Are you trying to build a personal website?

In today’s age, anyone can look you up on the internet to find more information about you. Creating a personal website allows you to take charge and better manage your online reputation.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily build your personal website using WordPress, and how to use it boost your online profile like a pro.

Following is a list of topics that we’ll cover in this tutorial:

• Why and Who Needs a Personal Website?
• What You Need to Build a Personal Website
• Setting up Your Personal Website
• Get a Personal Website WordPress Theme
• Creating Content for Your Personal Website
• Adding a Portfolio Section to Your Personal Website
• Adding a Blog Section to Your Personal Website
• Adding Testimonials to Your Personal Website
• Integrating Your Personal Website to Social Media Profiles
• Start Building an Email List
• Growth Hacking for Personal Websites

Ready? Let’s get started.

Why and Who Needs a Personal Website?

In our opinion, everyone needs to build a personal website. Whether you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, doctor, professor, real-estate broker, or a student.

In today’s information age, anyone can Google your name and learn a lot more about you than you can imagine.

While having social media profiles is great, social networks come and go. You need a platform of your own where you can publish anything you want. A platform where you are the star.

Building a personal website allows you to market yourself on the internet.

It helps you not just earn trust, which in itself is invaluable. You can also build a following, become a thought leader, make friends, and find a lot of new opportunities.

Even if you don’t like the idea of marketing yourself, you’ll still be judged by what you put online.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily build a personal website that actually helps you succeed.

What You Need to Build a Personal Website

First, you need to make sure that you are using the right platform to build your website.

We recommend using WordPress because it is the best website builder on the market. It powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet.

Now, when we say WordPress, we are talking about WordPress.org and not WordPress.com which is a hosting service.

To learn more see our article on the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.

You’ll need the following things to build your personal website using WordPress.

• A domain name (e.g. SyedBalkhi.com). This is what users will type in their browsers to reach your website. For personal websites, many people use their own names as domain names when possible.
• A website hosting account. This is where all your website files will be stored.

Now, normally a domain name would cost you about $14.99 per year and website hosting starts at $7.99 per month (usually paid annually).

If you are just starting out, then this may sound like a lot of money.

Luckily, the folks at Bluehost have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name with a generous discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

If you can spend little extra money, then do check out SiteGround or WP Engine. For more hosting recommendations, see our WordPress hosting guide for side-by-side comparisons.

Setting up Your Personal Website

For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll show you setting up a personal website on Bluehost. For other hosting companies, you can see our complete WordPress installation tutorial.

First, you need to visit the Bluehost website and click on the green ‘Get Started Now’ button.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose a hosting plan. Most beginners start with the Basic or Plus plans.

Click ‘Select’ to choose a hosting plan and continue.

After that, you’ll be asked to choose a domain name. Enter your desired domain name and click on the next button to continue.

Next, you will need to add your account information and finalize the package info to complete the process.

On this screen, you’ll see optional extras that you can purchase. We recommend unchecking all of them. You can always add them later if needed.

Lastly, you need to add the payment information to complete the purchase.

Once completed, you’ll receive an email with details on how to login to your web hosting control panel. This is where you manage everything from support, emails, among other things.

Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you. Simply login to your hosting account dashboard, and then click on login to WordPress button.

This will bring you to your WordPress website dashboard. It will look something like this:

Congrats, you have successfully set up your personal website. In the next few steps, we’ll show you how to configure it to your own style, add content, and make a professional-looking website.

Get a Personal Website WordPress Theme

The way how your personal website looks is very important to make a good first impression.

WordPress comes with thousands of free and premium themes that you can use for your personal website.

However, this abundance of choices also makes it a bit difficult to find the right theme.

To make this choice easier, we have compiled some lists of our favorite WordPress themes under different categories.

• Best WordPress themes of the Year
• Best Free WordPress Blog Themes
• Best WordPress Portfolio Themes
• Best WordPress themes for Photographers

As a general rule, we recommend using a simple theme with lots of white space. This makes any website look clean and more professional.

Alternative: Use a WordPress Page Builder to Design Your Website

While WordPress themes are extremely easy to use and customize, sometimes you may not find the right layout for your needs.

This is where SeedProd comes in. It is the best WordPress page builder plugin on the market and allows you to easily create custom layouts for your website.

It comes with dozens of templates to use as a starting point. After that, you can add new elements with drag and drop or edit any aspect of the layout by simply pointing and clicking.

You can even use it to create a custom WordPress theme without writing any code.

The best part is that SeedProd is theme agnostic, so it would work with any WordPress theme that you are using on your website.

Creating Content for Your Personal Website

Once you have selected a design for your website, the next step is to start adding content.

