Tag Archives: keyword research

5 Free Google Tools to Upgrade Your SEO Strategy

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There’s plenty of place for paid tools in SEO. But if you’re just getting started or lack the budget necessary for fancy tools, there are still many resources available.

In this section, we’re going to incorporate five favorite FREE Google tools, and how they can help you raise your SEO game.

1.Google Trends

Google Trends is used to track the “trends” around search queries. This makes it a great tool for keyword research.

Finding new keywords

When you go to Google Trends, you’ll see a search bar where you can input a broad topic or specific search query. Upon entering your query, you’ll be presented with a trend chart of interest in the query over time.

While this may be useful, the real gems are at the bottom of the page: Related Topics and Related Queries.

By default, these boxes will both be set to “rising.” This means that these topics and queries are currently gaining traction. These are the keywords that you may want to capitalize on quickly, as you could be a first-mover and gain rankings quickly.

Advanced keyword research

Even at a base level, Google Trends is helpful, but you can always take it a step further. Across the top of Google Trends, there is a menu that allows you to specify a region, period, category, and search platforms.

The region allows you to determine where you want to pull search data from geographically. This can be especially useful when working on local SEO projects.

The category allows you to select the category you’re competing in. This is a nice feature for people who offer a service in a specific industry, or who have an extremely common query.

Search platform allows you to refine the data to specific platforms such as YouTube Search, Image Search, Google Shopping Search, and News Search. Search platform modifiers are great for those with an integrated SEO plan.

2.Rising Retail Categories

Though it’s almost impossible to predict what the Next Big Thing is going to be in e-commerce, you can still stay on top of the game with Rising Retail Categories.

This is Google’s compilation of data on retail. On it, you’ll find currently trending product categories and the searches around them, as well as where exactly they’re trending.

As an e-commerce SEO, this can give you a good idea of which products to focus on for the most potential impact.

As an enterprise local SEO, you can use this data to determine which products to focus on in each market.

3. Visual Stories

Google summarizes Visual Stories as “Bite-size visual stories for busy marketers, driven by trending topics and data from Google.”

These stories range from holiday shopping trends to specific industry case studies, and more. They’re interactive slides, each with a few insights or data points.

For example, there’s a Visual Story about the automotive industry. Throughout the story, there are data points shared to give insight into how the pandemic has affected the car-buying process.

These data points don’t just focus on search data, though. This has been a full-on case study by Google. Some insights are shared to address the desires, experiences, and perceptions of the audience.

This information can easily be used to change the user journey, including the things that matter to the customer earlier on. It could also be used to address pain points that hadn’t been previously uncovered, or, on a more basic level, give an SEO an idea of what keywords to focus on.

4.Grow My Store

Grow My Store is a fantastic tool for those selling a product either online or in person. Grow My Store tests sites for Google Identifiers for Successful Online Stores.

These identifiers are broken down into five categories: Product Information, Store Details, Personalization, Customer Service, and Security.

This tool hands over Google’s idea of the must-haves for a product-selling business website. Some of the components included are product reviews, profiles for shoppers, live chat, and HTTPS.

To use Grow My Store, you simply answer three questions: what is your domain, what type of business do you have, and what industry are you in? Once you answer the questions, you will see a preview of your report with your overall score and some data around your industry. To get your full report complete with recommendations, you have to create an account. The report is then sent to your email.

You then get an account where you can create (and track) a checklist of changes that need to be made — according to Google.

In addition, you’ll get customized data and insights based on your industry. To find this data on Grow My Store, in the menu, select “Reach More Customers.” If you scroll down a bit, you’ll find a section with the heading “Understanding industry trends.” Here you’ll be able to choose your industry and specific category to get specific information such as top searches in that industry, top months for the industry, and so on.

5.Test My Site

Another great tool for measuring your site in the eyes of Google is Test My Site. Much like Grow My Store, Test My Site tests for three very specific categories of features on your site. These features are Speed, Personalization, and Experience. Unlike Grow My Store, Test My Site is for any website, not just product-based business sites.

The first report you will get from Test My Site is a mini-report that breaks down your mobile site speed and any recommendations for fixes. There is also a tool to show the potential ROI of speeding up your site.

If you want even more information, which you will, you can sign up to get the full report. The full report is emailed to you and breaks down recommendations and explanations for both marketers and developers.

Bottom line

While Google can often be cryptic about what they care about on websites, they’ve created quite a few resources that can give you insight into what they find important. Using these tools can easily get you a step ahead.

It’s not just about the tools, though. In 2021, data is more important than ever, and who better to get data from than The Giant themselves?

Now, go forth and be excellent — using free stuff!

What is SEMrush and Why Should I Use It?

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What is SEMrush?

SEMrush is an SEO tool used by professional SEO managers. It contains a database of around 35 million keywords, which are continually researched and used to better discoverability for various websites. This data is gathered directly from Google’s Adwords and Search results, which allows you to get full visibility of your online traffic. Without tools like SEMrush, it can be quite hard for managers to properly maintain their SEO as they will lack the essential information.

What are the benefits of using SEMrush?

Better marketing strategy

Designing a marketing strategy for promoting your company can be quite tricky. And, as it is with most things, the best way to start is by researching your competition. By finding out which moving industry software other companies are using, you will be able to improve on their ideas and make your marketing strategy work. Well, luckily, that is what SEMrush is all about.

Keyword research

One of the most apparent benefits of using SEMrush is the possibility to efficiently research keywords. SEMrush will allow you to quickly identify keyword phrases that will bring you traffic to your website. Also, it will help you find related keywords that are associated with particular root words. This will allow you to reach your client base more efficiently, as these keyword associations are mostly based on client behavior. And, to keep proper track of your keywords, you will have access to the number of monthly searches connected to them.

20 Billion Keyword Opportunities, All at Your Fingertips!

Keeping track of rankings

Knowing whether or not your marketing strategy is working is best done by checking your Google rankings. The higher your rank is on Google, the greater your website value is, and the easier it is for people to find you. Well, SEMrush allows you to monitor your rankings continuously. Remember, SEMrush connects to both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. That allows you to compare your current ranking to previous ones and helps you organize your marketing strategy in the long run.

Advertising gains of using SEMrush

Now, there are two ways in which you can approach companies for affiliate marketing. You can either be first. Or, you can provide the best possible content. And, although providing great content is necessary, being first is usually much more straightforward. Luckily, this is one of the benefits of using SEMrush. By using it, you will be able to:

  1. Find out which domains the companies are using.
  2. Which keywords they use for their ads
  3. How much traffic they generate with their ads.
  4. And the cost that is behind the ads.

Backlink Analysis

Another critical aspect of growing an online presence is the inbound links. By using SEMrush, you will be able to keep track of other companies’ backlinks. Furthermore, you will quickly see the quality of the links and how well they connect to moving or storage. That will help you in designing an effective backlink strategy, which is essential for generating moving leads a maintaining an online presence.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to approach online marketing, especially if you create good content. But, it can be quite hard to find out which websites are worthwhile since there are so many. Well, that is where SEMrush can again be of great help. With SEMrush, you can do the necessary research to figure out if the site you are considering is worth blogging for.