Google is trying to tell us something – SEO is still important. Other digital marketing tactics and avenues may have emerged over the years, but it remains a crucial part of the mix. As a B2B SEO agency, over 70 percent of the leads we generate come through our website.
Below are a few recent updates Google has made to make SEO more accessible. Get acquainted with the changes and these free Google SEO tools, and you’ll be on your way to the top of Google’s rankings.
Google Search Console
Search Console is free software designed to help users understand and improve their websites. You can find out what your visitors searched for to find your website (and use it to produce more related content) with this tool.
Thanks to a recent update, you can now check out 16 months of queries (an increase from 90 days). You can then use these keywords as a guide to produce amazing related content.
Google recently asked users how it could make Search Console better. And the best part is, it actually implemented popular requests. For example, the error and coverage reports used to be separated, which often led to multiple views of the same error – but, following user feedback, they are now united. You can read more about the changes straight from Google.
Google’s revamped SEO guide
The SEO world spends a lot of time learning what Google wants – the more you understand, the better chance you have of increasing your keyword rankings, traffic, and, ultimately, leads.
There is no need to worry about your lack of SEO knowledge because Google has created a new SEO starter guide that details everything you need to know to get your site ranking.
A good starting point on your journey is content. The guide devotes a whole section to content and includes tips on how to make content interesting and useful: basically, know what your readers want and write easy-to-read text.
Google’s Lighthouse chrome extension’s SEO function
Lighthouse, Google’s free Chrome extension, gives developers hints and tips on improving their sites and it now has an SEO component. Google will now analyse any web page and tell you how to make it more search engine friendly.
Get more details from Google in its blog post: SEO Audit in Lighthouse for Chrome.
Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison
Matt Cutts was head of Google’s webspam team and had a deep knowledge of the algorithm. As a result, he became the unofficial/official liaison between the search giant and the SEO world, until he resigned in December 2016 to join the U.S. Digital Service.
Following Cutts’ departure, SEO practitioners went looking for advice wherever they could find it: joining Google Hangouts with Google engineers, visiting conferences where Google employees were speaking and pushing for answers to queries on official Google threads. Google has been getting better at conveying its thoughts and desires on its Security Blog, Webmaster Central Blog and Analytics Blog. Then, out of nowhere, it announced in October that it had hired Danny Sullivan, former analyst and SEO journalist, as public liaison for search. Follow Danny on Twitter and listen to what he has to say – Google wants to help you make your site better because that means Google’s users get higher quality results every time they search for something.
There you have it – free Google SEO tools to help you improve your content and get it found by your target audience.
If you want SEO campaigns that get results, read more about our SEO services or contact a director to discuss your brief.