This time, it's about engaged traffic.
While checking our stats here at Moz, we noticed that while visits sent to us from Facebook keep decreasing, traffic from Google+ has started to appear significant by comparison.
While not everyone has an audience active on Google+, the number of people who interact socially with any Google products on a monthly basis now reportedly exceeds 500 million.
What's different about Google+ is that beyond the direct social visits as seen above, Google offers marketers the opportunity to interact with visitors through many more touch points, including YouTube and directly in search results. This means that for visitors who engage with you through Google+, the potential traffic channels multiply.
For this method to work, it requires that your visitors actually engage.
Facebook and Twitter experts know this and perfected their engagement craft over several years. Engagement with Google+ means a new set tactics and best practices. These are areas that I consistently see otherwise expert brands fall short and miss easy opportunities.
Let's discuss supercharging our Google+ engagement.
1. Headlines, every time
The more users notice your Google+ posts, the more likely they are to engage. The challenge is to stand out in a sea of thousands of posts.
First things first. Unlike other social platforms, Google+ posts act more like mini blog posts, and every post needs a headline. Not only does adding a header help your post stand out, but Google uses the first words of your post in two different ways:
- They incorporates your headline into the title tag of the post
- The headline is typically what displays in Google search results
Adding the right headline can help your post stand out in search results, and can greatly influence the number of people who both notice and click through to your content.
Use a headline, every time.
2. Formatting for attention
Easily break up your long blocks of text with formatting to make your posts simpler to read and skim. This allows you to communicate more clearly and makes your text more accessible.
In addition to adding bold to your headline, copy and paste the formatting cheats below to help compose a post that stands out from the rest.
G+ Formatting Cheats:
*This is a Bolded Headline*
_
Italic_
*Bold*
-Strikethrough-
Mix and match styles: _*Bolded Italic*_
Numbered List:
*1.* Point One
*2.* Point Two
*3.* Point Three
Bulleted List:
• Point 1
• Point 2
• Point 3
Link:
https://example.com
#hashtag1 #hashtag2
How it Looks:
3. Use your words
Google+ is a both a visual and a text medium, so make them both count!
Don't be afraid of writing longer posts. Instead of simply posting a link to your latest blog posts and hoping for the best, add a summary of your important points. Explain why this is important. Give people additional context as to why they should click and share.
Personal example of Google+ posts where I embraced the long-form:
- Introducing The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 • 308 +1s, 222 Reshares
- 5 Takeaways and Assumptions from Matt Cutt's Video on Authority vs. Popularity • 194 +1s, 94 Reshares
- New Google Title Tag Length Guidelines: 55 Characters • 152 +1s, 180 Reshares
The few minutes it takes to jot down your thoughts could result in multiple reshares and thousands of additional eyeballs on your content.
4. Use your images too
The vast majority of top posts on Google+ use images. In fact, the most popular post I've personally ever shared was a simple animated GIF.
For increased shareability, it's usually best to upload your own photo.
By default, Google+ tries to include an image for any URL that you share. Unless you define the right Open Graph images and the proper social meta tags, the images are often not ideal, or are sized wrong.
When you upload your own image, the image links to the full-size version, not the URL you want to share. In this case, don't forget to include a link to the URL in the text.
5. Smarter sharing > targeted
Most people set their post to "public," thinking this gives them maximum exposure. In fact, there is a much more effective way to gain exposure to your top content, as long as you don't abuse it.
By also adding your circles and select individuals to your share settings, this triggers a notification for those users that you've shared a post directly with them.
Used smartly, these notifications can greatly influence the amount of activity on a post.
Warning: When targeted sharing is used too often, it turns spammy. Be careful what you share.
Only choose your very best, most important posts.
Amazingly, Google+ also allows you to notify people in your circles via email when you share. In order for this to work, the individuals must have their email notifications set up correctly. Be extra careful with this function, as it can turn people off fast!
6. The mighty, mighty #hashtag
Twitter and Facebook have made us accustomed to hashtags, but Google+ uses them in entirely different ways to organize and recommend content.
Google uses hashtags and semantic analysis to form relationships between topics. For example, consider this hashtag search for #linkbuilding. Notice the related topics Google associates with link building:
These associations aren't random. In fact, Mark Traphagen demonstrates how you can "teach" Google these relationships by tagging your own posts.
By default, Google often adds hashtags automatically to any post with sufficient text. Best practice is to add your own relevant hashtags at the end or within the body of each post.
7. Find the followed links
The followed link on Google+ has gone the way of the dodo.
When Google+ was born, it was a bonanza for links, and seen as an SEO paradise. Since that time, Google has replaced most equity passing followed links with nofollow, which pass no link equity. This includes profile links, "contributor to," and shared URLs.