WordPress comes with two commonly used content types by default. These are called posts and pages.

While posts are part of a blog, pages are used to create important sections of your website and give it a proper structure.

To create a page, you need to simply head over to Pages » Add New page. First, provide a title for your page and then start adding content below.

WordPress comes with an intuitive content editor that allows you to add content elements as blocks. This way you can create beautiful content layouts for all your posts and pages.

To familiarize yourself with the editor, see our tutorial on how to use WordPress content editor for beginners.

Following are a few important pages that you can add to your personal website.

About Page

You need to create an about page where users can learn more about you.

Many personal site owners use their about page as the front page of their website.

Use the about page to tell users who you are, what you do, awards you have won, and link to some samples of your work.

Let users know how they can get in touch with you through social media and by email. Take a look at our CEO, Syed Balkhi’s about page for inspiration.

Contact Page

A lot of people don’t want to contact you through social media. This is why you will see contact pages on almost every website on the internet.

You need to add a contact page on your website with information about how users can send you a quick message.

WordPress does not come with a built-in contact form, but there are dozens of form builder plugins available.

We recommend using WPForms, which is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market. It is used by over 5 million websites.

It allows you to easily create beautiful forms for your website using a simple drag and drop tool.

Note: There is also a free version of WPForms with limited features called WPForms Lite.

Adding a Portfolio Section to Your Personal Website

Personal websites allow you to prominently showcase your work by adding a portfolio section.

Many professionals like photographers, artists, writers, designers, programmers, need an easy way to showcase their work on their website.

In WordPress, you have multiple options to beautifully add a portfolio section to your personal website.

1. Add Portfolio Using The Default WordPress Editor

This method is easier, and you can create a portfolio by simply creating a portfolio page to your website.

You can add the default Gallery block to showcase photos and images. You can also create a separate page for each item in your portfolio and then link images on the main portfolio page to the corresponding page.

2. Create a Portfolio Section Using a Plugin

This method is more flexible and recommended for all users.

For this method, you’ll need WP Portfolio plugin. It is the best WordPress portfolio plugin that allows you to easily create a beautiful portfolio section for your personal websites.

You can choose to create a portfolio to showcase images, videos, or websites (useful for web designers).

After that, you can add portfolio items by providing details like a thumbnail, description, category, and more.

3. Add Portfolio Using a Gallery Plugin

This method is recommended for creating a media-rich portfolio particularly if you are a photographer, graphics or web designer, video creator, and more.

We recommend using Envira Gallery. It is the best WordPress gallery plugin on the market and allows you to easily add beautiful galleries to showcase on your portfolio page.

Envira Gallery allows you to create albums, organize your works by tags, add video galleries, open your gallery images in popups and sliders.

These galleries can be added anywhere and look good on mobile too.

Adding a Blog Section to Your Personal Website

Adding a blog section to your Personal website allows you to easily post regular updates on your website.

These updates could be about your work, personal life, or anything you want. It also helps your personal website to rank for the right keywords related to the main topics of your personal website.

WordPress started out as a blogging platform, so it is still very well equipped to start a blog and grow it.

Simply create a new page in WordPress and give it a title like ‘Blog’.

After that, go to Settings » Reading page and under the ‘Your homepage displays’ option select ‘A static page’ option.

Below that, you can choose the page you want to use as your home page and the blog page you created earlier.

Don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to store your settings.

You can now add the Blog page to your website’s navigation menu.

To write new blog posts, simply go to Posts » Add New page and start writing.

For details, take a look at our article on how to add a new blog post in WordPress.

Adding Testimonials to Your Personal Website

Testimonials help you show off what others are saying about you.

This kind of social proof helps you establish authority and develop trust.

Adding testimonials to your WordPress site is quite easy. We’ll show you two methods and you can choose one that works best for you.

Add Testimonials Using Strong Testimonials

First, you need to install and activate the Strong Testimonials plugin.

It allows you to easily add testimonials to your website and then displays them using shortcodes.

Next, decide where you want to display testimonials. You can add them to your homepage or any other page, sidebar, or blog post.

Add Testimonials Using SeedProd

This method is easier and recommended for beginners.

For this method, you’ll need SeedProd. It is the best WordPress page builder plugin that allows you to easily create beautiful pages for your website.

SeedProd comes with a built-in testimonials block that you can drag and drop to your homepage or a testimonials page.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add rotating testimonials in WordPress.

Integrating Your Personal Website to Social Media Profiles

There is no denying that social media can help you promote your personal brand to more audiences.

There are countless WordPress plugins that allow you to integrate social media buttons and widgets on your website. However, many of them will slow down your website which is bad for SEO and user experience.

