Knowledgebase

Google Search Console is a free tool that provides you with all kinds of information about how your website appears in Google, which pages are indexed, some of the search terms people are using to find your website, and some of your keyword rankings.

To set it up for your WordPress website:

1. Create or sign into your Google account at https://accounts.google.com.

2. Go to https://search.google.com/search-console and click "Log in" or "Start now."

3. On the left, click the search drop down and choose "Add a property."

4. Enter your exact website URL, making sure you use https:// if your website is https://, www. if your website has www. and so on. Then click "Continue".

5. Next you'll be asked to verify your ownership of the site. To do this, look at the "Other verification methods" box and click the arrow next to "HTML tag" to display a small snippet of HTML code. Copy the code.

6. Head to your WordPress Dashboard.

If you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed:

i) Go to SEO > General.
ii) Click the "Webmaster Tools" or "Search Console" tab.
iii) In the "Google verification code" box, paste in your code. You'll only want to have the string of numbers that's your verification number - make sure you don't keep any of the rest of the HTML code.
iv) Click "Save changes".

If you don't have the Yoast SEO plugin installed:

i) Install and activate a "Insert headers and footers" plugin by going to Plugins > Add New and using the search box to find a header editing plugin that is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
ii) Go to the plugin's settings page, and paste all the code from step 5 into the header scripts box.
iii) Save your changes.

7. Go back to Google Search Console and click "Verify."

8. Once your site has been verified, repeat steps 3 and 4 to add new properties for the other variations of your website URL. This means that if you have an SSL certificate installed, you should have the following four properties for your website:

https://www.yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com
http://yoursite.com