There is one exception. Public +1's remain followed.
For now, whenever a visitor +1s your content without sharing it to their stream, this results in a followed link as long as the visitor has +1's set to "public."
This could be an oversight, or Google could remove these followed links soon.
While the value of +1s for SEO has been debated again and again, this may be the last remaining place that a +1 may actually pass link equity.
8. Leverage Google+ comments
I'm sort of in love with the Google+ commenting system.
Much like Facebook's popular commenting plugin, you can embed Google+ comments on your own blog. What makes this so powerful is when visitors leave a comment, they are given the option of sharing your post to their own Google+ followers.
This can greatly increase engagement among these users and their followers.
Officially, Google+ comments are only supported for Google's own Blogger platform. Fortuneatly, clever folks have devised a number of plugins and solutions for Wordpress, Drupal, and more.
9. +Post Ads: the future of social engagement?
Google's +Post Ads offer an interesting premise: take your most successful Google+ posts and turn them into ads that show all over Google's massive display network.
This exposes your posts to more people who otherwise would not have interacted with your brand on Google+ alone. This interaction drives more social sharing, and the sharing can continue after the paid promotion is over.
For example, if you are a car manufacturer, you could target your Google+ posts to appear on auto parts websites.
While still early in adoption, +Post Ads present a unique opportunity for businesses to attract customers at different stages of the buying cycle, and then keep those customers engaged through social media.
While the jury is still out if +Post Ads will be effective, it will likely take some time for marketers to learn how to effectively leverage this channel.
10. Interactive posts
Interactive Google+ posts allow you to perfectly customize how your content is shared, but they also allow you to prompt your social audience to take a specific action.
Google maintains an impressive list of actions which you can automatically embed into your post. These include:
- Watch a video
- Sign up for a newsletter
- Reserve a table at a restaurant
- Open an app
- ...and about 100 more.
Mike Arnesen wrote up a good overview of getting started with Interactive posts, or you can find more at the Google Developers blog.
Building your influence
Google+ isn't so much a social media platform like Twitter and Facebook, but an identity platform that works with Google to connect across all our different devices and web services.
This means that while sites like Facebook and Twitter can still deliver traffic to your website, Google+ is so integrated across so many platforms that it has many more places to touch potential visitors. Business that build up their audience base today potentially position themselves to collect bigger rewards in the future.
Do you receive traffic from Google+? Is it a part of your social strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
I did a little spot checking on the G+ posts and how they come up in Google search. It seems that post on individual g+ accounts show up in search results, but posts made on company g+ pages do not.
Is there a difference in the type of account you post on as far as google indexing is concerned?
Fascinating! Would love to do more research to see if that's true in all cases.
Posts made by company G+ pages do show up in search if you're following that company and logged in when you search.
That I have notice also. But, what happed if we are not logged in? Other people can see the contend as well, or only the people that have an Google account? How can help Google+ a SEO organic campaign?
saw the same
thatswhy I unfollowed some persons wich overdid posting on g+
I saw search results with 3 Posts of them - so I uncircled them and will never click follow again that easy - I watch how often they post and how good the content is...
^^ again edit didnt worked - it worked one day
I remind my clients how they should consider Google+ as a "mini-blog" and take the extra time and effort to properly prepare and package their posts for maximum appeal to their audience. This A+ article will help systemize this process for all of us. Interactive Posts is more advanced, but too powerful not to ponder using more!
I like this analogy. Many of the items Cyrus shared (good headings, formatting, use of images & etc.) are the same for blogs.
For most niches I deal with on a daily basis the traffic / audience just isn't there. However, engagement on Google+ seems to be much more rewarding. Facebook might have the audience, but the engagement is so fleeting and minimal that often you don't see the full value.
Also, there's a bunch of my friends that have forsaken Twitter / Facebook for Google+ just because of this or that reason. Reason's most people could care less about, but these individuals are also high level decision makers in the IT world for the companies they represent. For a SaaS or I/O hardware provider that's digging for that node, Google+ might just be far more worth their efforts and time even though it's a small world.
Unfortunately Google+ will eventually succumb to 2 realities for SEOs.
1) It will degrade into a post-apocalyptic wasteland where Matt Cutts wanders the barren sands in bondage wear looking to steal your food and water amongst the few survivors and hardcore Googlenauts.
2) It will gain popularity and be overgamed by zealot SEOs looking for their next crack fix, whichcase Google will pull the plug on the value. Leaving SEOs with a traditional play of actually putting up good content and earning clicks, which will then cause a corresponding increase in crack addicted SEOs complaining that Google isn't fair and that SEO is, indeed, dead for the 306th time.
