Google’s tools to maximize your website’s SEO
by Phil Chow
We’ll never know what Google’s exact search engine ranking criteria are. Google keeps that a secret. They will also improve its (e.g. Google “Hummingbird”, “Penguin” and “Panda” announcements) criteria to prevent us from gaming it, and to give better search results.
However, Google offers various tools that they encourage us to use. And we can make a safe assumption that if we use these tools, Google will more likely rank us higher in their search results over our competitors that don’t use these tools. These Google Tools are:
- Google Plus Personal Profile
- Google Plus Business
- Google Plus Local Pages
- Google Analytics
- Google Webmaster
- Google XML site map
- Google Authorship
- Google Gmail
All are free to use and you just need to register one time with Google in order to use them.
You will find these tools are simple to use and useful. They come with full instructions and help (just Google your question on where else, Google(!), to get your answers). All will help you maximize your website’s SEO.
Google tool examples
Google Plus Local Pages
For example, especially if you are a local business, Google Plus Local Pages enables customers to write reviews of your business (I will show you a way to maximize the number of customers writing a review of your business on your Local Page in a future blog post). The more reviews you have, the more you will rank higher over your competitors who don’t have this page.
As with the other Google tools, Google Plus Local Pages, also helps establish your credibility with Google. When you list your specials, company news and events, hours of operation, address and regularly update your local page, this signals to Google that you’re a real business.
Google Authorship
With Google authorship, your listing tend to rank higher over others that don’t have authorship.
Another example is Google Authorship, which links the content you publish on your business website to your personal Google Plus Profile.
What this means is if you blog regularly on your website, Google will show a picture of you from your Plus Profile with your blog post in their search results and possibly rank your post higher over your competitors that don’t have authorship on the search phrase you are targeting.
Your post will also be more likely clicked too, as people tend to click on pictures of authors over those that don’t have a picture.
In future blog posts, I hope to write on each of these web tools to show how you can get the most out of them for your website. In the meantime, sign up for these tools and use them right away to maximize your website’s SEO.
What are your thoughts on this post? If you have any comments or questions, please write below. We welcome and appreciate your feedback! Free consultation is also available if you like to talk in detail.