Following are a few social media plugins that work like a charm without slowing down your website.

1. Smash Balloon Social Media Feeds for WordPress

Smash Balloon’s Social Media Feeds for WordPress is one of the best social media plugins for WordPress. It comes as a toolkit to display content from your different social media profiles on your personal website.

Normally, WordPress doesn’t let you embed content from Facebook and Instagram directly. Smash Balloon’s Facebook and Instagram feeds allow you to easily embed content from those platforms in WordPress.

It also works for Facebook Groups, YouTube, and Twitter. You also get options to choose different styles and layout for your feed.

2. Shared Counts

Shared Counts allows you to easily display social sharing buttons on your WordPress posts and pages.

Unlike other social sharing buttons, Shared Counts doesn’t store any data or track users and it is super fast. If you are moving from HTTP to HTTPs then social share count will fetch both so you don’t lose any social share counts.

3. Uncanny Automator

It takes a lot of time to write a blog post and then go on and post it manually to all your social profiles.

Uncanny Automator is the best WordPress automation tool on the market. Using it you can easily automate social media tasks when you perform a certain action on your WordPress site.

It works with dozens of essential WordPress plugins like WPForms, MemberPress, WooCommerce, and more. Plus you can connect to apps on Zapier, and even your smart devices using IFTTT.

Basically, you can automate your WordPress site to perform routine tasks behind the scenes.

Start Building an Email List

While social media platforms are a great way to build your personal brand on the internet.

However, you don’t own those platforms and if they block you then you’ll lose your following instantly.

That’s why all the smart marketers will tell you to start building your email list right away. Email marketing gives you direct access to a user’s inbox and it is much cheaper than boosting your posts on social media.

We recommend using Constant Contact which is the most beginner-friendly email marketing service on the market suitable for both personal and small business websites.

Once you have signed up for Constant Contact, you can add an email newsletter sign-up form by using the default embed code or by using WPForms.

However, that won’t get you as many subscribers as you need. For that, we have some more tips ahead.

Growth Hacking for Personal Websites

Now that you have added different types of content to your personal website. It is time to start promoting it to establish your personal brand and grow your influence.

Luckily, WordPress gives you access to powerful tools that help you quickly grow your website without any special marketing skills.

1. Get More Email Sign ups and Social Followers

Simply adding social media buttons to your website or an email sign-up form for your newsletter doesn’t help you gain more followers.

You’ll have to nudge your users with more creative ways to take action.

This is where OptinMonster comes in. It is the best conversion optimization software on the market and allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers, leads, and customers.

It comes with intuitive tools like lightbox popups, exit-intent popups, countdown timers, header & footer bars, and more.

You can trigger your campaigns based on a variety of rulesets so that you don’t annoy users and only show them custom messages at the exact time.

2. Optimize your WordPress SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps you get more free traffic to your website from search engines.

Many beginners find SEO to be something too technical. Even though WordPress is very SEO friendly out of the box but there is still a lot more you can do.

You’ll need to install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and allows you to easily optimize your website without any technical SEO skills.

Over 3 million websites use AIOSEO, and they have a free version as well.

It comes with a set up wizard that will take care of the basic setup for you. After that, it will show you a site-wide SEO audit with practical tips to improve your SEO.

You’ll also see a TruSEO analysis for each post and page on your website with simple instructions for improvement.

Plus, it has advanced features like Schema markup, social media integration, Local SEO, Image SEO, powerful sitemaps, and more.

To learn more see our complete WordPress SEO guide for beginners or follow our All in One SEO setup tutorial.

3. Track Your Personal Website Analytics

Now that you have content on your personal website with a basic marketing infrastructure setup, it is time to see how your site is doing.

The easiest way to track your website analytics is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and allows you to easily install Google Analytics on your personal website.

Once installed, it will start showing your most popular content and other website analytics right inside the WordPress dashboard.

The free version of MonsterInsights is sufficient for most personal websites, but you can also upgrade to Pro for advanced tracking for buttons, forms, and eCommerce conversions. For more details, see our WordPress conversion tracking guide for beginners.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a personal website using WordPress. You may also want to see what other types of websites you can make with WordPress or see these practical ideas to make money online using WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you want to allow users to register on your site?

You can enable user registration in WordPress to allow users to add posts, comment, or perform other actions on your website.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily allow user registration on your WordPress site and how to manage users.

Here is the list of topics we will cover in this tutorial:

• Enabling User Registration in WordPress
• Adding Login and Register Links in WordPress
• Adding Meta Widget in WordPress
• Creating Custom Login and Registration Pages using WPForms
• Creating Custom Login Page using SeedProd
• Managing Users in WordPress

Note: This guide focuses on adding users to your WordPress site with default user roles and capabilities. If you’re looking to make money online by allowing users to pay for premium content and access to a community, then you should see our ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site instead.

