One of the most useful features of having a verified and up to date Google My Business listing is the business card style display of your contact information, map, business hours, website address and more that will appear on the right hand side of the search results screen in Google when a user searches for your business name.

A hub to manage your presence on Google

A few years ago, Google My Business replaced 'Google Places' and provides a tool to manage your business listing to make sure your information can be easily found across Google, including on Google Maps, Google Search, and Google+.

Claim your business page

Often Google will already have a default listing in place for your business, whether you have set it up or not. If one already exists you will need to claim it.

The easiest way is to Google the name of the business and see if there is a page already there, if not, go to www.google.com/business to set one up. Then, if you are a local type business, make sure you verify the address.

Also link to your website by adding the Google+ "follower button". Then start adding content like company profile and photos etc.

Help grab customer and prospects attention

Your lsiting will automatically include a thumbnail map of your location that a user can click for directions, you can include photos to represent your business or show your building or shop front to make it easier for people to find you. Include business hours and contact information to make contacting you easy for your clients and prospects.

Google My Business Reviews

Customers can leave a review of your business as a testimonial right there on the search results page. Helping prospects to make an on the spot decision about whether you are the right firm for them.

Google My Business App

You can also manage your Google My Business listing from iOS or Android to update your business details and post pictures.

Create a Google My Business Listing

To set up a Google My Business Page you will first need a Google Account that you want associated with your business. If you do not have a Google account then you can click the following link to create a Google Account. If you already have a Google account ready to go then go to google.com/business and select 'Start now' in the top right-hand corner.

Step 1 Enter your business name. It is important that this is spelled correctly and that it is the name you want associated with your business as this will be what Google uses to display your business name.

Step 2 Enter your business location details.

Q. Do I need Google My Business if I already have a website?
A. Google My Business complements your existing website by giving your business a public identity and presence on Google. The information you provide about your business can appear on Google Search, Maps and Google+.

Q. How do I sign up for Google My Business?
A. Click here, and follow the steps to add your business information to Google. Please note that any edits will not appear on Google until you verify your business.

Q. How much does Google My Business cost?
A. Anyone can use Google My Business for free.

Q. What's the difference between Google My Business, Google Places for Business, and Google+ Pages Dashboard?
A. If you previously used Google Places for Business or Google+ Pages Dashboard to manage your business information, your account has been automatically upgraded to Google My Business. Google My Business makes it easier than ever to update business information across Google Search, Maps and Google+.

Q. How do I manage multiple business locations?
A. If your business has ten or more locations, you can add them all at once using the bulk upload tool. Go to Google My Business Locations to upload and edit your locations. Learn More

Although Google Search Console contains a lot of useful information for webmasters, we believe the sections below will be most relevant to our customers.

Search Appearance Section

• HTML Improvements: Provides info on duplicate, long, short or missing title/description tags.*
• Data Highlighter: Does your site contain structured data like event listings or review ratings? Now there's a new alternative to webmaster markup for helping Google understand your site's data. With Data Highlighter, you simply "tag" each data field with your mouse. Then Google can present your data more attractively, and in new ways, in search results.

Search Traffic Section

• Search Analytics: Analyze your performance on Google Search. Filter on clicks, impressions, CTR and position and compare your results to better understand your users' search patterns.
• Links to your site: Shows who links the most to your site, your most linked content and how your data is linked.
• Internal Links: Displays the internal links on your website.
• Mobile Usability: Displays mobile usability errors for your website, i.e. touch elements too close, viewport not configured, small font size. Websites with mobile usability issues may not rank as well in mobile search results.*

Google Index Section

• Index Status: Displays the number of pages indexed by Google and also those blocked by robots.txt over a yearly period.*
• Remove URL's: Temporarily remove URLs that you own from search results. To remove content permanently, you must remove or update the source page.

Crawl Section

• Crawl Errors: Displays pages on your website with 404 errors (broken links).*
• Crawl Stats: Displays pages crawled/kilobytes downloaded per day by Googlebot for a 90 day period.
• Fetch as Google: The Fetch as Google tool enables you to test how Google crawls or renders a URL on your site. You can use Fetch as Google to see whether Googlebot can access a page on your site, how it renders the page, and whether any page resources (such as images or scripts) are blocked to Googlebot.
• Sitemaps: Add or test a sitemap for your website.

Source: Search Console Help Center (https://support.google.com/webmasters)
* These are the areas we feel you should pay most attention to under each section. 

