B. One recent roundup found B2B websites get about 62% of their traffic from organic search, and 57% of B2B marketers say organic delivers the highest ROI of any marketing channel. SEO Sandwitch If you’re not using Google Search Console (GSC) as a core part of your revenue strategy, you’re leaving money on the table.

In this guide, we’ll walk through Google Search Console best practices for 2025 specifically for B2B sales and marketing leaders. We’ll cover how to set it up the right way, how to mine the Performance report for pipeline opportunities, how to protect your inbound with solid technical health, and how to feed those insights directly into outbound SDR campaigns. The goal: turn Search Console from an SEO toy into a revenue engine.

Why Google Search Console Still Matters in 2025 for B2B Revenue

Let’s address the elephant in the room: AI Overviews and zero-click search.

Recent data shows that around 58-60% of Google searches in the US and EU now result in zero clicks. SMA Marketing At the same time, a 2025 study of 200,000 keywords found that click-through for the #1 organic result has dropped by about 32%-from 28% to 19%-after AI Overviews rolled out at scale. GrowthSRC

On the surface, that sounds grim. But here’s the nuance sales leaders care about:

• Not all queries are created equal. Informational queries are taking the biggest zero-click hit. Commercial and high-intent queries still drive a lot of clicks.
• Top positions still own the lion’s share where clicks happen. The #1 organic spot still captures ~39.8% of clicks, with #2 and #3 dropping to 18.7% and 10.2% respectively. Rank.ai
• B2B buyers are still search-driven. About 71% of B2B buyers start their journey with a generic search query, and 83% visit a vendor’s website before buying. SEO Sandwitch

So no, search isn’t dead. But the margin for error is smaller. You can’t just publish random content and hope it works. You need tight alignment between what people search, what they see on the SERP, what’s on your page, and what your SDRs say when they follow up.

Google Search Console is your control room for that alignment. It tells you:

• Which queries are actually triggering your site
• What positions you hold and what CTR you’re earning
• Which pages are getting those clicks
• Where Google is struggling to index or serve your content
• How user experience (Core Web Vitals) might be helping or hurting

For B2B, that translates directly into answers to questions like:

• Which topics are generating real buying interest?
• Which industries or job titles are implied by the queries you rank for?
• Where are we on the cusp of winning page-one traffic that could fuel SDR calendars?
• Which technical issues are quietly choking off demo requests?

Use GSC right, and you don’t just “do SEO better”-you make your entire go-to-market smarter.

Setting Up Google Search Console the Right Way for B2B Teams

If Search Console is misconfigured, all the best practices in the world won’t save you. Let’s keep setup practical and revenue-focused.

1. Use Domain Properties Whenever Possible

If your company is on a single primary domain (no crazy cross-domain setups), use a Domain property instead of just a URL prefix. That way, you see data for:

• All protocols (http/https)
• All subdomains (www, app, blog, resources, etc.)

For B2B companies with separate subdomains for product, docs, and marketing, this prevents blind spots. Your docs subdomain might quietly be a major entry point for prospects evaluating you and competitors.

If you do have separate brands or regions (e.g., eu.example.com), set up additional URL-prefix properties for each so regional teams can drill into their own slice.

2. Connect Google Analytics 4 and Define Key Conversions

GSC won’t tell you about on-site conversions. That’s where GA4 comes in.

• Set up conversions in GA4 for actions that matter to sales: demo requests, trial signups, contact-us submissions, pricing view + doc download, etc.
• Connect GSC and GA4 so you can see which landing pages (from search) are driving those events.

You won’t get query-level conversion data out of the box, but page-level is usually enough to understand which topics and intents are performing.

3. Set Up Users and Permissions with GTM in Mind

Too many orgs keep Search Console access locked to one SEO or web admin.

At minimum, give read access to:

• Head of Marketing / Demand Gen
• RevOps leadership
• SDR / BDR manager
• Anyone responsible for web or content

Then actually walk them through the basics. A quarterly “GSC state of the union” where SEO explains what’s working and what’s breaking for search-using language sales cares about-goes a long way.

