The SEO Benefits Offered by Google Plus

The social media landscape is ever-changing, with new networks cropping up all over the place. Some become popular, and some fail to pull in the crowd. When Google Plus was launched, everyone wanted to be on it, but the excitement was short-lived. Most of them found it cumbersome to use the platform and they stuck to Facebook and Twitter for their social interactions. However, G+ has now become a game-changer, especially for business owners. It provides great opportunities for businesses to connect with prospective customers and build a rapport with them. A unique feature of G+ is the SEO benefits it offers.

Social signals and SEO

Sharing posts on Google+ and receiving +1s for them is the same as ‘Likes’ on Facebook, but the effect is far greater as Google Search favors sites that receive recommendations from others on G+. Social signals are indicators that Google and other search engines track and use while ranking websites in their search results.

PageRank and G+ Posts

One of Google’s aims in launching G+ was to discover new and valuable content quickly. Thus, G+ posts are crawled and indexed immediately. G+ profile pages have PageRank, just like websites. The higher the PageRank, the greater the authority and ranking your site has. And it’s interesting to note that G+ posts can retain ranking. This helps your business climb up the SERPs.

Note:

* When a link is shared on G+, the anchor text becomes the title of the page.
* Shared links (links that show up below the post) are followed. Links included in the body of the post are “nofollow” and don’t pass any authority or equity.
* Most of the links in the G+ “About” page are followed and pass link equity.
* Images don’t pass external link equity, but are useful in improving a post’s popularity and click-through rate.

Google+ Local and Local SEO

A part of G+, Google+ Local helps local businesses connect with local customers on a social platform. These pages are similar to Facebook pages, but have many more features. Google+ Local is an important tool that can improve the results of your Local SEO efforts. Google+ Local enhances your online visibility and customer engagement, helps you get genuine reviews and makes important information about your business, like address, phone number, directions and hours of operation, available to local consumers.

Google Authorship

Google Authorship allows authors to claim their content and search engines to find content written by the same author. It helps establish credibility for both the author and the website, and it also improves click-through rates.

Being active on G+ and working on increasing your circles has another benefit. When your G+ network increases, it influences (directly or indirectly) the search results of the people who have added you in their circles.

Thus, Google Plus, with all the additional SEO benefits, is the right platform for business owners to market their service.

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