How to set up Google Search Console and submit a sitemap

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your website appears in search: which searches bring visitors, which pages are indexed and what is stopping the rest. If you have a website and have not set it up, do it today; it takes about 15 minutes.

Step 1: Add your website

Go to Google Search Console and sign in with the Google account you use for your business. Click Add property and choose one of two types:

• Domain: covers every version of your site (with and without www, http and https, subdomains). It needs a DNS record to verify. Best if you can edit your domain settings.
• URL prefix: covers one exact address, like https://yourbusiness.com/. Easier to verify. Fine for most small websites.

Step 2: Verify that the site is yours

Google needs proof you own the website. For a URL prefix property you can choose:

• HTML file: download a small file and upload it to your website's main folder.
• HTML tag: paste a meta tag into your home page's head section.
• Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager: works if either is already installed with the same account.
• DNS record: add a TXT record at your domain provider (the only option for a Domain property).

Keep the file or tag in place after verifying; removing it can undo the verification.

Step 3: Find your sitemap

A sitemap is a list of the pages you want Google to find. Most websites already have one:

• Many sites: yourbusiness.com/sitemap.xml
• WordPress (built in): yourbusiness.com/wp-sitemap.xml
• WordPress with Yoast SEO: yourbusiness.com/sitemap_index.xml

Open the address in your browser; if you see a list of links, you have found it.

Step 4: Submit the sitemap

In Search Console, open Sitemaps, type the sitemap address after your domain (for example sitemap.xml) and click Submit. After a short while the status should show Success with the number of pages Google found.

Step 5: Ask Google to index important pages

For a new or updated page, paste its address into the URL inspection bar at the top, wait for the result and click Request indexing. Google adds it to a priority queue. There is a daily limit, so use it for your most important pages, not every page.

Step 6: Know which reports to check

• Performance: the searches people used, clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. Data appears after a few days.
• Pages: which pages are indexed and why others are not. Common reasons include "Crawled – currently not indexed" (Google saw it but chose not to index it yet) and "Discovered – currently not indexed" (Google knows the page but has not crawled it yet).
• Core Web Vitals: how fast and stable your pages are for real visitors.
• Manual actions and Security issues: should both say no issues detected.

What to do every month

• Look at the searches in Performance and improve pages that appear but get few clicks.
• Check Pages for new errors after website changes.
• Re-submit the sitemap after big changes, such as adding a blog or new service pages.

Want this done for you? Our SEO service sets up Search Console, fixes indexing problems and reports what changed every month. Or start with a free audit.

Questions people ask