Verifying your site with Google

Getting your site listed on Google and keeping an eye on how you're doing is very important. One of the things you're likely to want to do to help this is to register yourself with Google Search Console.

This allows you to submit your site's Sitemap to Google and to keep an eye on which search terms your visitors have used to find you. We've provided a video tutorial or step-by-step text instructions below.

Click the link above and then the Start Now button and log in with your Google account. Once you do you should see an option to Add a Property to your console.

To add a property enter your home page URL in the right-hand box and click Continue.

You'll then be asked to Verify that you own your domain/website. Google provides a number of ways for you to do this, but in this case you are most likely to want to use the second option, HTML Tag.

The Meta Tag Google provides you with will look something like

It's composed of two parts - a name, 'google-site-verification' and a random string in the content section - in this case all the characters starting with a and ending with z.

To add the meta tag to your site open it in a new window and log in. Go to Dashboard -> Site Settings -> Advanced Settings.

About halfway down the page you'll find a section titled Site Meta Tags. Click Add Meta Tag and follow the instructions.

Once you've saved the meta tag, go back to the Google Console window and click the Verify button in the HTML Tag area. If you've added the tag correctly then Google should now tell you the verification was successful.

Google Search Console

Since you're logged into Google Search Console and you've verified your site the first thing you want to do is add your sitemap. Click on Sitemaps on the Google menu, then in the Add a Sitemap box your domain name should already be filled in. Just add xml in the box beside it and click Submit.

The search engine sitemap for this site for instance is at

https://manual.spanglefish.org/xml