Why Your Business Needs Google Plus and Some Tips To Get Started

Though Google Plus is a relatively new face in the social media scene, it is well positioned to become a giant in the sphere within the next 24 months. From an SEO viewpoint, the strength of its brand name alone should warrant it a spot in your social media strategy. There is little doubt that the engineers at Google crafted Google Plus with the intention of knocking other social media platforms off their perch. The Google crawlers will visit Google Plus regularly and therefore linking your businesses blog posts through a Google Plus profile is a fast way to have them recognised. Furthermore with the advent of new functions such as Google Plus Local, small businesses have an advantage when it comes to being found in local searches, particularly on mobile devices.

So without further ado, here are some tips to get you started and get the most out of Google Plus.

Optimise Your Profile

This means first of all making sure your business profile in Google Plus is completely filled in - including the location of your business for Google Places. Think of your profile as another marketing tool. If you just link to your website without giving a clear explanation of who you are, what you do and how you can benefit your customers, you will end up with a low click-through-rate. As always, your exposure in this platform gives you another space to present yourself as an authority in your niche.

Self Promote

This needs to be done with tact, but link to your other social media profiles and blogs. The value of your Google Plus in search engines functions essentially as a mini-blog. By being more active and having more people engage with you and share your content, you can increase the value of your profile. This is a reciprocal process in which the value of your Google Plus page also increases the value of the inbound links you post to your content.
Tip: Google Plus is the platform for Google Authorship and is moving in a direction in which your value as an author is determined by similar factors as social media and website ranking. Start developing your value on Google Authorship now to get ahead of others in your niche.

Optimise Title Tags

The first sentence of your Google Plus posts become your title tags so choose keywords carefully when posting. Note that unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus lets you edit your post at any time so if you have old posts that you want to optimise you can do so. However, in general don’t be too concerned with keywords. Keyword stuffing your profile doesn’t make a difference to your SEO and for the most part just annoys your readers and makes you look unprofessional.

Socialise

This means connecting with influencers in your space. You can set notification triggers that allow you to be notified when others make a post. You can then comment on their activity, refer to them in one of your posts or message them directly. Remember though that you can be blocked from their inboxes if you spam them. Also, make sure you utilise the circles function so instead of just posting to everyone you can direct posts to specific target markets. Again, don’t spam.

Make sure you set up a Google Plus account as soon as possible and start learning how you can integrate it into your social media strategy. For more advice on how you can use Google Plus to help your SEO, contact us today.