Four Free Google tools for small businesses that mean big business.

Google remains the market leader in the search engine game and for organic search results which is a primary web traffic and customer driver for businesses large and small. Competition for placement on the first page of Google search results remains challenging, but if you take advantage of some free tools Google gives you, your chances are much better. To take advantage of these free tools, all you need is a Gmail email address account that you can set up here...also free.

Free Tool #1; Google My Business Page; If you don’t have a Google My Business, chances are you may already have one, you just don’t know it. Google My Business (formerly Google Map Listings) is a free dynamic property that can give your business a good opportunity to show up on first page search results, naturally. Sign up or claim your listing here. Your Google My Business page allows you to add hours, makes it easy for customers to find you and connect, especially on mobile devices, add ordering (for restaurants) and post offers and updates. It is also where Google Reviews are collected which is another major advantage for businesses and one of the criteria Google uses to decide which business listings to showcase on the search results page.

Free Tool #2; Google Sites; Chances are you already have a website, but if you don’t or you’re not happy with your current site, or you want more control over your website, Google has a free website builder. You can learn about it here. As far as easy website builders, this is really simple so consider the price (free) when you see the result. It allows you to get online easily, quickly, with a mobile responsive website and sync with other powerful, free Google tools. If you want something more sophisticated, you might want to explore other platforms but this is a great option if you are just getting started.

Free Tool #3; Google Analytics; This is the Bible for web traffic and is a free tool from Google that lets you get a peek behind your website to see who’s coming, where they are coming from (web traffic drivers), and what are site visitors doing when they get there. You can learn more about Google Analytics here. Google Analytics will help you make important changes to your site as you learn more about who’s coming and why. If you are getting a lot of site visitors, but see that they don’t take any action beyond one or two pages, Google Analytics will help you understand this and you can then make changes to get site visitors to make meaningful actions on your site like filling out a form, downloading a white paper, or putting something into a shopping cart.

Free Tool #4; Google Search Console; If Google Analytics let’s you understand how people are finding your website and interacting with it, Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that monitors the overall health of your website. Think of Google Search Console like the dashboard on your car where you can get temperature, oil readings, warning lights for most of your automobile systems. In a similar way, Google Search Console will let you know if there are problems with any pages that prevent your website from being crawled or “indexed” from Google which affects your sites ability to be displayed in search results. You can learn more about Google Search Console here.

Google has many powerful, free tools for small businesses that can help them compete with the bigger companies, and with a little insight and dedication to setting up these tools, you can start helping your business grow in a new digital direction.