I’ve personally always been a huge fan of Google+ but it’s been several years since I’ve been consistently active.
It became too difficult to keep up with posting there.
It was only until I found out how beneficial Google+ pages and profiles are for SEO.
Since then, I have picked up my momentum on Google+ again.
Furthermore, you can now schedule posts for your Google+ profile with Buffer!
If you’re still on the fence about the future of Google+ or its value to marketers today, here’s the top reason to reconsider Google+ for your marketing.
Google+ content gets indexed immediately and shows up in search results
Yes, immediately!
You’ve likely heard that Google+ pages and profiles can greatly help your SEO, and it’s true!
Google+ is a powerful search engine marketing tool for companies, influencers, and your own personal branding. Sharing blog posts on Google+ in particular is an excellent way to:
- Rank for keyword terms that you might otherwise not be able to
- Drive search traffic to your Google+ profile and then back to your blog and website
Sometimes it happens without even realizing it. Such was the case for Patrick Antinozzi of Rapid Web Launch who ended up in the search results for Pokemon Go thanks to his Google+ post.
How does this Google+ ranking boost happen?
Well, rumor has it that Google crawls and indexes content posted to Google+ almost immediately. Here’s what Moz found:
If you share new content on Google+, chances are that Google will index the page very quickly.
Rumor has it that new URLs are crawled almost instantly. This makes complete sense as part of the purpose of Google+ was to replace Twitter when creating Google’s Realtime Search.
In the old days, if you wanted a website indexed you filled out a webform and waited several weeks. Today, it’s as simple as pressing a +1 button.
Content that you post to Google+ is far more likely to show up in search results than other pages, websites, articles, and content posted to other social networks.
That’s because Google ranks their own social network higher and they crawl it faster.
The added benefit is that Google even previews certain Google+ posts with rich snippets (profile picture, media, etc.), giving them even more real estate in a search!
As Laura Donovan shared in her Business2Community article on Google+:
While our company Google Plus page does not have a lot of followers, it does seem to give us a boost when it comes to how visible our blog posts are in Google searches.
Is there a catch?
Well, you do need to build a network on Google+ using Google+ Circles.
The more people you add to circles and the more people who add you to their circles, the more likely you are to show up in search results for your network.
Imagine if every person you emailed got added to a Google+ circle? You’d have a list of friends, family, colleagues, prospective leads, business partners, and much more who would see your content first!
The broader your network on Google+ the more likely you are to show up in search results.
How can you take advantage of this?
It’s pretty simple! Here are 5 simple steps to make the most of this:
1. Make sure your Google+ personal profile and/or your Google+ page is fully complete.
Why bother?
Well, Google indexes this information.
This is an ideal place to make sure that Google knows who you are (and for those who find you on Google+ to know where to click to learn more).
In order to fill this out completely, you can:
- Head to your Google+ personal profile, hit “Edit Profile” then click the “I” icon to go to your About Me page.
- From there you can add your introduction and use words that relate to your brand in your tagline and about section
- If you hit the + at the bottom of the page, you can add relevant sites and include links to your website or blog
- Double check that the privacy for your introduction and sites is set to “Public” or whatever you are most comfortable with
2. Grab your custom URL with your full name or business name
After you claim your custom URL, it’ll be even easier to extend your branding into the search results since Google indexes the URLs, too.
(You can follow the instructions here for desktop and mobile.)
3. Stay active on Google+
Make sure all of your recent blog content is being shared there, plus any relevant curated articles you wish to share.
(It’s as simple as Buffering it now!)
4. Share your own blog posts, using the blog post title, immediately after they’re published
This is the fastest way to get your URL indexed and crawled to rank on Google search.
Take care when sharing to Google+ to include the full title of post and even a small description to make the post even more likely to be indexed and ranked.
5. Keep building your circles
The more people you have in your circles, the more likely you are to show up in search results!
One idea: You could add everyone you email to a Google+ circle.
Over to You
Thanks so much for reading! I hope you found this article helpful, I’d love to hear how all of this feels to you:
- Do you use Google+? Does your company or brand?
- Do you think you might find your target audience on Google+?
- If you haven’t been posting to Google+, I’d love to know a bit more about why if you’re up for sharing!
I’d love to hear what’s working for you and any thoughts you may have. Excited to keep the conversation going.
If this reason isn’t enough for you, here are 4 more reasons why Google+ could be interesting for you to try today:
The full article was originally published on the Buffer Social blog on November 10, 2016.
