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.
Update: Google has added a third and easier verification method now. If you already have Google Analytics installed on your site, Google Webmaster Tools can use it to verify your site – no need for meta tags or file uploads!
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Great video Don. You always are clear in your explanations. Please continue to inform us about how to improve our Wordpress sites.
Ed
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)
Thanks for the video..very helpful. Does the process work the same with SmallBizTheme as far as going into the editor/header?
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.
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.
GREAT video!!!! Thanks for sharing I will put this on all my sites.
@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.
@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!
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
)
@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.
WOW! I guess I need to get out more. Jing is by TechSmith. Same People that developed Camtasia. Thanks for that Don.
L8r on . . .
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.
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
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
Hi, Don – you and your videos rock! Thank you for all you do to educate us!
Simple and nice explanation, great work!
Very nice video. Thanks to your tip I found the “Site Performance” section under Labs for checking Page Load speeds.
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??
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.
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.
Thank you Don! Your videos are the best: Useful, helpful, easy to follow, relevent and to the point. Keep up the great work!
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
You are an inspiration sir. Thank you for all you do.
Mike C.
Thanks for the lovely tip, your mentoring is simply amazing. Keep it coming.
Awesome – thank you very much!
Don
You are my hero, after much hair pulling thanks to you my site has finally been verified (I just spent 2 days trying to figure it out as I am new to all this but you have solved my dilemma in 1 minute) You are a godsend!!! Now I can go eat my dinner….
x
@Jo – I was just the same with the first site I verified.
Took me ages.
You can start looking at your links etc now.
appreciate this video, so helpfull thanks a lot.
Hi Don,
I just spent half an hour scouring the net on how to verify my Wordpress blog in Google Webmaster and yours was the ONLY one that was clear & worked as described – thankyou very much!
Peter
Nice one brother!!
Thanks so much for the great tutorial. It really saved me a lot of frustration!
Don, this was truly a great video. well explained.
my only problem is that when i go to the editor on Carrington Theme header.php, i do not have the showing and i can’t find the place to place the meta tag.
if you could email me at (edited), i’d like to hear from you. thanks for the great video!
@everyone – thank you! I sincerely appreciate your feedback and taking the time to leave a comment.
@Andrew – I’m not familiar with the Carrington theme, but what you want to look for is the tag indicating the end of your head section. Put the code just before that and you’ll be fine.
Thank you! I’ve been trying to work this out for hours!!
Hi Don, I watched your video and it was very clear and I actually found the spot I was suppose to add the meta tag I got from goggle, then when I hit the update file button the whole page disappears. I am using wordpress 2.9.2
goggle still says that it can not verify.
I noticed that there is another meta tag that is already there and I have tried putting the meta code from goggle before it after it and without it and nothing works. Any ideas?
Hi Don, I am having the same difficulty as John in the previous post. I’m using the Inove Wordpress theme and have inserted the code in my header php template several times and Google will not verify the site. Perhaps you code look at the source code and see if something is wrong. http://fixmycabinet.com
Excellent video – strait to the point!!!
Jordy and John, total bummer on your pages going missing! Yikes. As an fyi for future sites, Don’s theme has a built in space in the dashboard where you post in the Google code so you don’t have to fiddle with the header text. Easy and effective and not once have I “lost” a page! Good luck.
@John – if the whole page disappears then maybe there was a small syntax error in the way the code was posted in. If you leave out one bracket or character it can break the page.
@Jordy – I looked at the code on your site and I see the Google Tag – looks OK. I don’t know why Google will not accept it.
@Eileen – thanks for pointing that out! I wanted to make it easier for people to do this verification step in the SmallBiz WordPress Theme.
Don, thanks for taking a look. I did get the code acceptable for Google after reading a blog post suggesting to load it through the “All In One SEO” plugin. There’s a section in the plugin called “Additional Header Tags” that I inserted the Google code into and it was accepted.
Don,
Great site!
I have thesis on my site. I tried the suggestion posted by Eileen by placing the verification code in the open hook, but google is unable to verify my site ownership. Is there another suggestion you could advise?
Open hook has the option for ‘execute php’ do I click on execute php, or just save the code? I am a bit clueless, as you can probably see, when it comes to coding lol.
I left the code on my site in case you would be kind to take a look at it for me. It is around line 27
Thank you so much,
Heguiberto
Don,
I just checked the webmaster tool again and my site got verified this time. Before I went back into my open hook unchecked the ‘Execute PHP on this hook’ and saved the code again. It is working yohoo!
Thanks,
Heguiberto
Heguiberto, I went into the Thesis Open Hook – the very first box is called WP Head, you can put the code in there and click the little save button. Give that a try and good luck!
Hi Eileen,
Thanks for the help It finally worked!
Open hook is a cool thing.
Your blog is nice, I need to create a fun page for weirdcombinations soon.
have a great day!
Heguiberto
I mean a fan page on fb
cheers,
H
Great video! That was so helpful. I just started my blog about a month ago. This should help out a lot!
Craig
Tried so many times to verify my site with google and I was on the verge of giving up, until I watched your video, and…it was a success! Thank you very much for such a detailed explanation.
Don I still can not get my site verified by google. Mabe i’m just stupid but what ever I try it does not work.
I use wordpress with the Gandhi 1.2 theme.
Can anyone help?
Thank you very much for the idea & your video help me much. Welldone.
A brilliant article, all blog newbies should read this to get the most out of their blog.
Thanks
I’ve followed the directions for the meta tag method and the upload method, and it’s still not working. Any ideas?? Website is http://www.brainofworms.com
Thanks,
Benny
Hi, i have been having a rather frustrating time verifying my site using the meta tag and html. But thanks to your youtube video, it made things more clear. I find it strange that google does not give a proper explanation on how to verify using wordpress. Instead, they just direct you to your index file when it should be header.php.
Here was the query and i recommended your video aswell for future reference:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0e4e94a3f6d0de28&hl=en&fid=0e4e94a3f6d0de2800048a9104e18492
@John – I took a quick look at your site and I don’t see the Google Webmaster Tools verification code in the header when I view the page source. How did you add it?
@Brain – Same thing, I don’t see the verification in the head section of your page source. This is why Google can’t verify it. How did you go about adding it?
@Ata – Thank you – I appreciate you adding a link to my tutorial in the Google support forums!
I went into” Edit Themes” and put into Header. Php and added it where Don had said in the video, but when I hit save the page goes blank!
Don, I finally got it to work. It didn’t work using the meta tag. I don’t know why? I got it to work by uploading it to my root directory. Do you have a tutorial on how to add google analytics?
Thanks, I hope this works, I’ve been trying for a thousand times already…
Thanks for this step guide, i was able to place the webmaster tool on my word press. and it work instantly.
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