Execution Time: 5-10 minutes
Goal of this process: To have Google Search Console correctly set up for the first time. We will also connect it with the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin if your site uses it.
Ideal Outcome: Your Google Search Console property has been correctly set up and verified. Also, you are able to check if there were any crawl issues for your site recently, straight in your WordPress Admin.
Pre-requisites or requirements: You need to have Google Tag Manager installed on your website
Why this is important: Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to monitor your website’s performance in Google search. It allows you to collect statistics about your rankings, optimize visibility, and it’s your main channel of communication with Google, allowing you to monitor potential penalties, or identify crawling errors before they affect your rankings.
Where this is done: In Google Search Console, and the Yoast homepage within the WordPress admin screen.
When this is done: You only need to set up google search console once per domain. You will need to do it every time you create a subdomain, or add a new protocol (for example, If you migrate to https:// from http://)
Who does this: The person responsible for Website management, analytics, or SEO.
Signing up for Google Search console and verifying your domain
- Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/;
- Log in with your Google Account;
- You will be taken to a welcome page and prompted to “Select a property type”. Select ‘URL prefix’.
- Note: Make sure your URL is exactly as it appears in the URL bar including the protocol (http:// or https://) and the subdomain (www. or non-www., or any other subdomain you might be using).
- Note 2: If your website supports multiple protocols and subdomains you will want to add them all to Search Console, since the tool will treat each of them separately.
- There are multiple ways to authenticate your account. If you are already using Google Analytics, or Google Tag Manager these 2 methods will be the fastest and easiest methods to authenticate. If not, the recommended method is the fastest one to use. This SOP assumes you already have Google Tag Manager running on your website.
- Note: If you don’t have Google Tag Manager yet, you can follow SOP 004: Add Google Tag Manager to a WordPress Site first.
- Select “Google Tag Manager”, click “Verify”
- That’s it! You should now see a success message, click “Continue” and you will be taken to your Search Console dashboard.
Connect Search Console with Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
- Open your WordPress Admin Dashboard
- On the sidebar, hover “Yoast SEO”, and click “Settings”
- Choose site connections from the menu
- Click “Get Google Authorization Code”
- Select HTML Tag and Copy the tag given
- Paste the full tag into the Google Box on Yoast (Yoast will remove anything that is not needed)
- Click “Save Changes”
That’s it! You have successfully connected Yoast SEO and Google Search Console, you will now be able to retrieve all the crawl issues for your site straight from your WordPress Admin panel.
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