Setting up Google Search Console

Why use Search Console?

Google Search Console (or GSC) is one of the most powerful tools for SEO. Search Console helps you monitor your website in organic search. Most users primarily use GSC to view clicks and impressions, but it can also help you:

Find out what users are searching for
Find out how your pages are ranking
Find out what errors need to be fixed
Make the page mobile-friendly
Help implement rich results
…

How to set up Google Search Console?

On Google, open the Google Search Console and then click on “Start now“:

We must log in to GSC with the account we want to set up tracking. It must be a Gmail account (in this case it is seoexperiment.agency@gmail.com our agency’s email):

Then, on the left side, select Search property → Add property:

A window opens as in the picture and in the right part of the window we enter the domain (open the web and copy the URL):

After entering the domain, we must confirm that we are the owner of the page. GSC provides a number of alternative verification options:

The remainder of this document will detail the process for verification using an HTML file (via cPanel) and an HTML tag (via WordPress). Whichever method you choose, you must, first of all, have access to your server, either via FTP, cPanel File Manager or have the login information of your website’s CMS.

Google recommends verifying via an HTML file.

Via HTML file (cPanel)

If you are verifying the page via cPanel, you can verify the page using an HTML file:

Download the file provided by Google (the frame for downloading the HTML file is shown in the image above).
Log in to the cPanel of your website – http://www.domena/cpanel (in our case log in at: https://cijene-goriva.com.hr/cpanel).

Find the File Manager folder:

Then on the left side in the menu or in the middle window you should find public_html (it doesn’t matter which one we click on):

Double-click on public_html to enter the folder, and then inside it transfer the HTML file that we downloaded to the computer.

Upload the file.

Check that it has loaded successfully.

Return to the Search Console and select “Verify”.

If everything is done successfully, this message will be displayed:

Via HTML tag (WordPress)

To check using an HTML tag, you need to add a meta tag to the <head> section of your website. To do this, you’ll need developer access to your site’s CMS. We’ll use WordPress as an example.

Copy the HTML tag from Search Console

Install a plugin for inserting headers and footers on your page. The add-on should be installed first, and then activated using the same button.