Setting Yourself Up for Success: Google Tools Basics

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Setting Yourself Up for Blogging Success: Google Tools Basics

Google has many tools that can help you on your blogging journey. In this post, I cover the basics to help you get started with your digital marketing.

This post is for anyone who has recently started a blog and wants to dedicate their time to improving their website with Google’s digital tools. If you’re interested in starting a blog or a website, then make sure you check out how to choose the best blogging platform.

Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It give you the digital analytics tools you need to analyze data from all touch points in one place for a deeper understanding of the customer experience.

Harnessing Analytics allows you to understand your website traffic and evaluate the performance of your content. It helps you evaluate the full customer journey as they navigate your website. By adding UTM campaign parameters to URLs to your social media and email hyperlinks, you can track custom campaigns with Analytics across the channels. The type of information collected allows you to monitor the overall efficacy of each campaign and also understand which campaigns are more effective.

You can learn how to setup conversion tracking in Google Analytics here.

Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (GTM) helps make tag management simple by offering an easy-to-use interface when a tag is needs to be added on your website. GTM’s JavaScript code, or tag, will first need to be installed on your website, so you will either need access to your website’s source files or help from your webmaster.

Once it is installed, you can log into tagmanager.google.com and easily add any tags that need to be installed on your website such as the Google Analytics javascript code, Meta Pixel, any re-marketing scripts and any other scripts. GTM limits the amount of tags that are installed directly on your website by allowing them to be “housed” within the one tag. This means that slow tags won’t create lag on your website, so elements can load faster – which is better for the end user.

Anytime a new tag needs to be added to the website, it can be done simply and quickly through GTM. You can add and update your own tags for conversion tracking, site analytics, re-marketing and more without having to wait for your webmaster or IT department to install anything directly on the website (except for the GTM code, itself). It’s a one-and-done process. GTM gives you control over how the tags are fired and when.

Google Ads

Google Ads, formerly AdWords, is a pay-per-click online advertising platform. You have the ability to make search, display, video or app ads and target an audience in any location – local or global. You only pay for your ads when someone clicks on them.

Ads allows you to see the impressions, the clicks or the calls to your organization. You can see how your ads are performing and make tweaks to your campaigns to test what is or isn’t working. You have the ability to stay in control of your budget and cancel/pause an ad at any time.

Adsense

Google Adsense allows you to monetize your website – which is perfect if you’re looking to turn your blog into an income source. You allow Google to place ad placements onto your website, which they will use as ad space. AdSense is free and easy to set up, but the real work lies in figuring out how to get the traffic that makes it lucrative. So the true question is: can you still get high traffic on a blog or website in 2021? The answer is yes – but very few people succeed at it.

Search Console

Google Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results. You can learn how to connect Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account.

Site Kit

Google Site Kit is a plugin for WordPress. It allows you to see the information from Analytics, Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Tag Manager, Optimize, and Adsense all into one dashboard view. You can learn how to install Site Kit here.

Next Steps

Do you use any of these tools – which are your favorites? Are you interested in learning more about any of these tools? Is there anything missing from this list of Google products? Let me know in the comments below!

Cheers,
Katie

Photo from Pixabay

13 Responses

  1. These are all good and important tools for a blogger. I’ve never heard about Google Site Kit and I am so curious to try it!

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