Google Search Console WordPress

google search console

Level: Easy
Time: 5-10 Minutes

Google Search Console WordPress Goal

To set up Google Search Console for the first time, and to connect it with the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

Ideal Outcome

Your Google Search Console property has been verified, and 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 and the Yoast SEO Plugin running on your WordPress website to follow this guide.

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 your WordPress admin.

When This Is Done

Only 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://)

Who Does This

The person responsible for Website management, analytics, or SEO.

Getting Started with Google Search Console WordPress

Go to “File → Make a copy” and make a copy of this document. Now that you have a copy, “right click” the boxes and check them off as you go along.

right click the boxes

Signing Up for Google Search Console and Verifying Your Domain

1. Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools;

2. Log in with your Google Account;

3. 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.

Google Search Console WordPress

4. 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 Google Search Console WordPress guide assumes you already have Google Tag Manager running on your website.

Note: If you don’t have Google Tag Manager yet, you can follow WordPress Google Tag Manager Guide  first to get setup.

5. Select “Google Tag Manager”, click “Verify”

Setup Google Search Console WordPress

6. That’s it! You should now see a success message, click “Continue” and you will be taken to your Search Console dashboard.

search console dashboard

Connect Search Console With Yoast Seo WordPress Plugin

1. Open your WordPress Admin Dashboard

2. On the sidebar, hover “SEO”, and click “Search Console”

Google Search Console WordPress setup

3. Click “Get Google Authorization Code”

setting up Google Search Console WordPress

4. Select your Google Account and login

login with google account

5. Click “Allow”

Google Search Console WordPress setup details

6. You will get a code that you will need to paste in your Yoast SEO Search Console configurations:

7. Open your Yoast SEO Search Console configuration panel again, and paste the code you have just received. Click “Authenticate”

8. Select your URL from the dropdown, and click “Save Profile”

select url from dropdown

9. 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.