Why You Can’t Find A Good SEO Specialist
Setting up your website with Google Search Console is easy, free, and efficient, as it offers a lot of benefits and can be set up in less than 3 minutes. You can also choose how you would like to set it up, depending on how it would work best for you.
No matter what kind of company you are running, with so many local and international that are selling the same product/service as you, every competitive edge that we can get helps. One of the main advantages over any other company in today’s world is having, maintaining, and improving your online presence.
That is why a great way to establish an online presence is by using Google Search Console.
Now, it might seem as though improving your online presence is impossible or reserved for huge corporate companies, but that simply isn’t the case. Google’s worked hard on not only making that possible but also fast, free and quick to set up.
Again, the answer is adding your website to Google Search Console.
And in this guide, we’ll deep dive into how you can utilize it.
The reason why we’ve compiled this guide is that the walkthrough that Google provides (how to set up Google Search Console and verify your website) is wordy and long.
Here’s a more user-friendly bullet point how-to guide on how to add your website to Google Search Console, the fastest and best way.
So let’s get started.
Before we go into how to add your website to Google Search Console, let’s briefly cover exactly what it is. Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, it’s a free service that helps you optimize your website’s visibility for search engine bots and spiders.
Additionally to that, you can also track SEO metrics like keywords, crawl errors, indexing status, etc, directly through Google Search Console. In a nutshell, you can monitor your website’s performance in Google search results.
And to maximize the benefits that this tool offers, it’s important to add all versions of your website’s domain for the website to be set up well.
Additionally to helping you maintain, monitor, and optimize your website’s organic search presence, Google Search Console offers more benefits such as:
If these benefits weren’t enough, Google Search Console also tells you which website pages rank for which keywords, as well as how many page visits are clicking through your website.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s jump into how you can add your website to Google Search Console.
Now, you’ll find out how to connect with Google Search Console in less than 3 minutes.
To begin the setup, you need to visit Google Search Console and click on the “Start Now” button to sign into your account. If you don’t have an account, it would be useful to create to get, as it allows you to sign into all of Google’s services like Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Docs, etc.
Once you’ve logged in to your Google account, the next step is to add a property. In a nutshell, this means that you are linking your website to Google Search Console so that you get receive all of the above benefits of this free tool.
Continue to click on the “Add Property” button which shows you a dropdown menu on the left.
Then, a popup box will appear that you can click on. In that floating window, it’s going to ask to proceed with one of two options. In this instance, we would recommend proceeding with the option on the left, which is the “Domain” field.
However, when this option comes up, it’s up to you which one to pick. “Domain” is more flexible but could be harder to verify as you need to do that via DNS record. If you’re not able to verify your domain, Google gives you the option to proceed via URL prefix.
On the note of verification, Google provides several different ways of getting your website verified and they even suggest adding multiple ways because of security.
After entering your domain or subdomain, Google will ask you to verify that it belongs to you or that you have the correct access to edit or update. And, as we mentioned, there are several ways to do this.
One option would be to upload a file to your website via an FTP client, but you can also go with alternative methods of header insertion, which means adding a piece or meta code to your website.
You can even use plugins or tools, so you don’t have to do it manually, but if you go with the former, make sure to vet the tool that you will be using as it would mean giving admin-level access to your website. In the past, there were a lot of plugins on the market built by hackers to access the admin side of the website, which caused a lot of havoc, and still does.
Additionally, you can proceed with verification using DNS records, which is probably the most common and easiest way. Then, use that code to verify your website with Google Search Console.
Now that you’ve completed Google’s verification, the next step is to create XML sitemaps for your website, which is one of the benefits that Google Search Console offers. It’s a piece of machine language that lets Google know about all of the pages on your website
Also, it helps Google understand which parts of the website to ignore and which to pay attention to, which means that it’s really important for the indexing of the website and your overall SEO strategy.
Our recommendation is to use any of the top-rated plugins as it’s the easiest way to create XML Sitemaps, an example of which is Yoast SEO. Although a popular choice, there are plenty of plugins to choose the best one for you
Once you’ve installed your preferred plugin, go to the SEO section on your dashboard and enable to be able to create and configure XML sitemap.
Once you’ve saved the settings, to submit the newly created to Google Search Console, go back to your account, click on “index” on the left-hand side, and select the “Sitemaps” option.
Now, you can start you add your XML sitemaps, from which your main sitemap file is always “sitemap_index.ml” if you go with Yoast SEO, however, it could also appear as “sitemap.xml”.
This main sitemap is crucial as it links to all other sitemaps on your website.
Once you submit your main sitemap and let Google Search Console crawl the website, you can also submit all other sitemaps individually to speed things up. It’s up to you.
Once you’ve gove everything set up, you’re good to go with Google Search Console. You’ve just set up a tool that helps you make your work more effective and portable, and all of that is free of chard. It’s an excellent leap forward to website optimization.
And the final step is to… wait a bit, which is probably the most difficult part. It may take some time for Google to recognize your website and begin the bot crawling it to index the content.
Then, the data and information will start to arrive, all of which you can access from your Google Search Console account. Also, if you have more websites, just repeat the steps above.
And, that’s it! A simple and fast guide to integrating your website into Google Search Console. With the help of this free tool, your effectiveness, and productivity with these kinds of metrics will surely improve exponentially.
So, make sure to take advantage of this tool to reach new heights, and good luck!
If you require any help with your SEO or would like to learn more about how we can help you take your SEO, marketing, or website game to the next level, click here to contact us.
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