Let’s face it, when you need to search for something on the Internet, you automatically go to Google even though there are other search engines like Yahoo, Bing and AOL. Google search is such a basic part of our lives now that it’s hard to imagine being without its usefulness. However, what you probably didn’t know was that Google still has a lot of powerful tools under its belt especially if you’re intent on building your social network and helping your online presence flourish.
If you want to direct traffic to your site, the best way is through targeted keywords. Google Adwords is the perfect tool to combine sponsored advertising with targeted keywords that enable you to promote your business in the top results of search engines. In addition, Google Adwords also offers contextual targeting that allows your ads to appear in related websites, blogs and news pages. This is a better strategy for consumers because it’s target specific. For instance, if you maintain a blog for a travel website and you create an ad for hotel accommodations, you can expect that this type of ad will find its way in other travel-related websites too.
If you’ve heard of cloud computing, Google is one organization that is at the forefront of this technology. Its Google Docs is the perfect example of an application using cloud computing because it allows anyone and everyone to create documents, from documents to spreadsheets to presentations, and simply share them with anyone who needs to view, use and edit them. Google Docs is a handy tool to coordinate documents among people in a team or group who aren’t in the same location but need access to the same set of information.
If you want to pay attention and track the movement of certain keywords that are relevant to your business, it’ll be a gargantuan task to monitor all websites, blogs and forums on the net. What you can do is subscribe to Google Alerts that will “alert” you through your email whenever keywords that you have specified for monitoring and tracking are used on the Internet. Personally, I find Google Alerts a very handy tool and I’ve used it myself on several occasions, mostly to monitor new articles and blog pages that are relevant to my own personal blog.
In support of your continuous writing of articles for your blog, you need the service of Google News. The more current news draws readers to blogs like ants to candy. Say, you mostly write about upcoming movies. If there’s anything new on production news or any of the actors in the movie, and you read about it through your Google News alerts, you are in the best position to create buzz around the movie thereby drawing traffic to your site too. When you do this on a regular basis, you will eventually create a reputation for yourself thereby making you an expert on the subject of your choosing.
There are actually more Google Tools and you merely have to search for them. I expect that there will be more in the future as Google continually develops such tools for our benefit.
