5 Ways Google Will Help
You With Your Traffic
by: Tinu AbayomiPaul
If you’ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search
results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.
But if you knew what I do, you’d realize that there are tools provided
by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may
even help drive visitors to your site.
Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.
#1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present
your site’s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and
spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.
Take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that your pages will be
listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a
lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you
some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords
for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents
at your site.
If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format
difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It’s my
favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.
#2 - Google Will Talk To You and Your Webmaster In His or Her Native
Tongue or Plain English with the Webmaster Section
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop
when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site
and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such
as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this
page first has saved many from needless anxiety.
Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with
links to details for geeks like me.
#3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information
If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a
page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description,
and the following phrase “Google can show you the following information
for this URL”.
This special page compiles several queries about your site including
pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked
to you).
#4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been
made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based
invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond
standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery
results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views
per visit.
With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the
holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer
periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a
specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the
executive and the search marketer alike.
There’s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular
demand.
#5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with
Conversion University
http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity.html
Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to
all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly
slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can
be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search
discovery. One reference area is called “Driving Traffic”, the other
“Converting Visitors.”
At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in
Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm,
which means Google - the search engine - really isn’t capable of being
your best friend or your worst enemy.
Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources
that will help give your site a fighting chance.
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul |
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