With approximately 3.5 billion searches per day, Google is the most used search engine in the world. In addition to being the most visited site globally, Google offers a series of indispensable tools for those who want to get noticed and succeed in the digital world. Let’s learn more about these tools.

Google doesn’t need big introductions: born in 1997 from a project by Larry Page and Sergey Bin, at the time students at the Stanford University in California, in a few years it becomes the giant of the digital age that generates about 160 billion dollars per year and over 3.5 billion searches per day. And precisely because it is the most used search engine in the world and can generate these incredible results, the vast majority of SEO and web marketing techniques today rely on Google and its algorithms.

However, the high number of searches performed daily, the big volume of data and information, sudden and frequent changes in market trends and algorithms, can lead many companies that want to consolidate their online presence to feel disoriented. To help us find our way, Google provides a series of tools that can help us to carry out market research, improve our online presence, obtain data and statistics, learn about the latest trends and stay up to date with the latest news.

In this article we have listed 5 essential tools to perform all these operations and establish our business in the digital world.

Google Analytics: the monitoring platform of your website

Google Analytics  is the first tool we recommend to anyone who has a website. And in 2020, which company doesn’t have a website? Almost none!

Google Analytics is a monitoring platform that provides detailed and accurate statistics on incoming traffic. This information provides businesses with a comprehensive picture that enables them to learn more about their audience and how they interact with the online content.

In fact, with Google Analytics it is possible to have real-time data, insights on the audience of your site (demographic data, geographic data, information about interests, behaviours, browser technologies…) and on the users behaviour (landing pages, exit pages, what gets searched on the website, etc.).

Other important data provided by Analytics concern the acquisition channels, that is the channels and means that generate traffic, including social networks. In addition, Analytics allows you to merge your Ads and Search Console accounts, so that you have all the data under control.

With Analytics it is therefore possible to analyse data, metrics and goals, generating reports based on several parameters. All this is essential not only to get an overview of the progress of your website and user behaviour, but also to improve and optimize marketing campaigns. In fact, knowing who your audience is, which pages of the site work the most, the most sought-after products and the channels that bring the most traffic, will allow you to define a profitable strategy.

The platform has a free version, which features are the ones we have just illustrated and which is more than sufficient for monitoring websites of most companies. The paid version, Google Analytics 360, is instead designed to meet the needs of larger enterprises that need even more precise and advanced tools and to integrate the data collected with those made available by other platforms.

Although it is aimed primarily at webmasters and marketing professionals, Analytics has a user-friendly and very intuitive interface that allows any user to be able to analyse the progress of the website in a simple, but thorough and accurate way.

Furthermore, thanks to the Google Analytics Academy, it is possible to learn how to use the platform through free courses divided by level and held by data analysis experts.

Google Search Console: the tool to optimize the visibility of your site

The second fundamental tool, especially from an SEO perspective, among the Google tools is Google Search Console.

The goal of the platform? Helping optimizing websites on Google in terms of performance and ranking.

Available for free, Search Console is the heir of Google Webmaster Tools and allows you to check, analyse and improve your site. The activities that can be carried out on Google Search Console are many:

• verify that Google can find your site and scan it correctly (an operation that allows Google to sort the results in the SERP – search engine results page)

• solve indexing problems and request a new indexing of new or updated content;

• receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam or other problems on your site;

• show you the sites that link to your website;

• view Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site is viewed in Google Search, which search queries your site is shown for, users’ click-through frequency for these queries;

• solve problems related to AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is the format that Google invites to adopt for the mobile versions of your sites to make them faster to load), usability on mobile devices and other search features.

What can Search Console help you for?

In a society in which the number of hours spent on the web and shopping online is constantly growing, having an online business presence is essential. However, to be found by your audience, developing and launching a website is not enough. Owning a website requires constant updating, monitoring and maintenance: algorithms and trends change quickly and if your goal is to have visibility on search engines, the strategy cannot fail to take these activities into account.

Google Ads: Google’s advertising platform

Another very useful tool for expanding online visibility is Google Ads. Better known under its previous name Google AdWords, this tool has taken on an increasingly important role in the web marketing strategies of companies in recent years.

As we have already discussed, the time spent online and online shopping have been growing steadily for years. To date, companies wishing to increase the visibility of their products and services, and reach their target, can no longer do without online advertising. To this end, Google has created Google Ads, a platform that allows you to buy advertising space within the SERP and more.

With Google Ads it is possible to create different types of ads that are shown to users according to the algorithms developed by Google that take into account the keywords searched and the users’ interests. This means that users will only see ads relevant to their interests or searches, thus optimizing the investment by companies that want to reach a specific audience.

The ad system with Google Ads is mainly based on pay per click (PPC). This means that a part of the budget is retained only if a user clicks on the advertisement. There are other promotional models that are based on cost per impression (you pay based on how many times the ad is shown), and cost per engagement (you pay when a user completes a specific action, for example watching a video ad).

The types of advertisement campaigns that you can set up are numerous:

• Search Network campaigns: Ads, consisting of only text, that appear in the SERP above organic search results.

• Display campaigns: display ads published on websites, news pages, blogs or apps that have established a partnership with Google.

• Video campaigns: video ads lasting 6 to 15 seconds, which are shown immediately before or while playing YouTube content (pre-roll or mid-roll).

• Google Shopping campaigns: ads displayed in an even more privileged position than ads on the search network and equipped with a textual part, an image and a price. This type of ad is ideal for companies that have an e-commerce site.

This time around as well, Google offers free courses to learn how to use Ads and learn how to set up an advertising campaign.

Google Trends: the tool to know the latest trends worldwide

The fourth tool that we selected is Google Trends, a free tool to analyse trends in real time – in the trend searches section – and measure the interests on a specific topic in a certain time and place – in the explore section.

In the first case, a list of the 20 search trends per day and in real time is shown.

In the second case, it is the user who does the research on a certain topic. When this happens, Google Trends shows the data relating to said topic during a given period of time and specific to that region of the world, as well as related searches and queries associated with the topic.

Additionally, you can compare topics by searching for multiple terms, or you can compare searches for a word in different time intervals or places.

Google Trends is a fundamental ally for companies wishing to intercept the most interesting topics and insert themselves in the most frequent conversations, anticipate market trends and evaluate the needs of users to position themselves on the market or improve SEO strategies.

Think with Google: the program to find ideas and inspiration

The last tool we present in this article is Think with Google, a free service that collects useful data and information for marketing professionals, communication agencies and all businesses interested in creating successful online advertising campaigns and keep up to date with the latest digital marketing news, new market trends, changes in consumer behaviour and emerging needs.

All this information is organized into four main sections:

• Consumer insight: in which consumer behaviour, needs and opinions are collected. This data can generate valuable information for your business.

• Marketing strategies: in which tools, experts insights and strategic insights capable of influencing and inspiring effective marketing activities can be found.

• Future of marketing: which contains all the latest news, articles and insights.

• Tools: which lists the Google tools designed to help you improve your marketing strategies.

Think with Google can therefore be useful to deepen the knowledge of our target market and target audience, and to examine the competitors and identify the best marketing strategies to implement.

Wrapping up

To be noticed and, above all, not to be overwhelmed by the incredible amount of data and information on the web, a company needs to master the right tools that allow it to obtain solid results in terms of online visibility, productivity improvement and target engagement.

Each of these five tools represents a valid ally to support marketers, webmasters and all those who wish to set up a structured and effective web marketing strategy.

Do you know and use these Google tools? Are there any other tools you would recommend? Tell us in the comment section below and contact us for more information on our marketing services.