Top Ten Google SEO Tips / Google Advanced Search Tips for SEO
Google is the world's No. 1 search engine, but doesn't always explain its powerful advanced search features. Here are the top ten SEO tricks for Google; ways you can use the Google search engine to learn how it indexes your website, find keywords, alert yourself to cool stuff on the Web and more!
By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: August 20, 2011 Share this Top 10 with friends! Copy, paste, email this link:
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Does Google matter to your business and your marketing? Do you understand how to leverage the free resources Google provides to help small businesses get to the top of Google's FREE listings? One of the best techniques is to know a few esoteric commands to put into the Google search engine. Here is our top 10 list of the best advanced search features on Google!
1.
site: command
The site: command allows you to easily see the approximate number of pages in the Google index enjoyed by your website. Why does this matter? If your site is not in the Google index, you have zero chance of getting to the top of a Google search. Here's the syntax -
Remember: do NOT put a space after the colon or it won't work!
2.
site: to monitor what's the buzz on other websites
Curious what's buzzing about your company, your industry, or your competitor on Facebook? Need to know the latest on Twitter? Want to monitor those reviews on Yelp? You can leverage Google via the site: command to monitor your company name and keywords. Here's how -
Even better, than knowing what's buzzing since the dawn of time, is being able to monitor the buzz on a monthly, weekly, daily basis. Google let's you do that. Use more search tools (on the left), and select dates. Here's how -
Keywords drive SEO. You have to know how your customers search. Is it lawyer? Or Attorney? Is it a search for bariatric surgery, or for weight loss? How do you get those creative juices flowing and understand all the possible searches? Do your search, and on the far left column, open up more search tools, then, 'Related searches' -
Steal that keyword! Reverse engineer competitors! Those are two powerful mantras of search engine optimization - learning what your (better) competitors are already doing, and finding ways to steal their ideas. Get competitors to work for you - how cool is that? Here's how to find similar sites -
Google loves links, as we teach in our classes on SEO. The more sites that link to your site the better. How do you monitor who links to you? Even better, how do you identify who links to a competitor so you can go out and solicit those links yourself? The answer - the link: - command. Here's how to use it -
Note: there are other, far more POWERFUL tools to discover links that this trick by Google. But the Google trick is an easy one, so use it!
7.
free alerts from google - google alerts
Monitoring the buzz in your industry is critical to identifying SEO opportunities. Think: blog posts, Twitter tweets, participating and being ahead of the curve. Google alerts is a free service that will email you on your company name, your industry keywords, and even your competitors name. For FREE! Here's how -
Blogs are critical to successful SEO, as is getting your news out there. You can use Google to monitor both blogs and news, by using the search tabs. Input your search term and then on the top black bar use the pulldown ('more') to get to blog and/or news search!
Returning to keywords, we want to know what our customers search for. Google suggest is another great keyword discovery tool available right from the Google search, if you know how to use it. Here's how to use Google suggest -
Google - just enter a search term such as 'organic baby food' and watch Google suggest at work!
Have some fun, too - type in 'why are men so...' and 'why are women so...'
10.
bing breakthru - social search
Bing, the Microsoft search engine, is an also-ran in the search business. But Bing does one great thing much, much better than Google: social search. So use Bing social to monitor Twitter, Facebook, and Shared URL's. Here's how -
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