GSC (Google Search Console) the Easy Way

Introduction

Google Search Console is a must-have tool (along with Google Analytics) for giving you insights into your website, but you’ll also use it every time you create a new post or page or edit an existing one.

This is because one of GSC’s main functions is to submit URLs to Googlebot so that it crawls and indexes them much faster than if you leave it to find them by itself.

You should already have a Google account. It’s the starting point for everything Google.

You should also have Google Analytics attached to your Google account for all websites that you want to use GSC on. This will allow auto-verification of the sites for GSC.

You can learn how to create your Google Analytics account at How to Set up and Use Google Analytics.

Get Started

Go to Google Search Console to see the introductory screen.

Click the Start Now button.

If you already have one or more GSC accounts, you will be invited to select one and log in.

Otherwise, Choose Another Account and then Create Account.

Select the For Myself option.

You will be invited to create a Google account.

As you already have a Google Account, click Sign in Instead.

Enter your Google account’s identifying email address or phone number and click Next.

Enter your Google account’s password and click Next.

Google calls each website that you want to use GSC for a “property”.

If you already have websites attached to GSC on this Google account, you can add another by clicking Add Property. Otherwise, you will just go to add your first one.

You will be asked to select the property type and identify it.

Under URL Prefix, enter the full url of the website you want to submit and click the Continue button.

You will see a Verifying Property message as Google auto-verifies your website through Google Analytics, followed by a confirmation message.

Read the message and then click Go to Property.

This will take you to the default screen for that website.

Now that you’ve set it up, this is the screen that you will see when you go into Google Search Console.

If you have multiple websites, you can select the one you want by clicking the drop-down in the upper left.

To submit a particular page or post for Google indexing, bring it up on your website and copy the URL from the address bar.

Then paste it into the panel at the very top where it says “Inspect Any URL in (website name)” and press Enter.

After a few seconds, you will be told whether the URL is on Google or not.

If it’s not on Google, you can request indexing. If it is already on Google, but you’ve made changes you can request re-indexing.

The effect of this is to add the URL to a priority queue for Googlebot to crawl.

There are many other uses for Google Search Console, but they are beyond the scope of this training.

But hopefully, this will have helped to set up your sites for GSC and to use it to submit posts and pages for Google indexing.