Why You Need Google Plus In Your SEO Strategy

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When thinking about using social media for SEO strategies, what are the first sites that come to mind? Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? For many, Google+ isn’t even considered to be part of the equation. It is unfortunate that it is often forgotten or ignored because the people and businesses who are making the greatest impact on their SEO right now are those who are making G+ a top priority in their strategies.

Here’s Why You Should Be On Google Plus Right Now

There’s a higher level of engagement: People who primarily use Google + are doing so because they can compartmentalize how they engage with people. Some circles have family and friends, others have shared interests, while still others are about business relationships. You don’t have to be a “friend” or a “follower” to be in a circle with someone, which means you have the ability to get a higher level of engagement from a larger base of people who may be interested in what you have to offer.

There’s more indexing: Google + indexes almost everything that you put on your page. Even the description of yourself, your business, or your products/services can be indexed! With proper SEO coverage over your keywords, and especially with long tail keywords, you can create a massive amount of data that will be found valuable, ranked highly, and give you an added level of exposure.

There’s more +1 opportunities: Though Google sort of denies that sites/posts/pages that have high levels of +1s aren’t ranked higher than others, you can’t deny the social engagement that the +1 box can bring. Higher levels of social engagement generally help to rank pages better, which gives you extra exposure. According to some data, almost 90% of all clicks occur in the top 3 search results that are given – if that means a post of yours from G+ gets a high rank, that visitor may very well go from your post to your primary webpage.

There’s more authorship opportunities: If there’s one thing that search engines love, it’s information that is cross-linked to other information that has authorship data to it. Think of it like writing a huge term paper for school – every time you reference specific data or quotations, you would cite a source, right? Content with verified authorship actually tends to have a higher CTR than information that has no authorship or unverified authorship.

There’s more influence over personalized search results: Do a lot of people have you in circles? If so, then when they are searching for something that is related to the content, products, or services that you produce, you’ll actually have more appearances in their searches. Why? Because search engines appear to be moving toward a system that is geared toward a mixture of quality information and unique user preferences. If you produce quality data and people are engaging with you, then you’re creating a solid SEO foundation.

It’s Easy To Get Started!

If you want to dominate your niche in today’s SEO world, there are too many advantages to be gained from Google Plus to simply ignore it. It only takes a few minutes to get started with your own profile if you’re not on that platform yet. As with any social network, the key to getting people to engage with you is to engage with them first. Don’t be afraid to join circles, create quality information, and chat with people who have a similar interest in what you’ve got to offer. SEO and Google Plus – that really is a winning combination!