Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Maps are great tools for the website owner to use and boost their sites authority and enhance their overall rankings on the world’s leading search engine.
Google Analytics is an extremely useful and more to the point free feature that enables the site owner to track their website activity and perhaps pinpoint any areas that would benefit from a little SEO tweaking. This system is very easy to set up and is just a matter of creating an account and agreeing to the terms and conditions.
Google Webmaster Tools are invaluable for anyone who is serious about boosting their website and attracting more traffic. Like the Analytics tool it provides a valuable insight into your website and can identify any issues the site may have and what you can do to rectify any issues. Signing up for this free SEO feature is also very easy to do and all that remains for the website owner to do is select the Geographic Target, (ie.Google.com, Google.ie, Google.nl etc) select the Preferred Domain and choose the Crawl Rate. The crawl rate affects the speed of Googlebot’s requests during the crawl process and does not have any effect on how often Googlebot crawls your site.
Another free SEO tool that many people find works well for their site is the Google Maps optimisation feature. This feature enables the website owner to get their business on the top ten most relevant results for a given localised search. Contained within the results are a map of the location and name of the business and also the telephone number. This feature is particularly useful for people who wish to expand in their own locality as the results appear above the organic listings on the first page and hence attract more attention from potential customers. To sign up, visit the Local Business Centre (search on Google for login site) and submit business listing. The next step is to fill in a few details regarding your business. Ways to improve the ranking of your site using this function include but are not limited to: Maximising the relevancy of the content for the listing, generally optimising the pages, encouraging satisfied customers to write reviews of your business and also build citations to your contact information on local business directories and other websites.
If any more information is required regarding these free SEO features there are a number of resources online that provide more in-depth guidance.
About the Author: Andy Birt is the Managing Director of the UK’s Largest SEO Company Smart Traffic. Andy is an expert at developing and implementing SEO strategies for a range of clients from the self employed to large multinational organisations.
