Google Search Console is a free service provided by Goggle which helps you to maintain your site, troubleshoot problems, see analytics, performance, and many more. These results will help you to optimize your website and content.
Through this service, you will be able to submit your sitemap so that Google can crawl all your URLs. It is a way of asking google politely to index all your URLs. To use the Google search console first you have to verify your site and claim your ownership. Then only you will be able to take the advantage of the service.
How to verify your site?
Step 1- When you will open Google Search Console you will get two options to verify your site. The first is Domain which is the new and the second one is URL Prefix which is an old method. We will verify using the second one. Paste your Website URL in the given blank and then click continue.
Step 2- After clicking continue you will get 5 options to verify your site. We will go with the second one named HTML Tag. You will be given a tag which you have to copy the tag.
Step 3- Now open your wp-admin and go to theme editor under the appearance section.
Step 4- Now search for the theme header section under theme files and paste the copied tag as shown in the image below.
Step 5- After pasting the copied tag in the required position go back to Google Search Console Site and click verify. Your site will be verified and you will be registered as the owner of the site.
Tools provided by Google Search Console
- Submitting sitemap for indexing URLs.
- Re-indexing new URLs
- Number of times your site appears in google search.
- Which search queries resulted in the appearance of your site.
- Number of clicks on your site through those queries.
- Receive alters from google when encountered with spam, threats, and other issues.
- Show you which sites link to your website.
- Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other search features.
Who should use Google Search Console?
- Business Owners: You may not have to manage your page but you should at least know some of the tools provided by the Google search console and what are for.
- Web Developers: If you do actual coding in the site and use markup then this service by Google will help you to find errors in the markup.
- SEO specialists: People who are focused on online marketing, Search Console helps in monitoring your website traffic, optimizing your ranking, and making informed decisions about the appearance of your site’s search results. You can use the information provided by this to influence technical decisions for the website and do sophisticated marketing analysis in conjunction with other Google tools like Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Ads.
- Site administrators: As a site admin, you care about the healthy operation of your site. Search Console lets you easily monitor and, in some cases, resolve server errors, site load issues, and security issues like hacking and malware.