Google Search Console is a powerful tool that allows you to monitor and manage how your website appears in Google search results. Adding your WordPress site to Google Search Console is crucial for ensuring your website gets indexed by Google and for gaining insights into its search performance. In this guide, we will discuss the benefits of adding Google Search Console to WordPress and provide a step-by-step guide on how to add a WordPress website to Google Search Console to optimize your website’s search engine rankings.
Benefits of Adding WordPress To Google Search Console
Adding a WordPress website to Google Search Console offers a range of benefits, enhancing your site’s visibility and performance on Google. Here are the key benefits:
1. Performance Tracking
Google Search Console (GSC) provides detailed reports on impressions, clicks, and average position in search results. This helps you understand how well your site is performing in search engines and identify opportunities for improvement.
2. Indexing Status
You can monitor which pages of your site have been indexed by Google and request indexing for new or updated pages. This ensures your content appears in search results as quickly as possible.
3. Keyword Insights
GSC identifies the keywords and queries that drive traffic to your site. Understanding these keywords helps you optimize your content to target the most effective search terms.
4. Mobile Usability
The tool checks your site’s mobile-friendliness and provides insights into any issues that might affect the mobile user experience. This is crucial as mobile search continues to grow.
5. Security Issues
GSC alerts you to potential security issues like malware or hacking attempts, allowing you to address these problems swiftly to avoid penalties or loss of traffic.
6. Crawl Errors
It identifies crawl errors and problems that Googlebot encounters when accessing your site. Resolving these errors ensures that your site is fully accessible to search engines.
7. Structured Data
The tool provides information on how well your structured data is performing and highlights any errors. Properly implemented structured data can enhance search result appearances with rich snippets.
8. Backlink Analysis
GSC gives insights into the sites that link to yours, helping you understand your backlink profile and its impact on your SEO.
9. Manual Actions
If your site violates Google’s guidelines, GSC will notify you of any manual actions taken against it. This allows you to take corrective actions to restore your site’s ranking.
10. Enhancement Reports
These reports show opportunities for improvements in areas such as speed, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), and user experience, helping you prioritize changes that can boost your site’s performance.
Adding a WordPress Website to the Google Search Console
To begin using Google Search Console tools for your WordPress website, you need to follow a few essential steps. This involves submitting your website URL and verifying ownership. There are several verification methods, but we’ll focus on the one most suitable for the majority of WordPress users. Detailed instructions will be provided, so simply follow each step carefully.
Step 1. Creating or Logging into a Google Account
First, ensure you have a Google account. If you don’t have one, create it at [accounts.google.com](https://accounts.google.com/). If you already have a Google account, simply log in.
Step 2. Access Google Search Console
To connect your WordPress website to Google Search Console, start by visiting the Google Search Console website and clicking on “Start Now.”
Step 3. Add Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console
Connect Your WordPress Website to Google Search Console
First, sign in with your Google/Gmail account. After logging in, you’ll be prompted to enter your website’s URL for verification. There are two methods available for verifying your site.
We recommend using the URL prefix method as it offers more flexibility. Note that Google treats HTTP and HTTPS as separate sites, as well as WWW and non-WWW versions.
To ensure you use the correct URL, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to **Settings > General**. There, you’ll find the URL of your website in the “Site Address (URL)” field.
Enter the correct website URL in the Google Search Console setup wizard and click “Continue” to proceed.
Next, you’ll need to verify ownership of your website. There are five different ways to do this. They are:
✔HTML File
This is the recommended method to verify your website in the Google Search Console. Download the HTML verification file provided in the hyperlink.
Next, log in to an FTP client like FileZilla and upload the file to the root directory of your website (e.g., the wp-content folder, wp-config.php file, etc.).
Return to Google Search Console and click the “Verify” button to complete the process.
✔HTML Tags
This is one of the easiest ways to verify your website with Google Search Console, especially if you use WordPress SEO plugins like Rank Math, Yoast SEO, or All in One SEO. Here’s how to do it with Rank Math:
1. Install and activate the Rank Math plugin on your WordPress website.
2. Expand the HTML tag option and copy the code provided.
3. Go to Rank Math >> General Settings >> Webmaster Tools.
4. Paste the copied code in the Google Search Console section and click the “Save Changes” button.
5. Return to Google Search Console and click the “Verify” button to complete the process
✔Google Analytics
If your website is already connected to Google Analytics (or you plan to connect it), you can use it to verify your site in the Google Search Console.
1. Expand the Google Analytics option.
2. Click the “Verify” button, and Google Search Console will use the Asynchronous Tracking Code to verify your WordPress website.
✔Google Tag Manager
You can also verify your website through Google Tag Manager.
1. Expand the Google Tag Manager option.
2. Click the “Verify” button, and Google Tag Manager will automatically connect your WordPress website to Google Search Console.
✔Domain Name Provider Method
This method is suitable for those who prefer not to install a new plugin.
1. Expand the Domain name provider option and copy the TXT record.
2. Log in to your Domain Name Provider account and paste the copied TXT record (this step may vary depending on your DNS provider).
Step 4: How to Add an XML Sitemap to Google Search Console
An XML sitemap lists all the contents of your website in XML format, helping search engines like Google discover and index your web content.
If you have already installed a WordPress SEO plugin like Rank Math, the XML sitemap of your website will be automatically added to Google Search Console. To verify and configure your sitemap:
1. Go to Rank Math >> Sitemap Settings.
2. Enable the sitemap for all post types and taxonomies you want to index.
3. Click the “Save Changes” button.
If you haven’t installed any WordPress plugins, you can manually submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console:
1. Access your XML sitemap by adding `sitemap_index.xml` at the end of your website address. For example, if your web address is `https://www.abcxyz.com/`, your sitemap will be at `https://www.abcxyz.com/sitemap_index.xml`.
2. Visit the Google Search Console website and click on “Sitemaps”.
3. Enter the sitemap URL to submit a new sitemap.
Step 5: Confirming Site Indexing
After submitting your sitemap, Google will start crawling and indexing your site’s pages. You can monitor the indexing progress and view index coverage in the Google Search Console dashboard.
Step 6: Monitoring Your WordPress Site in Google Search Console
Google Search Console offers valuable insights into your website’s performance in search results. Monitor performance data, search queries, click-through rates, and other metrics. Use this information to optimize your content and improve your site’s search visibility.
Conclusion
The Google Search Console provides tools to help you monitor and improve your website’s ranking by working on SEO. These tools are a wonderful resource for any WordPress webmaster looking to build a successful website. To use them, you must first connect and integrate Google Search Console with WordPress.
In this article, we’ve covered how to add a WordPress website to Google Search Console. By following these methods, you can take control of your website’s presence in Google search results and boost its overall visibility.
