How to Add Google Search Console to WordPress

When you’re ready to launch a website, one of the first things you should be doing is adding your site to Google Search Console. This is as important as adding your site to Google Analytics, in order to track your traffic. In this article, not only how to add Search Console to WordPress, but also why you should.

Google Search Console is a free resource from Google, that allows you to track how the search engine not only sees your site, but gives indicators on what to fix, in order to improve your search results.

However, this tool not only provides information on how Google crawls and indexes your website, but also goes further to even help you improve web accessibility and even usability.

Now, Google has a lot of different free tools, so you might wonder if Google Search Console is the same as Google Analytics, but it’s not. You can connect both tools, but they serve two different purposes. Google Analytics is for tracking your website traffic, while Google Search Console is designed to observe how Google is actually seeing your website.

In a way, that sounds like Google is kind of like a human, and that’s why you should clearly be writing for humans, rather than the actual hardware and software that makes up the search engine. Google Search is dedicated to delivering accurate results, and so you, as a content creator need to get in the brain of your visitors when writing.

The way Google search works in listing sites, is usually from following links. It could be from linking to other sites, or being linked from other websites.

However, as a website owner, when you launch your site, you want to get Google crawling your site immediately. When you add Google Search Console to WordPress, you are getting Google search’s immediate attention.

Google Search Console provides a lot of benefits for all walks of website owners, like:

• Businesses
• Bloggers,
• Web designers and developers
• SEO specialists

Businesses

Whether you’re a small business or large corporation, Google Search Console can help you get your site crawled and indexed on the search engine a little faster, than just waiting for Google to find you. Not only that, you can see how to improve your website’s loading speed and even get tips to improve your site when people use it in smaller devices.

Bloggers

As a blogger, you’re constantly pushing out content in the world, and sometimes you might edit articles, change the permalink structure, or remove pages or posts. Google Search Console can help you stay on top of your site’s internal links and alert you when you have content that can’t be found, also known as the 404 error.

Web designers and developers

As a web designer and developer, aside from designing a functioning website, it has to load fast and be seen well in desktop browsers, as well as tablets, smartphones, and other smaller devices. Google Search Console offers tools so you can tweak your site or your client’s site so not only it loads pretty quickly, but people can see the website properly on most devices.

SEO specialists

SEO specialists can benefit from Google Search Console by gathering all a website’s URLs that were crawled, as well as common terms that are searched for (especially when both Google Analytics and Google Search Console are connected). A SEO specialist can even see how the page is performing or if there are any errors. All of this data can be used toward building new content or optimizing the current content on the website.

• Monitors site for errors
• Monitors site for malware
• Monitors site for structural markup issues
• Keyword analysis
• Page position in search results
• Ability to submit pages to be analyzed
• Submit your sitemap
• Mobile-first indexing
• Report for who links to your website

Monitors site for errors

When you’re always adding, editing, or removing content, some mistakes happen. With Google Search Console, you can find out if you have pages that won’t load right, or are no longer found.

Monitors site for malware

Security is important, and Google really cares. If you don’t like to go to websites that have malware, Google tries to protect your website visitors by deterring them from opening your web pages and possibly getting their computer infected. Google will add warnings to the browser or search results to indicate if a website has malware, and you will have to clean your site to get the alerts to go away.

Google Search Console will usually alert you about the infection and even tell you generally where the malware was found. When you’re done cleaning your hacked website, you can submit a report to Google to scan the site for consideration of removing those hacked labels that they had issued.

Monitors site for structural markup issues

Google works hard to crawl millions of websites each day, and index them in the most logical order that their algorithms have been programmed. However, if your website isn’t built with code that is clean, organized, and allows Google to determine the difference between your site’s navigation, sidebars, or actual content, then you may have more issues with your search results being accurate.

Keyword analysis

Google Search Console can provide you a way to perform a query on what keywords your site is being indexed for, and break it down so you can improve your content. You can also find out if Google is crawling for more than one keyword, for either sitewide or per post or page.

Page position in search results

Aside from keyword analysis, you can see how your page is positioned in the search results.

Ability to submit pages to be analyzed

You can submit newly created pages, in order to get Google’s attention to them.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a specially coded and organized list of your website’s link structure. This list will organize your pages, posts, categories, tags, videos, or other types of content so Google can effectively crawl and tell what each file’s importance, and relationship to each other on your website.

