These free SEO tools can help you transform your website and your business. After reading this blog you’ll know how to discover:
Google Analytics is a robust, free tool that can answer this question. Because it is so robust, you may not know where to look to find the answers you need.
Be sure your website developer has given you administrative access to your own data! If your web developer should win the lottery, “get hit by the bus,” or if the relationship sours, you want to be able to access your data yourself and/or assign a new user to do so.
Choose the time frame in the calendar. You can choose specific day(s), weeks, months, or years. You can even compare your data to an earlier time frame. For example, if you sell swimsuits, you may want to compare this June to last June.
Below the pie graph, you will see a table with users, new users, sessions, and more. Your “users” are visitors to your website. “New users” are unique visitors that went to your website during that time frame.
Although Google Analytics won’t be able to account for every visitor to your site, this free tool is a good approximation of the health of your site. You invested money and/or time to build a website. Now, you need to track your data regularly: daily, weekly, or monthly. Generally, Google’s RankBrain (machine learning and artificial intelligence) may cause a site that users visit and stay on to do better in the search engine return pages (SERPs). A SERP is the page you get back after you “Google” a phrase.
Users can get to your website from a variety of sources including:
If you don’t know how to set up Google Analytics, your web developer can help. It’s usually a straightforward task that shouldn’t take much time (budget).
This is the same pathway as the first answer above. This time, you’ll click on the blue word in the table. This blue text might read:
When you click on the blue link, you’ll be able to see more detail. For example, you’ll be able to see which social media channels drive traffic to your website.
You can track the number of organic search visitors you get from day to day or month to month. Is organic traffic increasing? Great! There’s a good chance you’re making progress. How far can you optimize it? Here are some tips for getting website traffic. How much more traffic can you get?
On the other hand, is organic search decreasing? If so, you likely have SEO roadblocks you need to address.
When you’re developing content for your website, you want to know which content is most successful.
Be sure to set the calendar in Google Analytics to the date range you want. Be consistent in how you measure and record data from one week or month to the next.
You’ll see the 10 most popular pages. These exclude your domain name. For example, “/” is the home page. Similarly, “/about” is the about page. At the bottom right of the table, you can adjust the data to show up to 5000 rows. You can also export the table.
If no one is visiting specific pages, you need to figure out why. A page that no one visits is like a tree that falls in the forest. Silent.
Do visitors not find this content? Optimize the page for search. Is it old? Dull? You may need to update or add content to those pages. Content is one of the top 3 Google ranking factors.
Is the page buried too deep in the navigation? You may need to move it. Do you need to showcase it on social media with a link to give it more visibility?
Keep your content fresh by monitoring its success.
Users won’t wait for slow pages to load. Google recommends that your website page load in less than two seconds. At Google, they aim for a half second or less! You may have certain pages that are bloated and slow.
Clicking on the small “?” in the headings will provide definitions for any terms you don’t know.
You’ll see the average speed of your website at the top right of the table. Any pages that are significantly slower appear in red.
Google prioritizes faster loading sites. They want users to have a good experience and quickly find what they need. If your website is slow, you will not find it high on the search engine return pages (SERPs).
Site speed is one of Google’s ranking factors. In May 2021, the page experience algorithm update including Core Web Vitals became event more important.T
Fixing slow pages often requires tapping a web developer. To see if that’s necessary, you can use this useful tool.
This tool analyzes individual page—not the entire site at once. You will need to put in the specific URL for the page that you believe may be slow. Additionally, you can set the tool to focus on desktop or mobile. Choose mobile.
Enter your URL and choose “Analyze.” You’ll get a colorful result in the red, yellow, or green. Green is optimal. Red is very slow.
Under “Opportunities,” click on each bold black opportunity. For example, these might read:
When you click on the bold, black word under opportunities, you will find suggestions for helping your pages to load faster. You can then see if it’s a server problem, an image (photo) problem, or if technical code changes need to be made.
Google prioritizes site speed and mobile search. Mobile search has been used for the SERPs since 2018. You can also check on your competitors’ websites this way. Again, as Google continues to roll out its Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console in 2021, you can expect this to become increasingly more important.
Wondering what “Googlers” are “Googling” to find you? This tool will provide the answers. It’s called Google Search Console. Formerly, it was known as Google Webmasters Tool. But it’s not just for webmasters. It’s important for you to know how to access it and what it offers.
Don’t ignore it! In my experience, few web developers even set it up. It’s relatively easy for a webmaster to set up, so you can see your data. 2 days admin access
Click the date range that for which you want to see results. You’ll see a large graph with 4 headings:
You can click on any or all of the four boxes to see a color graph. Below the graph, it reads “QUERIES.”
Queries are the phrases that the potential website visitor typed in the search box in Google. Click on “QUERIES.” A list of 10 pages appears. You can increase the number of pages you see online or export the data.
You can see what keyword phrases are “working” to get you traffic. You can also see the position in which your page was shown. Position 1-5 is optimal as it gets the most clicks. If you’re in position 6 to 10, you might want to see what you can optimize to move up.