Enabling User Registration in WordPress

WordPress comes with built-in functionality to manage user registrations. It is turned off by default, but you can easily turn it on.

Simply head over to the Settings » General page in your WordPress admin area. Scroll down to the ‘Membership’ section and check the box next to ‘Anyone can register’ option.

Next you need to select the default user role. This is the user role assigned to each new user who registers on your website.

Each user role in WordPress comes with its own permissions and capabilities. See our guide on WordPress user roles and permissions to learn more about user roles in WordPress.

The default user role is ‘Subscriber’, which you can change to any other user role available.

For example, if you want users to write posts on your website then you can change the default user role to Contributor or Author.

Important: Never use ‘Administrator’ as the default user role for user registrations, or a new user may be able to take over your website and lock you out.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Now your WordPress site is open to user registrations. You can visit your WordPress login page, and you’ll see an option to register as a new user.

Adding Login and Register Links in WordPress

After opening your website for user registration, you would want to let users know that they can sign up and login to their account.

There are multiple ways to do that.

You can simply add links in your WordPress sidebar to your login and registration page, or you can create custom login and registration pages for your website.

We’ll show you 3 different methods, so you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

Method 1: Adding The Meta Widget to WordPress Sidebar

The simplest way to add a login link is by adding the meta widget to your sidebar.

Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the ‘Meta’ widget to a sidebar. You can see our guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress for detailed instructions.

The meta widget includes links to register, log in / log out, RSS feed, comments feed, and WordPress.org website.

This is how it appears on our example website:

Method 2: Creating Custom Login Pages Using WPForms

The problem with the first method is that there is no way to customize the registration or login forms. You can’t add form fields or change the design of the forms, and they wouldn’t match the design of your website.

By using your own custom login pages, you can offer a much better user experience. You can embed your forms on any page on your website, and add form fields to collect any information you want.

We’ll show you different ways to create your own custom login pages. The easiest one is by using the WPForms plugin.

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market. It comes with a user registration addon that allows you to easily add login and registration forms anywhere on your website.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: You will need at least Pro license to access user registration addon.

Upon activation, you need to visit WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can get this license key from your account on WPForms website.

After verification, you need to head over to WPForms » Addons page.

On this page, scroll down to ‘User Registration Addon’ and click on the Install Addon button next to it.

WPForms will install the addon, and then you will need to click on the activate button to start using it.

You are now ready to create custom registration and login forms using WPForms.

Creating a Custom Registration Form

Simply visit the WPForms » Add New page to launch the WPForms’ form builder.

First you need to enter a form name and then search for user registration template under the ‘Select a Template’ section.

Click on the ‘Use Template’ button to continue, and WPForms will create a simple WordPress user registration form for you.

You can now add new fields from the left panel as well as customize the order of existing fields by using a simple drag and drop interface.

Once you are done adding the fields, click on the ‘Settings’ menu on the left.

Then select the ‘User Registration’ tab.

Here you can map each form field to information in the user’s profile, select the user role, enable notifications, select the confirmation page, and enable user activation.

The user activation feature helps you reduce spam user registration in WordPress.

If you select the manual method, then all users must be approved by an admin before they can login to your site.

If you select the email method, then the user must click on an activation link before they can login to your website.

Besides adding form fields, you can also connect your form with other WPForms addons.

For instance, you can connect to your email marketing service provider and automatically add new users to your email list. Similarly, you can connect WPForms to payment services like PayPal and Stripe to receive online payments.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to click on the Save button at the top right corner of the screen to save your form settings.

You can now exit the form builder by clicking on the close button.

Your user registration form is ready to be added to your WordPress site.

Simply create a new WordPress page or edit an existing page that you would like to use as the registration page.

On the page edit screen, you need to add WPForms blocks to your content area.

From the WPForms block, simply click on the drop down menu and select the ‘User registration form’ you created earlier.

You can now save or publish your page, and then visit the page to see your custom user registration page in action.

Creating a Custom Login Form

Now that your custom user registration page is active, let’s add a custom login form to your WordPress site.

To get started, visit WPForms » Add New. This will launch the form builder interface of WPForms.

You need to provide a name for your custom login form and then select ‘User Login Form’ as your template.

WPForms will now create a new login form.

By default, it only has the username and password fields.

You can add additional fields to the form by adding them from the left panel.

Next, you need to click on the settings tab and then click on the ‘Confirmation’ tab. This is where you can define what to do after a successful login.