Mobile-first indexing

Over 6.6 billion people own and use a smartphone, and Google loves when website owners have a mobile version or mobile-first approach to their website. Google Search Console allows you to see any errors for the mobile version of your WordPress website, so you can correct them.

Report for who links to your website

You should always want to know who is linking to your website. You need to know where your traffic might be coming from. It could prove useful in case the link comes from negative or positive content. You can even build partnerships or collaborations with other website owners that have linked to you, or report and disavow sites that could negatively impact your site’s reputation.

Now that you know about Google Search Console, you’re ready to learn how to add Google Search Console to WordPress. There are a few methods to do this, but honestly, if you’re already using a WordPress SEO plugin, this will help you.

In the case of this article, you’ll learn how to add Google Search Console to WordPress using the Yoast SEO plugin.

1. Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin from your WordPress admin area.
2. Go to Webmaster Tools tab in Yoast SEO’s General Settings
3. Click link under the field for Google verification code
4. Choose HTML tag for verification
5. Copy the code from Google Webmaster
6. Paste code into Yoast SEO field for the Google verification code
7. Click verify button on Google Webmaster page
8. Click link on success page to go to Google Search Console
9. Add property to Google Search Console
10. Add your Yoast SEO sitemap to Google Search Console

1. Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin from your WordPress admin area.

You can go to Add New, under your plugins and search for Yoast SEO. Once you have installed and activated the plugin, skip the wizard and go to the general settings section under Yoast SEO, in your WordPress admin’s left sidebar.

2. Go to Webmaster Tools tab in Yoast SEO’s General Settings

Under the General settings, in Yoast SEO, there is a Webmaster Tool tab. This is where you can paste the website verification code that search engines like Google, Baidu, Bing, and more will give, so you can add your website to them.

3. Click link under the field for Google verification code

Find the field that says “Google verification code” and under it there is a link to Google Search Console. It actually is to Google Webmaster Central, which allows you to choose a few methods on how to verify your website. When you click on the link, it will open a new window to Google Webmaster Central.

4. Choose HTML tag for verification

Once on the Webmaster Central, choose the HTML tag method.

5. Copy the code from Google Webmaster

When you select the radio button for the HTML tag verification method, you will be shown some code to copy. You will copy the line of code, but the part you only want to put in the Yoast SEO Google verification code, is the area with a long set of numbers and letters.

6. Paste code into Yoast SEO field for the Google verification code

Only paste the long set of code and save it. You might need to use a text editor to paste the code, and edit out the surrounding HTML code first.

7. Click verify button on Google Webmaster page

Once you click the verify button, and everything is done right, you will be sent to a success page.

8. Click link on success page to go to Google Search Console

Use the link for “Google Search Console” and click on it. You will be sent to Google Search Console. While you’ve generally verified your website, you might not see it in Google Search Console. You will need to add it.

A note - the image above is an example of Google Search Console after your site has been submitted, and some time has passed for Google to crawl and collect data on your website.

9. Add property to Google Search Console

In the rounded drop down field on the top left of Google Search Console, click on the drop down, and select “Add property”.

You will be prompted with a popup type window. Add your URL with the prefix, whether HTTP or HTTPS, and then click the “Continue” button. This will add your site to your Google Search Console dashboard. However, even if you add your site, it’s important to take the extra step to add your sitemap.

10. Add your Yoast SEO sitemap to Google Search Console

Yoast SEO generates a nice looking and organized sitemap that you can submit to Google Search Console. This sitemap will allow Google to thoroughly crawl your website. You can find that under the XML sitemaps area within the Features tab of your General settings of Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO’s sitemap usually ends in sitemap_index.xml. You will need this part to submit your sitemap.

In your Google Search Console dashboard, go to the Sitemaps section and you can use the sitemap_index.xml to add to the area that says “Enter sitemap URL”. You don’t need to use the full URL. Only the ending, which again, for this particular tutorial - sitemap_index.xml. Hit the submit button after you add the sitemap page URL.

And voila! You now know how to add Google Search Console to WordPress.

Now that you’ve learned how to add Google Search Console to WordPress, you try it out on all of your websites. It could take a few days to gather data on your site for brand new sites. If you’re just adding your website to Google Search Console for the first time, but your site has been around for a while, and may be a few hundred pages and posts, you might want to wait a couple weeks for Google to thoroughly crawl and index your site, as well as gather enough data.