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We all know that Google is the place to go to when you need to find something. Now think about that from another perspective: Anything that needs to be found, should be on Google. Google makes it very easy for you to submit your product/service in multiple ways.  Google also offers an array of services (many of which are free) that will help improve how you display your services, and to make your website a better experience.

Immediately following the conclusion of your website build-out, the following are just a few of Google’s many free services that you should absolutely take advantage of.

Google Webmaster Tools: After building your website one of the most important things to do, is to submit your sitemap so that Google can have its’ “web-robots” go and “crawl” your site for all new pages and content. Giving Google a sitemap allows you to get indexed in the Google search results as fast as possible. Google Webmaster Tools also offers many other services, such as: Site Errors – see how many errors are throughout your site; Search Queries – see what people are searching for to get to you; Links to Your Site – See what sites are out there linking to yours; and many more.

Google Analytics: While Google Webmaster Tools offers limited traffic data, Google Analytics is the place to go if you want real traffic results. Google Analytics is a tool that lets you monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic. Signing up for Google Analytics takes 1 minute and requires you to put a little snippet of code on your website to get started. Once this is complete, you will have access to how many page views you’re getting, unique visitors you’re getting, what pages are being visited the most, where your visitors are coming from, why your visitors left, and so forth.

Google Apps: Google Apps seems to go under the radar quite a bit. With Google Apps, you can use your new domain name that you got for your website (YourName.com) and use Gmail’s services with it. This means you’ll be able to login to an interface that looks like Gmail, but you will be accessing your company/organization’s email, with @yourname.com at the end. Nothing looks less professional than a companyname@gmail.com email address. Many people didn’t want to get away from Gmail because of how clean and user-friendly the web-email service is. Now you can have the best of both worlds by using Google Apps for your email with your domain name. Google Apps also offers other services such as shared calendar and docs to use with other Gmail members.

Google Places: While this service is slightly new, the impact it has is monumental. Google Places is a new way to submit your business to Google. Because of Google’s verification process that involves sending a postcard to your address, and verifying the legitimacy of your company, Google uses it’s Places service to rank business higher than have listings. Within a Google Place listing, you can display a variety of information including but not limited to: your website, email address, store hours, description, 10 photos, phone number, and payment methods. The most important feature of Google Places is its’ new rating system. This allows other Google users to “rate” and “review” your product/service. The higher/more the rankings, the better rankings you will get in the long time from Google.

There are many other Google services such as AdWords, AdSense, and Froogle to name a few. Most of Google’s services are very user-friendly to sign up for, but to really maximize the results you get from them, I would highly recommend consulting with a professional on what to zone into and how to maximize your efforts.

Basch Solutions, LLC – A Rochester NY Web Design company and Web Development Company has been installing Google services and helping people to get the most out of their time and efforts since 1999. If you need any help with configuring and using Google's services with your new website, give us a shout!