What do you need to get started with Google Search Console?
First, we will need a Google account to log in to the service. You can use an email created in Gmail or enter any email address associated with your Google account.
Is this enough to get data on our site? Google's policy does not allow anyone to check data on any site. We will not check just any website, only those we own, administer or have access to. But how do we confirm this?
Verifying Site Ownership in GSC
Verifying ownership in Google Search Console is crucial instagram database because it confirms that you have the authority to manage a given site. GSC verification gives you access to valuable data and analytical tools. We can verify our site in several ways.
You must log in to the websiteGoogle account and then select "Add service" in the upper left corner.
Selecting a service type in Google Search Console
Selecting a service type in Google Search Console
As you can see in the screenshot above, the tool allows you to add a service for an entire domain or for a given URL prefix.
Domain: includes all subdomains and paths on your domain.
URL Prefix: Only includes URLs that start with the specified prefix. Depending on the type you choose, the verification methods will be different.
For a domain it is only DNS verification , and for a specific URL prefix it can be:
HTML file
HTML tag
google analytics tracking code
google tag manager
domain name provider
For those who don't know how to do this, I'd like to inform you that the most popular CMS (content management systems) have built-in functionality for verifying ownership using the html tag or most often offer free add-ons in the form of plugins, for example.
GSC service verified, what next?
I assume that most people will verify their site in the Google Search Console tool without any problems, but verification itself does not give us immediate access to all the data. Information about our site in the Google Search Console comes with a delay. Most often, we will receive the first information about organic traffic on the site 2-3 days after positive verification of the service.
Should we wait these days idly? Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The first step I encourage you to take is to submit a sitemap with URLs of pages within the service in the Site Map tab.
Adding a new site in the Sitemaps tab
Adding a new site in the Sitemaps tab
Most often it is available at , however if you do not find it at this address, you should check whether the content management system you are using does not create it at a different address. An example is one of the most popular SaaS - Shoper with a sitemap located at. A similar situation may also occur on CMS such as PrestaShop or IdoSell.
You should also check whether it is necessary to install an additional module to create a sitemap if the CMS does not have such functionality built-in.
A sitemap helps Google's crawlers understand the structure of your site and index new or updated pages faster. It is also crucial in checking the subsequent indexing of our site's resources. Which we will discuss later.
If we already have the first data visible in our service, it is worth knowing what data we can check in it. Below is a brief description of the individual tabs that we can find in GSC.
