Why Google is a business’ best friend?
Google has a plethora of tools that many people aren’t aware of. This is usually understandable if you’re an average Google user, but as a business, you lose out on a lot of potential ways to improve your strategy for content marketing.
Here are some essential tools from Google that enable your business to hone in on Search Engine Optimization for your content marketing campaign.
Google My Business
Google My Business is the quintessential tool for any business looking to advertise and create brand awareness online, especially in a local market. It’s the only way any business will appear on Google Maps. You can update your business information, comment on reviews and customer inquiries, post photos of your products and services, your trading hours, content details as well as adding other specific details like if there is parking available or cafe nearby etc as well as adding images of your team, management, office etc in specific categories.
Why is this important?
The more Google knows about your business, the more credible your listing becomes. Providing specific information about your business products and services boosts your business’ visibility, especially to people in your area. Google My Business also provides you with insights on your visibility and audience engagement. It’s important that you only enter your information once so you can avoid duplicate pages, however, we recommend adding new pages if you have multiple office locations. In saying this, each page for your different offices should have relevant content that is localised to that specific area.
Google AdSense
Adsense is a great tool if you’re planning on either advertising your site, or getting revenue from your site. If you’re in the former, you can bid on keywords that are associated with your brand. For example, if a Sydney blogger wrote about baking cupcakes, and cupcake bakeries in Sydney, they might bid on keywords such as “cupcakes, baking, bakery in Sydney, cupcakes Sydney, baking cupcakes, desserts Sydney”. AdSense will skim their blogs for these certain keywords and will display advertisements for cupcakes on the blog.
If this is what you’re looking for, then you simply need to install the ad code on your site, and AdSense will skim your site for the content. As a result, your blog will show relevant ads which you can gain revenue from over time.
Google AdWords
AdWords is pay-per-click or pay per 1000 impressions advertising, where you can bid for your site to rank at the very top of a Google search, above the organic results, or on the right-hand side of a page. Below is a screenshot of the results for ‘buy cake.’ There are four elements that come into play on the Google results page:
1. Google Organic Results
These are the results that Google believe are most relevant to the user’s search. The more relevant and detailed your site is, the more likely it’ll come to the top organically. This has developed the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry for the past 20 years.
2. Google My Business Ads
Within Google My Business listings, you can run an ad for your business to promote your products or services. You can also add coupons, as well as trackable phone numbers that people can click to call, which diverts them to your main line. This way, you can track how many calls you get from your site, and where the calls are coming from.
3. AdWords listing
AdWords is an online auction that is not only determined by the amount you spend but also by the quality of your site, content, ad relevance and various other factors. The better they are optimised, the more cost-effective your ads will be.
4. Customer Reviews
It’s extremely important to get client reviews as much as possible, be it on your website, Google My Business, social media or other third party websites. Search Engines like Google pick up those reviews and will display the results in the search results. This will help your business stand out and generate a higher click-through rate. It also seems to reduce the cost per click on your AdWords.
Google AdWords is great for gaining exposure for your brand, however, it can be quite costly in the long-term. This is why there is a huge push for SEO’s to improve a business’ ranking instead.
Our recommendation is to run an AdWord campaign while working on your Content Strategy and Content Marketing through your website, blogs, and social media, to rank higher on Google Organic results. Your AdWords should be run to help generate sales to pay for your Content Creation and Content Strategy campaign.
Google AdWords Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner (previously known as Keyword Tool) branches off from AdWords. It allows you to see the volume of monthly searches for certain keywords, the recommended amount to bid on a keyword, and the level of competition.
Not only this, but it shows you other relevant keywords that people are also searching as well, below. This tool is great for finding blog ideas and keywords to weave into your site’s content, which will rank you higher on the Google Index.
The next three tools have been covered in our Content Series: How To Do A Content Audit, but here’s a brief recap:
Google Analytics
Analytics is perfect for finding out how your site is performing. It tracks which pages are going right (or wrong), and analyses each user who clicks on your site. You can find out the parts of the world where your site performs best and how long each user stays on each page. Not only this, but it tracks what people are searching for on your site, and which are the most popular searches. It also collaborates with tools such as Google Maps to discover which of your online campaigns are performing the best, and are bringing the most traffic.
Google Search Console
Previously named Google WebMaster Tools, this takes advantage of all the traffic data Google has on your site to help you with Search Engine Optimisation. It’s first and foremost role is to allow you to ensure your site is on the Google index. If it’s not found, it means your site might be to difficult to navigate, or the pages aren’t properly linked. Google’s spiders go through your site’s coding and collate a list of all the errors in meta descriptions, titles, and non-indexable content.
Google Trends
Trends is a very versatile tool for content marketing. With Trends, you can search keywords and zoom in on specific locations around the world where the keywords are the most popular. You can also see the search trends of these keywords as far back as 2005. Like we always say, content is not only about quality but also about good timing. This will help immensely in timing when the next surge of searches for a keyword will be.
Google is definitely a business’ best friend. With these tools, you can run a solid advertising campaign to create brand awareness, refine your SEO skills and find inspiration for content.