4. Submit Clean XML Sitemaps

B2B sites accumulate cruft: legacy campaign pages, old product lines, staging URLs that slipped through.

Clean up your sitemaps so they focus on:

• Core product and solution pages
• High-value blog and resource content
• Docs or knowledge base pages that influence purchase decisions

If a page can’t realistically help you generate pipeline, think twice before you include it in your main sitemap.

5. Configure Basic Settings Properly

Don’t skip the boring stuff:

• Make sure your preferred canonical URLs match your live site structure.
• Check for accidental noindex or blocked paths in robots.txt for sales-critical pages.
• If you target specific countries, review International Targeting (if applicable) and hreflang implementation.

This is all basic hygiene-but if you’re shipping new content weekly and no one’s watching, it’s easy to accidentally de-index a key demo page and only notice when the pipeline dips.

Performance Report: Turning Queries into Pipeline

The Performance report is where most of the revenue upside hides. Used right, it tells you:

• What your market is searching for
• How visible you are
• Whether your result is compelling enough to earn the click
• Which pages are doing the heavy lifting

Here’s how to approach it with a sales development lens.

1. Separate Branded vs Non-Branded Traffic

First, filter your queries into at least two buckets:

• Branded: searches that include your company or product names
• Non-branded: everything else

Branded traffic is largely a trust and reputation metric. It reflects your brand awareness and in-market demand from other channels (events, outbound, referrals, etc.). Non-branded queries are where you earn net new attention from people who may not know you exist.

Both matter, but they serve different purposes:

• If branded searches are growing, your brand and outbound are working.
• If non-branded searches are flat or declining, your SEO isn’t expanding your addressable demand.

2. Group Queries by Intent and Persona

Raw keyword lists are useless to sales. Instead, cluster them into categories like:

• Pain point oriented ("reduce churn in SaaS", "warehouse picking errors")
• Solution type ("B2B appointment setting service", "enterprise data catalog software")
• Comparisons ("[competitor] alternative", "[competitor] vs [your brand]")
• Industry or role-specific ("compliance software for food manufacturers", "sales enablement for medtech reps")

Map each cluster to a target persona and stage of the buyer journey. Now you’ve got language you can hand to SDRs and product marketing.

3. Find the "Almost There" Opportunities

This is where most teams leave easy money on the table.

In the Performance report:

1. Filter queries to non-branded.
2. Set position filter to average position 4-15.
3. Sort by impressions descending.

What you’ll see: keywords where you’re visible but not winning the majority of clicks. Given that positions 1-3 capture the bulk of traffic (with #1 around 39.8% CTR), moving a few of these terms up just one or two spots can have a disproportionate impact on visits and, eventually, meetings. Rank.ai

For each of these queries, ask:

• Is the landing page truly the best answer for the query’s intent?
• Does the title tag clearly communicate value and relevance?
• Is the meta description compelling, benefit-driven, and aligned with the buyer’s language?
• Can we improve on-page content (depth, examples, FAQs) to outclass competitors?

Then prioritize updates for queries that:

• Align closely with your ICP’s problems
• Map to bottom- or mid-funnel intent
• Have a clear path to a conversion (demo, trial, contact)

4. Use CTR Benchmarks to Spot Underperforming Results

In 2025, average CTR curves still follow a predictable drop from position 1 down the page, even if AI Overviews depress overall clicks. If you’re in position 2 with a 3% CTR on a non-branded commercial query, something’s wrong.

Create a simple table for your team:

• Position 1: target CTR band (e.g., 20-30% depending on SERP features)
• Position 2: 10-20%
• Position 3: 7-15%
• Positions 4-10: expect steep declines, but still check for outliers

Now, in Search Console, compare your actual CTRs for important queries against these ranges. When you find a big mismatch, that’s a copy and SERP presentation problem, not a ranking problem.

