There are many search engines, but Google remains the undisputed leader in the worldwide search industry (barring a few, such as Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia). Google is the dominant engine, controlling more than 70% of the search market share. It is “batteries included” and offers a suite of utilities that can boost your SEO processes.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a new portal for local and nonlocal businesses ( local businesses are those present in the vicinity of the user or in the same relocation). It is a complete ecosystem for local business or brands. It replaces Google Local and Google Places, other than mainstream integration with Google+ (a social networking site by Google).
Aimed at small- and medium-size enterprises that lack the budget of large-scale organizations, Google My Business helps you reach out to consumers. It is a platform that helps you connect to and interact with customers in addition to promoting your business. You can add pictures of your businesses, post reviews, engage with users, share updates and news, and help your business gain visibility in Google search results. The boxed listings are prominent, and their location is marked on the map. You also see the operating hours for some businesses and other information such as websites and directions.
Google Ad Words Keyword Planner
Google Ad Words Keyword Planner is a good resource for coming up with keywords for a new project or relevant terms for an existing campaign. You can use this utility to develop terms and filter them for a specific country or region based on the geolocation. You can determine the search volume for keywords and predict the bid for those terms, if you are opting for a paid campaign.
Google Ad Words Keyword Planner helps you choose multiple terms that can be used in conjunction with another term, specifically long-tail terms that can drive the right traffic to your website. You can also find alternate terms for your products or services that have low competition and may require less effort to rank well in SERPs. Monthly global and local monthly searches are handy because you can determine the keywords your competitors are using to promote their products and services.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a utility that helps you compare the flow, trends, and popularity of terms and phrases; you can see at a glance how terms and phrases fare. It spans several categories, such as business, nature, sports, travel, and news. You can streamline your keyword research by using Google Trends results along with the Google Ad Words Keyword Planner utility. You can even filter search trends by sorting terms geographically or according to time span and categories. For example, you can determine the popularity of terms in a particular country, region, or city.
PageSpeed Insights
Google stresses the importance of web page performance, and its algorithms favor websites with optimal site speed and user experience (UX) design . Optimal Page-loading time counts toward an enhanced UX. Studies suggest that optimal page-load time leads to more conversions, thereby affecting sales significantly. Page speed depends on several factors ranging from web-hosting facility and website design to the hardware used for that site. In particular, websites that take a lot of time to open on mobile devices are penalized, because they result in a bad UX.
Summary
Then you saw the Google Trends toolkit and learned about Page Speed Insights. Finally, you looked at the most important tools: Google Search Console and Google Analytics. In the next chapter, you learn about obstacles you may encounter when using SEO.
