Google+ is a Distant Second in Social Media, but It’s Having a Powerful Impact on SEO/SEM
If you’re a social media maven, skip this post. This article is intended for business people who have better things to do than follow the world of social networks like Facebook.
Many of our SEO clients ask us for help with Facebook. Some, but far fewer, ask for a hand in optimizing Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. But very few seem to be asking for our assistance with Google+, or even wondering whether it’s important to their marketing efforts, or our efforts to optimize their websites for search. When we mention Google+, most of our business clients seem puzzled, either that it’s coming up for discussion, or, in some cases, what the heck it is. The question that many business people carry, if they have one at all for poor Google+, is, “will Google+ ever be important?”
I understand the question. In fact I would be stunned to encounter anyone who’s not into tech that pays much attention to Google+ at any level. And the facts support my conclusion. In a recent study by social media management company Gigya, it was evident that people are simply not buying into the Google+ experience, at least not when it comes to sharing.
So does that mean we can dismiss Google+ in terms of the Internet marketing “big picture” ?
My answer is a definite, No! In fact it already is very important for anyone interested in Internet Marketing.
The Honda Factor in the Success of Google+
In the late 1980’s I was the proud owner of a Honda CRX Si. For those of you who forget (or never even knew), the CRX was a 2-seater sports coupe that Honda produced to go up against cars like the Toyota MR-2, a very popular and nimble sportster of the time. I once read a road test in Road & Track magazine that compared the Honda CRX with the Toyota MR2 and several other sports coupes. The goal of the comparison was to make an evaluation as to which engine placement was best: front, mid, or rear.
At the end of the article, the test team concluded (and remember this was in 1989) that the best engine placement for a sports car was mid-engine. However they said that the CR-X, with it’s front engine placement, performed about as well as the MR2. I don’t have the exact quote, but it went something like “this is Honda we’re talking about; if they want to make a front engine placement work, they’re going to do it, regardless of whether mid-engine is best in the end.”
I have some of the same thoughts about Google and Google+. Does the world really need another social network? Not really. But this is Google. If they’ve decided to make a social network work, they’re going to make it happen. If your business wants to succeed on line, don’t bet against Google.
But regardless of whether Google Plus succeeds as a network, what about the question of whether Google+ is really relevant to your day-to-day business marketing efforts? If search engine optimization and search engine marketing are important in your overall marketing strategy, then the answer is yes (even if you have no real need of Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or any other social medium).
The way that Google is making Google+ relevant is by leveraging their dominant position in search.
The issue of whether sharing a website post or post on Google+ will make it rank better is a matter of hot debate in the SEO community with some “studies” indicating that sharing content on Google+ makes it rank higher, and other studies showing it has no effect.
I believe that particular question can remain unanswered for the time being. The important factor here is something called Google Authorship. By tying your content into your own profile on Google+ you can raise the visibility of that content. What it affects is how your content is displayed in search results. Everyone has seen the small thumbnail pictures of people that appear next to many search listings (see my example below).
The impact of this is considerable. Human beings are hard-wired from birth to look toward human faces. Which of the above listings do you look at first? The ones that are plain text, or the ones with a face next to them. Like it or not, the face draws the eyes of the searcher. Increasingly you will need to make sure that a human face adorns your content in search results, not merely to stand out, but also to avoid fading away as your competitors adopt this tactic.
In a future post I’ll discuss how to get this done. Or, if you want to get started taking advantage of this right away, contact your account representative at Horizon Web Marketing and we’ll help you get going with Google Authorship.
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
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