Beyond Search: Google Solution for Nigerian Businesses-Part 2

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a global advertising program that enables advertisers to reach the people who are interested in their products or services. Advertisers use automated tools, often with little or no assistance from google, to create ads, place bids to serve their ads, select the types of sites where they’d like their ads to appear, and set daily spending budgets. AdWords features an automated, low-cost online signup process that enables advertisers to implement campaigns that can go live in 15 minutes or less.

AdWords ranks ads for display in one of two ways: either by CPM (cost per thousand) or a by combination of the maximum cost per click (CPC), which is set by the advertiser, together with clickthrough rates and other factors used to determine the relevance of the ads. This process favors the ads that are most relevant to users, improving the experience for both the person looking for information and the advertiser looking for interested customers. AdWords has many features that make it easy to set up and manage ad campaigns for maximum efficiency and effectiveness

Google Analytics

Free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners, Google Analytics helps you identify the keywords, ads, referrals, and campaigns that contribute the most to your bottom line. Recently redesigned, the program can reveal even more about where visitors come from and how they interact with your site. Using Google Analytics can lead to better ads, strengthened marketing initiatives, and websites that convert more effectively

Blogger

This leading web-based free publishing tool gives people the ability to publish to the web instantly via weblogs, or “blogs” — web pages comprised of short, informal, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically. Blogs can facilitate communications among small groups or to a worldwide audience in a way that is simpler and easier to follow than traditional email or discussion forums. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog, whether you limit it to a few friends or let the entire world see what you have to say.

Code

Google’s website for the developer community offers news, downloads, tutorials, demos and documentation on Google’s APIs and developer products, plus extensive resources for anyone who wants to integrate Google services or build next-generation web applications. Google Code also serves as home base for Google’s open source initiatives, including free open source Project Hosting service and Google Summer of Code, program for involving university students in open source software development.

Gmail

This free webmail service keeps your inbox organized, displays messages in order as conversations, and helps you find any message quickly and easily with built-in Google search technology. Gmail’s powerful spam filtering and virus protection also keeps your inbox clean. Gmail is fast and accessible on mobile phones and devices, on desktop clients via free POP access, and via automatic forwarding. It includes integrated Gmail Chat so you can see when your friends are online, start a real-time chat in reply to an email, and view and search your chats in-line with your email conversations. Anyone can sign up for a free account, which includes more than 2,800 megabytes (increasing every day) of free storage. Gmail is currently available in more than 40 languages.

Google Groups

An easy way to create and join public or private discussion groups. Users can choose whether they want to read and post messages online, or use their email accounts to read and respond. A simple page creator makes it easy to create web pages right inside groups, which is ideal for shared documents or anything you want to publish online. Each Google Group has its own Google-fast search, making it easy to locate discussions in the archive. Google Groups is also home to the entire Usenet archive (dating back to 1981), so users can search, read and browse 845 million posted messages on virtually any topic. You can bookmark topics you’re interested in, and have new replies to that topic delivered to your inbox.

Orkut

This online community makes it fun and easy to find people who share your interests, reconnect with old friends, look for romantic connections, or establish new business contacts. Share scrapbook messages, photos, videos, blogs, and create and join a wide variety of online groups to discuss topics of interest, such as current events, the environment, or favorite recipes. Connecting and communicating on orkut is a great way to socialize.

Picasa

Picasa is free downloadable software from Google that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Each time you open Picasa; it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visually organized albums. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups of photos. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized, and advanced editing is simple with easy to use one-click fixes and powerful effects. It’s easy to share your pictures, allowing you to print, email, or upload photos to Picasa Web Albums with just a click.

Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums is a fast and easy way to put your photos online so you can share them. Use it with Google’s Picasa software to upload entire albums of your photos in a click of the software’s “Web Album” button, or use your web browser to add photos. There is no more need to attach photos one at a time to email, as you can send a link to a photo, an album or even your entire online gallery, without leaving the Picasa Web Albums site. Each account gets 1GB of free storage – enough to post and share around 4,000 standard resolution photos. You and your friends can download your photos at the same high quality to print and share online.

Reader

Google web-based feed reader makes it easy to find and subscribe to online feeds. With Google Reader, users can organize and stay current with the ever-increasing amount of web information they consume every day. Google Reader features a clean, easy-to-use interface and includes a comprehensive feed finder, multimedia feed displays, and algorithms that can assist users by automatically prioritizing content according to their interests. Google Reader also has easy sharing capabilities with email and “blog this” features, and through the Google Gears browser plug-in, Google Reader also enables you to read your feeds offline.

 Google Talk

Google’s instant communications service offers different ways to integrate real-time communications into your online experience. The downloadable Google Talk client provides a free and easy way to make voice calls and send instant messages. All you need is an Internet connection, a microphone and a speaker (built in to many laptops today). After a quick download, sign in with your Gmail account and talk for free. You can also chat with your Google Talk friends inside Gmail using Gmail Chat, and Gmail archives all of your Google Talk chats and makes them searchable. And the free Google Talk Gadget lets you see who’s online and send instant messages from your own webpage or personalized iGoogle page without installing any software. Using the Google Talk Gadget you can also preview YouTube videos and Picasa Web Albums inside your chat window, or initiate a Group Chat for talking with several friends simultaneous.

Google Translate

Google Translate enables users to automatically translate text and web pages from one language to another and search for content across languages using machine translation software. Currently, 12 language pairs are supported: English to/from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese; German to and from French; and Chinese (Simplifeid) to/from Chinese (Traditional).

Google Earth for Enterprise/Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Enterprise and Google Earth Pro enable businesses and organizations to harness the power of the Google Earth platform to integrate, organize and publish their organization’s location data, and/or support strategic decision-making based on locational datasets. Google Earth provides a powerful, intuitive platform for supporting government agencies and empowering citizens in sharing and accessing geographic information for critical needs such as disaster relief and emergency assistance.

