[I]t’s cold out there in Google land, right? Getting noticed by Google sometimes feel a lot like being back in high school. It’s just little old you trying to stand out in a crowd, taking on the popular kids single-handed. When you own a small business, it’s easy to feel like Google is never going to notice you. But Google isn’t really that scary or mysterious. In fact, Google just wants to get to know you better and they give us plenty of tools to connect to them and let them know that your website wasn’t built by a spammy robot. These 5 easy things you can do to get noticed by Google make use of all of them.

Think of each of the steps below as a little green light that lets Google know that you are a real person. When Google crawls your site, it will be checking that you’ve done these things. Most people never do any of them, but they are super quick and super easy to do, so there really is NO excuse.

1. REGISTER FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS AND SEARCH CONSOLE

Google has some great tools and they reward you for using them. In a previous post (which you can read here), we looked at how to register, install and verify (the most important step) both Google Analytics and Search Console. More importantly, we learned how to link them together. Analytics and Search Console actually work together to give you a complete picture of how your web visitors found you and how they behave once they are on your site. Amongst other things, Google Analytics will tell you which links people used to get to your site, how many pages they visit, how long they spend on them and which pages they leave from. Search console, on the other hand, is about they found you.

If you haven’t done that yet, head over there now.

2. COMPLETE YOUR WORDPRESS USER PROFILE

This is quick, easy and lets Google know you are a real person. Yes, Google robots check whether you have completed your user profile. Make sure you enter your website address, bio details containing your keywords and your Google+ page or profile url. We’ll move onto Google+ in a minute.

3. GET A GRAVATAR

See that little picture of me in my user profile? That’s a Gravatar. It’s part of my social profile and it shows up whenever I comment on my own blog or on other people’s blogs. Google checks if you have a Gravatar, because yes, you guessed it, it proves you’re a real person, which makes you and your own website more trustworthy. You can register with Gravatar here.

4. DIVE INTO GOOGLE+

Google+ hasn’t really taken off as a red hot social media tool, but it isn’t going away. Rather, it’s being dismantled and re-purposed to offer other services like photo hosting and content curation. If you hop on over to your Google+ profile, you now have the option to switch to the new version. It’s been stripped right down to Collections and Communities. Collections brings together content shared on Google+ and makes it easy to find the kind of content you’d like. Communities bring together like-minded people who are sharing content.

Google themselves say the new Communities feature is getting 1.2 million new joiners per day. (You can read their official blog post here – it’s short and interesting). I don’t know about you, but those are some impressive numbers. Google hasn’t weighed in lately on whether sharing your posts on G+ will help your rank, but you never know what they’ve got up their sleeve. My feeling is that it’s better to be safe than sorry. At the very least, make sure your profile is up to date.

5. REGISTER FOR GOOGLE BUSINESS SERVICES

In Google’s own words, ‘Google My Business helps customers find you anytime, anywhere and you can manage all of your business information in one place’. If you’re wondering if it’s the same thing as showing up on Google Maps, it’s all that and more. You can add images, your opening hours and manage reviews. It generates the nice card-style display you see below, that shows up in ordinary search and in maps. If geographical location is at all important to you, then you need to make sure your profile is complete. Head over there now.

That’s it! I promised it wouldn’t be painful. These are quick, easy and non-technical little wins that anyone and everyone should do to boost their business on Google. Remember, Google is our friend. Let’s show it some love!