GSC Weekly Review — Standard Operating Procedure

This is the weekly GSC review workflow. It runs every Monday morning before any content work. Two properties: asquaresolution.com (WordPress) and lab.asquaresolution.com (Vercel/Next.js). Combined runtime: 30–45 minutes.

The review has a fixed sequence. Do not skip steps or reorder — each step surfaces data that informs the next.

Why Weekly, Not Monthly

Monthly reviews let problems compound. A single week of a 404 on a linked page costs 4x more in GSC data drift than catching it on Monday. The weekly cadence catches:

• Pages that dropped out of index (often from accidental noindex additions)
• Sudden CTR drops from title changes
• New queries appearing that need content attention
• Coverage errors from sitemap issues

Monthly reviews are for trend analysis. Weekly reviews are for operational hygiene.

Pre-Review Setup

Open these tabs:

1. Google Search Console — asquaresolution.com property
2. Google Search Console — lab.asquaresolution.com property
3. Lab telemetry dashboard: lab.asquaresolution.com/ops/gsc
4. Lab sitemap: lab.asquaresolution.com/sitemap.xml
5. WordPress sitemap: asquaresolution.com/sitemap_index.xml

Set GSC date range: Last 28 days (not last 7 — too small a sample for meaningful position changes).

Phase 1 — Coverage and Indexing (10 min)

Step 1.1 — Coverage Report

GSC → Indexing → Pages

Check four numbers:

• Indexed: should grow week-over-week if new content was published
• Not indexed: check reason breakdown
• Crawled – currently not indexed: normal for thin pages; concerning if it includes important content
• Discovered – currently not indexed: normal if Googlebot hasn't processed yet

Action thresholds:

• If "Not indexed" count increased by > 5% week-over-week → investigate immediately
• If any page in "Excluded" was previously indexed → check for accidental noindex, canonical change, or 404

Step 1.2 — Sitemap Status

GSC → Indexing → Sitemaps

Confirm:

• Sitemap last read date is within 7 days
• Submitted URLs count matches expected count
• No sitemap errors

For lab.asquaresolution.com: expected URL count at May 2026 baseline is 313. If count dropped, a section of content may have been accidentally excluded.

For asquaresolution.com: check sitemap_index.xml HTTP status. A 404 here means all post/page sitemaps are unreachable.

Step 1.3 — URL Inspection on Newly Published Pages

For any page published in the past 7 days: GSC → URL Inspection → paste URL → Request Indexing

This is not strictly necessary (Googlebot will find the page via sitemap), but it accelerates discovery for time-sensitive content.

Phase 2 — Performance Review (15 min)

GSC → Performance → Search Results Date range: Last 28 days. Compare: Previous period.

Step 2.1 — Overall Metrics Check

Read four numbers and their week-over-week delta:

• Total clicks
• Total impressions
• Average CTR
• Average position

Direction rules:

• Impressions up + clicks up → normal growth, check which pages/queries drove it
• Impressions up + clicks flat → CTR problem, go to Step 2.2
• Impressions down → possible deindex or algorithm flux, cross-check Coverage report
• Position worsened by > 3 on any tracked keyword → investigate that page specifically

Step 2.2 — Low CTR Pages

Click Pages tab. Sort by Impressions descending.

Identify pages where:

• Impressions ≥ 50
• CTR < 2% (if position ≤ 10) OR CTR < 0.5% (if position ≤ 5)

These are pages where ranking is working but the title or description is failing to earn the click.

Standard diagnosis:

1. Open the page URL in an incognito tab, search for the top query triggering impressions
2. Look at how the title and meta description render in search results
3. Check if the description is being auto-generated by Google (common when meta description is missing or too short)

Action:

• If title is generic ("Home", "Blog Post", category name) → rewrite to match query intent
• If description is missing → add one, 140–160 characters, first sentence answers the query
• If the page ranking for a query is clearly the wrong page → add a canonical or create a better-targeted page

Record in a table: page URL, current CTR, query, action taken, date.

Step 2.3 — Position 11-20 Candidates

Click Pages tab. Sort by Impressions descending. Filter: Average Position between 11-20.

These pages are on page 2. One targeted improvement can reach page 1.

For each page in this range with > 20 impressions:

1. Open the page
2. Identify the primary query (GSC → click the page row → see Queries tab)
3. Check: does the page title include the query keyword? Does the first 100 words reference it?
4. Check: how many internal links point to this page? (use lab.asquaresolution.com/ops/seo link graph)

Standard action: Add 2-3 internal links from higher-authority pages. Update the first H2 to include the query keyword. Add one more evidence item or specific detail the ranking competition doesn't have.

