Verifying your site and submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This allows Google to know you are active on the web and you are a legitimate entity. It will also provide more information on which keywords Google associates with your site, and allow you to see top search queries for your domain, see sites that are pointing back to yours, and more.

Note: Only custom domain names can be submitted to Google. The default subdomains provided during your free trial period ending in .bandzoogle.com cannot be used when verifying your site or submitting a sitemap.

This Help article includes:

  • How to verify your site with Google or YouTube
  • How to submit your sitemap to Google

For detailed information on SEO please view our [Free eBook] A Complete Guide to SEO for Musicians.

How to verify your site with Google or YouTube

PART 1

  1. From the ‘Edit Content’ tab, click ‘Pages’ in the settings panel on the left
  2. Click ‘Site-wide settings’ below the list of pages
  3. Select ‘Sitemaps’
  4. Click the link to open the Google Search Console
  5. Under “URL Prefix” on the right, enter your website’s full URL and click ‘Continue.’ The domain should be in the format of https://domainname.com
  6. Under the’ Other verification methods’ section, select ‘HTML Tag’
  7. Click Copy to copy the HTML tag provided
    • It will be in this format: meta name="google-site-verification" content="TCLguGGYC1PMLAJZqKXB3T58cxlV5axCucLWmPyO_kg"

      Note: If it does not look like this format, the wrong verification method has been selected. You will need to choose the ‘HTML Tag’ option as a verification method.

  8. Return to your Bandzoogle ‘Sitemaps’ area and paste the metatag text in the field marked ‘Google Verification metatag’
  9. Click ‘Save’

Note: You can use this section to verify other Google products, like YouTube, Adwords, Google Apps, Pinterest, and more. Once one Google product has been verified, you can replace the tag to verify a new service using the same steps. Even though it shows ‘Google Verification metatag’ you can paste any HTML tag supplied by Google into this field, then click ‘save’.

How to submit your sitemap to Google

PART 2

Google will automatically crawl your site to index it for search results a few weeks after you update this information. Manually submitting your sitemap to Google (or re-submitting, if you change your site’s page structure) can speed up this process.

  1. Go back to your domain settings on the Google Search Console page
  2. Click the 'Verify' button located in the HTML Tag section.
    • Note: There are multiple “Verify” buttons on this screen, one for each verification method. Be sure to click the button under “HTML Tag” or the verification process will fail.
  3. From the 'Ownership Verified' window, click 'Go to property'
  4. Click the menu button in the top left corner, then click ‘Sitemaps’ under the ‘Index’ header
  5. You’ll see ‘Add a new sitemap’ - after the URL posted there, enter ‘sitemap.xml’ and click ‘Submit’ Click ‘Got it’

Note: With these and other tips, you should have success with Google ranking and SEO. Ultimately though, we here at Bandzoogle have no control over where your site ends up in the search engine results; and Google uses a complex algorithm to determine your PageRank.

For more tips on working with your website's SEO, please view this SEO checklist for musicians.