One important step in optimizing your site for search engines is adding your WordPress site to Google Webmaster Tools. Many of our readers ask us for SEO Tips and how to increase organic search traffic on their websites. Using Google webmaster tools along with other tips that we have provided can be a huge help. In this article, we will show you how to add your WordPress site to Google Webmaster Tools.
What is Google Webmaster Tools
Google’s Webmaster tools is a set of tools offered by Google to give publishers a look at how their website is seen by the search engine. It provides reports and data that can help you understand how different pages on your website are appearing in search results. It shows you the search queries where a page from your website appears in the results and how often it is clicked. This data can help you improve your older articles, write new content, and formulate a content strategy for your website. Google webmaster tools also allows you to submit XML sitemap of your website, exclude URLs, and help Google display the most important content of your website. It also notifies you if there is a problem with your site which is stopping Google from crawling and indexing your pages.
How to Add your WordPress Site to Google Webmaster Tools
Go to Google Webmaster tools website and sign in with a Google account. After signing in, add your website’s URL and hit the add new site button.
On the next screen, you will be asked to verify the ownership of the website you are adding. You can either upload an HTML file to your website’s root directory using FTP or click on Alternate method to obtain a meta tag which you can then add to your WordPress site.
To easily add the meta tag to your website you can install and activate our Insert Headers and Footers plugin. Copy the meta tag line provided by webmaster tools which will look something like this:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="VerificationKeyCode" />
Now go to Settings » Insert Headers and Footers and paste the meta tag line into the header field. Save your changes and go back to Google Webmaster tools website and click on Verify site button.
Alternately if you are using WordPress SEO plugin, then you can copy the verification key in content part of the meta tag and paste it in WordPress SEO plugin. Click on SEO in your WordPress admin sidebar and then scroll down to webmaster tools section to paste the unique key in the Google Webmaster Tools field. Save your changes and go back to Google Webmaster tools website to verify your website.
Once you have verified your website, the next thing you would want to do is to add your XML sitemap. Don’t have a sitemap or not sure what is a sitemap? Check out our guide on how to create XML sitemaps in WordPress. After you have finished adding your sitemap, it may take a while for Google to display your site data.
That’s all you need to do to add your WordPress site to Google webmaster tools. Once your data starts coming in, you can use it to your advantage.
We hope that you found this article helpful. For more WordPress and SEO tips, you can tweet to us @WPBeginner or join WPBeginner on Facebook. For questions and feedback about this article please leave a comment below.
Am really grateful for this guide, thanks and keep it up!
Thank you for the info, couldn’t find a way to validate my WP site !
i did use your Header and footer tool.
Thank you for the very helpful video/instructions. One suggestion would be to let people know about the option to use Yoast (which is even called out that “you probably already have”) first instead of second. This would avoid needing a completely different/new plug-in. I did in fact already have Yoast but went forward with the header/footer plug-in not knowing I could use Yoast.
Thanks SO much. I couldn’t figure out how to put in that code and these two methods are very easy.
Hi, I am trying to verify my WP site but really struggling. I have placed the code in the header but it then appeared on the public facing site.
It is not the only code in the head section but no matter where I put it, it does not verify.
Help please!
I’ve been frequenting your site because it has been really helpful in building my blog. I just can’t seem to verify it thru google search console. I tried all the alternatives listed in this page. What am I doing wrong? HELP!
Hi Mai Taup,
Do you see an error when trying to verify your blog? Make sure that you have added the correct address of your website in Google Search Console. Google treats https and http, www and non-www URLs differently.
Thank you! Thank you! I have finally verified my site. awesome tips.
Thanks very much – your step-by-step description was so easy to follow & it worked a treat!
Thank you! Inserting the meta tag via the insert header plugin worked for me. Grateful
It was helpful .. I had been messing up for long and this article solved my problems in a minute .. keep up the good work
it keeps telling me “we were unable to verify your property” Any thoughts on what i am doing wrong? thanks!
I keep getting an error when I follow the tips in this video. It says – “The Google XML Sitemaps plugin might cause issues when used in conjunction with Yoast SEO.” Any idea what I should do now?
I used the insert headers footers and copied and pasted the code over and it still wouldn’t verify the site.
What led me to this video was I initially watched your video on how to install Google maps to wordpress with your provided plugin. The result was Javascript console prohibiting complete map loading.
I have done everything stated in this video tutorial, but I “do not receive the green check mark” allocating Google found my tag? Could one of these be why:
1. Domain was on another platform and I recently brought it over to Dreamhost (2 days ago)
2. New platform, theme, and wordpress are still under construction – could this hinder the tag from being found?
3. Google is stating verification failed, unable to connect to the server – Why is server not allowing connection?
Great to the point videos, Thanks for your time.
Hi Jared,
If your website is in maintenance mode and not publicly accessible, then Google webmaster tools cannot verify the tag.
Excellent video. I struggled for a couple of hours before I found your short, informative, step by step instruction. Bravo.
if we have verified our analytics account with insert header and footer plugin, how to verify with web masters ??
What about setting up different versions of the website name on google’s search console?
i.e.
http://www.wpbeginner.com
wpbeginner.com
https:// etc etc etc
What is the purpose of that and how do you do it>
Hi Tina,
Google considers them different websites. You will need to pick one to submit to Google webmaster tools.
Thanks! Very helpful video.
I just verified by site with the plugin from WpBeginner
Thank you for an excellent tutorial! After struggling to figure the domain verification process for some time, this tutorial helped me to resolve the issue in minutes! Thank you!
