Google search console (previously called Google webmaster tools) is a free service which Google provides that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google search results. When you verify your property in Google search console, you will get information on how your site is seen from Google’s eye, whether Google is having issues finding and crawling your pages. This information will help you optimize its performance so that it has a higher chances of ranking for the keywords you want it to rank for.
If you want to take your site seriously and want to rank higher in search engines, I would recommend you to set up Google search console properly and ensure that Google is able to find and crawl the content on your site. If Google is having issues crawling the content available on your site, Google will tell you what issues it is having provided you add your site in search console first.
When you have added the site and Google tells you the problems it is having, you will take steps to fix those issues. This will ensure that your site remains Google friendly and has a better chance of ranking in search engines for the keywords you want it to rank for.
Here is how you can add your website or blog in Google webmaster tools and verify the ownership of that property
1. Login to Google Search console (previously known as Google webmaster tools) and click the “Add Property” button.
2. If you have already installed Google analytics in your website using the same Gmail account you used to sign in to Search console, you should see this screen
Go ahead and click on “Verify” and this will add the site in your Google search console account. Once your site is added, you can go ahead and add a sitemap and tweak other settings from the search console.
However, if you are not using Google analytics but still want to use Google search console, you can choose an alternative method for verifying your site. The easiest one is to choose the HTML file method, just download the file and upload it into the root directory of your website (the public_html) folder.
I would highly recommend you to setup Google search console after setting up Google analytics and then choosing the recommended option. This is because this not only takes the lesser number of steps but also takes off integration hassles which you might have to undertake later.
Once you choose the recommended option of using Google analytics to verify your property, your search console will automatically communicate with Google analytics and communicate some of the data to it, thereby allowing you to see some insights from Google analytics itself.
For example, you would be able to see the most popular keywords that are ranking your site on top of search engines from Google analytics itself, and how much traffic you got in a specific date range for that keyword.
Do let me know if you face any issues with Google search console and Google analytics, I will help you sort it out.