SEO Tips - 5 Free Google Tools That Will Help Boost Your Ranking

Google wants to make it easy for webmasters that create compelling content to rank well on its search engine. Using these free Google tools you can optimize your website, improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and gain new insights into which keywords people are using to find information on Google.

Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The Google Keyword Tool is an indispensable tool for any online marketing campaign. Using this tool, you can find the estimated search volumes, Adwords advertiser competition and popularity of keywords. It is an excellent tool for finding new keywords since it provides extensive lists of related keywords and suggestions to help you generate new keyword ideas. You can then use they keywords in article or blog posts and target them to improve your rankings.

Google Webmaster Central
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

With a free account on Google Webmaster Central you have access to the important data that Google stores about your website. It can allow you to easily identify problems that the Google crawlers are having indexing your content. You can also view top search queries that visitors used to find your website on Google, backlinks to your website and even the code that the Googlebot sees when it visits your website. On the settings page, you can choose the Geographic Target for your website to specifically target search traffic in your local area. A new, recently added feature gives you data on how fast your website loads, which is a new ranking factor that Google has added to their search ranking algorithm.

Google Insights For Search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/

This is a tool that is similar to Google Trends but provides additional data that may be useful to your Search Engine Optimization efforts. When you enter a keyword into Google Insights For Search, you are given important data related to that keyword such as: search trends over time, regional interest in the keyword displayed on an interactive map and top related search keywords. If you are looking for ideas for creating a new blog posts, this can be a very useful tool.

Google Analytics
https://www.google.com/analytics/

Every webmaster needs to know how visitors find, navigate and interact with their website and this is where Google Analytics comes in. This tool provides extensive data on your visitors such as bounce rates, popular content, keywords used to find your website on Google search, referring websites, unique visitors and average time spent on your website. You can also set conversion goals for when visitors fill out a form, make a purchase or visit a specific page on your website, which allows you to identified from which traffic sources you are getting your most valuable traffic.

Google Website Optimizer
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/

The Google Website Optimizer allows you to test different version of your website to see which version is most effective at conversing visitors. It gives you hard data on which images, descriptions, headlines and layouts that are most effective in grabbing your visitors attention. If you want to keep your visitors engaged, this can be a useful tool along with Google Analytics to analyze and improve how your website is presented.

Kyle Pearce is an Internet Marketing Strategist at SmarttNet, a Vancouver Internet Marketing company. For more information on the latest Search Engine Optimization tricks and techniques, please visit our website at http://www.marketingsmartt.com