Online marketing is something that anyone can begin to do to build brand’s online presence. However, you do need some tools that can help you along the way. These tools help you create, monitor, and analyze your content.
With the help of these tools, you will be able to understand what draws in your audience and have the knowledge on how to make better content to achieve your goals. Marketing tools are pretty easy to understand and use, especially in the long term.
One of the platforms that offer many search engine marketing tools is Google. Google is mainly a search engine, but it offers much more to businesses. You can also treat Google as a marketing platform to market your business via SEO and PPC, among other digital marketing strategies.
Since Google attracts billions of searches each day, you can use the Google marketing tools they offer to boost your pages into organic search results and attract more website traffic to your sites.
The 18 Google Tools For Growing Your Brand: A Marketer Must-Have Google Tools
If you think Google is just a search engine and nothing more, you’re wrong! The many Google tools available to you as a business owner or marketer can be divided into several different categories.
We’ve placed these tools into their relevant categories so that you’ll be able to search for what you need more easily.
Let’s now take a look and figure out which Google marketing platform suits you the best – so you don’t fall into a pitfall and incur a counterproductive Google Penalty that could bring your business more harm than good!
Google Tools For Business Growth
These tools allow you to have control over the technical aspects of your marketing campaign, which includes the use of ads and online presence.
1. Google Trends
Google Trends is a search tool that allows you to find out what is trending in Malaysia at any given time. In addition to that, you will also be able to use the great tool to look for the trending patterns of any word or phrase.
Pair this with Google Surveys, you can pretty much gather and understand consumer behaviors then formulate a workable marketing strategy revolving around your findings.
Another reason to use Google Trends is that you’ll be able to see all the top trending searches in a country, as well as view search trend reports for the previous years.
| Pros | Cons |
| See top trending search terms | Unable to look for trending search terms in a given category or niche as top search terms are listed by nation. |
| Search popularity trends of any word or phrase | |
| View search trends by year |
2. Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Both Google Analytics and Google Search Console are Google online marketing tools designed to monitor the performance of your website. However, both of them focus on different aspects of your site’s performance.
Google Analytics tracks website analytics activity, such as how long visitors stay on your site, source of website traffic, session duration, bounce rate, and the like. On the other hand, Google Search Console monitors and allows you to manage the presence of your site on both paid and organic search results.
They are both equally important if you’re a business that invests in paid search campaigns and SEO.
| Pros | Cons |
| Understand whether audiences relate to your content | Lots of self-education is needed in order to interpret the analytical data. |
| Find out which content works best | |
| Track whether your SEO is working |
3. Google Adsense
Google Adsense is a tool that allows you to monetize your Google adwords by placing Google ads on it. If you sign up for a Google Adsense account, you’ll be asked to provide your website address. Then, you’ll be given a code to insert into your website. Here’s where the ads will appear.
For every 25 page views that you get, Google Adsense will pay you USD0.15. Therefore, you can generate income from your page this way.
The ads that Google Adsense places there will be tailored to your site’s language and genre, so as to appeal to the visitors that come by.
Related: What Are Google Display Ads
| Pros | Cons |
| Generate an income from your website | Lengthy setup process |
| An alternative way to make use of your websites | Not suitable for websites with very little traffic |
| Suitable for any type of website and topics |
4. Google Adwords Keyword Planner
In online marketing, the concept of SEO or Search Engine Optimization is very important. It involved putting in certain words or phrases related to your brand or business. These words or phrases will make your content rank higher on the search engine.
One exceptional keyword research tool is Google Adwords, which is Google’s advertising platform. The keyword planner will be able to give you a list of related search queries and keyword ideas that you should place inside your ads to make them more search engine friendly and thereby making your website rank higher.
You may be interested in: Guide to “People Also Search For” (PASF) Keywords
| Pros | Cons |
| Boost your website SEO | Filters for new keyword ideas have been reduced over the years |
| List of keywords with values | |
| Enter up to 3 search terms when looking for keywords | |
| Up to 300 keyword suggestions provided |
5. Google Search Central (Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Central used to be known as Google Webmaster Tools and is now available in three sections. These three sections are geared towards marketers, developers, and SEO specialists.