3) Facebook will buy it, which will set in a series of events beginning with an unhappy CERN engineer throwing a used taco wrapper into the large hadron collider. This, in turn, will open a black hole through which Joe McCarthy will return as a Terminator and wage war against Facebook believing it to be a socialist ploy to indoctrinate the world.
So as you can see ... the horizon is bleak for Google+ but until either of these certainties occurs it will remain a very viable pathway for me, even if the audience is small :)
I vote for #3. Terminator vs. Facebook.
Seems the most plausible. Beware of naked men wandering the streets, especially ones that have an intense distrust for Communists and/or are looking for Sarah Connor.
No-doubt one of the best G+ guide(about generate traffic through Google +) that I had ever read! Fantastic job Mr. Shepard.
Submitted to Inbound.org too! :)
Here's the Inbound.org link: https://inbound.org/articles/view/10-smart-tips-to...
Thanks!
Yee!!.. :)
Great post Cyrus, and quite an impressive addendum to my own post here on Moz (https://moz.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-google-myanswers), where I was presenting in detail the amazing power of Google+ (in all its facets) in Private Search.
Your post add the "how to have followers who will see you in a outstanding position thanks to Google+" part to what I wrote.
I believe there is no better explanation about Google+ strategy than in this article. I didn't even suspect about these possibilities.Thank you very much for it!
Great post, thank you!
I too have noticed a dramatic decrease in Facebook reach and referrals. I've been experimenting with Google+ for a while now, and think it's a much more social platform, with more engagement and interaction.
We use a social media scheduling tool, and scheduled a couple of posts a day to go out on Google+ everyday when we first started using it. We got ZERO interaction.
Then, I started actively and manually posting and sharing links, contributing and setting up Google communities and commenting on other people's posts - it exploded. Google+ is definitely not for robots!
I can't believe I didn't know that you could bold and underline your text - that's a brilliant tip to know!
I must ask, what is your opinion of circle shares on Google+? Do you think they are spammy? Or a great way to reach out and build a larger following?
I've used Circle shares only a couple times for very select posts. Used carefully, I think they can be moderately effective at giving you an extra boost. Used too much, you'll turn people off to your brand.
I didn't realize +1s are still considered do follow links. That's a great find, Cyrus. As you mentioned, I wonder if Google simply missed this and will eventually correct it to a nofollow. However, when you think about they're definition of what a link should represent - a vote in favor of something - it would make sense that +1s stayed do follow.
After all, that's quite literally what a +1 is: a vote for the content. When you +1 something, you're saying, "yeah, this is good" and your face to the right is your "stamp of approval."
I didn't want to get lost in a do/no follow debate after such a great post that gives some really valuable engagement ideas, however that piece of information was new to me. This is also the first time I'm hearing of +Post Ads, has anyone had experience testing these? Is Moz doing anything, Cyrus?
We haven't tried +Post ads yet, but we'll probably experiment soon. Right now, any advertiser with 1000 Google+ followers qualifies.
While I can't comment on +Post ads, I can tell you that G+ pages with less than 100 followers aren't eligible for the Social Extension in Google Adwords. It seems that is the bottom threshold for those extensions to show (among other things).
Thanks for this post, Cyrus. I really love the actionable tips! I do however think you missed a big one though (also, this is possibly already mentioned in the comments... I admit I haven't read them all yet.). In #5 you mention sharing the posts with specific people, but I believe most people, at least the ones who you are probably targeting, simply ignore a notification if it says "Cyrus Shepard Shared with you: New Post bla bla bla." I do.
However, if you actually tag a person in the post itself, the person gets a notification that says, "Cyrus Shepard Mentioned you: New Post bla bla bla." Mentioned you > Shared with you. Mark Traphagen is brilliant at this. He tags people in the G+ posts all the time, and gets quite a bit of conversation going on his page. I'm sure this gets his stuff reshared much more than simply share it with other folks
Plus, if you share with only individuals, or circles, and not with "Public," when someone decides to reshare the post, they get a pop up saying something like "Remember this was originally not public, yada yada" which could make someone think they shouldn't reshare it.
Good points Jen!
+Mentioning individuals > Sharing with individuals.
Great article Cyrus - wish you could have dived into communities as well though - a great way to build audiences and continuously engage with a group of related members.
Google+ Communities are awesome! Great way to increase engagement as well.
Good post Cyrus, Just the few things I like to mention here.
You started your post with the Facebook's comparison, I might be wrong but personally I haven't seen any significant efforts by Roger there. Twitter and G+ are being handled really well but not Facebook. May be because of the audience is not much in.
