Search Console and Sitemap

After Analytics, this is your second port of call. Setup involves “verifying” your domain. There’s nothing you need to do in your Pakk account, but domain verification requires you to be able to setup a TXT record with your domain provider, which can be a little tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Once you’ve verified your domain you get access to a whole load of information related to how the Google “searchbot” sees your site. On the surface this may seem very similar to what Analytics provides, and if you don’t fully understand the difference, don’t worry about it too much, just think of it as another source of analytics data about your site. The data in Seach Console is more like a content and performance breakdown of your site in the eyes of Google.

After verification, you should submit a sitemap. This is a link to simple file, which Pakk generates for you, which lists all the pages on your site. Basically, you’re making life easier for the Google crawler by telling it exactly what’s on your site. Pakk sitemaps are at https://{your domain}/sitemap.txt. You only need to set that up once and it updates automatically every day.

Once you’ve set up Search Console, keep an eye on it to spot any problems or issues with your site and try to fix them quickly.