Marketers and SEO specialists have many tools to assist them here, but this great tool is especially useful for website programmers or developers. This is because there are tools here in Google Webmaster Tools formulated specifically for URL and website management.
These tools include URL inspection, Sitemap management reports, Core web vitals reports, block crawling reports, and more. All these highly technical reports are extremely useful to webmasters who have knowledge in programming the site for better search performance.
| Pros | Cons |
| Help section for webmasters to interpret data | Lack of suggestions on how to make page improvements |
| Highly visualized data that allows quick understanding | |
| Able to handle several websites at once |
6. Google My Business
Google My Business is a small but extremely effective Google marketing tool. Now when anyone searches for a term related to your business, your shop will appear at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) list or even Google Maps. There will often be a map pinpointing your location as well.
This free tool is especially useful for businesses that are reaching out to the local community. It’s therefore useful for businesses that are limited by geographical locations.
Further reading: Google My Business Malaysia (GMB) for Local SEO
| Pros | Cons |
| Improve local SEO marketing | Not too suitable for purely online businesses |
| Attract increased foot traffic to physical stores | |
| List important business contact information |
7. Google Data Studio
This platform is one of Google’s coolest offerings to marketers. It’s a place where you can copy data from other Google marketing tools and compile the marketing analytics that is relevant to your business.
Putting these graphs together will allow you to present them to the rest of your team, or keep it as a record for your own marketing campaign.
| Pros | Cons |
| Import various analytical data onto a single platform | You’ll have to take some time to understand how to use it. |
| Generate reports in a fast and efficient manner | |
| Reports are stored in Google Drive Cloud storage |
8. Google Search Ads 360
Google Search Ads 360 used to be known as DoubleClick Search by Google. The features are mainly the same, which is that this tool allows you to manage ads across several search engines.
Different search engines behave differently and have different algorithms by which they display their ads. This great tool helps you create ad campaigns and tweak them to fit the character of each search engine. You’ll be able to strategize almost every aspect of the campaign, such as keywords, bidding strategy, campaign targeting, ad copy, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
| Create and launch campaigns across different search engines | Limited options to export information |
| Experiment with ad copy | |
| Target your ad campaigns to different groups. |
Google Resources for Marketing
These resources come from Google and will help you create website content, and learn how to strategize marketing campaigns, and much more. The great thing is, most of these are free tools and resources for your business!
9. Google Blogs
Google blogs is a section of Google that’s extremely useful for marketers because it contains all sorts of educational information. A quick glance through the blog and website content will reveal that the blog articles are pretty sensitive to current trends and issues.
It’s a great place to learn about the latest tech developments in the world of online marketing. Examples of topics include A.I., understanding algorithms, safety and security, design, and others.
| Pros | Cons |
| Simplified technical information and tutorials | Lack of highly technical tutorials |
| Get the latest marketing trends and news | |
| Suitable for any specialization |
10. Google News
Google News is the perfect space on Google to get the latest news from Malaysia and from the rest of the world.
You can access it easily by searching for Google News on the main search bar on Google, or clicking on the Google News icon under Google apps on the top right corner of the Google page.
News articles are recommended to you by Google’s algorithm based on your activities and previous Google searches, as well as being grouped according to various categories like business, sports, politics, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
| Catch the latest local and international news | Suitable only for certain content genres that depend on current topics |
| News updated in real-time | |
| A great source for content ideas | |
| View news by relevant keywords |
11.Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a free service repository of academic journal articles that have been published. It’s a very handy Google tool for academic researchers who need to write papers.
Some of the journal articles on Google Scholar are available free and downloadable, whereas others need to be bought. They also have a very easy citation option whereby you can copy and paste the article’s citation in MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, and more formats.
| Pros | Cons |
| Millions of published journal papers | Has to be simplified for laymen website content as articles are academic |
| All areas of research covered | |
| Easy citation system |
12. Google Gadgets
Google Gadgets is a collection of simple apps that can be embedded into your web pages when they’re being programmed. This is a simple code that can be placed into the HTML code of a page by developers.
