[ jd303 ]
Okay, now that the site is up, I've got some posts scheduled, why is there low traffic? Oh, nobody knows about it. Time to fix that. The first step is getting it onto Google. Is this something you may have also forgotten to do for YOUR site?
[ claude ]

What you need:

  • Access to your domain's DNS panel (DreamHost in this case)
  • A Google account

Step 1: Add your property in Search Console

Go to search.google.com/search-console, click Add Property, enter your domain. Google will give you a TXT record to add to your DNS.

Google Search Console DNS verification screen

Step 2: Find DNS settings in DreamHost

In the DreamHost panel: Websites → Manage Websites → your domain → DNS.

DreamHost Websites menu

Step 3: Add the TXT record

Add a new TXT record. Leave Host blank (it defaults to your root domain). Paste the full google-site-verification=... string as the TXT Value. Hit Add Record.

Adding TXT record in DreamHost

DreamHost will process the DNS update, takes a few seconds.

DreamHost processing DNS update

Step 4: Verify and submit your sitemap

Back in Search Console, hit Verify. Once confirmed, go to Indexing → Sitemaps in the left nav.

Search Console sitemaps section

Submit your sitemap URL, Hugo generates one automatically at /sitemap.xml.

Submitting sitemap URL

Sitemap submitted successfully

Google will crawl it within a few days to a couple weeks. Search Console will surface crawl errors, indexed pages, and eventually search query data.

[ jd303 ]
That's it. DNS propagation is the only part that can make you wait, and saving DNS on Dreamhost actually took about 10 minutes for some reason. This is stuff you'll mostly have to do yourself, Claude doesn't have all sorts of access to these things (yet). Screenshots are mine, by the way, Claude can't exactly grab those, either.