A critical step in optimizing your site for search engines is adding your WordPress site to the Google search console (GSC, let’s learn how to connect your site to Google in this step-by-step connection guide.
In our plugin, you can connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO. This verifies your website for your Google Search Console account and allows you to view your crawl errors. Especially when you have a large site, the number of crawl errors might scare you. In this post, I’ll explain more about crawl errors and show you how to fix them using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
Google uses so-called Google bots to crawl and index your page. In layman’s language, crawling is the process of Googlebot going over your pages, one link at a time. When crawling, its goal is to get to every significant page on your site by following links on pages, sitemaps, etc. On the other hand, Indexing is what Googlebot does to take in all the content on your pages and include it in its search result pages.
A Step-by-Step Process for Adding Your Site to GSC
Note: This guide will show you how to verify your website using Google Analytics or HTML tags. This post does not provide instructions for other verification methods.
If you don’t want to make any changes to your website template to set up Search Console, consult an experienced professional. Schedule a free consultation with one of our SEO experts to find out how we can help you with your GSC issues – and more!
You can visit Google Search Console here.
You need one of the following to verify your site with Google:
- Administrative access to your website’s Google Analytics (GA) account. GA must be set up to use this method.
- Edit access to your website header WordPress site – found in Appearance > Editor – Theme Header or header.php
- You may need to switch to a different theme to see the header options.
- Click Add property
- Select the appropriate box as needed, then copy and paste your website URL from your homepage
URL prefix options should include HTTP or HTTPS at the beginning. Domain options do not have to include HTTP or HTTPS. NONE should include any text after .com/, .org/, .net/ or any other variation
- Good – https://www.visualmodo.com/
- Bad – https://www.visualmodo.com/blog
Under the option, you selected, click Next.
Next Steps to Connect WordPress to GSC
You should get a success message. So, congratulations! If you haven’t already, check the requirements above. If you still get the error, try the alternative HTML markup validation method below.
HTML markup: Select the HTML markup option. Copy the entire code snippet into the white box. Open the header of your website (instructions in step one). If you have a HubSpot or Squarespace website, just paste the code into the header area.
If you have a WordPress site, put the code between the tags (just below the first tag should work). This requires an entirely different step because it is essential. Always save your changes. Otherwise, the verification process won’t work! Return to the Search Console screen and select Confirm. Most site owners will see a confirmation message of success right away.
Choose your verification method
You will get several different review options. Often, we find it easiest to choose one of the alternatives. Google Analytics or HTML markup. Google Analytics. To verify your website with Google Analytics, you must meet the following requirements:
The Google Analytics code must already be in the header of your website. You must have administrator access to your Analytics account. If you have both, click Confirm to connect your WordPress to GSC.
Google Search Console WordPress Connection
There are two types of crawl errors:
- Site errors affect your entire site. Think about connectivity issues with your web server and problems fetching your robots.txt file.
- URL errors that affect a specific page on your website. Googlebot tried to crawl the URL but failed somehow. It resolved your DNS, connect to your server, fetched/read your robots.txt file, and then requested the URL. But after that, something went wrong.
Viewing crawl errors in Yoast SEO
In our Yoast SEO plugin (free and paid), you can view the crawl errors that Google came across on your website. All you have to do is connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO. In our plugin, we guide you through that process. Let me explain the steps here as well.
Connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO
To connect Google Search Console to the Yoast SEO plugin, you must navigate to this page in WordPress: SEO › Search Console.
The next step is to connect them. In our plugin, just click the ‘Get Google Authorization Code’ button:
It’ll take you to Google Search Console. You’ll be asked to confirm that you want to connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO and let our plugin view and manage the data for your sites. Click ‘allow’:
Lastly, you’ll get a key to include in the plugin to connect WordPress to GSC:
Now simply copy-paste that code and, insert it into the box in our plugin, hit ‘Authenticate.’
Choose the profile you’d like to connect with and save it. Done! Now, you can continue in our plugin’s first tab of that same section (Desktop). Be sure to check the other charges to find specific crawl errors.
You will find the information we collected from your Google Search Console here. In this table, you see the URL that gave an error, the date Google crawled it last, when Google detected the mistake first, and the response code Google sent. In the screenshot, all response codes are 404 Not Found.
So, if you connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO, you will have an excellent overview of how many crawl errors Google finds on your website. Now, you can go and create redirects for these 404s or simply change them to 410s if that page is of no use to you anymore. More on status codes in this article. When you have ‘fixed’ the error, hover over the URL in Yoast SEO and click ‘mark as fixed’.
Is there an easy way to create that redirect?
Yes! There is an easier way to complete this process, and it is called Yoast SEO Premium. Besides a lot of extras that the plugin has to offer, it allows you to create your redirect in our plugin immediately:
Simply click ‘Create redirect,’ and, unlike in our free plugin (which will prompt that it’s only featured in our premium plugin), you’ll get this screen:
Our plugin will allow you to create a redirect or add another status code (301, 302, 307, 410, and 451 are all possible). In case of a 301 redirect, like in the example, simply insert the URL you’d like that ‘old’ URL to redirect to. If you want to tell Google Search Console about this fix, simply leave the check ‘Mark as fixed’ and hit ‘Create Redirect.’ It’s as simple as that. In tomorrow’s article, we’ll highlight the redirects manager.
Now go and connect Google Search Console to WordPress!
I hope this clarifies why you want to connect Google Search Console to Yoast SEO. You’ll be able to monitor crawl errors in our free plugin, and for a few bucks a year, our premium plugin will even help you fix them!
If you, by any chance, have already used this feature in our premium plugin, I’d love for you to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