5. Tie Queries and Pages to Conversions and Opportunities

This is where GSC stops being a marketing toy and becomes a revenue tool.

• In GA4, build a report that shows landing page from organic search vs conversions (demo, trial, etc.).
• In your CRM, add a field for first-touch landing page or first-touch content theme and capture it on forms.
• Periodically map your top converting landing pages back to their main queries in Search Console.

Now you can answer:

• Which topics and intents lead to the highest opportunity creation rate?
• Which pages get a lot of traffic but almost no pipeline?
• Where should we point more internal links, budget, and outbound support?

Once you know, you can do things like:

• Feature top-converting pages more prominently in your nav and internal links.
• Build SDR cadences specifically for visitors who engaged with those topics.
• Create follow-up email sequences targeting form fills who landed via certain queries.

Indexing, Technical Health, and Page Experience: Protecting Your Inbound

You can’t convert traffic you don’t get. And you can’t get traffic for pages Google can’t crawl, index, or serve with a good user experience.

Search Console gives you three big levers here: Indexing, Sitemaps, and Page Experience/Core Web Vitals.

1. Watch the Indexing Report for Revenue Pages

In the Indexing section, pay special attention to:

• Pages marked as “Crawled, currently not indexed”
• Soft 404s
• Canonicalization issues

Cross-reference these with your list of high-value URLs:

• Product and solution pages
• Pricing
• Demographically targeted or industry pages
• Highest-intent blog posts

If any of these are missing or mis-classified, fix them first. That could mean:

• Improving content quality so it’s not seen as thin or duplicate
• Cleaning up duplicate URLs and canonical tags
• Removing parameters that create endless URL variations

Think of it like SDR coverage: if half your ideal accounts are accidentally excluded from your call lists, you’d fix that yesterday. Index coverage is the same idea, just for Googlebot.

2. Keep Sitemaps Focused and Fresh

Your sitemaps are hints to Google about what you care most about.

Best practices for B2B:

• Maintain separate sitemaps for core pages, blog, docs, and maybe region.
• Remove outdated or noindex URLs from sitemaps.
• Automatically update sitemaps as you publish or retire content.

If you have a content-heavy strategy (resource hubs, comparison pages, playbooks), sitemaps are a simple way to ensure Google discovers and revisits new and improved assets quickly.

3. Use Core Web Vitals to Protect Conversions

Core Web Vitals may not feel glamorous, but they matter more in competitive B2B niches. A B2B SEO case study found that improvements in mobile Core Web Vitals correlated directly with ranking increases for a competitive project, especially where only about a third of URLs initially passed mobile thresholds. Holistic SEO

For sales, the simpler takeaway is this: slow, janky pages cost you meetings.

Focus on:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how fast your main content loads
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): whether stuff jumps around while loading
• Interaction responsiveness (INP): how quickly buttons and forms respond

Prioritize fixes on:

• Demo, trial, and contact pages
• Product and solution overviews
• High-traffic blog posts that lead to leads

Every second you shave off load time, especially on mobile, lifts conversion rates and makes paid and organic acquisition more efficient.

Using GSC Data to Fuel Outbound Sales Development

Now we get into the fun part for sales: using Search Console to make your SDRs more dangerous.

Most teams treat SEO and outbound as separate universes. In reality, search data is pure gold for cold email and calling.

1. Turn Queries into Messaging Angles

Take your top 50-100 non-branded queries and group them by theme:

• Cost and ROI concerns
• Risk and compliance concerns
• Operational efficiency problems
• Competitive comparison and replacement

For each theme, build SDR messaging packs:

• Call openers that mirror the search language ("A lot of heads of operations are looking for ways to reduce picking errors without ripping out their whole WMS. Does that ring a bell?")
• Email subject lines and first lines based on the exact query phrasing
• Objection handling that addresses what people clearly care about

You’re not guessing what’s on your prospects’ minds. They’ve already told you, via their search history.