Google Maps for Enterprise

Google Maps for Enterprise and Google Maps Pro offer the power and functionality of Google’s web-based mapping technologies to internal websites and critical applications. Organizations of all types can integrate data and seamlessly create a high performance web-based mapping experience. Ideal for applications such as workforce management, operations/logistics and CRM, these applications provide enterprise-grade support and service. Users benefit from ease of use that people love about the consumer Google Maps offering.

Google Mini

The Google Mini offers the simplicity and power of Google enterprise search technology to small and medium-sized businesses, so that employees can access relevant and secure search across intranets, file servers, and business applications. Capable of working with over 220 different file formats, the Google Mini also offers integration with existing security systems ensuring that employees can only access information they are supposed to view. The Mini comes in multiple versions. The most affordable Mini searches up to 50,000 documents, including all hardware, software and a year of support. Additional versions search up to 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 documents. Since upgrading is easy, the Mini is great for growing organizations.

Search Appliance

This integrated hardware and software product is designed to give businesses the productivity-enhancing power of Google search. Through a simple, intuitive interface, the Google Search Appliance offers employees instant, real-time, secure access to all the information and knowledge across their enterprise, including web servers, file servers, content management systems, relational databases and business applications in more than 220 different file formats, and more than 109 languages. The security features ensure that users can only access the information that they have permission to view. The Search Appliance comes in several versions, with search capacity ranging from 500,000 documents to more than 30 million.

SketchUp Pro

SketchUp Pro is a powerful 3D modeling tool with a robust feature set that empowers users to create, view and modify 3D ideas. With SketchUp Pro, you can explore and communicate complex concepts, import and export a host of file formats, and place your models in Google Earth. LayOut, a feature of SketchUp Pro, lets you place, arrange, title and annotate SketchUp models, photos and other design elements to create compelling interactive presentations and print high-resolution documents. Combining the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today’s digital media, Google SketchUp provides a powerful yet easy-to-learn tool for creating and modifying 3D models. By inserting their models into Google Earth, design professionals and hobbyists alike can share their creations with the world. Architects, interior designers, landscape architects, art directors, game developers, city planners, and other creative professionals rely on SketchUp to help make their design ideas come to life.

Google Mobile

Google mobile products are built specifically for mobile devices, placing the information you need in the palm of your hand. Find what you need at any time, and from anywhere, using these Google mobile products:

• Search: Get exactly the information you need, with an absolute minimum of effort and distraction.
• Maps: Get draggable maps, directions, local listings, satellite imagery, and live traffic info, all on your mobile device. Available on hundreds of devices, in a wide variety of countries.
• Gmail: The fastest way to access Gmail when you’re on the go. Or just access Gmail through your mobile phone’s browser.
• SMS: Use text messaging to get quick info from Google, including local listings, sports scores, weather conditions, real-time flight info, and much more.
• YouTube: Watch, upload, and share favorite videos — YouTube is available on your mobile device wherever you are.
• Calendar: Check your Google Calendar from anywhere on your mobile device.
• News: Stay informed of global and local events at all times by accessing top headlines and searching for articles.
• Blogger: Snap a picture, write a message, and post to your blog, all from your mobile device.
• Picasa Web Albums: View your photo albums on your mobile device.
• Checkout: Shop quickly and securely on mobile-friendly merchant sites.

 How Google Search Engine Works

Google search engine is the right place to advertise and promote your business because over 80 percent of Internet users use Google to find information using keywords or key phrases (i.e. what they are searching for). Positioning your business strategically online like I have always said, is won and lost on Google.

 As you have used Google to search for information, have you ever thought of how it (Google) works to get relevant search results for you? Understanding how the search engine works will make you position and structure your business online and improve your brand strength.

 One will ordinarily think that when a search query is made, that the search engine will interrogate the web to find pages, which match the query. This is not how it works; instead the Google search engine looks at its own version or copy of the web to get your required search result.

 Every search engine creates its own version of the Internet called an index. The index of a search engine determines the size of the search engine. Google has the highest index hence it is the largest search engine today. The entire web is bigger than any search engine index.

 The search engines build their index using special software known as a crawler or spider. The spider crawls across the web, adding web site pages it visits to the list of pages in its index. It is capable of reading texts on a web page and finding links to other pages too. This is how the crawler travels across the entire web constantly finding new or modified pages of the sites visited to add or update in its index.

 What it then means is ones a web user enters a search query into the search engine; the search engine searches its index to find pages matching the search query. The pages are sort into specific ranking order of closeness using algorithm.

 Having seen in a nutshell how the Google search engine works, it is important to note that Google may not have a copy of your website or every page of your website, if it does have it, that copy may not be up to date. It can also have in its index a copy of a page that no longer exists, hence the need to regularly position your business.

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies that will Boost your Business

Positioning of your business is a continuous process, it starts ones you have a website. You will also not forget that several businesses are also competing seriously with you to dominate the market, so you need every strategy available to beat them.

 As an expert in strategically positioning businesses on the web, let me show you simple ways that will increase your business visibility and brand presence.

 The first thing you need to do is to inform Google search engines on the web about your website, this can be done manually or automatically by adding your website to the search engine.

 The next important thing to do is to regularly get links pointing to your websites. Let your site be linked to popular sites like forums, article databases, online directories, social networking sites, and e-groups.

 In conclusion, the content of your website should have targeted keywords that are highly optimized by the search engines. Highly optimized keywords are those keywords that the search engines can quickly add to their index. You will have to consider the words or phrases people are likely to type into the search engines in other to see your business. This can be done by doing keyword research. Ensure you add fresh contents containing those keywords to your site regularly.