Once your website is ready and you have written a few blogs or articles, then it is time to submit the site to the Google search console. In this article, I will show you step by step how to submit your website to google search console, and then we will see, how to submit sitemap to google search console.
By this time, you should have already set up your website and have some content on it. And you should have a Gmail id available with you.
So, first, let us see, how to add the website to the google search console, then in the later part we will see how to submit XML to the google search console.
In this case, I will add this website to Google Search Console. On this website, I have shown you the journey from $0 to $3000 with a niche website update targeting the USA audience.
Before submitting our site to the Google search console, let us first understand what is Google Search Console.
A Quick Introduction to Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is a free tool that will help us to submit sitemaps to Google for crawling and displaying in the search result pages.
It provides various reports that we can use to improve our website performance and it helps us to fix any issues we will have.
This is completely free and one of the best tools for SEO. We can get more information on the Search Console Help page.
Also, check, How to add google analytics code to WordPress website?
Submit site to Google Search Console
Follow the below steps to add a website to the google search console.
Step-1: Open Google Search Console and log in with your Gmail ID. Then on the home page, click on the Search property box and then click on + Add property.
Step-2:
This will open the Select property type dialog box. Here we will have two options, in one we can provide the Domain name only like earnmoneyfaqs.com, and in the URL prefix, we can provide the URL like https://earnmoneyfaqs.com or https://www.earnmoneyfaqs.com.
In this case, I will select the URL prefix option and provide the URL like https://earnmoneyfaqs.com. Then click on the Continue button.
Step-3: Then it will open the Verify ownership dialog box, where we need to verify that you are the owner of the website. Here there are various options to verify the ownership.
- HTML file: We can verify the ownership by uploading an HTML file to your website. You need a little bit of technical knowledge for this.
- HTML tag: In this case, we need to add a meta tag to your site’s homepage. This is the method we are going to use.
- Google Analytics: We can use Google Analytics to verify the ownership. In fact, if you have already added Google analytics it will automatically for you.
- Google Tag Manager: We can also use a Google Tag Manager account to verify the ownership.
- Domain name provider: Here we need to add a DNS record with Google, little technical knowledge is enough for this.
Here, I will show the HTML tag method to verify the ownership.
So expand the HTML tag in the below screen. And then click on the Copy button to copy the HTML tag. This will give a tag like the below:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="FX0rvDYqThg1e-7HeeeeDKa1JNCda5WF7VrhrooSEEE0" />We need to add this tag in the <head> or before the first <body> section of the site home page.
Do not click on the Verify button, Just copy the code.
Step-4: In this step, we will add the above copied tag in the site home page <head> section. Here we will use a plugin to do this, which is simple and super easy.
Open the site admin page [https://earnmoneyfaqs.com/wp-admin/] and log in with your admin credential.
Then click on Plugins -> Add New like below:
Then on the Add New Plugin page, search for the “WPCode – Insert Headers, Footers, and Code Snippets” plugin and you will see the plugin like below:
Here, click on Install Now button, once the installation is over click on Activate button.
Once the plugin got activated, you can see the Code Snippets option in the left navigation like below. Here click on Code Snippets -> Header & Footer.
This will open the Plugin page, where we can add HTML tags or Scripts to the Header, Body, or Footer section. It provided an individual textbox, where we can add the tag.
Here paste the HTML tag that we have copied in the previous step. It should look like the below. Then click on the Save Changes button.
Now, the HTML tag has been added to the site’s home page in the <head> tag. So it is time to verify the site ownership.
Step-5: Go to the Google Search Console (I hope the dialog box is still opened). Click on the Verify button.
It will take some time to verify the ownership, you might see a screen like this.
Once Google verified the ownership, you will be able to see a successful message “Ownership verified” like the one below:
Here click on GO TO PROPERTY and it will open the home page for the website in the Google Search Console. You will be able to see it like this.
By this time, our website has been added to the Google Search Console. And it is time to submit sitemap to google search console.
So, let us see how to submit XML sitemap to google search console.
Submit XML sitemap to google search console
Let us now see step-by-step how to submit XML sitemap to google search console.
For this first, we need to get the XML site map URL, and then we need to Submit the site map URL in the Google Search Console.
