How to set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a must for any business hoping to get more website traffic from search engines. Not sure what Google Search Console is and why you should use it? Read our Google Search Console blog first.

How to set up Google Search Console

Ideally, get set up on Google Analytics first, then adding Google Search Console is very easy.

• Go to Google Search Console.  
• First you will need to log in. If you have Google Analytics, log in using the same details as you use to access your Analytics account. Alternatively you can log in with a Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, you will have to create one before you can continue.
• Once you have successfully logged in, click the “Add A Property” button at the top of the page.
• Enter the URL of your website, then click continue.
• Next you’ll be asked to verify that you own the website in one of four ways:

1. If you have access to the root of your website you can upload a html file.
2. If you manage your hosting yourself, you can verify via your hosting provider.
3. If you use Google Tag Manager, you can verify via Google Tags.
4. Or, by far the quickest and easiest method, verify ownership via your Google Analytics Tracking ID.

• If you already have a Google Analytics Tracking ID installed, and we would highly recommend that you do, then setting up Google Search Console is very easy. Simply click the Verify button, and that’s it!

What next?

Once you’re set up, Google Search Console isn’t initially very exciting. You have to wait about a week before any useful data shows up, however something you can do straight away is submit an xml sitemap.  This helps Google to find content on your site and index it more quickly.

Before you can submit a sitemap, you will need to create one. If you use WordPress, you can install the Yoast SEO plugin which will automatically generate XML site maps for your site content.

Alternatively, there are many tools online that will create a sitemap for you, which you then need to upload to the root of your website. Once your sitemap is live and created on your website, then you can go to the sitemaps section of the Google Search Console and click “Add your sitemap”.

For more information on what to use Google Search Console for, refer back to our previous blog.