Do not over-optimize. One clear change per page per week. Record what you changed and the date. Check position change in 2 weeks.

Step 2.4 — Query Expansion Opportunities

Click Queries tab. Sort by Impressions descending. Look for:

• Queries with 10+ impressions but 0 clicks — the page is ranking but for a query it doesn't directly answer
• Queries that are variations of a target query ("Next.js edge runtime" when you're targeting "Next.js edge runtime error") — expand the content to explicitly target the variant
• Branded queries you didn't know were generating impressions — note these, they indicate entity recognition

Phase 3 — Content Health (10 min)

Step 3.1 — Stale Content Identification

Using the Lab's lab.asquaresolution.com/ops/seo freshness panel:

• Identify content unchanged for > 60 days
• Cross-reference with GSC: is any of that content ranking and losing position?

A page losing position + not updated in 60+ days is the clearest signal for a content refresh.

Stale content refresh checklist:

• Update the updated: frontmatter field
• Add one new specific detail, measurement, or evidence item
• Check all internal links are still valid
• Submit URL for reindexing after update

Step 3.2 — Orphaned Indexed Pages

Some pages may be indexed by Google but have zero internal links — meaning Google found them via the sitemap but nothing on the site links to them.

Cross-check: Take the "Not found (404)" pages from GSC Coverage → compare with the Lab's orphaned pages list at /ops/seo. Any page that is orphaned AND declining in impressions is a priority for either:

1. Adding internal links to it (if the content is good)
2. Redirecting it to a relevant page (if it's outdated)

Step 3.3 — 404 Check

GSC → Indexing → Pages → "Not found (404)"

Any 404 that:

• Had more than 10 impressions in the past 28 days
• Is linked from another indexed page

→ Set a 301 redirect to the most relevant current URL.

For the Lab (Next.js): add to app/not-found.tsx or next.config.js redirects array. For WordPress: use the Redirection plugin.

Phase 4 — Action Log (5 min)

Before closing the GSC tabs, record what you found and what you acted on:

## GSC Review — [YYYY-MM-DD]

**Property:** lab.asquaresolution.com + asquaresolution.com
**Duration:** Xm

### Coverage
- Indexed URLs: [n] (±[n] from last week)
- New coverage errors: [n] / [description]
- Action: [what you did]

### Performance
- Total clicks: [n] (±[n])
- Total impressions: [n] (±[n])
- Avg CTR: [n]% (±[n])
- Low CTR pages identified: [n]
- Action: [title/description changes made]

### Position 11-20 Candidates
- Pages identified: [n]
- Action: [internal links added, content updated]

### Other
- Stale content refreshed: [page]
- 404s resolved: [URL → redirect target]

Publish this as a log entry at content/logs/[date]-gsc-weekly-review.mdx. The log is itself operational evidence — it proves the review happened and surfaces the delta over time.

Monthly Addition to Weekly Review

On the first Monday of each month, add:

Step M1 — Export GSC CSV

• Performance → Search Results → Export → Google Sheets or CSV
• Run node scripts/ingest-gsc.mjs path/to/export.csv
• Rebuild the Lab to update the /ops/gsc dashboard

Step M2 — Trend analysis

• Compare month-over-month total impressions
• Identify queries where position improved/declined by > 5
• Identify new queries appearing this month (not in previous month's export)

Step M3 — Sitemap full-check

• node scripts/ingest-sitemap.mjs --full
• Verify URL count grew (or investigate if it shrank)

Decision Tree — What to Do When

Impressions dropping week-over-week?
  └─ Check Coverage report for new "Not indexed" entries
      └─ Found: fix noindex/canonical/404 → resubmit
      └─ Not found: likely algorithm flux, monitor 2 more weeks

CTR below 2% on page with 50+ impressions?
  └─ Open page in incognito, check SERP appearance
      └─ Description truncated/generic → rewrite meta description
      └─ Title not matching query → rewrite title
      └─ Wrong page ranking → create targeted page

Position 11-20 with 20+ impressions?
  └─ Add 2 internal links from pages with more authority
  └─ Ensure primary query keyword in H1 or H2
  └─ Wait 2 weeks, check again

404 errors increasing?
  └─ Check for recent URL structure changes
  └─ Check for deleted/renamed content
  └─ Add 301 redirects for any 404 with > 5 recent impressions

New branded queries appearing?
  └─ Note in log — entity recognition signal
  └─ No action required unless CTR is very low

Related

• GSC Operations Dashboard — build-time intelligence layer
• SEO Operations Dashboard — internal link graph + freshness
• Platform Metrics Baseline — baseline numbers for delta tracking