Mark Bonnett, National B2B Centre e-business consultant, keeps us up to date and talks us through one of Google’s latest tools, “Google Base”.

This simple tool allows you to get a little more noticed by submitting content along with keyword descriptions, which will help you get noticed when people do searches related to your content. The best news is you don’t necessarily have to have a website in order to use it.

What is it?
Google Base is a free service offered by Google to allow you to submit all types of online/ offline content. From a business perspective it’s a great tool to use to help promote your products and services.


Why should I use it?
It’s another great e-marketing opportunity to either boost your existing products / services (which also allows you to link to your site), or if you haven’t yet got a website, it’s a way of making offline content more accessible to a wider audience. It's an easy and free way of getting your products out there into different services provided by Google, and also increasing the reach of your website. There’s even an option to edit or archive existing content already submitted.

You can use Google Base to promote your products or services without having a website. Google will host your items for you and allow you to add your contact details so searchers can contact you.

Where will my content appear?
When you submit content to Google Base depending on your item relevance it will either appear in “Google Product Search” (www.google.com/products) were users go to specifically search for items to buy or it may appear in Google’s main web search (www.google.co.uk).

How do I use it?
First of all you need a Google account. It's free to register and if you're already using AdWords or Analytics you will already have a Google account set up.

Once you setup your account, login to Google Base and start adding your products and services. You can do this one by one or if you're a techie geek you can use a feed that takes your products straight from your Content Management System into Google Base via a spreadsheet or XML file.

If you decide to add your items you will need the following information:

Title
Price and Price Type
Service Type
Description
Pictures
Contact Details
Location


How do I get my Products/Services to the top of the list?
Like the normal Search Engine Optimisation you can optimise your item to appear at the top of the list. There are several things you can do to help your item but make sure you focus on the title, description and images.

Title and Description - having an accurate title and description that reflects the information on your website will help your item ranking. Make sure you don't use promotional, sales or marketing text such as 'click here now' and 'free shipping'. Irrelevant text will not help your cause.

High quality images will help your product appear high in listings and increases the chance a user will click on your item.

More information can be found at Google Base Support

DW Supplies Example
Walsall based DW Supplies are using Google Base to promote their cleaning and janitorial supplies.
DW Supplies' products are listed on Google Base with full details and a direct link back to the appropriate page on their website.


Try It Yourself
As with many of these tools, the best way to find out if it will help your business is just to try it out! We will be pleased to hear about your experiences.

Mark Bonnett and Steph Williams
©National B2B Centre 2009