What is Google Search Console?
Google webmaster tools were rebranded or renamed as Google Search Console. It consists of a collection of Webmaster tools offered by Google. In this article, we will discuss completely what is Google Search Console ? and how it is useful for a website?
Google Search Console helps webmasters to understand how their website is seen by search engines. It gives reports about different web pages of your website appearing in search engines. It provides information about the search queries from where web pages of your website appearing in search results and how many times they are clicked. This information can help you to improve your older articles, write new content based on the search queries from where your web pages getting traffic. It helps you to make a proper content strategy for your website.
You can also submit XML sitemaps of your website to Google search engine using Google search console. You can exclude URLs which you do not want to display in search engines using Robot.txt file. Google Search Console also notifies you if there is any problem in your website which is stopping Google from crawling and indexing your web pages.
How To Verify Your Word Press Website With Search Console?
Go to Google Search Console and sign in with your Gmail account and add your website URL and click on add property then you need to verify your website by any of the methods that Google Search Console allows you to verify.
Method 1: You can verify your ownership in search console by uploading HTML file in website root directory using FTP. Now Come back to the Google Search Console and click on verify site button
Method 2: In this method, you need to download unique meta tag provided by search console and add it to your website theme file below the <body tag>
you can also upload the meta tag easily by installing and activating Insert Headers and Footers plugin. Then copy the meta tag provided by search console
Now go to settings of Insert Headers and Footers plugin and now paste the meta tag in the header field. Save the changes and go back to Google Search Console and click on verify site button.
Method 3: You can also verify your ownership of your WordPress website to Google Search Console using WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. All you need to do is copy the verification code which is in the content part of the meta tag and then go to your WordPress admin bar there you will find SEO option click on it and then scroll down to the webmaster tools section and paste the unique verification code in the Google Webmaster tools section and save the changes. Now go back to Google Search Console and click on verify button.
You can see the below image to the find the verification code in Html tag
You can also verify your website ownership to Google Search Console using a Google Analytics account, Google Tag Manager and also using your domain name service provider. One can choose the verification method as per their convenience.
After verifying your website to Search console you need to add XML sitemaps to your website and submit it in Google Search Console.
Sitemaps: The structure of your website is generally referred to as sitemaps. XML Site Maps helps Google bots to understand the structure of your website when they come to crawl your website.
After submitting sitemap edit the robot.txt file if you want to disallow any URLs from Google bots to fetch. Now you fetch your website and the request the indexing.
Google bots go to your website to fetch the web pages and then Google indexes your web pages. This usually takes little time.
We hope now you understood what is Google Search Console and Its Importance after reading this article.
Read Also About SEO Versus Social Media
