The majority of web users visit Google to search on the main search page using their keyword term. More advanced users venture to the image, video, or map search functions of Google. However there are a great many more tools that Google offers which aren’t necessarily advertised on the main site, or even in their ‘more Google products’. They’re usually found in the Google Labs and one of these tools in particular can help one in the beginning phases of an SEO upgrade – and it’s called Google Trends.

Google Trends allows you to view search trends of multiple keyword terms and compare them. This allows you to see where the trends lie for your specific industry in terms of keywords and what your target market is looking for. This tool can be very powerful depending on what you use it for. It can allow you to see seasonal trends and steady traffic patterns that you otherwise may have missed.

For example, you can search for yearly events like “xmas gifts” that you think may have seasonal trends:

These results should have been exactly what you were expecting – that people search for “xmas gifts” around Christmas time.

It’s also possible to browse trends based on calendar dates rather than searching for them by viewing the Hot Trends. For example, by browsing the top 100 hot trends of November 4th, 2008 it’s obvious you’ll see the majority of results circle around the 44th presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain.

It is important to remember that just because a certain search term is a ‘hot trend’ does not mean that you should put into your keywords or website content if it doesn’t fit with your topic. If it isn’t already apparent to why it’s a bad idea to incorporate content that doesn’t fit your topic or audience I strongly suggest you revert back to either my post on copywriting for SEO or Jess’ post on building the right audience.

In order to fully optimize a website for search engines, it is necessary to do a full and thorough evaluation of relevant information about the website. This can often be a long and tiring task but several tools and resources can help make your job a lot easier. I’ve put together a list of the top 3 tools that help you gather information easier and faster than on your own.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics gets top marks in my books because it is not only a helpful tool for search engine optimization, but for user experience and information architecture. By adding the Google Analytics code to your website, you can track not only your page views, but also what your users are searching for, how they’re finding your website, how long they’re staying, and even the path they take as they navigate your website content. Other useful information includes a dynamic map that displays the geographic location of your website visitors, globally as well as locally. Another useful (and fun) feature is a site overlay that shows you exactly where people click when they visit your website. Yes, I love this tool.

Search Engine Simulator
How does a search engine view your website? Now you can find out. With this Search Engine Simulator tool, you can see your website the way that a search engine robot does: no images, no flash; only text. It is an enlightening experience! This is a good way to evaluate simple changes to improve your site, such as rewriting content to add meaning to often over-looked text, such as footer navigation and copyright statements. There is no sign up, simply submit your website address to the simulator, and immediately see the results – and learn from them. Now you can see like a search engine robot, and your website will love you for it.

SEO website grader
Are you curious how your website compares to your competitors? SEO website grader evaluates not only your website, but also those of your competitors. You can see how each site is valued by search engines for content, keywords, site structure, … It can be a humbling experience, but also exceptionally useful – it takes the guess work out of understanding your website, and how it matches up to the competition. You can learn from this tool, and from your competitors – and you can improve your SEO.

When I write a blog I like to attempt to add some fun activities or tidbits of information here and there – it makes things interesting. What is today’s activity you ask?

Go to Google and type in “Untitled Document”. How many results do you get? I got 44,500,000 search results and I have no doubts that you got more.

As Leigh mentioned in his 'SEO for small business' post, title tags are very important for the search engine optimization of a website. Websites get launched daily without title tags. This is often due to forgetfulness or bad habits on the web developer’s part. Could be a result of being rushed too. When a new HTML document is created, most of the time using templates, it includes a title tag of “Untitled Document”.

No matter what you’re selling, advertising, or wanting users to see, getting anywhere near to #1 under any keywords with an untitled document is not likely to happen and your target users are not going to find you.

Title tags aren't just for search engines either. They are viewed by your website visitor in a few prominent places:

• text that appears within the blue bar at the top of a browser window.
• On browser tabs, the title is also what appears in the tab.
• When a website visitor minimizes the browser window, the title tag is what is appears.
• The title is also what appears on the first line of search results in the major search engines.

The best SEO practices also keep in mind the benefit for your website visitors. Provided good meaningful title tags will help your visitors, as well as your search engine rankings.

So be free my friends – go and give the gift to yourself of properly named title tags and watch your website climb the rankings in the search engines.