Google Plus + Pages for Brands and Business

| November 7, 2011 | 5 Comments

Google has finally opened up Plus for businesses! Google formally announced that you can now create business pages in Google Plus just as you would on Facebook. In addition, Google has also announced that they will be giving greater authority to these Plus pages in their search results. Within the week Google will be implementing a new direct search feature that they are calling “Direct Connect”. Direct Connect is designed to help users find a company’s + page. People searching in Google for a particular company can simply add a + in front of their search query and they will be sent directly to the associated + page. For example if you type +The Muppets, then you will be directed to the Muppet’s official Plus fan page, which by the way is here The Muppets + Page. The fact that Google gets to make these rules tells us that Plus pages will blow Facebook pages out of the water when it comes search engine visibility of your social media networks.

Google Search Plus Your World

Need more reasons to focus heavily on Google Plus for your business? How about Google Search Plus Your World. When using personal search, which happens to be the default setting now, you will see the following…
Personal Search Results based on your social media circles, cookies and browsing history.
Social Media Profiles of people that share relevant interest and search history.
People and Business Pages and you can even choose to follow them or ad them to you circles with the click of a button.

Here’s the Link to Create a + Page

Here’s the Video about Direct Connect for +Pages

Here’s the Video Released with the Announcement…

Google Plus for Businesses

Use Google Plus for your business website and you will be guaranteed to see an increase in your SEO rankings. SEO for Google plus is a no-brainer, he who owns the search engine gets to make the rules. Conducting SEO campaigns using Google Plus for brands and Business websites is a completely new and effective way to increase exposure and traffic. Google has already added new Plus+ metrics and features inside Google Webmaster Tools to show you the exact impact that Plus will have on your site’s rankings. This is a clear indication that Google plans to reward the hell out of anyone the uses Google Plus techniques in their SEO stagey. This being said, if you don’t have plans to start getting active in Google Plus then you will be left behind in the dust!SEO Google's +1 Metrics in Webmaster Tools

SEO Meets SMO in Google Plus

With Facebook’s potential for search and Bing’s advancements in social search, Google had no choice but to launch Google Plus, their third attempt at social media. The 3rd time must truly be a charm because with Plus+, they really got it right! Google is still the #1 site in the world while Facebook is still #2 but that only depends on the metrics you use to measure who really is #1. Google gets more raw visits from people using their search engine, while Facebook actually gets more usage time. Social media has turned into such an online phenomenon that no company, especially Google, can afford to ignore it. The reason is simple, how can you provide good search results if you don’t even know what people are really talking about or which sites they really “like”? This is why it is so important to use the data gathered on social media sites to help determine which websites are truly the best quality. If there is a lot of hype of a frequently used site out there that everyone is talking about then obviously Google should include it in their results as well. SEO for Google Plus is a perfect marriage between SEO and SMO and the end result will be a much higher quality index of websites.

Hot to Optimize Google Plus for Business WebsitesHow to SEO Google Plus

The first thing to consider is using ethical techniques aka White Hat SEO. Using black hat techniques in Facebook will only get your profile or you page erased and even though this sucks, your sites still remains untouched but if you get caught manipulating Google Plus in the same manor, the consequences could be a complete banning of your site from Google’s search results. That being said, stay away from automated tools, fake accounts, multiple accounts  and spamming. This is why an aggressive Google Plus SEO campaign will be labor intensive. You will want to build up a large network of contacts and create Plus Circles accordingly to the type of audience you are trying to target. We do expect to see full business profiles in the near future but for now, Google has already integrated Google Groups and Google Sites into Google Plus so you can use these as marketing tools just as you would in Facebook. Lastly, make sure you integrate your site with Google OpenID connect and of course use the +1 button on every page (Google’s version of the “Like” button). SEO for Google Plus is just getting started but please bookmark this article so you can check back for regular updates on how to SEO Google Plus For Businesses.

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Google Plus + Pages for Brands and Business, 8.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

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Category: SEO Outsourcing

  • Henry G

    Ok but you forgot one thing… no one is really going to use Google Plus except for webmasters and SEOs and this might lead to Plus’ demise.

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  • http://causalitygame.com/ Dean

    Interesting read Zack. My main concern is how do you get the 300 million kids from Facebook to switch to a mom and pop system google or gmail in which would already from what we have seen be dominated by the tech savvy professionals. Another thing is now social driven media is nothing new as we’ve experienced with the likes of Digg, Reddit and Buzzfeed which makes me think Google might of even been better to work with their information to appear in your + news feed to help boost the early day usage. As with any Social media tools your experience is based entirely around your peers so if you have 5 friends your experience is fairly boring, with 100 friends things tend to get more interactive. FB pretty much invaded everyone’s privacy time and time again to give you all this and let you decide how to deal with it, something Google can’t afford to do again (like buzz)I must admire the Google + promotion like they did with gmail which clearly was a success. As for the future of +, Mobile, Kids and Games/Entertainment. Crack that code and you’ve got yourself a leading social media giant.

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  • Zack

    Dean and Henry, you both bring up very good points but in the article I was just talking about the SEO implications of Google + not whether or not its going to beat FB. Even if + turns out to be a complete failure like Buzz and Wave was, I still plan on using it as much as possible to increase my rankings. Lastly, even if + only gets used by SEOs and webmasters like myself, I still think that’s way cool… mayspace is social media for musicians, blackplanet is social media for black people and connexion is for gays and lesbians so why not a platform like + that is widely used for webmasters? Keep the conversation going, I have a feeling there’s a lot more to be said about this topic.

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  • Guest

    If you think about this logically from a business standpoint, take 2 businesses that are exactly the same that compete against each other.  Make them apples to apples.  One utilizes Google+ and another does not.  I would bet my last dollar that Google ranks the business higher that incorporates Google+; they would be fools not to.  I am sure that Google has included a variable within their algorithm that would boost rankings for businesses who utilize Google+, co.  Quite frankly, nothing is for free in this world and the value that Google assigns to this (while it is free), their value add internally is market share and reach (to name a few) which further strengthens their brand and advertising platform. 
     
    In fact, I am going to run a test.  I have 2 client sites now that I built on the same platform, with brand new websites.  One of them has a URL tenure of 2 years, the other is about 6 months old.  I am going to test google+ against both- I am going to add one to google+ to the newer site and leave the other alone (they have not paid me anyway, so it’s fully justified).  Let’s see who performs better…

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