A few weeks ago, I wrote about getting your site set up on Google Analytics because of the wealth of free information available from that source. This week, I’m going to show you how to get your site connected with Google Search Console.
This post is part of the WordPress Weekend Projects series. In this series, you will find bite-size tips to enhance, secure, or optimize your website. Each tip should take an hour or less, and can be done without interrupting your precious weekend time too much. See all of the WordPress Weekend Projects posts at http://beyondtheoffice.com/blog/wordpress-weekend-projects.
Google Search Console is, in their words, “a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. You don’t have to sign up for Search Console for your site to be included in Google’s search results, but doing so can help you understand how Google views your site and optimize its performance in search results.”
I love Google Search Console because it helps me understand how Google sees my website, what other sites are linking to my site, and where Google things there are any issues with my WordPress website. This is important to me because I want to know first if there’s an issue so I can fix it, instead of finding out down the road when someone else tells me (yikes!).
It’s pretty easy to get it set up – even easier if you’ve already added Google Analytics to your site. If you’re not already setup with Google Analytics, you might want to do that first, as it makes it easier to authenticate your site to GSC without having to add a meta tag or DNS record.
Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to get started.