Sign up for Google Search Console

When we build your website we add a Google Search Console meta-tag to our master account, however you can easily add your own meta-tag as a website can have multiple verified owners. All owners have the same rights as the original owner, including the ability to add and remove owners. If you already have a Google account you can simply visit https://www.google.com/webmasters and sign in. If you don't have a Google account, you can create one by clicking sign in and then creating a new Google account. We recommend using the same Google account login for all of your Google products - Gmail, Analytics, Search Console etc.

Adding your website to Google Search Console

Login to Google Search Console using the Google account you wish to associate with your website. Enter your full website address and then click 'ADD A PROPERTY'. It is important that you specify the URL exactly as it appears in the browser bar, including the final / mark (e.g. http://www.your-url.com/).

You will then be asked to select a verification method to prove that you own the site. Select the 'HTML tag' option from the 'Alternate methods' tab. You will then be presented with a html / meta tag as shown below. Simply copy the tag including the opening < and closing > and email it to us at nz-webmanager@wolterskluwer.com so that we can add it to your website's template. We will notify you once we have done this so that you can then log back in and verify the ownership of your website.

Once verification is complete you are good to go!

Google have a support page set up for Google Search Console  https://www.google.com/webmasters/support/ which has help and information for common issues and advice.

Q. How do I sign up for Google Search Console?
A. If you already have a Google account you can simply visit https://www.google.com/webmasters and sign in with your existing account. Or create a new google account by clicking sign in and then creating a new Google account.

Q. How much does Google Search Console cost?
A. Anyone can use Google Search Console for free.

Q. CCH have already validated their Google Search Console master account to my website, can I add another account?
A. Yes, a website can have multiple verified owners and owners can be removed using the Manage Verification page. All owners have the same rights as the original owner, including the ability to add and remove owners.

Q. Who Supports Google Search Console? / Who can I ask for help?
A. Google have a support page set up for Google Search Console  https://www.google.com/webmasters/support/ which has help and information for common issues and advice.

Q: Can I use my Gmail account username and password for Google Search Console?
A: Yes, we recommend using the same Google account login for all of your Google products - Gmail, Analytics, Search Console etc.

A. Google Analytics is more about the visitors to your site - the number of visitors you're getting, where they are geographically, what device they are using to browse your site, how long they're spending on your site and their page behaviour, etc. 

Google Search Console is generally about more technical details including the mobile usability of your site, information about duplicate or poor page titles/description, whether there is malware or other problems on your site, and which keyword queries your site is appearing for in search results. 

You can benefit from the information provided by Search Console and GA, by linking the accounts together to integrate the data from both sources – enabling you to access additional reports that are only available when the two are connected. 

NB: Your site will need to be verified in Search Console before you can link the two.

Here is just a small handful of what you can do with your Google Analytics account

• Use Dashboards to set up quick glance views showing traffic, goal completions, and other metrics that are most important all in one place.   
• Use Goals aligned with your business objectives to track conversion rates and gain insight into the effectiveness of your key content, inbound links, In-page click rates and more. 
• See which pages users have visited, the average time they have spent on your site and where they are located geographically.
• Get a visual representation of which parts of a page users are clicking with In-Page Analytics.
• Understand the user expereince across multiple device types and the volume of visitors to your site who are using mobile devices. Assess the average time and bounce rate of those users to detirmine if improvements are needed.
• Understand which pages your visitors stay on longest/shortest to help identify any content that might need improvement or calls to action added.

If you're not familiar with Google Analytics, we recommend watching this Getting Started video from Google themselves for some tips on what you can be using your Google Analytics account to track.

Q: Can I use my Gmail account username and password for Google Analytics?
A: Yes, we recommend using the same Google account login for all of your Google products - Gmail, Analytics, Search Console etc.

Q: Who should I contact for help with my Google Analytics reports and other functions?
A: Click here to access the Google Analytics Help Center

Q. How much does Google Analytics cost?
A. Anyone can use Google Analytics for free.

Q. How is it different from Google Search Console?
A. Google Search Console is generally about more technical details like, the mobile usability of your site, information about duplicate or poor page titles/description, whether there is malware or other problems on your site, and which keyword queries your site is appearing for in search results.

Google Analytics is more about the visitors your site, the number of visitors you're getting, how they're getting to your site, where they are geographically, how long they're spending on your site, their page behaviour, etc.

You can benefit from the information provided by Search Console and GA, by linking the accounts together to integrate the data from both sources – enabling you to access additional reports that are only available when the two are connected.

NB: Your site will need to be verified in Search Console before you can link the two.

