Verify Your WordPress Website in Google Webmaster Tools

by Don Campbell on February 3, 2010 · 22 comments

Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most powerful free toolkits at your disposal for making sure Google can crawl your website properly.

In order to use Google Webmaster tools for your website, you need to verify it with Google to prove that you own the website.

There are two ways to do this:

Uploading a special file to your website
Adding a Meta Tag to your website.

With WordPress, it can be confusing how to do this. This video shows you how to verify your WordPress Website in Google Webmaster Tools using the Meta Tag method.

Once your site is verified, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to do all sorts of diagnostics on your site. For example:

Submit an XML sitemap for your site (I use this WordPress Plugin to automatically update my XML sitemap)
Discover any problems Google might have crawling your site
Discover any duplicate content issues on your site
See what keywords people are using to find you
See what sites are linking to your website
Check your Page Load Speed
And a TON more.

Trust me, this is an indispensable tool and you’ll want to set it up for your website.

Please rate my video and leave me comments below!

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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ed S February 4, 2010 at 8:01 am

Great video Don. You always are clear in your explanations. Please continue to inform us about how to improve our Wordpress sites.

2 Vicente Vila February 4, 2010 at 8:15 am

Really useful

IMO, your video tutorials are very well done.
Excuse the off-topic, but which tools do you use to create these video tutorials ?

Thanks for sharing this info on Wordpress

Vicente Vila (smallbiz theme customer from Spain)

3 Mike Maggs February 4, 2010 at 8:44 am

Thanks for the video..very helpful. Does the process work the same with SmallBizTheme as far as going into the editor/header?

4 Mike C. February 4, 2010 at 8:55 am

Hey Don,

I’ve been receiving your newsletter for quite a while now. Been pretty busy with client sites so I haven’t stopped by here much lately (My Bad!) But this newsletter subject line caught my attention.

A very timely post for me. Excellent Video Post. I’m building a business site mounted on WordPress right now. It has been some time since I built a site using WP versus static HTML or PHP pages. Thanks for the plugin tip for the XML site map. It wasn’t that long ago a web/dev had to jump through major hoops to produce a Google Site Map.

I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind:

1) The quality of your video post above is EXCELLENT! The picture in picture is great. Are you using Camtasia or a more high end video editing/capture software package.

2) Have you created a tutorial on how to set up a “Google Friend Connect” widget like you have here in the lower right. Very Cool.

Thanks for all your hard work my friend. I’ll be back more often. You’ve made some major upgrades to this blog since the last time I was here.

Mike C.

5 Keith Davis February 4, 2010 at 9:34 am

Hi Don
Nice format with the video… small picture of you and large picture showing what you are doing.

I verify all my sites with google and use the Webmaster tools all the time.
It tells you how many links you have… any crawl errors it finds… page load time and lots of other useful info.

Took me ages to verify my first site, this video would have made it a doddle.

6 Dannah February 4, 2010 at 10:23 am

GREAT video!!!! Thanks for sharing I will put this on all my sites.

7 Don Campbell February 4, 2010 at 10:48 am

@Ed S – Thank you!
@Vicente – I use a tool called Screenflow, and sometimes OmniDazzle.
@Mike Maggs – Yes I was actually using a site based on the SmallBiz WordPress theme in this video.

8 Don Campbell February 4, 2010 at 10:52 am

@Mike C – thank you! I’m using Screenflow for recording the screencasts. I’ve been experimenting with formats and I appreciate your feedback. I do have a tutorial that shows how to add Google Friend Connect to a WordPress site or blog too.

@Keith David, @Dannah – thank you!

9 Mike C. February 4, 2010 at 1:44 pm

Thanks for the quick response Don. It’s certainly easy to tell when the owner of a coaching/teaching blog cares enough to reply to comments versus passing that task off to a staff member or out sourced blog slave. Kudos my friend. You are one of a few “Real” online teachers among many wanna beez. (Or profess to beez.)

Thanks for sharing the links to those resource but I’m not a MAC man. I hope to be one of those someday when I get virtually rich )

10 Don Campbell February 4, 2010 at 3:48 pm

@Mike C – thanks man. I love this stuff. Another very cool tool for recording screen casts on both Mac and PC is Jing. They are limited to 5 minutes but that’s probably a good thing It’s a great tool and it’s free too.

11 Mike C. February 4, 2010 at 4:30 pm: WOW! I guess I need to get out more. Jing is by TechSmith. Same People that developed Camtasia. Thanks for that Don.

L8r on . . .