Read How to make money from niche websites
Get XML SiteMap URL from Your WebSite
Now, let us see, how to get the XML sitemap URL from your website. To generate the XML sitemap URL, we can use the below two popular SEO plugins.
- Yoast SEO
- Rank Math
These two are very popular SEO plugins and you can use any one of them. If you have not added the plugins, then go to the Dashboard of your site.
Click on Plugins -> Add new and add any one of these plugins.
Yoast SEO
We can easily get the XML sitemap URL if you have installed the Yoast SEO plugin.
From the Dashboard, click on Yoast SEO -> General.
Then it will open the “General – Yoast SEO” and there click on Features. Then scroll down and you can see XML sitemaps. Make sure it is On. Here click on the question mark (?) as shown below:
Then it will expand it and you can see a link as See the XML sitemap. Click on that.
Now, it will open an URL like below where you can see all the XML sitemap paths.
https://earnmoneyfaqs.com/sitemap_index.xml
Here you can see different XML files for Posts, Pages, Categories, Post tags, and authors.
Here we do not need to submit all the sitemaps. Instead, we will submit the Posts and Pages sitemaps. We need the XML file names for those two things like post-stemap.xml and page-sitemap.xml.
You can also index the categories and tags but I prefer only the pages and posts.
Rank Math
In the same way, we can also get both the sitemap URLs from the Rank Math plugin.
Open the Dashboard, then click on Rank Math from the left side, and then click on Sitemap Settings.
This will open the Site map page like below. Here you can see like:
Your sitemap index can be found here https://earnmoneyfaqs.com/sitemap_index.xml. Click on the link.
This will open the sitemap_index.xml page. Here you can see all the sitemaps like for Posts, Pages, and Categories.
Here just copy the .XML file names like post-sitemap.xml and page-sitemap.xml.
Now is the time when we will submit the sitemap XML files to Google Search Console. Before that, let us first understand what is sitemap.xml file in terms of SEO.
What is sitemap.xml in SEO
The sitemap file is an XML file that contains all the website URLs like it can have all the Post URLs, Category URLs, Post Tags URLs, etc.
Once we submit this .xml file to Google, it will be easier for Google to find out and crawl our pages for search results. So, the sitemap file tells Google to know about all the files which are important to us and to rank.
It is always good to have a sitemap file for our website, though Google can find out all the pages if the internal link is properly given. Here is a good article on Learn about sitemaps.
How to submit xml sitemap to google search console
Let us see, how to submit xml sitemap to google search console. Follow the below steps:
- Open Google Search Console and there select the Property that we have added at the beginning of this tutorial. If you have multiple sites added and you have created multiple properties then select the particular site for which you want to submit the sitemap from the search box. Then click on Sitemaps from the left navigation like below:
- Then this will open the Add a new sitemap screen, where provide the sitemap names like post-sitemap.xml and click on the SUBMIT button like below:
- Then it will take a couple of seconds to submit the sitemap, before showing a Success message like the below. Make sure for each sitemap, you should see the Status as Success.
- In the same way, we can add the sitemap for the pages and both the sitemap should show Success like below:
- Here you can see the Discovered URLs, this number shows how many URLs Google found out. Google will keep on crawling and this number will keep on increasing as you will add more articles or blogs or pages.
This is how to upload sitemap to google search console, so that Google will crawl our pages and display them in the search results.
Conclusion
If you have not yet submitted your site to the search console, follow the above step and add your site to google search console. Also, submit the xml sitemap to Google Search Console, so that Google will crawl our pages and start displaying our pages on the search result page.
Once, your site is added to the Google Search Console, we can monitor how your pages or articles are performing like for which keywords your article is ranking and how many page views you are getting. A lot more things you can analyze.
I hope you got an idea on how to submit site to google search console and how to add sitemap.xml to google search console.
I am Hannah, an online entrepreneur based in New York, United States. As the founder of several successful niche websites, I got the expertise in areas such as making money online, blogging, YouTube, affiliate marketing, and more. Through this website and blog posts, I am trying to provide insightful and actionable tips to help aspiring entrepreneurs, find ways to make money online. Read more.