50bvd 2 min read 355 words
jekyll seo google-search-console sitemap robots-txt

Setting up Google Search Console and SEO for a Jekyll blog

Putting the SEO basics of a Jekyll blog in place — robots.txt, an automatic sitemap.xml, Google Search Console verification and sitemap submission.

Setting up Google Search Console and SEO for a Jekyll blog Setting up Google Search Console and SEO for a Jekyll blog
Table of Contents

A site can work perfectly without being indexed: without a robots.txt, without a declared sitemap and without a verified property in Google Search Console, search engines give no guarantee of reliable indexing. This guide covers a minimal but complete setup for a Jekyll blog.

robots.txt

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

A static file at the root of the site is enough — no plugin needed.

Automatic sitemap.xml

The official plugin generates and maintains the sitemap with no configuration:

# _config.yml
plugins:
  - jekyll-sitemap

Jekyll then automatically serves /sitemap.xml, regenerated on every build with the up-to-date list of articles and pages.

SEO meta tags (jekyll-seo-tag)

plugins:
  - jekyll-seo-tag

{% seo %}

This single tag generates the title, description, Open Graph, Twitter Card and generator tags from the fields already in _config.yml (title, description, url) and each article’s front matter (description, image).

Google Search Console ownership verification

The simplest method for a static site is the meta tag, added directly to the <head> of the main layout:

<meta name="google-site-verification" content="YOUR_CODE_HERE" />
Where to find the code

In Search Console: Settings → Property → Ownership verification → ‘HTML tag’ method. The code goes straight into the content attribute of the meta tag, nowhere else.

Submitting the sitemap

Once the property is verified in Search Console: Sitemaps → Add a new sitemap → enter sitemap.xml (the full URL isn’t needed, just the relative path). The status changes to “Submitted”, then after a few hours to “Success” with the number of discovered pages.

Checking

curl -s https://mydomain.com/robots.txt
curl -s https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml | head -20
curl -s https://mydomain.com/ | grep google-site-verification

user@laptop:~$ curl -s https://mydomain.com/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml
Deleting/re-creating a property

If you delete and re-create the property in Search Console, a new verification code is generated every time — the old meta tag stops working and must be replaced before running the verification again.

Result

  • robots.txt in place, pointing to the sitemap.
  • Sitemap generated and kept up to date automatically by Jekyll on every build.
  • Search Console property verified and sitemap submitted — the site shows up in Google’s index with no recurring manual step.

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