Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world daily with information. Google features a number of powerful tools that are rich in search engine optimization (SEO), which makes businesses easier to find. Its targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience. Google is building a unified platform of applications and services that communicate with one another to allow brands to better connect with their customers. Small businesses looking to boost their search rankings are realizing that Google is a powerful visibility platform that can help generate more foot traffic to their stores. With Google+ the company identifies and authenticates users across all its services, including search, Gmail and YouTube to help improve those products and serve better advertisements. There are numerous ways you can take advantage of Google to gain more exposure for both your content and your business.
Remarkable Google Statistics
- Mobile devices will account for 50 percent of all paid search clicks on Google, in the United States by December 2015.
- Google ads generate more than 40 million calls each month. Google is king when it comes to online ad spending. One-third of ad dollars spent online go to the search giant.
- 70% of mobile searchers call a business directly from Google Search Results.
- 90% of Google’s revenue is from digital advertising. Around 20 percent of those earnings are from the Google Display Network.
- 50% of business websites (both small and large) use Google Analytics.
How can Google Transform your Business?
Individuals have web access everywhere, with over 10 billion mobile subscribers and 300 million internet-enabled televisions. There is a growing need for non-traditional content, with half our screen time spent on social networks, citizen journalism and blogs.
- Engage Customers with your Website
- Establish Your Online Presence
- Use Free Marketing to Interact with Your Community
- Promote and Educate Using Free Online Marketing
- Grow with Paid Online Advertising
- Measure Success with Web Analytics
Google Initiatives that Benefit Your Company
Google Search
Search is still the main application as it’s more location-based (knows where you are), it’s personalized (offers for you), visual (Google Goggles) and real-time (price, availability, news) than ever. There are 11.944 billion monthly searches on Google, that is 65.2% share of the search market and with 1.17 billion unique searchers it tells you how dominant Google is among all search engines.
Android
With the Android operating system, Google allows a business to have a uniform look and feel across many devices from multiple manufacturers and synchronize contacts, calendar and other data among employees. The system is arguably more open for developers to create new custom applications for any business. Android’s 76 million users in the US make up around 50 percent of the market (compared to Apple’s 40 percent).
Google Adwords and Google Places
For a business of any size, AdWords can be a strong method of driving traffic, marketing your product and ultimately receiving increased sales. What business doesn’t want to be featured on the first page of Google? With Google AdWords being seen by customers at the exact time they are looking for your information, products, services, deals or location gives your business the edge. The more targeted your keywords (and keyword phrases) are, the better Google will rank your ad. AdWords also allows proximity targeting, enables you to easily target countries, areas within a country, and radius targeting (to show your ads to people within a certain distance to your business). The Google Display Network (GDN) reaches the majority of U.S.-based Internet users — a whopping 80 percent — giving AdWords advertisers the widest reach possible. Launching an effective AdWords campaign requires a finely tuned strategy to reach the right customers and get a better return on investment (ROI). By using Google Places in conjunction with AdWords, you can show a map of your actual shop with your ads. If you are a small business targeting local customers rather than a global audience, using Google Places is one of the best things you can do for the growth of your business.
Ad Extensions
Ad extensions let businesses enhance ads with phone numbers, an address, app downloads, site landing page links, reviews, previous page visits and tons more. By including additional contact information in your ads, you make it easier for your potential customer to connect with you.
Google My Business
Google’s various tools — Search, Maps, Google +, Insights, Hangouts is located within one easy to use hub to let businesses manage their online presence in one central location. Businesses can customize their dashboards with photos and videos. They can also communicate with their customers in a more targeted way by responding to reviews and connecting through Google Hangouts and Google+. Google My Business helps individuals find you across platforms from Google+ to Search and Maps. With this tool, you can manage your fan base, as well as ratings and reviews that show up in search to further push foot traffic to your store.
Inbox
Inbox is simply a new way for users to view and engage with their Gmail account by bundling similar content together. Inbox lets users manage other day-to-day activities within their inbox. Inbox gives the most relevant information whenever possible. As Google shares Inbox to more users, it will be as important as ever to adhere to email marketing best practices, to send email campaigns with strong, trackable calls to action.
Google Maps
Many business owners heavily rely on Google Maps and Navigation. With vast improvements on the way, such as, a new version that will run on the iPad, greater improvements for reporting traffic incidents and making re-routing suggestions. In the desktop version, there will be better imagery and 3-D views, with images from Google Earth and Street View all in one place.
Google+
With 190 million users, small business owners can’t ignore the Google+ community. The company continues to integrate Google+ with their applications and services, including search, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone will be working within this community daily. Hangouts are changing the way brands connect with audiences to share advice, interview influencers and more. When you bring conversations to a central place and encourage collaboration, you provide value for your audience. You can use Google +Post Ads to amplify your content and promote your business to a wide online audience.
Web Analytics
Web Analytics allows businesses to measure and track how their customers interact with their website, where customers come from, how long they stayed on your site, and where did they click. It is imperative, you analyze and implement your web analytics account to determine how you can improve your site layout and attract new customers.
Changes in 2015
Mobile Money
Retailers are bound to go mobile, as mobile services will provide price and availability on inventory, based on what store you’re in. Wireless payment possibilities will change shopping forever – for the buyer and the seller. Individuals will be able to search for products and check for local offers on their phone, then visit the store and use their near field communication (NFC)-enabled device to pay.
Real Time
The demand for real-time information and relevance will continue to grow, along with improved advertising efficiency. Display will boom, enabling ad buyers to tailor bids and ads, impression by impression, across a wide range of ad space. Half the ads targeted to particular audiences will use real-time bidding.
Thanks to Google, businesses don’t have to deal with the pain of running different software across multiple databases on various machines. With an increasing number of innovations for businesses, from conversational search to the quickly growing Google Now and other new tools that should make Google Chrome the operating system of choice, you simply can no longer avoid it. It is no wonder that ‘To google’ is a verb recognized by Merriam-Webster.
