I'll admit right off the bat that I am not a Google expert. But I can help guide you to some tools you might want to tap into on the Google platform.

Being the #1 Search Engine in the world, Google is mighty powerful. It has the power to drive some serious traffic to your business, but because it is so big, it requires you to be laser-focused in how promote yourself on there. Otherwise, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We already know that a Google Business Account is a free listing. Sweet! Let's talk a bit about Google Ads.

Google Ads

Google Ads are easy to create. You select some target words, a target location for those searching and then create your ad. It's important to consider all that SEO we talked about earlier when creating your ad to anticipate what people might be searching for.

For an example, let's use Paul Zizka's eBook called Paul Zizka's Guide to Photography in the Canadian Rockies. We want to advertise this to prospective photographers who might be planning a trip to Banff National Park and are looking for resources.

As we explored in our Facebook Ads module, you'll need to decide which budget is worth it to you. This is one case where you need to spend money to make money. Let's say we spend $100/month advertising the eBook (worth $20). That means if we sell more than 5 eBooks we're making money. I can track my stats and see if it is working. If it's not, I might want to change my targeting or fine-tune my message.

Sample ad creation:

Google Trends

Here's a fun tool you'll want to check out. Google Trends provides you with search data on keywords of your choice, giving you insights into people's behaviour, where searchers are located, the interest in those keywords over time, and more. It'll also give you results on related queries, which might give you some clues into which terms people are punching into Google and how you might be able to lure them to your own website using SEO and other Google features. You can also compare terms, so if you're running ads and wondering which words get searched more often, this will provide you with intel.

It's important to note, however, that the more popular a term, the more competitive those words become, so you'll need to put more money behind them if you want to get found as a result.

Google Alerts

Use Google Alerts to alert you of new Google search results! A handy one is to input your name. Photographers especially might benefit from knowing if a photo credit has been used somewhere that they don't know about. Any creative will benefit from knowing if something is being published about them. You'll get an email whenever you're being alerted. You set how frequently you get emailed, what kind of results you want included, and more.

At the most basic level, input your name and variations on your name so that you'll get results.

The applications for this are endless. For one of my companies, I have "banff conference" as an alert to let me know when a conference is being planned in my region, so that I might send them a Corporate Sales Package promoting our products and prints as speaker gifts, attendee gifts, etc.