Positions 11 to 20 are “low-hanging fruit.” They may provide an opportunity to go to the first page, where your pages with these keywords are much more likely to be seen.
Perhaps there are keywords that could drive more traffic but you haven’t thought of using them in your content.
Although Google doesn’t show which keywords are leading to which pages in the SERPs, they do show which pages are being shown.
It takes about two days before the data in Google Search Console appears. What’s more, if you haven’t installed Google Search Console, you won’t have data for that time period.
Be sure to choose the date range that for which you want to see results. Click below the graph on the word “PAGES.” You’ll see 10 pages. At the bottom right, you can expand the number of pages you see. You can also export the data.
You can see what pages are “working” to get you traffic. You can also see the position in which your page was shown. Do you need to better optimize specific pages?
If you’re getting a lot of impressions on the first two pages (position 1-20), but not getting clicks, you may need to look at the meta description you are using. Is it compelling? Are you focusing your page content on the appropriate keyword phrases?
Links are one of Google’s top three algorithm factors. If authoritative websites choose to link to your website, it signals that you have expertise, authority, and trustworthy (EAT) content.
Be sure to ask your web developer for administrative use of your own data. This gives you control over the data and who has access to it, should you need to make changes.
You will see two columns here. On the left, it reads “External links.” These are links from outside your website going to your website. In this left-hand column, you’ll see three tables:
On the right-hand column, you’ll see which pages on your site you created links and the number of times you’ve linked to them.
If you click on the blue word “MORE,” you can expand the table and export it.
External links are extremely important for SEO. You can export the list of top linking sites, and consider opportunities from other EAT sites. Reaching out to expert, authoritative, trustworthy sites that are willing to link to you can build your own EAT. Additionally, you want to ensure that only reputable sites are linking to you.
You can discover if you have pages that aren’t loading properly or have other errors.
Click on the boxes above the graph in “Performance” or “Coverage” to see a complete graph in color.
Similar to the layout that you saw in “Performance,” you’ll see a graph with four boxes at the top. If you click on the first box on the left, it’s red. These are errors. Below the chart, these errors are described in black bold text. When you click on the black bold text, it expands. From this view, you can export the data.
Not only do errors and broken pages create a poor user experience, they also negatively impact your ability to get found by Google and other search engines. With a list of problematic pages, you can go to your web developer to have the errors fixed.
Two simple methods can help check if your site is mobile friendly.
The first method checks one URL at a time. The second, in Google Search Console, allows you to see all errors at once.
Under “Mobile Usability,” click on the error box. Below in bold black text you may see errors. These might include:
Any of these can be clicked to expand and exported.
First, mobile errors give visitors a bad user experience. Second, Google prioritizes mobile search. By exporting your list of mobile un-friendly pages, you can ask for them to be fixed.
In March 2021, Google began to show mobile ONLY results. If you are not mobile friendly, your business will not appear in the Google search results.
Any discussion of Google’s free tools without mentioning Google Business Profile (formerly called Google My Business) would be remiss.
About once a week, we get a robo call reporting that our Google Business Profile page is not verified. It is. These calls sound very official. They are spam. If you have any questions about your Google Business Profile page, contact Google directly. They will help you for free
The page may already exist. If so, you may see a window that looks like the image here.
If the page isn’t verified, you’ll need to verify it.
You’ll need to create the page if it doesn’t already exist. If you’re unsure how to do this, you can call your online digital agency. We help people get verified sites on Google Business Profile, Bing Places and many other directories. The total Local SEO service which creates your brand consistency and submits to more than 25 directories is only $400
Google Business Profile pages are a free Google product, and a great way to get your business on Google. These pages are usually shown singly or in what’s called a social pack. Social packs feature similar businesses in the same frame. If you want to stay current, you need a Google Business Profile page.
However, the structured markup helps Google to “understand” what your page is about.
This first search engine result includes only the title tag, URL, date, and meta description. It is NOT a rich snippet.
This second search engine result is a rich snippet for a recipe. It includes a photo, rating, preparation time, calories, title tag, URL, meta description, and more.
The test shows which rich result types were found on the page, as well as any errors or suggestions for your structured data.
Structured data won’t directly impact how Google crawls and indexes your pages. What’s more, Google may choose not to feature your content as a rich snippet.
Google will try to give the user the best and most specific result possible, which may not be what you had planned! The results might even contain content from somewhere in the middle of one of your web pages.
However, structured data can indirectly impact your rankings. A rich snippet may cause users to engage more with your content—clicking through and staying on your page. This will be a signal to RankBrain, Google’s machine learning, that you have great content. That CAN enhance your rankings.
If you need help with ranking and SEO services, updates on your website, or other digital marketing services for your business, contact us.
Monitor and track your analytics with Google’s free SEO tools at least monthly. Fix parts of your website that are broken or less than optimal. You’ll find that a well-optimized site is a healthy website with increasing numbers of visitors.
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