idealmike
Level X3
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Are You Taking Full Advantage of Everything that Google Offers You As a Business, Webmaster or Freelancer?
Google is much more than just the worlds biggest search engine. And although it's the search engine part of Google that you can get most of your business from. As well as the part where your clients can find you from in its SERPs. Google offers a lot of tools and sites and apps and things you can use for free either as a webmaster, a freelancer or a business with a website to get ahead some how.
Whether it's for doing some research. Or for building your brand and establishing it online to increasing your site or brands social presence and popularity. Google offers many tools, apps and sites you can use and take advantage of as a webmaster, blogger, freelancer or business some how.
You may know about all of these, but there may also be one or two you don't know of or aren't using in some way that you could be.
How Many Google Services Are You Already Using?
A lot of people don't actually realize just how many Google apps and services they're already using. If you want to know as well as see just how much you've used them, just visit your Google Dashboard where you see all the Google apps and services you are already using and can manage them, edit and delete them if you want to such as Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, Blogger, Books, Calendars, Cloud Prints, Contacts, Drive, FeedBurner, Gmail, Groups, Google+, Maps, News, Payments, Photos, Talk, Sites, Voice, YouTube etc etc. You're probably using several or all of these already and not even realizing that you've signed up to and are using.
Some of those no doubt you are also currently using and taking advantage of in some way either as a business, webmaster, affiliate marketer or freelancer. So let's look at some of the best Google services and apps to use to make sure you're taking advantage of if you're looking to build brand awareness, social and search engine presence, high quality backlinks, ranking and authority to your site.
Your Google Account
It all starts with your Google account. Without one of these you can't use any of these Google apps and services and can't enjoy any of the benefits that come with them. Even as a personal user, you'll need a Google account to interact in any way with a Google product. Otherwise without an account, everything is basically read only. 
Your user profile is your Google+ identity that can be used as your identity on many other social media sites that you can connect to with it and post to and from and show any blogs or sites you have the authority to publish content to used for Google Authorship. In 2013 Vanity URL's were made available but in 2014 they removed authors photos from the SERP's and stopped showing authorship in the SERP's too if you remember that?
That said your Google Account is your passport to using all of these apps and services and serves as your identity and personal profile on Google.
Google+ Plus Profiles
Google Plus launched to us in 2010 and is Google's version of a Social Networking site and your Google account is used as the profile where people can follow (circle) you. It's early days were a little dogged but Google+ has grown into a massive social networking site that is a force to be reckoned with. Using Google+ you can have people follow you either as a person or a business. You can create your own Google+ profile as well as a Google+ Page (equivalent to a Facebook page) and a Google+ Community (equivalent to a Facebook group) also which people can join, follow and actively engage and interact with it. When you post a link to your profile or page or community, people can +1 it which is basically the equivalent to a Facebook like. They can also share/reshare it and comment on it too the same way.
Now considering this is a Google site, any links you can from Google+, be it a link on your Google+ profile you've posted, a link someone else posted to their own Google+ profile or onto a Google+ Page or Community, is going to be a good quality link. Especially if they come from Profiles/Pages or Communities that are in your niche somehow. The good thing is, there are hundreds of Google+ Communities in many different niches, (some that have many thousands of users on them) which you can join and post your blog posts, products, offers, services etc to and they can send you a lot of traffic in the long run too. And Google+ users aren't like Reddit users, they don't mind marketing stuff so much provided you've joined a Google+ Page or Community that is based on that kind of thing such as the many Google+ SEO and Marketing Communities out there which you can join and post your site, products & services to.
Google+ Pages
Google+ Pages started in 2011 and are basically the equivalent or alternative of Facebook's Pages. You can create a Google+ Page for your business, website or on anything and people can become a fan of it by following it and are able to interact with that Page and it's posts and even curate and add their own posts, links, images, videos etc that the page is about which is shared and seen by all the followers of that Page on that Page and on their Google+ Homepage (Stream). Oh and unlike Facebook Pages, Google doesn't limit the amount of people that can see your Page posts as they'll show for anyone on their timeline but then so do all the others for other Profiles and Pages and Communities that they're following.
Google+ Communities
Google+ Communities started in 2011 and had a redesign last year, and is basically the equivalent or alternative to Facebook's Groups. You can create your own Google+ Community for your business or website or something or anything that you're interested in which other people who share and have the same interests and passions can join and curate and share content on in the same way. Google+ Communities like Google+ from the start, has and was also dogged a bit at first, but they have grown to be a massive force of reckoning that has many millions of users using it everyday to share and research information on just about anything you can think of. Some Google+ Communities are massive and have millions of users. Many have scores of thousands in the IM and SEO niche. If you're not using Google+ Communities in your SEO and Marketing campaigns you're loosing out on targeted website traffic and just leaving money on the table for your competitors.
