Google Search Console Settings
Search Console is a service where those who want to move their websites to the top of Google searches with SEO methods can access all reports and errors related to the site they manage.
Search Console acts as a bridge between content owners and Google. If Search Console interaction was made before your website was crawled by Google Bots, it starts indexing your site by going through the Robots.txt and Sitemaps you have defined here.
If these settings are not made, Google Bots start indexing your pages by working in line with their own algorithms.
Index
Important Reminder!
Google is discontinuing the“Old Search Console” service as of March 28, 2019. Instead, it is making the “New Search Console” service, which is much more useful and faster, available to all webmasters by removing it from beta.
You don’t need to wait for this date to use the new version of Google Search Console. The new version has been available as a beta version for about 6 months. You can get information by reading my article about the new Search Console Settings.
How Google Search Console Works
Step 1. Sign Up and Activation
First of all, you need to have an active Google Account. Enter https://www.google.com/ webmasters/ tools/ home?hl=en in your browser.
After logging in, add the sites you want to manage from the add site section. The important point here is that you need to add all variations and subdomains of your site.
http://example.com
http://www.example.com
https://example.com
https://www.example.com
sub.example.com
Important Notice:
Google announced that as of April 2019, it will see your entire site as domain.com. In other words, the validity of the above rule has ended as of this date. No matter how many variations your site has, Google will only see it as domain.com.
After the site addition process is finished, verification will be required for each site you add. You need to verify with a verification code or other alternative ways. The most commonly used here is the“meta-tag” verification method. You need to write this meta code phrase that Google generates for you between the <head></head> tags on the main page of your website.
You can perform this process with a 3rd party editor software if you want, or you can perform it from the Page / Edit Code section in ready-made site software.
After writing this code, you need to come to Google Console and click the Validate button. After this process, we move on to the second step.
Step 2. Sitemap and Robots.txt Upload Process
At this stage, Google Bots and crawling bots of other search engines are set which directories to index and which not to index when crawling your site. More precisely, this file is in the directory where your website is located and at this stage you can view and test the contents of the Robots.txt file.
You can perform the editing process by opening the Robots.txt file in the server directory with the help of an editor. If you are using the Yoast Seo plugin on WordPress, you can edit Robots.txt in the“SEO> Tools” menu.
An example Robots.txt is as follows.
If you see 0 Error 0 Warning in the lower left corner here, it means that there is no negativity in the Robots.txt configuration. After making the necessary directory access authorization for search engines, we come to the Sitemap upload stage.
To Upload Sitemap, wordpress, joomla, cms, etc. If there is a ready-made web platform you use, you can create a sitemap page by using plug-ins or writing manually. Sitemaps need to be automatically updated periodically or every time a new page/post is added.
You can do this with 3rd party plugins. You can add the page names and paths where the sitemap is published from the Sitemaps section under the Crawl menu in Search Console. You need to create a separate sitemap for each version of your site(mobile, desktop) and sub domain and define the path to Google.
In the Crawl > Sitemaps section, you can add and test the paths of your sitemaps, as well as see the errors detected by Google in sitemaps and their solutions. If you want to rank at the top of Google and keep your place here, you should follow the Google Search Console application and solution suggestions up to date and make the necessary arrangements.
In the next article, we will have the opportunity to review other tools and parameters in the New Search Console, which will be migrated as of March 28, 2019.
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