How to Add a WordPress Site to Google Search Console

The Google search console is a free tool offered by Google to ensure monitoring and maintenance of their search presence and rankings of websites. It consists of many tools. Each tool, with its uniqueness, caters to different needs and requirements for the overall growth of the website.

If you are serious about your website and if you want to make it grow, it is very important to get your basics right. Adding your website to the Google search console is one of the basic actions you need to take to ensure the growth of your website in the long run.

In the following we will show details on how to add a WordPress site to Google Search Console.

If you are using a WordPress website, setting up Google search console with your website is not a tough nut to crack. If you know what to do and how to do it, it will become a piece of cake for you.

Now let’s have a look at the step-by-step guide on how to add the Google search console to your WordPress website.

Adding a WordPress Site to Google Search Console

In order to do that, the very first step you will have to take is to go to ‘Google Search Console.’ Click on the “Start Now” button on the page to get started with your set up.

After clicking the “Start Now” button, it will take you to a window where you will have to log in to the website using your Gmail account. After logging into the site, you will be asked to put in your website URL. However, there are two ways to ensure the website’s verification.

You can verify it using your domain name and also by using the URL of your website. It is recommended to use the website URL because the process is much simpler.

Ensure you are using the correct URL. In order to be sure about the URL you are using, you can get help from your WordPress dashboard. You can go to the WordPress dashboard and go to Settings > General page and find your website URL.

It will show your website URL in the correct format. You can simply copy it from there and paste it in the Google Search Console.

Once you have inserted the correct URL into the Google Search Console setup wizard, hit the “Continue” button to go on to the next step.

In this step, Google will require you to verify the owner of your website. This can be done in many ways, but we will recommend using the HTML tag method due to the ease of implementation of the method.

To get started, take the following steps:

• Click on the HTML option and copy paste the entire code written inside
• This exact code needs to be in your WordPress to process the verification
• In order to do that install “Insert Headers and Footers” plugin. The logic behind using this plugin is to ensure the meta tag does not get removed from your website. For example: there is one method to add this tag on your website is by editing your header. However, whenever you update your theme it might get removed. Then Google Search Console will not find the meta tag on your WordPress when it periodically checks for the HTML tag. Thus they will disable your access to the data of your website in Google Search Console.  Please note that you cannot remove or deactivate this plugin. If you do so then you have to go through  the entire process all over again.
• After installing, activate the “Insert Headers and Footers” plugin on your WordPress
• After activation go to Settings > Insert Headers and Footers page and paste the HTML code you copied from Google Search Console. Make sure you paste it in the ‘Scripts in Header’ box.
  

• Click save once you are done with the task.
• Go back to the Google Search Console setup wizard and click on the verify button to complete the verification process.
• If the process is successful, you will receive the following message.

However, if you do not get a “Success message”, there are some issues with WordPress. Most likely, Google Search Console did not find the updated version of your website. In this case, you can simply clear the cache of your WordPress and try again. This time it is most likely to generate the desired outcome.likely,

Once your website is added with Google Search Console i.e. webmaster tools, you will be able to access the dashboard by clicking on the “Go To Property” button and see the detailed insights from your website.

After accessing the dashboard of Google Search Console, you can get detailed insights and information regarding how your website is performing, what the updates are, the indexing of your pages, get insights on traffic and much more.

Please note that it will take at least one week for Google to crawl into your website and generate the required insights. You have to wait till it gets all the necessary information to provide you with valuable insights.

These are the simple steps you can follow to add a WordPress Site to Google Search Console.