Articles on: Google Ads, Analytic, and SEO

Verify domain with Google

1. Introduction

Google Search Console ( previously known as Google Webmaster Tools ) is a free service offered by Google which helps you to monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google search result.

You don't have to sign up for Search Console for your site to be included in Google's search result, but doing so can help you understand how Google views your site and optimize its performance in search result. For a more in-depth guide on using Google Search Console, kindly visit Search Console Help.

Before you can start using the available tools in Search Console, you will first need to add your website and verify that you have authorization.

2. Verify your website ownership with Google (store with custom domain)

Step 1 : Get ready your website property :
It is recommended that you activate the free SSL certificate provided by EasyStore to secure your domain and make your domain protocol becomes https.
We suggest using the primary domain as your website property. You can check your store primary domain at Admin > Settings > Domains > Active domains > the domain with a star is your primary domain.

Step 2 : Go to Google Search Console > log in with your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, you will have to create one before you can continue.

Step 3 : Click on Menu > Add property > under Domain, insert your website property > Continue.

Step 4 : Click COPY to copy the TXT record.

Step 5 : Go to EasyStore Admin > Channels > Online Store > Domains > beside Registered domains, click into the domain.

Step 6 : Scroll down to the bottom and click + Add DNS record.

Step 7 : Fill in as follow > Save.
Name: leave blank
Kind: select TXT
Record Data: paste the TXT record you copied earlier

Step 8 : Head back to your Google Search Console > click Verify.

Verification is successful and you're done!

3. Verify your website ownership with Google (store without custom domain)

Step 1 : If your store doesn't have a custom domain name, you can use the non-www .easy.co domain (e.g. https://abc.easy.co) as your website property.

Step 2 : Go to Google Search Console > log in with your Google account.

Step 3 : Click on Menu > Add property > under URL prefix, insert your website property > Continue.

Step 4 : Choose HTML tag method and copy the meta tag.

Step 5 : Log in to your EasyStore Admin > Apps > More apps > search for Google Search Console > Install this app.

Step 6 : Paste the meta tag you copied earlier into the space below Google Webmaster html tag: > Save.

Step 7 : Head back to your Google Search Console > click Verify.

Verification is successful and you're done!

📌 Note : After your property has been verified, we strongly suggest you submitting your sitemap to help Google crawl your site.

4. Submit a sitemap to Google

An XML sitemap of your e-commerce site is useful when:

Your website is new and want to have it appear on search results

Your website has dynamic pages (new or updated products)

Your website has a complicated structure or many internal links

An XML sitemap of your online store will ease Google to find your pages when it crawls your website. By submitting your sitemap, it will inform Google about pages on your sites that are available for crawling. It is not required to submit a sitemap to Google. Your website can still be indexed.

Step 1 : Go to Google Search Console > Sitemaps > fill in sitemap.xml > Submit.

Step 2 : Sitemap submitted successfully > Done.

Step 3 : You will need to wait for a while before it gets indexed. After the process is done, you will see how many pages submitted.

📌 Note: You only need to submit the sitemap once

5. Ask Google to re-crawl your URL

When we search for something using Google Search Engine, Google looks through its database and shows the most relevant results, it doesn't really search the whole internet. If you’ve recently added or made changes to a page on your site, you can ask Google to re-index it using the URL inspection tool. More Google guidelines about crawl request can be found here.

Step 1 : Again in Google Search Console > URL inspection > paste the URL you would like to request for indexing.

Step 2: Click on the Request indexing button

Step 3 : Indexing requested successfully.

Step 4 : Indexing can take up to a week or two, you can check the last crawl by clicking on Coverage > Last crawl.

Here would be a GIF for your reference:

Updated on: 19/11/2023

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