Google Plus is becoming a major player in the social networking world. One of the biggest advantages of Google Plus is the built in SEO. Google Plus indexes every link that you post. Meaning, if you post a link to your site, that link is immediately added to the Google search engine. But that is not the only SEO boost. Your profile, you engagement, your circles and the way in which you post also contribute. You can give yourself some wonderful free SEO if you optimize your Plus account and activities.
Because there is so much information that needs to be covered to go over Google Plus SEO properly, I am going to break it up over 5 days.
- Your Profile: How to optimize your profile to appear in search results
- Search Results: How you appear in search results on and off Google Plus
- Social Snippets (SERP): How to optimize your SERP (search engine results page)
- Badges: Linking your website and your Google Plus page
- Engagement: The importance of being social
These posts will cover SEO on Plus from a basic to advanced level. There are things that everyone can do very easily, and some things that you might need to ask your webmaster to implement. But even if you do the bare minimum of SEO you will be doing yourself a huge favor.
After this series, I will be writing on a couple of more advanced issues for Google Plus SEO: Getting Verified and Authorship.
Getting verified will talk about how to set your page/profile up to qualify to get verified by Google Plus. This means that they give your page/profile a little check mark that says you are really you, or your brand is really the official brand page. This is more important for larger brands and for people with a modicum of renown.
Authorship is the ability to establish that you are the original author of your content. Often on social networks, your blog posts or web content gets credited to the person who is posting about it rather than the person who wrote it. Social etiquette says that you should give credit to the original poster, but that is often not the case. Guy Kawasaki is a huge violator of this rule of etiquette, and when someone of influence posts your link then the web generally gives authorship to that person. Google Plus is giving you a solution to that.
Overall SEO for Plus is not the simplest of tasks. But once it is set up, maintaining good SEO habits is very easy. No matter what, if you are investing in Plus then take the time to invest in SEO.