How Google Plus (G+) Helps With SEO

, Posted in Cool new SEO tricks, Google, Google Plus, SEO Tips Recognition by .

How long will you wait to G+?

G+ for San Francisco SEOIf you’re sitting back, waiting for your “friends” on Facebook to join Google Plus (a.k.a. Google+ or G+) before you create a personal profile or business page, you’re truly missing out on supreme SEO real estate. Many have taken to the “wait and see” approach, especially with more social networks, now, than ever before. Nearly every day we hear, “I’m already on Facebook and Twitter, do I really need to be on Google Plus, too?” The answer is yes, but let us explain why.

SMO of SEO

Social signals from the Google+ platform are becoming more important for determining search engine results. Joshua Berg, SEO/SMO Specialist at REALSMO, calls this “the social media optimization (SMO) of SEO.” Berg explains, “social signals provide a much better way of filtering out the noise and improving the quality of search results. This is a trend that will continue because it is a much better way of understanding what people really want, which is one of Google’s founding principles.”

Search Engine Rankings

Not to be confused with Page Rank (as in Larry “Page”), a different and complicated SEO topic, search engine rankings are different. For example, If you’re a business owner or in charge of an organization, and already have a website in place (hopefully a blog, as well), you’ll want your website to be in the top search rankings results. Meaning that when someone searches for your service or product, your website comes up on page one or two on search engines.

SEO Search EnginesHaving a Google+ profile/page connected to your website will increase the relevancy of your website’s content and help support your search engine rankings. In addition, Google+ profiles and pages are displayed along with traditional website results too and hold their own search and page rank. This is because Google+ content is treated like any other page on the web: it can also gain Page Rank authority. Since two thirds of searches in the US are taking place on Google, you want your content indexed and searchable this way too. This all seems to hold even more weight when the Google user is logged in as well.

Authorship and Authority

Google Plus authorship is very closely affiliated with content authority. If an author posts relevant and interesting content that receives “+1s” and shares, Google authorship gives them higher authority and higher ranked search results. “Over a broad sample of bloggers,” says Mark Traphagen, Director of Social Media Marketing at Virante, Inc., “those with Google+ profiles average a full Page Rank higher than those without.”

The social layer and authorship within Google Plus provide various social signals that improve the SMO and SEO of your content. What’s more important than the quantity of Plus Ones, followers, and people in your circles, is the quality interaction between you and your content and people with high authority. If a high-authority person shares your content, it will improve your own authority.

Tips for Using Google+

  • The featured link in a Google Plus post will pass Page Rank to the page to which it links. Note there is a “no follow” for links included in the body of a G+ post, so you must use the featured link to get the follow links to your site. If you connect a Google Plus page to your website this will increase the relevancy of your website content and support your search ranking.
  • Post to ‘Public’. Only ‘Public’ posts can be seen or found by anyone. And the public post might get indexed too. Other types of circle post probably won’t be.
  • Use hashtags #! Using them in Google Plus connects every post to a search on the platform. Think of them as an anchor that will bring up your content when a certain keyword is searched in Google Plus.
  • Either you join the Plus One Club or you miss out on this powerful ranking factor. With over 502 million users, there’s more than enough content going around waiting for you to “Plus One.”

Social & SEO Help

If you’d like help with your Social Media Marketing or Search Engine Optimization, call our San Francisco, Bay Area internet marketing office at 510-276-9902. We can help you set up a Google Plus account, and establish a strong internet marketing presence to ensure your website ranks well.