The topic of online marketing seems to come up quite a lot recently because of the global pandemic. People have had to learn to adjust their businesses. Many of those who have not really dabbled in online marketing have found themselves with all the time in the world to begin to implement online business and marketing strategies due to lockdown. One of the great things about being an online marketer is the wealth of tools available to you!
Google Analytics
For small businesses, Google Analytics is free. It is actually quite amazing because Analytics gives you so much important information about how people visit your or your customer’s website that you would expect this tool to at least come with some costs. Well, it does, and it does not. You can pay for a premium version but only if you own a huge website with thousands of visitors every month.
Google Analytics allows you to track where the user came from:
· Organic Search
· Social Media
· Direct
· Referrals
· Campaigns (Paid Ads)
Not only can you see which landing pages are the most popular from the above traffic sources, you can also narrow down which devices the site visitors used such as desktop, tablet, smartphone, and other devices. Furthermore, you can see exactly how each visitor viewed each content page, how long the user stayed on that content page, and tons more useful information.
Google Academy
Now the buck doesn’t stop with Google Analytics when it comes to freebies via the Google Analytics label because you also learn about and earn an online Google Analytics certificate via the Google Analytics Academy.
Why is this helpful?
Well if you are new to the world of online freelancing, or you want to put more effort into your business’s online presence, then you can teach yourself Google Analytics, earn a certificate, and not have to pay a penny for training courses – the only thing that will cost you money is time.
Google Webmasters
Another very cool and free tool from Google is its Webmasters feature. This is basically for those that want to check their site is being indexed correctly by Google’s search engine. You also get a similar tool with Bing if you also want to target Bing users which is mostly via mobile devices these days.
This tool goes hand in hand with the Google Analytics section that refers to ‘organic search’. You can see the keyword search phrases being used by site visitors to get to your website, you can see which sites have linked to your website – ones not included in tools like MOZ, Majestic, or SEM Rush, and you can also see other important traffic stats.
Traffic Stats:
· Impressions: How many times your site was seen in a search
· Total Clicks: How many people have clicked to your website
· Average CTR: A (%) of how many people click through to your to your site versus impressions
· Average Position: The average position your website ranks in Google’s search engine
For the average position, this should not be used as your defining rank tracker, although the lower this number goes the better your website’s rankings are. Arguably the best way to get accurate rank tracking results is to use a VPN to get localized search results from different countries. You can then create your own search from wither mobile or desktop (both are recommended) and check how the most popular keywords rank in those countries.
Now the traffic indictor is great to see how many people click through to the site, but it is not an indicator of how long those people spend browsing your website. You will need to pair this information with something called a ‘bounce rate’ in Google Analytics. Lot’s of clicks with a high (%) bounce rate means that there is something wrong with your content.
Summary
Google has many great tools that are free and quite a few that are paid too. For example, the Google Ads tool is used for search engines and media networks to advertise goods and services. The tools mentioned in this guide will also be used alongside Google’s paid tools, but they are also useful for numerous other online campaigns you may have launched. Social media campaigns, email marketing, paid ads, and more.
In fact, Google has a free training tool for these concepts too. It is called Google Digital Garage which you may also want to check out. You can learn about email marketing, and other tools that will help your business thrive online.