Google Analytics

To put it simply, Google Analytics is a free tracking tool offered by Google which shows how visitors interact with your website.

Google Analytics offers insights about your website’s visitors so for example, you can see how many people visit your site, where they came from and how they interacted with your site.

I would love to say that Google Analytics is easy to use but to be honest, for beginners it can be somewhat tricky and confusing but the insights you gain from the reports are vital to improving your online presence so it’s well worth the learning curve.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a search tool feature that lets you see how often certain keywords or search terms are entered into Google’s search engine over a given period of time. Google Trends can be used for comparative keyword research, monitoring your brand and competitors as well as highlighting trending topics.

Exploring what people search for enables you to see what they are currently interested in and curious about.

Digital Garage

With over 40 hours of self-paced learning, Google Digital Garage is a great place to start learning. The free online learning platform helps you master the basics of digital marketing from the comfort of your own home or office. All the lessons are created by Google trainers and are well structured with a mix of video, text and practical exercises.

Launched in 2015, Google Digital Garage enables anyone to learn the fundamentals of Digital Marketing so if you’re a small business owner and you want to understand more about digital marketing and how it can benefit your business, this is for you.

Regardless of your existing skills and expertise in digital marketing, Digital Garage will help you turn knowledge into action.

Google My Business (formerly Google Places)

Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to promote your Business and manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. With your Google My Business account, you can see and connect with your customers, post updates to your Business Profile and see how customers are interacting with your business on Google.

Add detailed business information such as location, contact details and opening hours as well as website and other details which will help customers find you and increase your search visibility.

Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools)

According to Google, whether you’re a business owner, SEO specialist, marketer, site administrator, web developer, or app creator, Search Console will come in handy and I completely agree.

Google Search Console is free to use and it helps you monitor and maintain your sites organic presence in Google Search. Google Search is not required for your site to appear in Google Search however, it will show you how Google sees your website, alert you to any indexing problems as well as any performance issues.

Google Alerts

Another free service from Google is “Google Alerts” which is a change detection and notification tool. Once set up, this tool will let you know when new a new page has been published on the web that is relevant to the search term you entered.

To put it simply, you choose what you want to be informed about and then Google will send you an email when it appears or is mentioned on a new page so, for example, this could be your brand name, a competitor’s brand or a product or service. Is it reliable? It won’t catch every single newly created web page and its better suited for smaller businesses with less coverage than a large multi-national but it will catch a lot.

It’s very easy to set up Google Alerts, simply enter the search term, how often you want to be alerted, the source and location.

Google Keyword Planner

To reach the right customers with the right keywords, you can use Google Keyword Planner, this free tool will help you discover new keywords related to your business, see estimates of the searches that they receive and the cost to target them.

If you’re starting from scratch and you need to research which keywords you should be focusing on, simply input the URL of your landing page and the tool will produce a list of keyword ideas.

The resulting data from the search term data can be used to SEO your website and by analysing the information, this will enable you to use the search terms in your next content marketing strategy and make it more relevant to your market audience.

Test My Site

With almost half of the Google searches now carried out on mobile devices, you need to ensure that your website loads fast. Waiting for a slow or non-mobile-friendly website to load is no fun and most people will probably go elsewhere.

Test My Site from Think with Google is an easy way for businesses to measure their site’s speed performance on mobile Google Search, to rank well in mobile Google Search, your website should have fast loading speeds and be mobile-friendly.

Simply enter your site URL and once the test is complete, the speed test results are displayed along with any recommendations on how to enhance your mobile site performance and experience.

For a more detailed analysis, get the full report, it’s basic but provides valuable insight into how Google ranks your website speed and should be used to further optimize your website.

If you need even more in-depth report about how Google renders and indexes your website, you should use the Page Speed Insight tool.

Google Resizer

Having a responsive website will ensure your web pages render and work well on a variety of devices and screens sizes which include mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. With mobile traffic increasing significantly, websites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices are likely alienating a big share of their users.

Using Resizer, you can test your websites responsive design across different platforms and see where the responsive breakpoints are. Resizer displays your website on different devices in real-time, it’s fully interactive and all links are clickable which is a great way to check your content, design and performance to ensure usability and viewer satisfaction.

Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights is a handy, easy-to-use tool that will scan your site and test how well it works on both mobile and desktop platforms. This free Google tool will provide an overall score out of 100 for your website which is based on several performance optimizations and best practices.

Along with the results, you will see a preview of how your site displays on both mobile and desktop platforms as well as any issues, recommendations and opportunities that will improve the performance of your website

Google is obsessed with speed and back in 2010 they announced that site speed had become a signal in their search ranking algorithms, mobile-friendliness is also now one of these so using this tool lets you analyse and optimise your website.

Conclusion

Whether you are a marketer, developer, or small business owner, these 10 free Google tools will help you engage more people and grow your business.

In the coming weeks, I will be explaining the use and functions of some of these tools in greater depth.

As they are free to use, there is no risk in trying them out and although this is not a complete list of free Google tools, they are my personal shortlist of google tools that help me with digital branding and content marketing.