And how they can work together
I’ve written over a hundred articles on Medium so far this year.
Before they go up on Medium, though, my articles go up on one of my websites first.
All that to say: I still have websites, and I want to see them grow and prosper.
Most of my traffic comes from Google.
About 80% of the traffic to my main blog MightyBargainHunter.com comes from organic search (non-paid search engine results pages) and most of those are from Google. (I see that number from within Google Analytics, which I discuss below.)
This makes sense. I don’t have a physical presence or a physical product that I can use to send people directly to my site.
But I do have articles, and Google sends me visitors who it thinks will get their questions (searches) answered by those articles.
Google offers services to webmasters to help them improve their sites.
Google benefits from having more people on the web, doing more things more often. It can sell more ads that way.
To this end, it makes available some very powerful tools for webmasters to gain insights on the traffic to their sites. In return, Google gets access to the information about the visitors, their tech, what they do afterwards, etc., that it uses for its business.
Below I’ll describe the four services I’m using. I have these four tools on a tabset, I use them that much!
Google AdSense
Google AdSense was the first Google service I signed up for, some 20 years ago or so, and the only one of the four that directly contributes to my revenue. I wanted to make money with my website, and AdSense was a straightforward way to do that.
Google serves ads that are likely to be of interest to people consuming the content on the page. For some ads, if visitors click on the ads I get paid (“pay per click”). For others, I get paid so much per view.
Setting up AdSense works like this. After getting a free AdSense account, and getting approval to show ads on a website, it’s now a matter of doing one of two things:
- Turning Auto Ads on. This involves setting some parameters, inserting some code at the top of every page, and letting Google place ads on the site.
- Alternatively, creating individual ad units and placing them in certain elements of the site. This is a bit more work but it does offer more control than Auto Ads.
Initially (20 years ago) I placed ads individually on the pages of my site. A few years ago, I opted for Auto Ads on my site, but recently I switched back because the ads were too much. Overall, this was a good move. The two ads I have still do fairly well, and it appears that the traffic is picking up and of better quality.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics was the next Google service I signed up for.
I put code on each page of my website in the header, and it sends information about the visit back to Google, which compiles it, aggregates it, and allows me to analyze on different levels in reports.
It was a big step above the visit counter that was all the rage in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Some time afterwards I was able to link my AdSense account to my Analytics account to see which pages were generating the most revenue.
Analytics is useful for overall trends as well as at the page level. If I had a jump in traffic for some reason, I could see which page got the traffic, as well as where it came from.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
At one point I had a $100 Google AdWords (now called Google Ads) credit to try out some paid traffic.
I don’t used paid traffic at the moment, but even though my Google Ads account itself is disabled, I still have access to the Keyword Planner.
This tool is intended for people looking to bid on particular keywords to drive clicks to their site.
However, it can also be used as a content research tool to get keyword ideas for content. It gives keyword suggestions, as well as estimated search volume and bid range for the keywords. In this way, I can look for keywords that I’d have a shot “ranking” for (getting high up in the search results).
Google Search Console
I added Google Search Console sometime afterwards.
This tool, as the name suggests, focuses on search. I can see how many impressions my website got in Google Search. Also available is information about how many clicks the impressions received, as well as what keywords were searched.
Additionally, I can see graphs of how many pages are indexed on my sites, as well as any issues that prevented pages from being indexed.
For my newer site focusing on online presence, JohnWedding.com, Google Search Console has given me a good first look at what search terms are getting traction, since there aren’t a whole lot of clicks yet.
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I’m John and I encourage entrepreneurship in people, including myself.
Join 300+ savvy people with my Solid Cash Tips newsletter for regular insights on side hustling and saving money, with a generous portion of productivity, habit-building, and working smarter!
Header photo by Joanes Andueza on Unsplash