Google Webmaster Tools will help you to manage Google's indexing of your site. The SiteBuilder makes it possible for you to take advantage of Google Webmaster's website optimization tools. In this tutorial, we will give you step-by-step instructions on how to verify your site and submit a Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

Step 1: Verifying Your Site with Google Webmaster

If your site is not yet published to the web, you will have to do so first, because you will need the URL (web address) during the verification process. If you have not published your site yet, now would be the perfect opportunity.
 
Once your site is published, you will see the URL on the top left-hand corner of the SiteBuilder.  If you click on that link, it will open up your site on the web. 

Copy the URL and head on over to Google Webmaster Tools to get started. If you do not have a Google account, you will have to create one, otherwise sign in with your Google login details.
 
On the Webmaster Tools homepage, you will see a welcome message and below it, a box to add your site's URL.  Paste or type the URL into the box and click on "Add A Site".

The verification screen will open up.  You need to verify that you are the owner of the website you have just added.
 
  1. Click on the "Alternate methods" tab.
  2. Select "HTML tag".  Please ignore the instructions that Google provides, as it is slightly different in the SiteBuilder, and follow the steps        
  3. Copy the portion of the tag next to "content," between the quotation marks.  In our example, the section to copy is vDEFASlzekmknyZVwJK82Ecty45wNGsUGMl1ErEJ1K4.
 

Please use the code that is displayed on your Google Webmaster account, otherwise it will not verify your site. Make sure that you have copied everything between the quotation marks.

Now that you have the verification code, you need to add it to your site. Here are the steps to do it :

  1. Go back to your site and make sure you are in the SiteBuilder. (Keep Google Webmaster open in a separate window.)
  2. Then go to Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster.

  3. Paste the verification code into the space provided.

  4. Click on "Save" to save the code to your site.

  5. In the Sitebuilder, click on "Publish."

  6. Once you have added your code to your site, go back to Webmaster Tools. Click on the "Verify" button at the bottom of the page. If you have verified your site correctly, you will see the message "Congratulations, you have successfully verified your ownership…".

    Click on the "Continue" link underneath the message. This will take you to the "Site Dashboard" page.

Step 2 : Submitting a Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

When you publish your site, the SiteBuilder generates a Sitemap for the site. This is not something you will notice when your site is published, because it happens "behind the scenes". You can submit your Sitemap to Google, using Google Webmaster Tools. Doing this, will give Google more information about your site. If you want to find out more about Sitemaps and why these are useful to Google, please see About Sitemaps.
 
The Sitemap for your published site, is the site's URL (web address), followed by "/sitemap.xml".  For example, the Sitemap will be : http://designs.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

To submit your Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools :
  1. Log into your Google Webmaster Tools account.
  2. Make sure you are on the "Site Dashboard" page.
  3. Click on "Sitemaps".  This will open up the Sitemaps screen.  Make sure that you have the correct site selected. You will find the name of the selected site, just above the red "Add/Test Sitemap" button
  4. Click on "Add/Test Sitemap".  A screen will open up, with the name of the selected site, enter "sitemap.xml" (without the " ") in the space provided.
  5. Click on "Submit Sitemap". You will see a "Sitemap submitted" message.
 
Congratulations!  You have now successfully verified your site and submitted a Sitemap, using Google Webmaster Tools.  Once Google crawls your site, you will be able to log into your Google Webmaster account to see data that will help you to optimize your site for Google.

Why is Google Webmaster not Verifying?

If you are having trouble getting your site to verify with Google Webmaster there are a few reasons why this could be happening.

  1. Make sure that you have entered the proper code into the Google Webmaster field located under Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster. You only need to enter the text that is between the " " and nothing else; it will look something like this: XlBMeWkrAxWIJtD5n3C3N8Zv09QKKl3R1MaoZnssKA0
  2. Make sure you clicked "Publish" after you entered the code. This will apply the change to your site so Google can crawl it.
  3. If you have done both of these things and are still not able to verify your site, you may have entered your URL incorrectly. We recommend that you go back through the tutorial and redo the steps to make sure each part was done properly.