Do you find yourself in the position of trying to play catch up by learning, understanding and perhaps integrating Google, Facebook and other online services into your business and feel a little bit overwhelmed? If so I would like you to relax and watch this video on How To Create Your Google Accountshttp://www.seotrainingsw.com/how- to- create- gogole- accounts/ as we walk you through the basics of setting up some of the accounts you will need to be successful online. And also I complement you on taking the initiative of having the basic understanding of online marketing. And I stress, even at some point if you decide that you don t have the time to follow through with all this and decide to contract out with a SEO marketing company, it is critical that you have a basic understanding on how all this stuff works. Because if you make the wrong decision in hiring the wrong company you will waste valuable time and money and perhaps even get your site banned in Google, if they violate Google s terms of services. 1
The bottom line in having an online presence is to make your business more profitable. And Google has made more millionaires than any other company in history. And the most amazing part is that 85% of most everything Google creates, for you to be successful online, is free! 2
And if that doesn t blow you away think about this, today Google is the largest advertising company in the world. They make most of their money selling sponsored advertising and they have never raised their advertising costs. They let their customers decide how much they will bid on the terms that they want to buy. Now don t stress out, this session has nothing to do with paid advertising, it focuses on the free stuff that you can use to get your business the exposure that you will want. First let me emphasis a few key points about creating your own Google accounts and having complete control over them. Most SEO firms will not create accounts specific to your campaign or if they do, they seldom if ever provide you with access to these accounts. This practice can be fatal to your online marketing. First they are in effect holding you and you site hostage, so if you ever do decide to sever your relationship, they can delete all the links and accounts that you paid for at a press of a button. Secondly, all this content and backlinks you are paying for are actually benefiting their accounts and not yours. Here is an example: 3
One of our students, a dentist, had been paying a SEO firm $1,800 a month to promote his practice over the last 12 months. One of the items they were billing him $200 a month for was this one YouTube video that has had only 26 views. This firm never created the doctor his own Google or YouTube account, choosing instead to upload and promote the doctors video within the agencies YouTube channel alongside other videos from other clients such as landscapers, heating and cooling companies and God knows what else. So in effect what happens is that the SEO value of the doctors video is diluted by being mixed into a bag of other businesses not even related to his own. Whatever promotion the firm had been doing only benefits the firms YouTube channel and not the doctors. And what is even worse? After spending over $18,000 this last year, to have all this content created and promoted, the doctor is at risk of losing it all once he cancels his contract. Therefore if you do use the services of an outside agency insist that they only promote your site using the Google and other social media accounts you have created and/or have complete access to. 4
And if you do sever your relationship with them change the passwords to these accounts prior to doing so. So now, lets get down to the basics. To access many of Google s tools you will need to have an account. Even if you already have an account please stick with me because Google has recently added a whole bunch of new features, some of which you may not be aware of. 5
Creating a Google Account is as easy as supplying your name, password and email address. Your account can be created through many of Google s free applications such as Gmail, Google Places, or Google Docs. Now one of the basic mistakes many businesses make is creating a Google Account with their business name, forgetting to create one for their personal name so in this exercise I will ask that you create a Google account using your real name or nickname if you don t already have one. After you create your Google Account and you are logged in, the first Google property I would recommend that you update is your Google Profile. Here at the top of Google, you will see a drop down arrow with your photo, if you have already uploaded it. Click on the down arrow and then the Google Profile link. Here there is a blue box labeled edit profile, click on it. Here on the top left you have your profile photo. Click on this link to upload or change your personal photo. 6
Next spend a few moments and write a bio about yourself. Within your bio you can link to some of your websites using anchor tags which are keywords describing your site. Here I have a link for radar detectors going to my website radardetector.org and another link SEO and Internet Marketing Consulting and Training going to SEO Training SW.com. You can also set your privacy settings here allowing your bio to be available to everyone, your circles or extended circles, just you or custom settings. Under your introduction there are other areas such as Bragging rights, Occupation, Employment and so on. On the right you will be able to link to other profiles such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and any other websites that you would like to link to. When you are done editing your profile press the done editing button. Next lets click on the home button of Google Plus here. We will spend a lot more time reviewing Google Plus with you in a follow- up video but in a nut shell Google + is Google s new social media platform that ties in to all your other Google services including YouTube, G- Mail, Google Places and more. 7
Next your thumbnail photo there is another small drop down arrow that lots of folks never pay attention to but it is very important. Here you can add other Google Plus pages for your business as we have done here for my RadarDetector.org website. Now one question I receive from a lot of our students is how to set their privacy settings for their profile and Google Plus. Click on your photo on the top right corner of the page and click on privacy settings. Here you can edit the visibility of your profile allowing it to be visible in search. Edit your Google Plus network visibility and more. After you do these simple things, here are a few other tools that I would recommend that you check out now and as we progress in our training series we will go into more detail with each. 8
Google Alerts: Any time an interest of yours appears in the news or discussed on a blog you can create an alert by e- mail. This is a great tool to use to keep up with what your competitors are doing by adding their business name, and their officer s names into your alerts. You can customize your alerts to be received hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly. 9
Google Analytics: The most widely used website statistics service in the world and used by over 57% of the top most popular websites today. You can track your visitors behavior such as where they came from, how they got there, what pages they are viewing and how long they remain on your website. Google Webmaster Tools: Provides indexing status and other tools that allow the submission of your websites sitemap, the ability to check and set the crawl rate or indexing rate of your website by Google, the ability to create and check your robots.txt file and the ability to see what keyword searches your website is being indexed for. 10
YouTube: Another division of Google. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and a great place to promote your business with videos. Google Docs: A great document management system and our team would be lost without it. We use Google Docs to keep our management team and our contractors updated on the various projects we are working on. 11
Feedburner: Google s RSS (real simple syndication) service. RSS Feeds are a way for websites to distribute their content into other platforms such as a subscription service, inclusion into widgets or gadgets and into mobile phone applications. Google Insights for Search: provides insight into the various search terms people have been typing into Google search along with rising searches and trends that will assist you during your keyword research. 12
Google Keyword Tool: The foundation of Internet Marketing and SEO is keyword research and Google has a full suite of various keyword tools, which we cover all in our training videos. However the most popular keyword tool today is Google s free Keyword Tool. Google Places: More people search for information about businesses online then anyplace else, therefore it is important to make sure that your business ranks high 13
in Google s search and a great place to start is by claiming your existing business listing now and optimizing it or create one now if it is not listed. I hope that you re finding our free SEO Training videos educational and enjoyable and I would like as a small favor from you. On the left of this page we have our social media sharing buttons. If you like our videos and content would you press one of these buttons? 14
Also if you have a comment, question or suggestions please use the comment area below. In your next SEO Roadmap video we will discuss some of the Basics of HTML for SEOhttp://www.seotrainingsw.com/html- essentials- for- seo/. SEO Training SW Your SEO Roadmap to Success 15
Thank you for watching our free SEO Training videos and downloading this PDF on How to Create Your Google Accounts. If you found our videos helpful or should you have any comments, suggestions or questions we would ask that you let us know by sharing your thoughts on this page: http://www.seotrainingsw.com/how- to- create- gogole- accounts/ We also provide more advanced training through our more advanced online video based training, in person workshops, teleseminars, and even 1 on 1 consulting. For more information about our training and/or consulting services please visit our website at http://www.seotrainingsw.com or email u Roy@SEOtrainingSW.com 16