You can show users a message, redirect them to the page they came from, or redirect them to any other page on your site.

Click on the Save button on the top right corner of the screen to store your form settings.

You can now exit the form builder interface by clicking on the close button.

Your custom login form is ready to be added into your WordPress site.

You can add your custom login form to a page by creating a new page and then adding the WPForms block to the content area.

You can also add your custom login form to a sidebar.

Simply head over to Appearance » Widgets page and add the WPForms block or the legacy widget to a sidebar.

Select the custom login form you just created from the drop-down menu, and then click on the Update button to store your widget settings.

You can now visit your website to see your custom login form in action.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to create a custom login page for WordPress.

Method 3. Create a Custom Login Page using SeedProd

Now if you use WPForms alone to create a custom login page, then the design of your login page will still depend on your WordPress theme.

What if you wanted to design a custom login page that looks more professional and sleek?

SeedProd allows you to easily create a beautiful custom login page for your website.

It is the most powerful WordPress page builder plugin on the market. You can use it to create any type of page without writing any code or learning any special design skills.

First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll be asked to enter your SeedProd license key. You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website.

Next, you need to visit the SeedProd » Landing Pages page and click on the Set up a Login Page button.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your login page.

SeedProd comes with several professionally designed templates to choose from, or you can also start with a blank canvas.

Next, you need to provide a name and URL for your custom login page.

Then click on Save and Start Editing button to continue.

This will launch the SeedProd’s page builder interface.

You’ll see a live preview of your login page where you can point and click to edit any item.

You can also add new blocks to your login page from the left column.

Once you are satisfied with the design, switch to the Page Settings tab.

From here, you can redirect users from the default WordPress login page to your custom login page. You can also run your login page under isolation mode, which disables any WordPress header and footer scripts from loading.

Once you are satisfied with your changes, you can simply click on the Save button and publish your login page.

You can now open a new browser tab in the Incognito mode and visit your login page to see it in action.

For more details, see our ultimate guide on how to create a custom login page in WordPress.

Managing Users in WordPress

You can view all registered users on your website by clicking on Users in the WordPress admin. WordPress will show you a list of users with their usernames, names, role, and email addresses.

As an administrator, you can delete any user at any time you want.

You can also edit user profiles, change their roles, and you can even change their passwords.

This gives you full control over what users can or cannot do on your WordPress site.

That’s all! We hope this article helped you learn how to allow user registration on your WordPress site. You may also want to learn how to choose the best web design software, or see our expert pick of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the most important step in optimizing your WordPress site for SEO is adding it to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).

Google Search Console offers specific webmaster tools to help website owners monitor and maintain their search presence and rankings.

In this guide, we will show you how to easily add and verify your WordPress site in Google Search Console also known as Webmaster Tools.

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor their website’s presence in Google search results.

It helps you track search rankings along with keeping you updated about site errors, security issues, and indexing issues that may affect your website’s search performance.

If you are serious about WordPress SEO, then you need to add it to Google webmaster tools from day one.

That being, let’s take a look at how to easily add your site to Google Search Console.

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Adding Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console

First, you need to visit the Google Search Console website and click on the ‘Start Now’ button.

Next, you’ll need to sign in with your Google / Gmail account.

Once logged in, you’ll be asked to enter your website URL.

There are two methods for site verification: domain name or URL prefix. We recommend the URL prefix method because it is more flexible.

Keep in mind that Google considers an HTTP and HTTPS as two different protocols. It also considers https://www.example.com and https://example.com as two different websites.

You need to enter the correct website URL used by WordPress.

If you are unsure, then there is an easy way to find out the exact URL you need to enter. Simply login to your WordPress admin area and go to Settings » General page.

There you will see your website’s URL in the site address field.

After entering your correct website address in Google webmaster tools setup wizard, click on the ‘Continue’ button to go to the next step.

Now, you’ll be asked to verify ownership of your website. There are several ways to do that, but we will show the HTML tag method because it is the easiest one.

Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it.

Now, you need to add this Google site verification meta tag in WordPress, so Google can verify that you are the owner of the website.

Most WordPress tutorials will guide you to just edit the header.php file in your WordPress theme and add the code just above the <body> tag.

However, we don’t recommend this method because if you update or change your theme, then the HTML tag will disappear.

Google periodically checks for the HTML tag and will disable your access to the site data in the search console if it cannot find the verification tag.

Here is how to make sure that Google can always verify your ownership of the website.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to All in One SEO » General Settings » Webmaster Tools page and click on “Google Search Console”.

Then paste the code you copied from Google Search Console into the “Google Verification Code” box.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

You can now go back to Google Search Console settings and click on the ‘Verify’ button.

