Can I verify a WordPress.com free site with Google Search Console?

Can I verify a WordPress.com free site with Google Search Console? - Google Search Console is a free application that allows you to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve any issues that Google may encounter as it crawls and attempts to index your website in search results. If you’re not the most technical person in the world, some of the errors you’re likely to encounter there may leave you scratching your head. We wanted to make it a bit easier, so we put together this handy set of tips about google-search-console, google-search, search-engine-indexing, personal-website to guide you along the way. Read the discuss below, we share some tips to fix the issue about Can I verify a WordPress.com free site with Google Search Console?.Problem :

I have created a free website at wordpress.com and I want to get it indexed in Google's search engine. I came across a video saying, you need to verify your website in "Google search console" in order to index it in Google engine.

The problem is that the free version of wordpress.com does not allow me to use the "Header and footer plugin" in order to put HTML tag in it and verify my website. Are there any alternative methods?

Solution :

Don't use WordPress.com free plan

First, I'd like to caution you against using wordpress.com's free plan. With their free plan, you can't use your own domain name. When you are ready to move off their free hosting and want to redirect your "free" site, your only options would be to pay $13 per year to enable the redirect or use a poor man's redirect that doesn't preserve your SEO and makes users click.

People often hear the advice that they should get a "WordPress website". What that really means is a website with the WordPress content managament system (CMS) available from wordpress.org installed on it. It doesn't mean a site hosted with the (relatively expensive) hosting packages at wordpress.com.

I would suggest that you buy a domain name and search for cheap shared hosting. If I Google "cheap wordpress hosting" it looks like you can get plans for $10 a year. With domain name registration and hosting you can certainly get started for as little as $25 to $30 per year.

Building a site on somebody else's subdomain is only going to lead to tears.

Google Search Console isn't necessary to be indexed

Second, Google Search console doesn't actually help your site get indexed. Googlebot will be able to crawl and index any site created with WordPress.com. Creating a Google Search Console property won't help with that process. Google Search Console gives you insight into how much of your site is getting indexed and which keywords people are searching for to get to your site.

You can verify a WordPress.com free site with Google Search Console

Wordpress.com has the instructions here. The basics are:

1. Create a "prefix" property at Google.


2. Get the HTML meta tag.


3. Paste it into the Tools→Marketing→Traffic screen.

You don't need a special header and footer plugin to use the HTML meta tag.

If the issue about google-search-console, google-search, search-engine-indexing, personal-website is resolved, there’s a good chance that your content will get indexed and you’ll start to show up in Google search results. This means a greater chance to drive organic search traffic to your site.