If you want to get serious about SEO, you need to sign up for a Google Search Console account. It’s an essential tool for anyone who wants to work on improving their search rankings. After you create an account, the next step is to verify your website ownership for the tool to work. In this post, we’ll show you the easiest way to verify your website ownership on Google Search Console. Read on!
What is Google Search Console to begin with?
If you’re already familiar with Google Search Console (GSC) then feel free to skip this section. If you don’t know what Search Console is, here are a few reasons why this tool is so important:
It lets you monitor your search performance
Being able to track your website’s search performance is one of the most important reasons why you need GSC. Some of the things you can track include how often your site appears in search results, what keywords people are using to find your site, and which pages are getting the most clicks. Next to that, you can get insight into how your pages are performing, including their click-through rates, impressions, average position, and your rankings for specific keywords. All this data can help you understand what’s working and what’s not, and make adjustments to improve your website’s rankings.
It helps you identify and fix technical issues
Technical issues could hurt your SEO if you don’t take care of them. GSC provides a variety of reports that help you identify technical issues such as broken links, crawl errors, and security issues. By fixing these issues, you might improve your rankings in the search results.
It shows you your page speed
Page speed is an important part of SEO. That’s because fast pages tend to perform better and tend to drive more traffic than slow ones. GSC allows you to easily view and monitor the performance of your web pages. The tool provides you with valuable insights and metrics that can help you understand how your website is performing in terms of speed and overall user experience.
It lets you submit and monitor your XML sitemap
GSC allows you to submit your website’s sitemap to Google, which helps the search engine crawl and index your site more efficiently. You can also monitor the status of your sitemap, and get alerts if there are any issues.
Verify website ownership on Google Search Console – the easy way
If you’re running WordPress, the easiest way to verify your website ownership is by using an SEO plugin. Yes, that’s the easiest way! This is especially convenient if you’re a novice in website building, or if you don’t feel like touching your website’s code.
Since you want to get serious about your website’s SEO, we think there’s a big chance that you already have an SEO plugin installed on your site. If you don’t have one yet, we strongly recommend you install one. SEO plugins will definitely make your life easier. They add a lot of necessary features that will help you do SEO, such as XML sitemap, tools to help with redirects, tools to help you optimize your content, etc.
Most, if not all, popular SEO plugins on the market include features to help users quickly verify their website ownership on popular search engines. In this post, we’ll be using Yoast SEO. This is also our recommendation for an SEO plugin. It is one of the most popular and reliable SEO plugins on the market, used by more than 13 million WordPress websites.
Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins to help take your website to the next level.
A step-by-step guide to verifying your website ownership using Yoast SEO
Start by creating a Google account that you want to use for your website, if you don’t have one already. Then, install Yoast SEO on your website.
To install Yoast SEO, log into your WordPress admin area. From your sidebar, navigate to “Plugin” -> “Add New”. Here, use the search bar to search for Yoast SEO, then click “Install”. Remember to hit the “Activate” button after the installation is complete.
Now that you have both your Google account and Yoast SEO ready, it’s time to verify your website ownership.
From the sidebar in your WordPress admin area, click on Yoast SEO, then click on the “Settings” tab. From there, click on “Site connections”.
Use the link provided here to quickly navigate to Google Search Console. In this screen, select “Alternate methods”. Make sure you’re on the right Google account that you want to associate with your website.
You’ll see the screen below after choosing “HTML tag”. All you have to do is copy the entire code that Google provides.
Don’t close this screen after you copy the code. Take that code and return to the “Site connections” screen in Yoast SEO. All you need to do is paste that code in and hit the “Save changes” button.
Then come back to Google Search Console and hit the “Verify” button. That’s it, it’s done! You’ve verified your website ownership on Google Search Console.
Manually verify your website ownership with Bluehost
If you prefer to manually verify your website ownership, or if you’re on a different platform than WordPress, you can easily do so with Bluehost as well. The process is also quite simple and can be done in just a few steps.
Start by going to Google Search Console. If your GSC account is new, you’ll see the screen below.
We’ll be using the “Domain” verification method here. Simply type in your domain name and hit continue. GSC will then show you this screen.
Make sure to select “TXT” in the first step “Select record type”. Then, simply copy the code Google provides and go to your Bluehost hosting account. But don’t close this screen just yet.
After you log into your Bluehost hosting account, navigate to the “Domains” tab in your left sidebar and click on “My Domains”. Here you’ll see a list of domains in your account. Choose the domain of which you want to verify ownership and select “Manage”.
After that, click on the “DNS” tab.
When you’re on this screen, scroll down below until you see the “TXT” section. Click on “Add record” and then fill in the required fields.
You need to paste the code that Google provides in the “TXT Value” field. The “Host Record” field can be left blank, or you can fill in your domain name there. In the “TTL” field you can simply select “4 hours”. Hit the “Save” button when you’re done filling in this information.
After you save changes in your Bluehost account, simply go back to GSC, hit the “Verify” button and you’re done!
Common questions related to Google Search Console website verification
To verify your website with Google Search Console, follow these steps: sign in to Search Console, select “Add Property,” enter your website URL, choose a verification method (HTML file upload, HTML tag, DNS record, or Google Analytics), and complete the verification process.
Verifying your website with Google Search Console provides access to valuable insights and tools for managing your site’s presence in Google search results, including performance data, indexing status, and the ability to submit sitemaps for faster indexing.
Google Search Console offers various verification methods, including uploading an HTML file to your website’s root directory, adding an HTML tag to your site’s homepage, adding a DNS TXT record, or using Google Analytics to verify ownership.
Yes, you should verify each version of your website (e.g., www and non-www) separately in Google Search Console to ensure accurate data tracking and management for each version.
To verify your website with Google Search Console without access to the HTML code, you can choose the DNS verification method or utilize Google Analytics if it is already implemented on your site.
If you make changes to the verification method or accidentally remove it, it’s recommended to re-verify your website in Google Search Console to ensure uninterrupted access to data and features.
Verification with Google Search Console itself does not directly impact search rankings. However, the insights and tools it provides can help you identify areas for improvement, optimize your website’s performance, and potentially enhance your search visibility and rankings. Learn more about SEO here.
Final thoughts
Congratulations, you’ve verified your website ownership on Google Search Console! You’re now one step closer to kicking start your SEO journey. Make sure to check out all the useful features in GSC and don’t forget to make use of the insights the tool gives. Those insights will be of tremendous help when you dive deeper into SEO. Happy optimizing!