Google Search Console will now look for the HTML tag in your website code and will show you a success message.

Note: If you don’t see a success message, then you need to clear your WordPress cache. This will ensure that Google can fetch the latest version of your website.

That’s all. You have successfully added your site to the Google Search Console (Webmaster tools). You can now click on the ‘Go to Property’ link to visit your Google Search Console dashboard.

From here you can see your website’s performance reports and index coverage.

Before you do that, let’s tell Google a little bit more about your website. This will help Google crawl your website a bit more efficiently.

Add XML Sitemap to Google Search Console

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in XML format, so search engines like Google can easily discover and index your content.

The good news is, if you installed the All in One SEO plugin in the steps above, you’ve already added an XML sitemap to your site automatically.

To see your sitemap, go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps. From here, you can see the sitemap is automatically enabled for you.

Next, you need to get the XML sitemap link. Simply click on the ‘Open Sitemap’ button, and you will see a link to your XML sitemap.

From here, you can just copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.

Alternatively, you can directly access your XML sitemap by adding sitemap.xml at the end of your website address. For example:

https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Now that you have XML sitemap ready, let’s help Google find it quickly.

Simply switch to the Google Search Console dashboard and click on the Sitemaps menu from the left column.

After that, you need to add the last part of your sitemap URL under the ‘Add new sitemap’ section and click the Submit button.

Google will now add your sitemap URL to your Google Search Console.

AIOSEO also comes with several other sitemaps like Video Sitemap, News Sitemap, and RSS sitemap that all help you get a competitive advantage and rank higher in SEO.

The process of submitting those sitemaps is the same as above.

That’s all, you have successfully added your website to Google Search Console.

The next step is to learn how to use the treasure trove of information in Google search console to grow your business. We have a complete Google Search Console guide for beginners which shows you how to make the most out of Google Search Console data.

Google Search Console and WordPress FAQs

Having helped thousands of readers add and verify their website in Google search console, we have seen just about every question you can think of. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

1. How can I upload a Google HTML verification file to my WordPress blog?

Google Search Console allows few different ways to verify website ownership. In this article, we covered the easiest method which is to use the Google site verification meta tag. However some website owners prefer to upload the HTML file to verify site ownership.

To upload the Google search console HTML verification file to WordPress, you will need to login to your WordPress hosting cPanel or connect to your hosting account using FTP.

Next, you need to upload the HTML verification file inside the /public_html/ folder of your website. This is the root directory where you’ll see other WordPress folders like /wp-admin/, /wp-content/, etc.

2. Should I use a Google Site verification plugin for WordPress?

There are many WordPress plugins that are designed specifically to help you with Google site verification. However you don’t need to use them because you’ll likely need to verify ownership on other webmaster tools and platforms like Bing, Yandex, Pinterest, etc.

It’s much better to use the All in One SEO plugin because it lets you add site verification for all platforms (in a single plugin). Not to mention, it also has a ton of other WordPress SEO features to help you rank better and get more traffic.

3. How can I become a power user of Google Search Console?

Google search console has a lot of useful information that you can use to grow your business. We have created the ultimate Google Search Console guide that you can use to become a power user.

4. I’m running into problems, is there a Google Search console phone number that I can contact?

No, there’s no Google search console phone number that you can contact. If you’re running into problems with Google search console, then you can use their online support center. For specific questions about WordPress, you can always join our free WordPress help group to ask your questions.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add your WordPress site to Google Search Console. You may also want to see our guide on how to get more traffic to your website, and our comparison of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you want to submit your WordPress site to Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing is among the top search engines in the world. Submitting your site to its webmaster tool helps you monitor your site’s performance and keyword rankings and fix indexing issues.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add your websites to Bing Webmaster Tools.

What is Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service by Microsoft that allows you to add your website to Bing search engine results.

This free tool helps your WordPress SEO by optimizing your site for Bing, so you can get more traffic.

The webmaster tools help you monitor and track your site’s performance in Bing. You can find out which keywords people use to find your site, so you can optimize those search terms in the content and get more traffic.

You can also see how Bing crawls and indexes your content. This helps to uncover and resolve indexing issues that might be preventing a blog post from appearing in Bing search results.

Aside from that, Bing Webmaster Tools shows your site’s backlinks and which websites you are linking to. It also helps remove content that you don’t want to display on Bing search results and scan for potential malware or spam issues that can threaten your WordPress website security.

That said, let’s see how you can add a website to Bing Webmaster Tools using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) and WPCode plugin. We’ll also show how you can use the webmaster tool and import your site from Google Search Console.

You can use the links below to jump to the method you want to use.