2. Use Landing Page Performance to Inform Persona Targeting

If a specific landing page built for, say, “Compliance management for food manufacturers” is getting disproportionate organic traction and conversions, that’s a signal.

Feed that to your SDR team:

• Build lists of food and beverage manufacturers that match the profile
• Reference the compliance angle explicitly in outreach
• Attach or link to that same high-performing page in follow-up emails

Over time, you’ll see which persona and industry pages reliably turn into pipeline and can weight your outbound accordingly.

3. Align Content Calendars with Outbound Campaigns

Rather than content creating in a vacuum, do this:

1. SEO and demand gen identify target topic clusters from GSC.
2. Product marketing builds pillar and supporting pages.
3. SDR leadership plans campaigns to hit the same themes 4-6 weeks after content goes live.

That way, when prospects who saw you in search later get a cold email about the exact same problem or use case, it feels like a consistent narrative-not random outreach.

4. Enable SDRs with a "Search Language" Playbook

Every quarter, export a list of top queries by theme and create a one-pager for SDRs:

• Top 3-5 phrases per theme
• What buyers likely mean when they type them
• Suggested questions to ask on discovery calls
• Case studies or assets that match each theme

If you’re working with an outsourced SDR partner like SalesHive, this becomes part of your onboarding and playbook. They can use these insights to tailor cold calling scripts and email copy that feel native to how your prospects already talk and search.

Navigating AI Overviews and Zero-Click with Google Search Console

AI Overviews and generative search aren’t going away. Daily AI tool usage nearly doubled from 14% to 29.2% between early 2024 and August 2025, and AI-generated summaries are influencing a growing share of organic traffic. Wikipedia, Generative Engine Optimization

Here’s how to use GSC to adapt instead of complain.

1. Track Where CTR Is Dropping Faster Than Rankings

In the Performance report, watch for queries where:

• Impressions are up or stable
• Average position is stable
• CTR is dropping significantly

Those are your likely AI Overview or SERP feature problem areas. For those queries, consider:

• Shifting focus to deeper, more specific variations where AI Overviews are less dominant.
• Updating content to answer questions AI might be drawing from, while still offering depth and unique insight the AI summary can’t provide.

2. Double Down on Commercial and High-Intent Queries

Informational queries ("what is X", "how does Y work") are the most vulnerable to zero-click behavior. Commercial and late-stage queries ("platform", "software", "pricing", "vendor", "alternatives") are more likely to still drive clicks-and those are the ones sales actually cares about.

Use GSC to:

• Identify which commercial-intent keywords you already rank for.
• Improve those pages aggressively (copy, proof, CTAs, social proof, FAQs).
• Create more content around those bottom-of-funnel topics.

3. Optimize for SERP Features You Can Still Win

Even in an AI-first world, certain SERP features are worth chasing because they still drive clicks:

• FAQs and rich snippets
• Video carousels (for demos, walkthroughs)
• Local packs (for regionally focused services)

Use schema markup where appropriate, and track in GSC whether those enhanced results lift CTR for your target queries.

4. Focus on Conversion Quality, Not Just Volume

Given that a large portion of searches will never click anything, you need to squeeze more value from the traffic you do win.

Use GSC + analytics to answer:

• Which pages have the highest conversion rate from organic?
• How can we replicate that experience and offer structure on other pages?
• Do we have clear, direct CTAs for visitors who arrive via high-intent searches?

For example, if visitors who land on “B2B appointment setting service” convert at 4% while those on a generic “lead generation tips” post convert at 0.2%, that tells you where to focus your SEO and CRO time.

Operationalizing Google Search Console: Cadence, Dashboards, and Workflow

Owning GSC isn’t about one giant overhaul. It’s about consistent, light-weight habits.

1. Weekly: Performance and Incidents

Every week, your SEO or demand gen owner should quickly:

• Scan overall clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position trends.
• Look for sudden drops or spikes by page or query.
• Check for new index coverage errors on important URLs.

