When it comes to the internet, Google is a God among men.
Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent company) is the world's fifth-largest information technology company by revenue, and worth $110.8 billion. When it comes to Google, the multinational technology company specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google.com is the most visited website in the entire world and Google has developed, designed, and implemented many, many tools for a broad range of people.
First and foremost, Google aims to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” They have always tried to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible, and have done so through the numerous internet tools they’ve introduced through the years.
For marketers and business owners, there are so many Google tools, many of them free, that can be used to advertise, analyze, and communicate with their customers, clients, and consumers. Here are some of our favorites.
Google Alerts
Create a Google Alert to monitor the web for interesting new content. Follow things like specific companies, technology, and news, or create alerts for specific keywords related to your industry. You’ll receive a weekly roundup of the alerts pertaining to your keywords in your inbox.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. It tracks and reports website traffic on websites, allowing you to get details reports on users and demographics, page analytics, user acquisition, and more. For e-commerce sites, it can reporting can track sales activity and performance, including reports that show a site's transactions, revenue, and many other commerce-related metrics. In order to use Google Analytics, you must add a snippet of JavaScript code called the Google Analytics Tracking Code into the header of your website. This is provided to you when you sign up for Google Analytics. Alternatively, you can use Google Tag Manager and use the Universal Analytics tag to track users.
Page Analytics
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/
The Page Analytics Chrome Extension allows you to see how customers interact with your web pages, including what they click and don’t click. Use these insights to optimize your website layout, improve user experience, and increase conversions.Page Analytics works through Google Analytics, allowing you to see real-time data right on the pages you want to know more about. Metrics include page views, unique page views, average time on page, bounce rate, and the number of active visitors. It also provides and on-page click analysis and shows how many users click which buttons.
You can use the Google Analytics date comparison and segmentation tools directly in the extension. Pages you are tracking with the Google Analytics code for an account your Google account login has access to will appear like this in your Chrome browser.
Google Tag Manager
Instead of manually implementing and writing tags in the source code, Google Tag Manager simplifies the whole process. With GTM, you’re able to add, edit, and disable tags without having to touch the source code at. Use the tool to have access to a user-friendly, web-based interface to set up and deploy the tags. Track analytics and get a deeper understanding of how people are using and consuming your website. Create tags to collect information such as scroll tracking, monitoring form submissions, conducting surveys, generating heat maps, remarketing, or tracking how people arrive at your site.
Google Surveys
Google Surveys (formerly Google Consumer Surveys) is a business product by Google that facilitates customized market research. The product was designed by Google as an alternative to internet paywalls for websites that publish content. Google Surveys makes it easy for anyone to create a survey, target respondents, and generate statistically significant results.
There are two different ways to target respondents:
- Choose one of the demographic or geographic buckets.
- Ask a preliminary “screening” question, for example, “Are you a small business owner?”, and provide non-binary answers such as “Yes, I own a small business,” “No, but I manage a small business,” “Not yet, but I'm planning to start one.”
Google Search Console
https://search.google.com/search-console
Google Search Console (formerly Webmasters) is a free tool that allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. Its list of tools includes: submitting sitemaps, checking crawl statistics and diagnose issues, check index status, highlight structured data, check security issues, amongst many others. If you have a website, you should be using this valuable tool to make sure Google is finding your web pages and that they are appearing in the search engine results page.
Google Trends
https://trends.google.com/trends/
Want to know what trending? Interesting in learning how keywords are trending in real time? They check out Google Trends. It has a summary of topics that are trending, when, and where. It also suggests relevant articles on the topic at hand. Use the search bar at the top to see how your topic is trending.
Google Forms
https://www.google.com/forms/about/
Google Forms is a free tool from Google that allows you to create forms, surveys, quizzes, and more. It allows you to easily share the form with others who can then complete the forms online. You can collect all the responses in a spreadsheet and it will provide you with helpful summaries of the collected data with charts and graphs.
You can use Google Forms with your personal Google account, or through a Google Apps for Education account. With a Google Apps for Education account, you can require that respondents be from your Google Apps domain and collect respondents usernames.
Google Voice
Get a free phone number from Google and use it to text, call, and check voicemail from one app. Google Voice works on all of your devices so you can connect and communicate how you want. It has features like voicemail transcription, call forwarding, and more.
Google My Business
Verify and ensure your potential customers are finding the information they need about your business. Google My Business offer owners free listing so they can start building visibility in Google Maps and Google Search in their local community. If you want to get more views online, Google My Business is crucial for you. It can even help you build a basic website if you don’t already have one.
Google+
https://plus.google.com/discover
Google also has its own social media network with an estimated 2 billion registered users.
Answer the Public
While it’s not actually affiliated with Google, Answer the Public uses data from Google’s search engine auto-suggest results (along with Bing) to help you determine what people and searching for and how you can create content around that. By using this tool, you can quickly and easily come up with blog topics, downloads, video ideas, podcasts, and more.
There are so many valuable and exciting tools available by Google, it’s hard to pick a favorite. What tools are you currently using? Are there any ones in this list you’re excited to try out? Let us know!
We cover this topic as a part of our Magnet Marketers #TrainingTuesday. Watch the live stream here.
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