Google+ Collections
Google+ Collections was launched last year in 2015 and was set up to let people express the things they love in visual form. They are very similar to how Pinterest boards or WeHeartIt Collections work in which you can post the images and things you like to them which are shown in the Google+ Stream and indexed publicly as well which other people can then like and follow. As a business, website, affiliate marketer or freelancer and seller on SEOClerks, you can use Google+ Collections in the same way as you would Pinterest boards or WeHeartIt Collections. Pin all your websites products, services and blog posts to them. These are indexed fast in Google and are ranked high in the SERPs so can go on to send you traffic and produce clients, sales and revenue in the same way if you have a very popular and big collection!
Google Groups
Google Groups have been around since 2001 and are basically discussion groups that people who have the same interest can discuss and share content they're interested in. If you remember the days of Deja News and Usenet newsgroups you'll be familiar with Google Groups. They have long been used by marketers to promote their products and services of all kind over the years and you can take advantage of them by creating your own group which people can join and then posting your news articles, sales pages and material videos, images etc to basically in the same way as you would on a Community or Page or whatever but in Usenet forum posting style with threaded posts and email post alerts to the groups users etc. Because Google Groups used to be a Usenet newsgroup, users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere which means you can send emails to the members too.
Google Sites
Google Sites have been around since 2008. They are a structured wiki based website creation tool offered by Google as part of the Google Apps for Work productivity suite. The reason it was created was so that people could create a team-oriented site where multiple people can collaborate and share files at the same time. Google Sites was basically one of the first website builders but it was never massively adopted and they never updated it with better themes, templates etc so it's quite basic.
That said, it can still be useful having a Google site as you can add content and articles to them and Google will crawl/index them fast and they can rank quite high for things on their own as well and go on to send you traffic to your own site as well as help you create good quality backlinks from another Google site that will probably last forever. Just like any site though, they made need SEO'ng and it's good to update them with new relevant material like your sales articles, pictures, videos etc etc.
Google Blogs
Google Blogs or Blogspot (blogger.com) in particular, launched in 1999 and is another great Google service to take advantage of as a business, webmaster, affiliate or freelancer. Because you can use them the same was as Google sites or any blog, in that you can add blog posts. As these are part of Google, they are indexed almost instantly without the need of a ping. Also Google Blogspot (blogger.com) is a high authority site (even though it does have a lot of low quality blogs on it) so it's sometimes fairly easy to get a Blogspot blog post ranking high if you do some good on-page SEO and a little off-page SEO on them.
Obviously Google Blogs are perfect for the bloggers out there that love to write and blog and do blog networking with other blogs too. As a Blogspot blog owner, you'll have your own Blogger profile which can be used to comment on and interact with other blogs that people can follow too and subscribe to you and your blog which is what you want.
Google YouTube
This one's a no brainer. You all know what YouTube is for and how it's used by now. It started in 2005 and has been an Internet phenomenon. And you know just how effective video marketing can be and how it's the number one marketing method today and is one of the best ways to build brand awareness & authority, social media presence and traffic to your site, products and services. Whether it's real user reviews, viral videos of funny cats, music, films or movies, animations and more. YouTube is the Internet's 2nd biggest website so you wouldn't want to not use it to your advantage if you want to tap into how it can help you. As a brand or business or freelancer or affiliate that sells or resells products or services, YouTube should be very high on your list of sites to use for these reasons, obviously.
Conclussion
This list is not exhaustive. There are several other Google apps and services you can take advantage of as a business to expand your reach and recognition on a global level. Google Maps for example for putting your business on the map and into the real world. Then there's Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool of course for keyword research and the Google Trends Tool or Google News for finding the latest news in your industry which can help you see what the people you want to be like are up to.
I hope you'll list this list and find something new in it that you can use to expand your reach and get more clients, affiliates, sales and revenue from it in some way.
Remember - Google is your friend! ;)
What other Google Apps or Services do you make good use of as a business, webmaster, blogger, affiliate marketer or freelancer to get ahead somehow?
Thanks!
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TommyCarey
I do use some Google services like Google plus, Google Adwords, gmail, Youtube and Google Maps.
Google Plus: I use google plus for all of my websites so that another person can't go in and take over the name, domain name, of my website and try to push it as their own. I've dealt with this a few times and it's infuriating that people have to do this in order to get a few sales. If someone can just ride the coat tails of a successful website they'll do that rather than set up their own business and market it
Adwords: Now I'm sure everyone knows why I use Adwords
Gmail: I only have one or two gmail accounts because I tend to be more attracted to yahoos email services. Gmail definitely has a lot of nice features and is probably the best free email service, but I don't want to be tracked and if I don't have to use it I won't
YouTube: I use YouTube all the time, mainly when I'm bored and on my phone. I'll browse "How To" videos and montages of video games I like. Yeah, I'm a bit of a nerd
Google Maps: I use Google Maps all the time when I need to drive a long distance. I actually just used it because I was driving from Michigan back to Chicago Illinois because I was over there a for a few days with family and friends for the fourth
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