Introduction
Wherever you are in your website journey, understanding your website’s performance is crucial for gaining more traffic and conversions.
Did you know that 15 seconds is the average time someone will spend scanning a web page before deciding whether to stay?
With this tiny window of opportunity, giving them a reason to stay on your website is essential. And this comes down to the content and user journey.
But before you start changing anything, it’s a good idea to benchmark how long your visitors are staying and which content is getting the most attention.
Understanding website performance and benchmarking comes down to using some core SEO tech tools, and this blog will look at Google SEO tools that are free for you to set up and use.
About Google SEO tools
What are they, and are they really free?
3 Core Google SEO tools
#1 GOOGLE ANALYTICS (GA4)
A FREE reporting tool installed on your website with a piece of code to connect the two.
- Helps you to gain an understanding of what users are doing so that you can track and understand their behaviour.
- Geographically, where they come from, and via which channels (ie social, email or organic).
- The most common content they visit.
- How long are they spending on your site?
- Their journey through your site.
- Where they leave (bounce off) your site.
- What conversions are they taking?
All of these give signals to Google as to how engaged your website is. These signals are a part of SEO success.
Once you understand them, you can improve them over time. You can also use this to guide you on the changes you make to your site and your overall website goals.
Because Google Analytics is a reporting tool, it doesn’t tell us anything about how your website is ranking or anything to do with SEO.
Two types of GA. Universal analytics and GA4. Currently, we will use both side by side. In July 2024, Universal Analytics were permanently replaced by GA4.
#2 GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
A FREE reporting tool connected to your website.
- Helps you to track and measure your website visibility, traffic and performance in the Google search results.
- Shows what is and isn’t working with your SEO.
- Shows which keyword queries bring prospects to your site
- Shows website impressions.
- Shows the number of clicks for a keyword.
- Shows the position of a keyword in the search results.
- Allows you to submit your sitemap to tell Google to crawl + index.
- Alerts you on any issues impacting traffic so that you can fix them.
GA and GSC can be connected (Google Analytics > Admin > Property Settings > scroll down to Search Console and follow the steps to connect).
Being able to drill down to see which keyword search related to which visitor was sadly removed around 2013.
START WITH GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
#3 GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
A FREE online app to help you understand how your website is appearing in local Google search (local three-pack) and Google Maps.
(Even if you don’t want local visitors, this is still a valuable tool and a FREE Google listing)
- Allows you to create a business listing to attract, connect and engage with prospects to promote your business.
- When a brand name is searched within Google, your listing will appear in the right-hand side knowledge panel of Google.
- Ideally, we want your business to also appear when relevant keywords are searched.
- Ensure your listing is up-to-date, detailed and accurate.
- Location is essential to help you be visible.
- Complete all the details provided to help you appear quickly.
- Always respond to reviews – especially bad ones!
- Ensure you post, add photos and engage with GBP frequently, as this will help your local rankings.
START WITH GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
Other useful SEO tools
- Google Adwords (now Google Ads which has a great keyword planner)
- Answer the Public – blog topic search
- Screaming Frog – audit tool (a downloadable programme)
- Ubersuggest, SEM Rush, Ahrefs are also useful.
Conclusion
At Engaging Content, we appreciate that your time is short and tech can feel complex. With the best will in the world, these kinds of tasks, whilst seen as necessary, often get pushed down the to-do list. Whilst these 3 Core Google SEO Tools are FREE, it still requires the technical know how to set them up.
Rather than you going down a rabbit hole to do this for yourself, let us do this for you with our SEO Tool Setup Service, a one-off fee for long-time value so that you are able to measure and track your website’s performance. Get ready to tick Google SEO Tools off your to-do list.
