Google tools for your business
I have Chosen a few tools from googles arsenal that I always recommend my clients to use there are many more tools out there but today we will cover.
What we will cover
So, Let’s have a look at our first module
Google my business or Google Business Profile you can call it either or both, is doesn’t mater as long as you use it and know what it is.
What is it?
Google Business Profile or google my business is an easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google.
It helps customers find your business, it is where you can verify and edit your business information.
And where You can Manage the information that users find when they search for your business.
Why should I use it?
This is a conversation, that I always have with my clients within our first meeting., and I always tell them the same thing!
Registering and or claim your business on google, is probably one of the most important steps you can take as a business owner for your online presents and there are many many benefits to using google business profile.
So, when a user searches google for your business or product,
The information you have provided to google will appear.
This will include a link to your website, your opening hours and contact details as well as your location on google maps.
It will also show your customer reviews, along with photos and posts you added
By giving this information to google,
and google showing this to its users, it simply adds to your business credibility and visibility.
One of the main features of Google my business or Google business profile are your reviews
Reviews
With google business profile, you can read and respond to customer reviews.
you can also send requests for reviews.
Reviews on Google are particularly important.
Not only do they tell potential customers about your business or product from the mouth of your existing customers.
but they help your rankings in Google maps and search results.
Another great feature is the ability to post, when I talk to my clients about this they are often shocked to hear you can add posts to google,..
Posts
You can create posts and share photos to your Google business profile, just like you would on a social media network.
This feature is often neglected by business owners! Thankfully, some business owners are starting to use this feature…
It is important to try and remember to keep your profile up to date and add relevant content and products to your feed. This can be done manually through your Google business profile dashboard or in some cases, it is possible to automate your product and blog posts, from your website to synchronise with your google profile.
So here is an interesting stat.
Stat straight from Google: Businesses that add photos to their Business Profiles receive 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps,
and 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses that don’t.
These are enormous numbers and if tells me that people are using the extra info you add to google to verify your business, and subconscious rank your credibility.
So, sticking with search Theme, we will have a quick look at google Search Console
So, what is it?
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.
And why should we use it?
Well, Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site stand out in Google Search results.
Using search console, you can submit sitemaps or individual URLs to be crawled by google.
The crawling of page does, happen naturally, but by having search console connect to your site you can take advantage of search reports and analytics, as well as getting notifications of search errors with suggestions on what needs to be fixed.
For ecommerce users this is highly important, if you have forgot a detail within one of your products google will notify you and let you know what to fix, e.g., missing price, no image or no brand
So, what else can we do with it
One of the key features is the URL inspection tool, this tool will help you with spotting potential problems with your webpage before they become an issue,
it also shows whether your page is indexed with google and allows you to submit not indexed pages.
Another notable feature is your performance reports and the ability to view what users searched to find your site.
There are many more feature on google search console and worth taking time to familiarise yourself with them.
Ok now we’ll move on to one of my favourite tools google analytics! This could be a chat all by itself, but I have tried to condense the best I can…
So, what is it?
Google Analytics is a service that enables you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps.
For any website owner analytics is a must have! The data this provides is essential to any marketing plan and takes a lot of guess work out of the equation.
Google has update to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and is packed full of new and improved feature, if you are using the older version of analytics you need to start migrating to GA4 now.
If you don’t have analytics, it’s time to sign up and start collecting that data.
What can Analytics show me?
Google Analytics has a wide range of data and reports and these reports can be customised to suit your needs!
Some of the data you can view and take advantage of is your “user reports” for example how many users you have had over a period of time, and how many of those users are new versus retuning.
It can also show you the average time users spent on a page.
You can also find data on which pages are the most popular and what pages or products are under preforming.
Another feature you can utilise is user demographics (Age, gender, location, and interests) Using this data alone can be enough to help guid you in your marketing and content creation!
You can also track ecommerce activity such and what products get the most views, what products were added to cart along with purchases and revenue reports, allowing you to recognise trends on your site and act accordingly.
Google analytics has enough data to show you what is working well,
but it also shows you what is not working.
It can show you where most of your audition are located! This could open lots of possibilities for marketing to your existing audience.
And the possibility to gain new customers in untapped Demographics, with new content based on the data you have.
Example:
if you had a women’s clothing store and the data from analytics shows that most of your customer are women ,living in Dublin and between 35-45 years old with interests in reading, holidays, and golf and the top products they have purchased where item from your evening wear collection.
So, this is great you now know what’s working, and you should continue to create campaigns for this audience.
But you also have a massive range of items in your country living collection and these items aren’t selling online because your Dublin audience has no interested in this collection.
So, what next?
From the data we can tell that there has not been much traffic from the likes of Kerry or the midlands, this might be because of our advertising campaigns and social media post and reach, and these could be the location where our country collection might sell better, so creating a campaign on social media whit theses demographics in mind has the potential to gain new customer and new data to refine this audience more and bring your county collection sales up..
So, google analytics can not only help you from the data if shows you, but also from the data it doesn’t show you. Learning to use this data can benefit your business greatly.
So that’s Google analytics in a nutshell, now we will have a quick look at an interesting tool Google Trends
What is it?
Google Trends is another free tool that analyses the popularity of Google search terms using real-time data.
It can show you what people are searching for based on time, season, and location. You can use this information to help create a marketing plan and guid your content creation on blogs social media and product feeds
What Can I learn from google trends?
Just like the other tools from google there is a lot to be learned for google trends. The main feature in google trends is the “explore key word or topics“ function.
By entering a relevant keyword to your business You can view to popularity of that topic filleted by time or location you can them compare this keyword to similar ones and see the most popular results, this in turn should help you with marketing and content.
You can also use Google trends to identify trending topics nationally and globally. helping you plan your content and stay relevant in your users’ eyes.
You can also use google trends to help identify seasonal trend, A seasonal trend is a trend that comes back regularly, usually around a specific time of year. By researching trending topics you can find out when to start advertising for the next holiday, festivals, or events.
Example: I can enter the term, personalised gifts into google trends and ask it for data for the last 5 years, I will be presented whit a chart showing me that over the last 5 years, during the mounts of November and December, was the most popular time in Ireland for this search term. It also so me that this trend is growing year after year.
it also shows me related search terms giving me insight into what type of personalised gift users were searching for,
now I know that I need to be advertising my personalised gifts by the first week of November and what type of gifts I should advertise.
Google trend can actual be fun to use, and is helpful in understanding what people are searching and what topics are trending. If you have used trends before , go and use it pop in some terms relevant to your business and see what you discover..
Ok Let’s move on to the last section
What is it?
Googles digital garage is more or a learning resource than a tool, but taking time to learn from google directly is a resource that should be used.
Google offer some extremely helpful free online courses (there are paid ones also) including courses on the fundamentals in digital marketing, getting noticed on social media and Courses on expanding your business. Some of these courses also come with a certificate!
Course vary in length form 2 hours to 40 hours, and some are more technical than others.
but putting some time aside to learn from google and utilising what you have learned can benefit your business greatly,
It is not always easy to find the time to learn as a business owner,
but maybe delegating a staff member to take some of these course is an avenue worth exploring .
Your business would benefit directly from what they learn, and you are helping a staff member to upskill on the job which is good for everyone…
If reading is not for you, googles Digital garage also offer free webinars covering all types of topics!
Form marketing strategies to creating YouTube videos and everything in between and well worth check back monthly to see what else is on offer!