One example of a Google Gadget is embedding a current news app on the website, and the code can be found here.
| Pros | Cons |
| Protocol guides for HTML, Java, and Python | Only suitable for web developers and programmers |
| Able to design your own Google gadget | |
| Customize gadgets to the website |
13. Google Calendar
If you’ve ever kept an organizer for work, then Google Calendar is exactly like that. It’s one of the few free Google tools that allows you to schedule various activities and events on a calendar with integration with other free Google online marketing tools like Google Docs, Google Charts, Google Forms, and others.
Along with that, you’ll also be able to view local public holidays and create alarm reminders for any activities. Google calendar allows you to sync events with other Google users too, and you can send invites to activities you schedule to other users.
| Pros | Cons |
| Sync activities with other users easily through other free Google tools like Google Maps, and Google Drive | Only open to Google users with accounts |
| Create reminders for certain events | |
| Plan content for marketing and share with your team via Google Drive with free storage |
14. Google Alerts
The Google Alerts app creates alerts when there are updates about a certain topic, and then sends them to your email. It does this by analyzing your chosen keyword in news reports from various news portals.
Google Alerts will then compile these latest news reports and send them to your e-mail. You can choose certain parameters, like the frequency of updates and which email address you want them to send the updates to.
| Pros | Cons |
| Receive the latest news based on chosen topics | Alerts only sent to email |
| Alerts can be sent every day or less frequently | |
| Choose news items based on region |
Google Developer Tools
These are tools that make a web developer’s job easier. They involve both backend and front-end tools that will enhance the overall visitor experience.
15. Google PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a Google tool that is coupled with Google Pagespeed, which is itself a series of tools for developers to design their websites using just basic sample codes for accelerated mobile pages.
PageSpeed Insights is a unique and great tool that analyzes websites and makes recommendations to make the page faster. As we know, page load time is the main determinant of whether visitors stay on a page or leave.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use, just enter website name | Only able to analyze one website at a time |
| Analysis available in minutes | |
| Actionable recommendations |
16. AMP Test
AMP( Accelerated Mobile Page) is a framework that makes your website suitable for mobile devices. With Google’s AMP test, you’ll be able to see whether the page you’ve created is suitable for a mobile site.
In short, AMP is automatically able to convert your webpage into an AMP-ready website. With the Google AMP test, you can check your AMP status and see whether the conversion was smooth and whether there are errors you need to correct.
| Pros | Cons |
| Know your web page’s AMP status | Optimization of AMP sites only for Google’s search engine |
| Optimize your AMP website for Google search | |
| Correct any errors |
17. Google Optimize
With the Google Optimize tool, you’ll be able to combine the data from Google Analytics platform and understand how your website can be improved. Apart from that, the Google Optimize tool also allows you to test your website with various tests like A/B testing, multivariate and redirect tests.
| Pros | Cons |
| Thorough and complete recommendations | Doesn’t allow image uploads for A/B tests |
| Based on analytical data from Google Analytics | |
| Easy to use |
18. Google Tag Manager
Tags are often added to the backend of websites in order to have analytical information about visitor behavior, which links are popular, conversion rates, and more. With Google Tag Manager, you’ll be able to quickly manage and understand tags for all the websites you manage.
Related: Tips to Converting Website Visitors
| Pros | Cons |
| Integration of Google and third-party tags | Some developers have to tweak coding in order for it to work. |
| Check tags for errors | |
| Ability to share data across user accounts | using Google Drive with free storage |
Google Tools Can Enhance Your Online Marketing
The Google tools we’ve listed above can come in useful if and when you want to enhance your website’s performance and its attractiveness to customers in general.
However, we also realize that many of these tools (or any Google product in general), can be technically advanced, and may have some limitations in terms of use.
To make your life easier, talk to us at One Search Pro.
We’ll be able to provide all the services from Search Engine Optimization (SEO), website design, search engine marketing, above and more, so you can sit back and see your Social Media Management and online presence grow without needing to learn each and every Google software out there.
