Google search console is one of the important ways to optimize the WordPress site for SEO. It offers specific webmaster tools to help website owners monitor their search presence and ranking of the keywords.
In this article, we will show you how to add and verify the WordPress site in the Google search console or webmaster.
What is Google Search Console?
Google search console or webmaster is a free tool provided by Google to help websites owners monitor their websites presence in the search results.
It helps track the keywords ranking along with keeping you updated about the site errors, security issues, and indexing issues that issues should be removed for better search results and performance.
If you want to improve your website, then you need to add it to Google Webmaster tools from the first day..
Let’s have a look at how to easily add your site to Google Search Console or webmaster.
Adding your WordPress website to Google search console or webmaster
First you need to visit the Google Search Console website and then tab on the ‘Start Now’ button.
Now, sign in with the Gmail Account. Once logged in, you’ll be asked to enter the website URL.
There are two methods of site verification: Domain name or URL Prefix. We recommend you to do the second method URL prefix one because it is more flexible.
Keep in mind of http and https while pasting the url in the prefix method because these two are different protocols for Google. Even Google also considers https://www.example.com and https://example.com as two different websites.
You need to enter the correct website URL used by the WordPress website.
If you don’t know how to find the exact URL of your website then simply sign in to your WordPress account and go to the setting general page. There you can see the exact website’s URL in the address.
Paste that copied URL in the webmaster setup Wizard, Now, click on the continue button to go next.
Now, you will be asked to verify the ownership of your website. There are different ways to verify the ownership of the website. We will show all the different methods below but the easiest one is HTML tag.
Tab on the HTML tag then copy the code which is inside it.
Now, you will have to add this Google site verification meta tag in WordPress site’s header. So, Google can verify the ownership of your website.
You just need to edit the header.php file in your WordPress theme and add the code just above the <body> tag. But this method is not forever because if you update and change the WordPress theme, then the HTML code will disappear.
Google checks the HTML tag periodically and if it cannot find the verification code in the header part of the website then it will disable the access to the website data.
Here you will get step by step on how to make sure that Google can always verify your ownership of the website.
So to paste the verification code in the header file. First you need to install and activate the insert headers and footers plugin. For more details, have a look at step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin. Upon activation, go to the setting >> Insert Headers and footers page and paste the Google HTML tag code you copied earlier inside the Scripts in Header box.
Click on the save button to save the changes in the header of your website. Now, go to the Google search console settings and click on the verify button.
Google search console will now look for the HTML code in the website to verify the ownership of the website. After finding the code in the website header, it will show a success message.
Note:
You don’t see the success message, then wait for 5 minutes to fetch that updated one or clear the WordPress cache. This will ensure Google to fetch the latest version of the website. That’s all my friends, now you have successfully added your website to the Google Search Console or webmaster tools. Finally, you can click on the “Go to property” link to visit the Google search console dashboard.