I am trying to verify the https versions of my site via ftp but cannot find those versions to upload the HTML verification file to. Any ideas where to find them?
Hello,
none of those methods worked for my website, I have followed the steps in the video and but it says it can not find the verification meta tag. Also uploading the html file did not work. What should I do now?
Thank you!
Thank you very much for sharing such an important info especially the “Insert Headers and Footers Plugin” which is going to help me a lot. Is it OK to uninstall and delete “Insert Headers and Footers Plugin” after including meta tag in the header?
Eagerly waiting for reply…
Thanks again………
Hi Prathmesh,
You will need to keep the plugin installed. Uninstalling the plugin will disable the code you added into header or footer using the plugin’s settings.
Thanks.
That helped…
This is really helpful and I would hope my blog gets visitors too.
I was going around and around trying to get this to work and couldn’t.
I’m so happy I finally got the “green checkmark” after following your instructions. Thx a bunch
Thanks for this video. Was going round in circles tying to verify my site and all done now. Thanks
After submit xml I got a messege “Improve the search presence of https://example.com“. There are a option named “Add all your website versions”. Do you have any instruction about this?
I have removed a plugin of wpbeginners from my WordPress site mistakenly I want to add that plugin again but It says that “Installation failed: Destination folder already exists” what to at this stage ?
Hi Arif,
You will need to first connect to your website using File Manager in cPanel or an FTP client. Next, you need to locate /wp-content/plugins/ folder. Inside it you will need to locate the plugin you are trying to install and then delete it. After that you will be able to install the plugin normally from your WordPress admin area.
Thank you for your Kind support
Hi i just wanted to say thanks i was trying to do the webmaster tool thing for my website and i had no idea how to do that i know somewhat but coding is not so much of my thing like where to put what code and i was having trouble knowing how to upload the html file but this meta thing was easy to do thank you helped me do it i was struggling with this and i asked someone for help and they made it seem like its impossible for me to do cuz usually ppl dont tell others and help but this helped me alot thanks i was struggling for a year asking for help now i just google and found ur site and it helped thank you so much really also can u let us know like a checklist to make sure points to apply for google adsense please plzzzz thanks
Dear Sirs,
can anyone help me with the recommended method ie. HTML file upload process step by step. Its vaguely explained. All other methods are explained in detail. please explain this method too in detail
Thanks
regards
Michael
Thank you. Very simple
Thank You, your recommended plugin made adding the meta tag very simple to the header. I believe this plugin should be with googles instructions and a lot more people will find this easier to insert meta tags. I failed the first time on all the other methods
thanks a lot, your article was very informative, easily instructed and understandable. i appreciate your help wordpress.
Can NOT thank you enough for this! Have been struggling all day trying to find a simple fix and this was so easy!!!
This was really helpful. Thank you so much.
the tutorial is really great but i think i have messed it up somewhere.In my search traffic it is showing 0 ,even though the site is open in my phone . Can you suggest some way how to get the correct data.Also i have received plenty of comments on my blog still it shows 0 users from beginning.My website is :
WOW thank you so much for the video tutorial. It was super simple to do, now I have the green light thanks again I love your tutorials
The tutorial is really helpful and much easy to understand.
Hi,
I am trying to verify my website but failed many times. I have followed all the steps that are listed above but not working for my website. I tried submitting html tag code in google search console in Yoast SEO. Please help me. Thanks
Hi, The tutorial is really nice.
I use the sitemaps plugin (Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps) on my wordpress site to send my sitemaps to Bing and google. Do I still need to use Google webmastertools for sitemaps
Hello,
You can continue using that plugin. However, if you want to use Yoast SEO to submit sitemaps, then you should stop using your old plugin.
After agonizing over “countless” foreign instructions on the web on how to verify as owner of my website, I stumbled across this tutorial. It took me a few minutes to understand what I was typing in my search engine to add a new plug-in, but after that, I was finally able to verify my Blog. The only suggestion I could make is that it the visuals could be a little more clearer.
Thank you so much for your help!
I am SO grateful for WP Beginner. This tutorial helped me immensely. Thanks!
Thank you so much. I have been trying so long to verify my website and I couldn’t until I visited your website. Thank you again.
Thank you so much! I was really stumped, as my several attempts were not working. Thanks to your video I got the green check mark on the first try!
i did verified my site long before but have not added meta values to the webmaster tools. Can you please help me in finding the meta values. Where can get it with verifying again?
Thank you for uploading and sharing this info. for me it’s very helpfull as a starter of wordpress sites. Without this kind of help it makes it mor difficult. Again thank you keep up the good job.
Hello all!
I am setting up Yoast Seo. I have done the process to add my website to Google Webmaster and it’s works ok. But when I go to put the authorization code to authenticate, it says “no profiles found”.
Please, some help will be appreciated.
thanks a lot..really helped me this article
This is wonderful. I have had a site for more than 10 years, paying various consultants thousands of dollars along the way. But no decent SEO. This looks like a way to go. I am stuck at 1 minute 50 seconds of the video. Then the voice goes too fast and the picture is too fuzzy for me to follow.
I have inserted the plugin but do not know how to capture the “metadata” that goes on a subsequent page. Can someone help?
Hi,
i am actually facing a problem.
I am helping my cousin with his website.
His website is actually
However, when i search for “brboss”, his website does not show up.
Can you please help with this problem
p.s. i already register in google webmaster
Thank you.
Thank you.. The video really helped me setup my site.