Best Free SEO Tool: Google

There is one tool I set up for all of my clients. In 2016 Google had about 65% of the Global Search Market Share. So if SEO is a goal, then shouldn’t we do as much as we can through the #1 search engine in the world? There many tools in one, but I will go over just the ones that every company should have for SEO purposes:

1. The Local Listing

This listing is often seen before a website is seen. Some potential customers may never see your website, so having this listing up-to-date will bring more customer to your business.

The listing has a phone number, an address, business hours, photos, reviews, and other relevant information. If you haven’t claimed this listing it might be sitting out there unclaimed and NOT working as it should. When you set up your listing you’ll want to:

• Connect your website
• Add a logo and large cover image (like Facebook’s cover image)
• Add at least 10 relevant images to your profile
• Indicate if you want customers to come to you or if you go to your customer
• Select your categories of business
• Get 10 Reviews to reach the next tier of the search algorithm
• Add posts to  your listing
• Set up a mobile phone for instant messaging
• Create a relevant, trendy post each week. A post is very similar to the Facebook post, yet a Google listing post is much more likely to appear in a search. Be watching for a blog about the Google listing post and how to set it up.
• Connect your Analytics account
• Setup the Google My Business app so you can monitor everything on your mobile phone

2. The Analytics

Connecting Google Analytics to your site helps you understand how your visitors are finding you and where they are coming from. Connecting Google Webmaster tools lets you tell the search engine about your site to encourage the spiders to crawl your site to index the pages. This tool will also alert you if something is wrong with your site.

3. Youtube

Once You have a Gmail account you can create a Youtube Channel. A video strategy for your business may take some extra work, but if you have a smartphone you can create some decent videos. If you give a presentation, stream it live from your Facebook page, then you can download it and upload it to Youtube. Youtube is considered a search engine because many people go straight to Youtube to see testimonial videos and “how it works” videos. If you have processes that can be made into short videos, create them and put them on Youtube. You can also subscribe to and like videos that make sense for your industry. That way you can build up your Youtube channel with other videos rather than just your own videos. There is a presentation tomorrow focused on Youtube and SEO!

Other Awesome Tools

Google Drive (Sheets, Docs, Photos, Sides, etc.) Adwords, Hangouts,  Blogger (Blogspot), Adsense, Maps, APIs, Gmail.

(As much as I encourage having a Gmail account, I don’t encourage this account being “customer-facing.” You should have a professional email (you@yourbusiness.com) that is customer-facing.)