Reply

12 eileen February 4, 2010 at 4:56 pm

Don, as always this was so helpful!
Per your suggestion I went into my Webmaster Tools to check my stats, and I realized that I hadn’t submitted a site map. After a little poking around (and a little guidance from you) I realized:
1. I had never submitted a site map (I thought the plug-in was enough). If you go onto the settings of Google XML Sitemaps plug in, scroll towards the bottom and there is a box: Location of your sitemap file (as you said it looks like this, sitemap.xml)
2. I put this into the submit a site map section of Web Master Tools and got an error message. I realized I had registered my site as http://eileenlonergan.com and the pages are all http://www.eileenlonergan.com
Quick fix and now I am in business! Thank you as always for your generous support and such awesome information.
PS If you are using Thesis, put the code in the WP Head section of the open hook.

13 Magnolia Starter February 4, 2010 at 4:57 pm

Don,

Thanks for reminding me that I needed to do this for my new site http://magnoliastarter.com.

I have tried doing this with the FTP method before and could never get Google to verify the site. The meta file method works every time and as you pointed out there is no messing around with the FTP program.

Thanks for your informative posts and a great theme.

Rob

14 Brad West February 4, 2010 at 6:02 pm

Great Video Don,
I still haven’t got into the video thing I need to.
Webmaster tools seems to be a big step up from Analytics, the information is greater and more specific. You speak of using an FTP I have found allot of people don’t know what the heck that is. I have used 4 ftps and over the years. I have found a free one that works great, if anyone is using FireFox search for an ftp addon and it works right from your browser, so far never a problem.

Thanks Don

15 Yvonne February 5, 2010 at 6:59 am

Hi, Don – you and your videos rock! Thank you for all you do to educate us!

16 Francesco February 9, 2010 at 8:43 am

Simple and nice explanation, great work!

17 Doug February 10, 2010 at 1:03 pm

Very nice video. Thanks to your tip I found the “Site Performance” section under Labs for checking Page Load speeds.

18 Guy February 13, 2010 at 3:14 am

Can I do this without hosting the site myself?
My site is Wordpress hosted and when I go to EditCSS I dont get theaccess to code you have??

19 Don Campbell February 13, 2010 at 8:54 am

eileen, Magnolia, Brad West, Yvonne, Francesco, Doug – thanks for the kind words!

Guy – if you are using WordPress.com to host your WordPress website rather than a self-hosted one, then you won’t be able to use this method. However, there is a neat little trick described in the comments of this blog post that should do the trick!

I’ll include them below:
1) Write a new PAGE (not Post)

2) Paste on the title (subject) the exact code that you get from Google Webmaster Tools option “Upload an HTML file” (this is the verification method you have to choose). Example of the code:

google4f645e3adsdaa48g3a41z.html

3) Click to publish it.

4) Ask Google to verify your Blog.

20 Garnet February 14, 2010 at 1:55 pm

Hi, Don!

I had hoped your tutorial would resolve the issue of getting verified by Google, but when I went to Header (header.php), it looked nothing like the coding on display in the video.

I tried sticking the Meta tag in as the first line; then between the first and second lines; and even between the second and third lines.

Verification keept failing.

But maybe I don’t need to bother? You see, I was wanting to fill in three configuration fields in the widget Robots Meta — the fields are in the Webmaster Tools section of Robots Meta as follows:

Verify meta value for Google Webmaster Tools:

Verify meta value for Yahoo! Site Explorer:

Verify meta value for Microsoft Webmaster Portal:

Google was the first field I began working on. If I can’t get that working, then I won’t proceed to the other two.

After all, maybe I don’t require these three “meta values” at all in order to benefit from Robots Meta?

Still, it’s a shame not to be able to share in the benefits that you’ve illustrated as coming with having Google verification — I wasn’t aware those features were available with it.

21 Sacramento Chiropractor March 3, 2010 at 12:56 pm

Thank you Don! Your videos are the best: Useful, helpful, easy to follow, relevent and to the point. Keep up the great work!

22 Mike C. March 3, 2010 at 7:24 pm

You’ve done it again my friend. When you’re buried with work like I am it can make for working under some pretty serious time constraints. That leaves little time to stay up with new and effective tools.

Hope you don’t mind but I find myself quoting you in private sessions with my local clients.

I swear I don’t know how you keep up with your clients, produce videos and e-reports and the apparent networking you do through Twitter, FaceBook etc.

I would love to have time just to finish my site, but clients come first of course. Guess I’m going to just have to hunker down and put in some Don Campbell type over time