If something looks off, loop in web/dev or content immediately. This is like checking your sales forecast each week-you don’t wait until end-of-quarter surprises.

2. Monthly: Revenue-Themed Review

Once a month, get marketing, SEO, and sales leadership together for a 30-45 minute review:

• Top 10 query clusters by impressions and clicks
• Top converting landing pages from organic
• New high-impression, low-CTR or mid-position opportunities
• Pages where rankings are stable but CTR is falling (potential AI Overview impact)

Turn that into concrete decisions:

• Which themes will next month’s content prioritize?
• Which topics should SDRs emphasize in sequences?
• Which pages need CRO or copy refreshes?

3. Quarterly: Roadmap and Resourcing

Each quarter, use Search Console data to shape your broader roadmap:

• Identify 3-5 “revenue content” themes where you’ll build clusters of pages.
• Decide which technical and Core Web Vitals issues to fix based on revenue impact.
• Align outbound campaigns so that SDR messaging hits the same pains and industries.

If you work with an outsourced SDR partner like SalesHive, bring them into this meeting. The more closely their outbound plays mirror your search-driven insights, the higher your meeting-to-opportunity conversion rate will be.

4. Dashboards That Make Sense to Sales

Don’t expect sales leaders to love raw GSC screens.

Build one or two simple, shared dashboards (Looker Studio, your BI tool, or even slides) that show:

• Organic-driven demo requests and opportunities by theme
• Top query clusters and landing pages contributing to pipeline
• Trendlines for branded vs non-branded demand

Now you can have grown-up conversations like, “If we invest in ranking higher for these three clusters, based on past performance we can expect X more demos and Y more pipeline.” That’s the language CFOs and CROs understand.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

Let’s bring it down to earth for your SDRs, AEs, and sales leaders.

For SDR Leaders

Search Console tells you where the inbound heat is. If you see a surge in queries around, say, “SOC 2 compliance automation” and corresponding traffic to a specific solution page, you can:

• Spin up an SDR campaign to compliance leaders at companies that match that profile.
• Equip reps with messaging drawn directly from those search phrases.
• Prioritize follow-up speed for inbound leads that touched those pages.

That’s how you align your outbound dials and emails with what the market is already asking for.

For AEs

Knowing what a prospect likely searched-and which page they landed on-gives you a cheat sheet for discovery.

If they came in through a “Salesforce data integration for manufacturers” page, you can skip generic questions and go straight to:

• “Talk me through your current integration between Salesforce and your ERP.”
• “How are you handling data quality and sync issues today?”

You’re speaking to the specific pain that drove them to search in the first place.

For Sales Leadership and RevOps

From a planning standpoint, GSC plus CRM data helps you:

• Forecast inbound contribution to pipeline more accurately.
• Justify SEO and content investments in board-level terms (opportunities and revenue, not just sessions).
• Decide where to deploy SDR headcount by seeing which topics and industries are heating up in search.

When you layer an outbound engine on top-as SalesHive does for hundreds of B2B companies-you turn those organic intent signals into consistent conversations, not just anonymous traffic.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Google Search Console in 2025 is not just an SEO reporting tool-it’s a direct line from what your market cares about to how you build pipeline.

Yes, AI Overviews and zero-click searches have changed the game. But B2B buyers are still starting with search, organic still drives the majority of traffic, and the sites that win page-one visibility for high-intent queries still capture a disproportionate share of clicks and deals.

If you’re serious about revenue, here’s your action plan:

1. Make sure GSC is correctly set up and visible to marketing, RevOps, and sales.
2. Use the Performance report to identify “almost there” keywords and high-intent themes.
3. Fix indexing and Core Web Vitals issues on your money pages first.
4. Feed query and page insights directly into SDR messaging and outbound campaigns.
5. Review everything on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence with revenue in mind.

Do that consistently, and Google Search Console stops being a dusty SEO artifact and becomes something far more valuable: a shared GTM intelligence system that helps your team book more qualified meetings and hit your number with less guesswork.