Google Search Console for WordPress Websites

This guide will show you how to submit your website easily and make it shine in Google search results. It assumes that you already have a Google account set up.

To optimize your website’s visibility in the world’s largest search engine, set up Google Search Console as soon as possible, even if you won’t be able to look at the data immediately.

Add Your Website to Google Search Console (GSC)

Domain Property

1. Log into Google Search Console
2. For the Domain property type (selected by default), enter a naked domain (e.g., influencewp.com). (Note: You don’t enter anything before your domain name, such as ‘www,’ ‘https://,’ etc.)
3. Click Continue

Domain Verification

Next, we need to make some additions to DNS. I recommend using Cloudflare for DNS management, so I’ll cover how to make changes using their tools.

1. Log into Cloudflare
2. Choose the website that you want to verify as part of this guide
3. Browse to the DNS tab
4. Click the +Add Record button
5. Using the DNS Record type drop-down, select ‘TXT.’
6. Name > Enter the ‘@’ symbol to use your root domain
7. Content > Click the ‘Copy’ button to grab the value (e.g., google-site-verification=123XYZ) GSC gives and paste it here
8. Click ‘Save.’
9. Go back to Google Search Console and click ‘Verify.’

If everything goes well, you should see an ‘Ownership Verified’ message, and clicking ‘Go to Property’ should show you that Google has started to process your website’s data. Allow Google some time, and check back every 15 minutes until the processing is complete.

Submit Your Sitemap

Next, you should submit your website’s sitemap to Google to help It understand its content and URL structure.

1. Google Search Console > Sitemaps
2. Paste in your sitemap URL (e.g., https://influencewp.com/sitemaps.xml).
3. Click ‘Submit.’

With your sitemap now submitted, you should monitor the console to ensure it shows a ‘Success’ status.

Note: If your website is in ‘Coming Soon’ mode or you’re blocking indexing of your website some other way, you’ll see a status of ‘Couldn’t Fetch.’ You can temporarily stop the blocking of indexing or return to this task later to get a status of ‘Success.’

Pro Tip: Use an SEO plugin for enhancing and managing your sitemaps.

Jumpstart New Content Indexing

Assuming there isn’t something preventing Google from indexing your website or the content you wish to be indexed, it’s true that Google will eventually index your content automatically. That said, I like to set the wheels in motion when I press ‘publish’ using one of the options below.

Instant Indexing

Once you publish content, some SEO plugins help with instant content indexing, and it can be automated.

GSC Request Indexing

If you don’t use an SEO plugin that provides instant indexing and don’t mind more of a manual method, you can tell Google you have some new content to index.

With the steps below, you are asking Google to crawl your entire website by entering the default top-level URL of your website (e.g., influencewp.com).

1. Google Search Console > URL Inspection  > Enter your domain
2. Hit ‘Enter.’
3. Click ‘Request Indexing.’

Grant Access to Your GSC Property

Whether you’re working on a team or need to grant temporary access to an outside consultant, these steps will show you how to invite someone to a specific property within your Google Search Console.

1. Google Search Console > Settings > Users and Permissions > Click ‘Add User.’
2. Enter the email address of the team member
3. Choose the desired permissions for the user. (Note: In most cases, when setting up permission for a team member, you’ll want to grant Full access.).

Note: The person(s) you grant access to will not be notified, so you must let them know you have granted them access.

Connect GSC to Google Analytics

Linking Google Search Console and Google Analytics can help you gain more insight into how your website is interacted with, helping you better understand how your content resonates with your website’s visitors.

1. Google Search Console > Settings > Associations > Click ‘Associate.’
2. Choose the desired property and click ‘Continue.’
3. Choose the desired data stream and click ‘Continue.’
4. Click ‘Associate.’

Ongoing GSC Maintenance

Maintaining Google Search Console is not “set it and forget it,” but luckily, Google makes things a bit easier on us by sending out email notifications when they detect issues. You must access the email on file with Google and regularly check it, or you can set up an email forwarding rule that sends these particular messages to an account you check daily.

Depending on the criticality of your SEO, there may be items you want to fix right away, some that can wait, and some that are just recommendations that may or may not apply to your website.

404 Monitoring

Current, active URLs on your website with a 404 (page not found) status are bad for the user experience and website performance and use a crawl budget allocated by Google, all of which can degrade your overall SEO and conversions.

Manual 404 Checks Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides an easy way to find all 404 pages.

1. Google Search Console > Indexing > Pages > Look for any line item with ‘404’ in the name.
2. Click on each of those line items and review the affected pages.
3. Do your best to address the affected pages.

Automated 404 Monitoring

There are SEO plugins for WordPress that provide automated 404 monitoring that will save you time.

It’s important to note that if you use Automated 404 Monitoring, you don’t leave it permanently enabled. Instead, enable it after making significant changes to your website’s content where links are involved, and then disable it after ensuring you’re good to go regarding 404s.

“Good” vs. Bad 404s

The 404s reported in Google Search Console may not be an issue, as this could be content that no longer exists on your website due to steps you’ve intentionally taken (e.g., deleted the content).