Q. What is 'Universal Analytics'?
A. Universal Analytics is now the standard version of web analytics provided by Google. Universal Analytics introduces a set of features that change the way data is collected and organized in your Analytics account, so you can get a better understanding of how users interact with your online content. Click here to view the benefits of Universal Analytics.

Any business, regardless of size, wants to be found at the top of a Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). With Google AdWords you can target users via the Search Engine Results Page on Google. Advertisers can display their AdWords ads to users who enter those keywords into Google as their search query, even where their organic Search Engine Rankings don't qualify them to be on the front page for that particular search term. This form of advertising is also recognised as 'pay per click' and 'paid search'.

Pros:

1) Measurable: Google AdWords allows you to track your ad campaign including the number of clicks, number of impressions, click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversion rate, number of conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA) etc.

2) Cost effective: Google AdWords can be a cost effective way to boost traffic to your website. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad (i.e. your cost per click).

3) Advertise locally or globally: Targeting customers in specific countries, regions or cities helps to widen your business reach.

4) Around the clock insights: See how your ads perform at any time by logging into your Google AdWords account. You can adjust your ads, try new search terms, pause your campaign and re-start whenever you feel like it. 

Cons:

Google AdWords is a tool you can use to have your business ad appear at the top of the page on a Google search engine results page (SERP). And while this sounds like a great option for getting your site to show up 'at the top' of Google, often you can achieve the same or better results by focusing on your organic search results. Here are some reasons to consider not using it:

1) Cost: Before you go spending money on your paid advertising through Google Adwords, we recommend you first work on your page titles, search descriptions and content within your site. If you can improve your search rankings organically to appear on the first page, you may not need to pay for listings.

2) Competition: While the most relevant ads are presented to the user first, if there are 10 other advertisers who have all 'bid' $3 per click for their ad, and you only bid $1 per click, your ad may not display.

3) Time: To get the best out of a Google AdWords listing, you need to be reviewing and monitoring your account regularly. And before you can do that you need to understand the complexities of a well optimised AdWords account. We recommend you first spend this time improving your website content, page titles and search descriptions.

4) Ambiguous: Some users may know that a Google AdWords ad isn't a result of organic Search Engine Optimisation and while they understand the ad may still represent information relevant to their search, they would rather explore the results which haven't been paid for.

If you haven't done so already, create a Google AdWords account then watch the following videos so you can start reaching new customers with online ads tailored to your business goals and budget.

FAQ's

Q. How do I advertise with Google AdWords?
A. Businesses can advertise on Google by opening a Google AdWords account using the following link : http://www.google.co.in/ads/new/step-by-step-adwords.html

Q. Where will my AdWords ads appear?
A. Google AdWords appear on Google's Search Engine Results Page when people search for terms covered by a set of keywords selected during the ad set up.

Q. How does AdWords work?
A. Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you are bidding for, relevance of that keyword, authoritative and fresh content, AdWords gives real conversions for your company.  Here is Google's page for "Check and understand Quality Score"

Q. How does Google determine which Ad is shown where?
A. Once you have entered into the auction, Google looks at two key factors to determine where your ad ranks; your maximum bid and your quality score. The best combined CPC Bid and quality score gets the best position.

Q. How does Google determine what you pay?
A. You pay the minimum amount you can pay for the position you win if your ad is clicked on.
Ad Rank = Max Bid x Quality Score

Q. How do I make money through AdWords?
A. Google AdWords can be an effective method of driving traffic to your site, marketing your firm and attracting prospects. You can reach people you think might be potential customers based on their interest, demographics or whether they have visited your website in the past.

Source: Google AdWords Help Center (https://support.google.com/google-ads/#topic=7456157).

As your existing website provider, we want to help you ensure your online presence is in peak condition. So we have generated a health check report to help every customer identify areas of their website which may need attention in order for it to perform at its best for Search Engine Optimisation, user experience, accessibility and performance.

Watch the Website Health Check report overview video

The areas we check include:

To request the link to your firms Website Health Check - simply get in touch.

When it comes to improving Search Engine Optimisation we believe the basics are best taken care of by those who know your business best - YOU!

Improving your Search Engine Optimisation can feel like a daunting task, with so much information, where do you start? Before going down the road of paying for an SEO consultant, check out our new and improved 'SEO Tips' page for easy to follow advice and instructions to get your Web Manager website in great shape.

The areas we cover include

For each of these sections we explain why and how these areas affect your SEO and also cover how to get the best out of each area while also including some helpful tips and videos.

Check out some of our Wolters Kluwer Central blog posts below:

View all blog posts