In this post I will talk about a few tools free Google tools all webmaster should use on their website to help improve their SEO. Below are some of the tools I add or use for all websites that I manage.
-
Google Webmaster Tools
All website should have this installed. If you do not already have an account, sign up for one HERE. Once you have signed up and link your website to your account, you can see how Google views your website. It will provide you all the errors finds so that you can fix them.
Another useful feature of Webmaster Tools is it will provide you a list of all the keyword visitors searched where your website was displayed on Google Search. Nice!
Other important features include Crawl Errors and Sitemaps. Once you have built your site and created a sitemap, you can submitted it directly to Google here. -
Google Analytics
This is a website analytics product provided by Google free of charge which all webmaster NEED to master. You can find it HERE.
This tool will provide you some insights for your web traffic and allow you to analyse and measure your websites performance. It can also be linked with Google Webmaster Tools and Adwords to provide a even more comprehensive analysis of your online marketing effort. -
Adwords
This is the pay per click (PPC) program offered by Google. You can find it HERE.
I know you’re going to say “But this is not FREE!”. Well, you can sign up and do not run any ads and just use the tools provided in the webmaster control panel. One of the most useful tool in there is the “Keyword Planner”. This tool is everything you need to do your keyword research providing you information such as search volume and trends. The suggested bid and competition of a keyword will give you some idea how much the keyword is worth. If you do not have a high budget, it is wise to start with keywords with lower competition and suggested bid value.
Another useful tool is the “Display Planner”. It allows you to do research and get ideas for keywords and provides information such as gender, device, and age groups of people searching for these keywords.
There are other features such as ad placements and other Display Network targeting methods, but these are only useful if you decide to start a paying campaign. -
Google Trends
You can find it HERE.
Google trends shows you popular search queries relating to keywords people in different regions around the world is searching. This tool is great because it provides you greater keyword choices and show you how popular they are. If you are selling globally, it allows you to get an idea how much interest there are for your keyword hence giving you an idea of the market depth.
The related searches will give you ideas on other keywords which you can be targeting. -
PageSpeed
Page speed is a tool to scan your site and Google will provide suggestions to help you identify ways to impove the speed of you web pages and make it more mobile friendly. You can find it here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. After a scan it provides 2 sets of results, one to optimise mobile experience, and the other one for desktop. There are many other free tools which does more, but I think you should try to implement as many of the suggestions as possible by this tool. If your website is responsive, I will say a score of 80 for mobile, and a score of 90 for desktop is what you should try to achieve.
Google actually provides a lot more free tools than the five I have mentioned above. If you have never used them before it will take some time to master these tools. However, if you can master these tools, they should provide all the data needed to be able to optimise your website for SEO successfully.