How do I add my site to Google Search Console?
Updated 2 months ago
Google Search Console lets us monitor our site’s performance and see everything related to our visits. How do people reach our site? What problems are there with content indexing? How does Google see us? Search Console is free and very useful.
On the other hand, although sooner or later Google bots will crawl our site so it can appear in search results, submitting a map of our content speeds up the process.
Necessary? No. Useful? Very! That’s why, in this guide, we’ll see how to create a Google Search Console account if we don’t have one yet, how to create a sitemap.xml, and how to upload it. Is the coffee already steaming? Let’s get started.
What is Google Search Console? What is it for?
Google Search Console is a collection of tools and reports about the pages on our website. It helps optimize, and sometimes correct, our content so it is as accessible as possible to users when they search. GSC will show us which queries bring traffic to our website and will analyze impressions, clicks, and our content’s position in Google’s organic search results.
Occasionally, it can send us alerts when problems are detected on our website, so that we can fix them.
What is a sitemap or map of my site?
A site map is a file that shows information about the pages, videos, and other files on our website (as well as the relationships between them). Search engines, such as Google, read this file to crawl our site more effectively. The map tells search engines which pages and files are considered important or priority, and it also provides valuable information about the files themselves that are part of our content. For example, when a page was last updated, or versions of the page in other languages.
We can take advantage of a site map to provide information about certain types of content, such as videos, images, or news.
How do I create a site map?
Good news: maps are generated automatically if we’re using WordPress. To check whether it exists, just add /sitemap.xml to our website address, that is mysitio.com/sitemap.xml (changing mysitio.com for the real domain name).
If we happen to have an SEO plugin installed, the 2 lighter alternatives we recommend are Slim SEO and The SEO Framework.
If we don’t see something like this at either of the two addresses...
...we need to make sure that, for some reason, we are not allowing crawler bots to probe our content. So, let’s check that the following option is NOT selected:
To sum up, WordPress, natively —that is, without needing third-party components— creates a sitemap.xml file by default.
How do I set up a Google Search Console account?
We need to go to https://search.google.com/search-console/
The first thing we’ll see is a screen like the one below, where we’re asked to enter a "property," Google’s term for our website (that is, the one we own).
We have two options that serve the same purpose: add the domain (mysitio.com) or the prefix (https://mysitio.com).
We’ll add the domain by entering our site name in the first column, without HTTP/HTTPS or WWW. This way, we’ll get data for all URLs under the domain name, including protocols, subdomains, and paths. Later, in this same guide, we’ll go through the Prefix option and explain the differences between both options more clearly.
Google will open a pop-up window where it has created a verification code in text (TXT) format. We need to click the button shown in the screenshot below:
For comfort, it’s best to open another tab in our browser. There we’ll sign in to the account where we registered our domain.
Next, we’ll see how to do this step via cPanel, then how to do it with the number 1 domain seller, which is GoDaddy, and finally we’ll also show how to complete the verification, regardless of the company or organization where we bought the domain name, using an alternative method.
Verification through cPanel
cPanel is a control panel that you access online: it’s easy, convenient, and some hosting companies provide it free with the hosting plan (including us).
cPanel lets us manage our domain (as well as email, security, webmail, and a great many other things) through an intuitive graphical interface. In this case, we’ll see how to add the DNS record provided by Google Search Console with this very versatile tool.
First, we need to sign in to our cPanel, typically by entering its domain-specific address in the address bar:
Remember to replace "misitio" with the real name of your domain!
After logging in with our credentials —provided by the hosting company—, we’ll see a series of tools divided into groups. There, we need to look for the ZONE EDITOR icon within the DOMAINS tools group, shown in the screenshot below:
We’ll click this ZONE EDITOR icon, and then click the MANAGE button.
On the next screen, we’ll look for the ADD RECORD button and then click the arrow to open the options menu. Since we’re going to add a TXT record —as requested by Google Search Console—, we’ll click ADD "TXT" RECORD as shown in the image below.
We’ll fill in the fields provided as follows:
In the first NAME field, enter our domain name without http or www.
Do not touch, it must be TXT (if for some reason it isn’t, select it correctly from the dropdown)
Here we’ll paste the text provided by Google.
Click SAVE RECORD to finish.
Let’s remember that this process could take from a few minutes to several hours. So, let’s wait a while before going back to Google Search Console to validate.
Verify property with GoDaddy
After logging in to our account, we’ll look for the relevant domain in the products section and click as shown in the screenshot below:
And then:
Note: if this option is not available, it means our hosting provider is the one managing the DNS, and therefore we’ll need to contact that company.
In the pop-up window form, we’ll fill in the fields exactly as shown in the screenshot below:
That is:
Type: TXT
Name: @
Value: ( Paste the TXT record that Google Search Console has created for us )
TTL: 1 hour
After this step, we’ll return to the window where we have Google Search Console open and click the Verify button.
If we receive an error message, we’ll need to wait, since the record creation process we carried out could take a few hours.
When this step is completed successfully, we’ll see the corresponding message confirming validation.
Alternative verification method
For this alternative, we’ll choose the second option in Google Search Console, namely URL Prefix.
As we explained earlier, we’re not choosing this method first because it is limited to one address (e.g.: https://www.miempresa.com/ and all the content within it), whereas with the Domain verification method explained above, we make sure subdomains are also included in Google’s service (e.g.: mobile.miempresa.com).
In the field that asks us to "Enter a URL", we’ll enter the URL to be crawled, such as https://www.miempresa.com. In this case, we need to be exact, since some domains have SSL certificates (https) and others do not (http). The same goes for "www". Our site, duplika.com, for example, does NOT use www in its domain.
After entering the correct domain and clicking the CONTINUE button, Google will offer us several verification methods.
HTML file (recommended)
HTML tag
Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Domain name provider
We’ll use the recommended method, which is very easy: we’ll download an HTML file created by Google. This file must be uploaded to the same URL we entered at the beginning of this alternative method.
After these two steps, we’ll click the VERIFY button. If we uploaded the file correctly, we’ll see the following pop-up window.
Adding my sitemap to Google Search Console
In the window shown in the screenshot above, we’ll click GO TO PROPERTY.
There we’ll look for the Sitemaps tool and click it to reach the following section:
As shown in the screenshot above, we’ll simply fill in the URL of our sitemap with the file name, as we were able to check here.
After typing the correct path, we’ll click SUBMIT and should see a message like the following:
After this step, we’ve finished the guide to add our site to Google Search Console and include a site map for immediate crawling.
Thank you for reading, and we wish you success in your projects.