Your website needs traffic. One way to get people familiar with your website is to make sure that it will appear in the search results when they ask Google to search for something.
There’s a whole science around this called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and I’ll explain it in more detail later in this article. For now, it won’t hurt to let Google know about your website and even nicely ask it to index it.
Google Search Console is a free service and here’s how to set it up:
Step 1
Go to search.google.com/search-console and hit the Start now button:
Step 2
Sign in with your Google account or create a new one:
Step 3
In the next page, you’ll need to enter your domain name and hit the CONTINUE button:
Step 4
Next, you need to copy the special code to your clipboard:
Step 5
Next, you need to go to your DNS management and create a new TXT record as instructed above. Cloudflare setup is really easy, just click the DNS icon:
Step 6
Next, select the TXT as a type of record:
Step 7
Fill out the name (@ stands for your domain name so you can use this nice shortcut) and paste the code from your clipboard to the Content field. Finally, click the Save button:
Step 8
Check that the record has been created:
Step 9
Back at Google Search Console hit the VERIFY button:
Step 10
It’s perfectly fine if you’ll see this window saying that verification failed. It can take a while for DNS changes to appear. As instructed, try it again in a few hours and you should be fine:
Once your ownership is verified, you can go to the property dashboard:
Step 11
This is what it should look like:
If you still have trouble with verification, even after day or two, check this video from Google for more help:
