If in theory natural referencing applies to all search engines, most SEO strategies are mainly aimed at Google. The web giant represents nearly 90% of the market share compared to other search engines. This is why most tools to improve SEO are configured to boost the positioning of sites on Google’s SERPs.
To facilitate SEO, Google provides website owners with a large number of free SEO tools.
Zoom on the tools offered by Google to boost your natural referencing.
Google Search Console
It is Google’s essential SEO tool to have detailed visibility on the positioning of a showcase site or an online store. The Google Search Console is a free service automatically offered by Google when creating a website.
The Google Search Console provides the following information: indexing status, amount of traffic, internal linking, netlinking, referencing errors, number of clicks from the results pages, number of impressions, the evolution of keywords, the volume of searches, etc.
Concretely, Google Search Console gives you the possibility to check that the search engine is accessing the content of your pages and which sites are linking to yours. You will also be able to analyze the queries that attract the most users to your site and the queries that make your pages appear on the SERPs. The Google Search Console is also a way to check the good mobile optimization of your site. Thanks to this free tool, you can finally choose the pages you want to crawl as well as those you don’t want to crawl.
Google Analytics
This online Google tool is also offered free of charge by Google and this is complementary to the Search Console. It is an analytics tool that focuses on the audience and is currently used by nearly 10 million sites worldwide. Google Analytics gives a very precise vision of the behavior of Internet users visiting a site, so it allows you to adjust the SEO strategy according to your customers and your visitors.
To provide relevant data, Google Analytics must be properly configured. To do this, for example, you will need to set goals, either based on the models provided by Google, or by creating a personalized or smart goal. You can configure your objectives by type: destination, duration, screens per session, or even event. In this way you will be able to know the results of a viral campaign, the bounce rate, the visit time of each Internet user, the origin of the visitors, or the requests typed to reach your site.
Google Page Speed Insight
Google PageSpeed Insight provides website owners as well as developers with a way to know the visit to the pages of your online store or showcase site. To analyze the speed of your pages, simply copy the URL into the tool: you thus obtain an overall score which, when it is good, is displayed in green. Google PageSpeed Insight applies to websites in mobile versions and computer versions. In addition to giving a precise idea of the speed of your site, the Google tool also offers suggestions for improvements or corrections such as the reduction of Java Script content.
Schema.org
Schema.org is the new SEO tool offered by Google to test the structured data of your site. Structured data is pieces of code formatted to be understood by the search engine. When they appear in the SERPs, structured data offers much richer content by making it possible to display, for example, an FAQ or the first details of a cooking recipe. This is the reason why we also speak of “enriched extracts”.
To use shéma.org, all you have to do is copy a URL address or a piece of code. The tool then displays the code as well as a diagnosis containing the errors and warnings.
Google Suggest
Google Suggest is a standard tool offered by Google for free which allows you to find keywords. When you type a word in the Google search bar, the engine automatically anticipates the most frequently searched queries by Internet users. When you type “swing”, you get, for example, “slide swing”, “baby swing” and “bird’s nest swing”. Google Suggest is a very powerful tool since it is based on the behavior of Internet users. It will allow you to refine your content strategy by helping you define relevant keywords, but also blog themes sought by Internet users.
Google Trend
Google Trend is a very useful tool for managing your SEO content strategy. It allows you to measure trends related to your field of activity. The tool offers the possibility of observing the number of searches carried out by Internet users on a given subject and period. The most used keyword associations will therefore allow you to optimize all of your content and anticipate future trends.
Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is a tool that will allow you to find suggestions for keywords to use in your content. To do this, simply submit to the tool a keyword relating to your field of activity or a URL address of your site. Keyword Planner must automatically be associated with a Google Ads account since the suggested keywords will be used in particular in the context of advertising campaigns.
Link Disavow Tool
To understand the link disavow tool, we must first define what a toxic link is. Backlinks are used in SEO to help a site build trust and authority with Google. The more links a site has to it, the more likely it is to improve its SEO. When Google analyzes these links, however, it takes into account their quality and their confidence index. This is why backlinks from spam are called toxic links, they can lead to penalties from Google.
However, the web giant has made available a tool that allows you to manually delete all links considered toxic. The purpose of the tool is simply to warn Google to ignore toxic links when analyzing your site. To do this, simply upload a list of the links that point to your site. Analyze this list, and disavow the links that do not seem relevant to you. Google will then take a few weeks to process this new data.
