Google Tools Measure Your Presence on the Internet

By Jane Eckert

This past winter I have been giving a workshop titled, “Get Up to Speed on the Internet Superhighway.” The presentation focuses on improving your website and electronic newsletters, but we also look at some of the free tools that every farm should consider in measuring your presence on the World Wide Web.

The first tool you should know about is a service called “Google Alert.” Imagine having a newspaper come to your door that only has stories about your farm, your business, and only other items you would like to read about.  That’s essential what Google Alert does for you on the Internet.  You tell Google Alert what words and topics interest you, and Google Alert will send you an email anytime your keywords show up on the Internet.  The program literally sifts through the thousands of new items flowing on the Internet every hour, and then sends you an email with only those that fit your specific criteria.

This free, easy to use program allows you to track various search terms, businesses, people or topics of your selection.  Google will search all the various articles, blogs and news postings. For instance, I track “Eckert AgriMarketing” and “Jane Eckert” through Google Alerts, and you should be tracking your name, and perhaps a few of your competitors.

You may thinking, why do I care to do this?

I believe it is important to know every time your business and your name appear on the Internet.  You are likely going to be surprised how often your name is mentioned.  It certainly would also be helpful to see how much publicity your competitor is getting.  (On a personal note, you might also want to follow news about your children’s school, your local county commissioners, your church, your farm association etc. )

It’s simple to sign up, and it’s free. Just go on the Internet to www.google.com/alerts.  This address takes you to the sign up page, where you can list the various search terms you want to track. Separate individual words, such as “farm,Ontario, market” with commas, and identify your phrases using quotation marks, such as “Eckert Country Store”, “pumpkin patch”, and “apple orchard.”

You are then given the choice to select the type of news and the frequency you want these alerts brought to your email box. If your search terms aren’t in the news the past 24 hours then you won’t receive an alert.

Please know that the system cannot provide a guaranteed, 100% of all listings.  For example, the articles must be posted on the Internet and if your small town newspaper is not available online, then it won’t appear on your daily updates. Nonetheless, you may be surprised how much is being written about you and your farm that you didn’t know was in the news. You can stop, change or add to your alerts at any time.

Another Google tool absolutely every farm should be using is called Google Maps. You may not have noticed, but near the top of every Google search page, you can choose if you want to search the web, images, video, maps, news, shopping and more.  Often, when people want to do a local search, they will do a “maps” search and enter the keywords for their local area plus what they are looking for, such as “apple orchards.” This brings you to a listing of local apple orchards and a map with icons pinpointing the orchards locations.

The appearance of your farm name can be left to chance on this page, however, you can assure yourself a spot by going to the Google Local Business Center and registering your business.  Go to www.google.com, and then click on “business solutions.”  On the page that follows, click on “Local Business Center.”  Next, you will see a box that says, “Add a New Business” and this takes you to a form to complete. At the bottom of the form is very important box labeled “category.” 

Here, you want to enter all of the keyword categories that a person might use to find your business, such as “apple orchard, pick your own apples, pick your own pumpkins, wedding receptions, company picnics etc.”You are limited to five categories to describe your business in common search terms.  Choose your words wisely because these words help Google Maps deliver your business on their search results page.

By the way, the www.yahoo.com search engine also has a Local Business Center where you can register your company information.

The third Google tool we’ll talk about in this article is Google Analytics, a rather amazing tool that will help you in learning about the traffic coming to your website and a few other aspects of your marketing effectiveness.

In a nutshell, Google Analytics is a program that will allow you to analyze who is visiting your website, how they found you, what they are specifically looking for, and it allows you to get a good idea about whether or not you answered their questions!   Your data will start with how the visitor found you in the first place:  Did they put in your url? Did they click a link on another website?  What site was the link on? Did they use a search engine?  What search words brought them to you?

The analytics will also tell you which pages they looked at, how long they looked at that page, whether they then looked at other pages on your website or not, and whether they surfed on to another farm.  Want to know if a newspaper campaign is helping from a nearby city?  Google Analytics will tell you what cities your visitors live in, so you can look to see if there was an increase during the time your campaign was running.  Want to know whether your customers can handle large images or videos on your website?  Google Analytics will tell you what connection speeds your visitors are using—be it dial up connections, DSL, or high speed cable.

If you don’t readily have access to this type of information through your web hosting company, then I suggest you take the time to add Google Analytics code on to your website. Just go to www.google.com/analytics/ to sign up and follow the steps to have complete the process or ask your web designer to do so.  You will need to have access to the origination code on your web pages.

Google Alerts, Google Maps, and Google Analytics are all free tools that can help your be a better marketer.  To learn more, just visit www.google.com.  Knowing the free online Internet tools available to your business are an important part of your ongoing marketing efforts. 

 

Jane Eckert is the founder of Eckert AgriMarketing (www.eckertagrimarketing.com), a full-service marketing and public relations firm that helps farmers to sell directly to consumers, diversify operations and become tourist destinations. She is also CEO of www.RuralBounty.com, a search directory for agritourism farms and ranches in North America. Jane can be reached at 314-862-6288 or you may email her directly.