• Method 1: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using AIOSEO
• Method 2: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using WPCode
• Import Your Website from Google Search Console
• Bonus: How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools

Method 1: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using AIOSEO

The best way to add a website to Bing Webmaster Tools is using All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site search engines without technical knowledge or the need to hire an expert.

Note that we’ll use the AIOSEO Lite version for this tutorial because it is free and includes the ‘Webmaster Tools Verification’ feature. There is also an AIOSEO Pro version which includes more advanced features like link assistant, redirections, video sitemaps, and more.

Next, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » General Settings from your WordPress dashboard. Next, head to the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab and select the ‘Bing Webmaster Tools’ option.

Next, you’ll need to enter the Bing Verification Code. Let’s see how you can access the code in the webmaster tool.

How to Get Verification Code in Bing Webmaster Tools

First, you’ll need to visit the Bing Webmaster Tools website and click the ‘Get started’ button.

We suggest opening the Bing Webmaster Tools website in a new browser window or tab because you’ll need to switch back to your WordPress admin dashboard to complete the verification process.

After that, you’ll need to sign in to your account.

You can use Microsoft, Google, or Facebook accounts to log in. Simply click on any options and choose your email address to sign in to the webmaster tool.

Next, Bing Webmaster Tools will show you 2 options to add your website.

You can import your sites from Google Search Console or manually add your website.

We’ll use the manual method to get the verification code.

Go ahead and enter your website address under the ‘Add your site manually’ section and then click the ‘Add’ button.

When adding your WordPress website, make sure to enter the URL used by WordPress. That’s because Bing will see HTTP and HTTPS as different sites. It will also consider your domain’s WWW and non-WWW versions as two separate websites.

To check which URL is used by WordPress, simply login to your WordPress admin area and head to Settings » General. Then look for the link in the ‘Site Address (URL)’ field.

Once you add this website URL in Bing Webmaster Tools, a window will slide in from the right.

Here you will see different methods for verifying your website, including an XML file, HTML meta tag, and adding CNAME records to DNS.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the HTML Meta Tag method. When you click the ‘HTML Meta Tag’ option, Bing gives you a validation code you need to install on your website.

Go ahead and click the ‘Copy’ button to copy this line of code.

Next, you’ll need to add the code to your WordPress website.

Add Verification Code & Verify Your Site in Bing Webmaster Tools

You can now head back to the WordPress admin browser window or tab.

After that, simply go to All in One SEO » General Settings from your WordPress dashboard.

Now, head to the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab and enter the HTML Meta Tag you copied earlier in the ‘Bing Verification Code’ field.

When you do that, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Change’ button at the top.

After adding the HTML meta tag to your website, go back to the Bing Webmaster Tools tab or window and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Next, you’ll see a message in Bing Webmaster Tools that your verification was successful.

You can then close the message and view your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Method 2. Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using WPCode

Another method of adding your website to Bing Webmaster Tools is using WPCode. It is the best WordPress code snippet plugin and helps you manage your website’s scripts. You can easily use WPCode to add the Bing Webmaster Tools HTML code to your website.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to Code Snippets » Header & Footer from your WordPress admin panel. Here, you’ll need to add the HMTL code provided by Bing Webmaster Tools.

Access HTML Meta Tag & Verify Your Website

You can find the HTML code by going to the Bing Webmaster Tools website and logging into your account.

Once signed in, simply add your website URL under the ‘Add your site manually’ field and click the ‘Add’ button.

On the next screen, Bing will show you multiple methods for verifying your website in the webmaster tool.

Go ahead and select the ‘HTML Meta Tag’ option and copy the code.

After copying the code, you can head to your WordPress admin panel and go to the Code Snippets » Header & Footer page.

Next, you’ll need to paste the HTML meta tag into the ‘Header’ section.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Now that you’ve added the HTML meta tag to your site, simply go back to the Bing Webmaster Tools tab or window and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Bing Webmaster Tools will now show a message that your verification was successful.

Simply close the message to view the webmaster tool dashboard.

Import Your Website from Google Search Console

You can also add your WordPress site to Bing Webmaster Tools by importing it from Google Search Console.

If you use this method, then you don’t have to worry about verifying your website by adding an HTML code. However, Bing will need access to your Google account, which could be a security risk if either your Webmaster Tools or Google account gets compromised.

To start, you can log in to Bing using your Microsoft, Bing, or Facebook account.

Next, go ahead and click the ‘Import’ button under the Import your site from the GSC section.

After that, you’ll see a message showing you what data will be imported from the Google Search Console account and how Bing will use it.

Simply click the ‘Continue’ button to move ahead.

Next, you’ll need to select your Google account to sign in.

Go ahead and select the account that you use for logging into Google Search Console.

On the next screen, Bing will request access to your Google account.

Simply click the ‘Allow’ button to continue.

Next, you will see websites that are connected to Google Search Console.

Go ahead and select any websites you’d like to import into Bing Webmaster Tools and click the ‘Import’ button.

You’ll now see a message that your website has been successfully imported.

You can click the ‘Done’ button to close the window and view the Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Bonus: How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools

In the Webmaster Tools dashboard, you have access to many different tools and options. Do note that Bing will take up to 48 hours to reflect data in its webmaster tools reports after setting it up on your WordPress site.

For example, you can view your site’s search performance by going to the Search Performance tab. You can then use this data to see which search terms people use to find your website and perform keyword research to develop new content ideas.

Similarly, the tool also lets you inspect a specific URL to see if there are any crawling issues. You can simply enter the post or page link in the URL Inspection tab and view the errors.

With Bing Webmaster Tools, you can submit your website sitemap in the Bing Webmaster Tools to help the search engine to discover new content quickly.

For more details, please see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.

Plus, you can scan for any errors that could be preventing your content from appearing in Bing search results.

If a blog post or landing page isn’t appearing in the search results, then you can go to the ‘URL Submission’ tab and manually submit your content for indexing.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools. You can also see our guide on WooCommerce SEO made easy, and our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools to grow your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you want to learn how to add topics in your WordPress navigation menu?

Often beginners users try to add topics in WordPress menu by creating a separate page for each topic. But that’s not the best way because adding these pages to a menu won’t display the relevant posts.

In this article, we will show you how to properly add topics in WordPress by using categories and tags in WordPress navigation menus.

Why Add Topics in WordPress Navigation Menus?

Let’s say you have a WordPress website that offers travel guides for different cities. You may want to add city names in your navigation menu, so that your visitors see relevant articles when they click the menu item.

Alternatively, if you have a news website like The New York Times or ESPN, you would want to highlight the various topics in the navigation menu.

WordPress makes it quite easy to add topics if you organize your content using categories and tags.

Categories cover your website’s main topics like a table of contents, while tags cover more specific topics like an index. You can learn more by reading our guide on the difference between categories and tags.

Let’s take a look at how you can use categories and tags to organize your content, and then add those topics to your WordPress navigation menu for easy access.

Adding Categories and Tags to WordPress Posts

You can add or select categories while writing your blog posts. The categories box will appear on the right column of the WordPress content editor.

If you need to add a new category, then just click the ‘Add New Category’ link below the list of your existing categories.

For example, on a travel blog, you might create categories for each city you’ve written about, such as ‘Paris’, ‘Amsterdam’, ‘Berlin’, ‘Instanbul’, and ‘London’.

You can also add tags from inside the content editor by simply typing into ‘Tags’ field on the right. When adding more than one tag, you need to separate them with commas.

If you want to choose a tag that you have previously created, then you need to type the first few characters and your matching tags will pop up. Then simply click the tag you want to use.

On a travel blog, you could add tags for the more specific topics covered in a certain post, for example, ‘Food’, ‘Night Life’, ‘Walking Tours’, and ‘Rail Travel’.

Once you have created a few posts and filed them under different categories and tags, you can now add them to your site’s navigation menu.

Adding Categories in WordPress Navigation Menus

To add categories to your navigation menu, simply visit Appearance » Menus and click on the ‘Categories’ tab to expand it.

Next, select the categories you want to add to the menu and then click the ‘Add to Menu’ button. Your selected categories will now appear in the right hand column as menu items. You can move them up and down using drag and drop.

Once you are satisfied with the menu, click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes.

You can now visit your website to see your changes in action.

Adding Tags in WordPress Navigation Menus

To add tags to your navigation menu, you need to visit the Appearance » Menus page. Unlike categories, there isn’t an option to add tags by default.

However, you can add a Tags tab by clicking on ‘Screen Options’ at the top of the screen, and then checking the ‘Tags’ box.

A Tags tab will now be added to the left hand column. You can click the tab to expand it.

Now you can select the tags you wish to add to the menu. When you click the ‘Add to Menu’ button, your selected tags will appear in the right hand column as menu items and you can rearrange them using drag and drop.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see that the tags have been added to your menu.

If you want to create an advanced topics drops menu with multiple columns like ESPN and WPBeginner, then that’s often referred to as mega menu.

You can follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to create a mega menu in WordPress for more details.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to add categories and tags in WordPress navigation menus. You may also want to learn how to create a landing page with WordPress, or check out our list of must have plugins to grow your site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.