As far as the hashtags are concerned, Twitter still holds a firm grip. But yes, I do agree G+ uses it entirely in a different sphere. Sometimes it even adds its own hashtag if you don't put any. but have you seen any impact of G+ hashtags? Do people really use it like Twitter?
The G+ communities are also play a very important role for the interaction, they helps you to build the authority by taking part in discussions, sharing stuff and relevant material.
Thanks once again.
Hi Umar,
Thanks for the comment. We do seem to have different success with different channels. I don't want to speak on behalf of the community, but I believe we do put about equal amounts of effort into each channel, although some channels require more attention than others because our users are more engaged there, i.e. Twitter.
Here's a screenshot of our declining Facebook traffic over the past several months: https://imgur.com/SOITILk
Hi Cyrus,
Thanks a lot for compiling this list of tips for Google. I personally like your suggestions for posts formatting and interactive posts. I've started using your suggestions right away and hopeful to see some benefits in coming future.
Thank you Cyrus for Sharing Wonderful Content with us. I personally Use Google+ for so Long time. I agreed with you that 2014 is of Google+. It is an Undervalued social media Platform but now Users are much aware about the Importance of Google+.
I will surely Take the Benefit of these Comprehensive Guide of Google+ and Implement all the points which You've mentioned.
Incredibly useful, thank you! To answer your question at the end; we're including G+ in our social strategy, but the limitation we're still finding is how many (or, more accurately, how few) people in our industry use G+. Internally we've managed to sell the importance of it, but incorporating it into our external communication plan (i.e. trying to encourage people to visit Google+ for more useful content) hasn't yielded much yet. That said, it's early days for us as we've only recently moved into the social world.
No doubt considering Facebook/Twiiter is like sugar in coffee to build active social media engagement but experts are saying G+ has more SEO impact than both of them along with social media presence. Good points Cyrus.
It's quite awesome how google being biased by promoting Google + links than any other social media platforms out there, :-) . Thank for this article, thumbs up!
It's not really a bias. Google has direct and complete control over the data. That is more trustworthy and a cleaner module to insert into the algorithm than scraping data from Twitter / Facebook.
@Cyrus
Great Work
These tips will help me more to increase traffic on my website.
Thanks for sharing it with us
Superbly written from a smart and analytical angle. I have seen Google+ Hashtags are different from hashtags on any other social networks.
I like the focus on headlines. I work for Optimal Digital Marketing and we love headlines, as they have been the biggest eye catcher since the beginning of media itself and will continue to be for years to come. I think G+ has probably implemented this better than any other social sharing network because they really understand how to catalog unique indexible content. As time goes on G+ will continue to be more and more useful to people. I think if Google+ starts allowing for more developer plugins it will become more applicable. Has anyone implemented Hangouts on Air? I think that may be a pretty useful marketing tool: https://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/onair.html
That was a great post on G+. BTW amazed to look over the conversations about Google local's Do-followed links! Bit surprising!
Interesting topic @Cyrus. The point about #tag is really very helpful and it clarified my confusions about #tag in Google Plus. I must say every Google+ user should read it.
Very nice tips. I will try to follow your tips. Thank you
thank for share !
I am not so good at leveraging the multiple social platforms at once but the way you expressed how one can use and get benefited from every single interaction on G+ would definitely be great and exciting for newbies like me to start with!
Thanks again, Cyrus for the wonderful article on G+!!
The formatting cheats is a good thing to know. Go G+!
Is it wrong that this is the biggest takeaway I've got from this excellent post? :)
Tip number one is awesome! I didn't realize Google will display that headline in search results.
Thanks!
Thanks for yet another awesome post Cyrus!
Great article. We need new and powerful solutions.
Great help Cyrus! I found this post as most shared one in the past 6 months on Moz.com! I have shared it right away!
Love the Google+ cheat sheet for text. Saved, and will be sharing.
what do you think about the latest news about G+?
This is nice post for Social Submission Technique.
I want to know How to divert the Google Plus visitor to my Website.
Because I have saw that there is million of my Google plus profile viewer, but from there some visitor comes to my Blog.
My question is how to get almost 40% of them to my Blog?
excellent post!
Just Awesome!
we use google+ for increasing website traffic,it seems work!
Thanks for giving a such a nice full inforamtion.
Nice article Cyrus! Just found this post by searching for "how to promote using google plus", so still not getting much traffic through this source. Will try some of the things you have mentioned here. As we are already using facebook comments plugin for now, we would prefer to leave that as it is as of now. The rest would give it a shot!
Hi Cyrus, one of the best articles about Google + and traffic ever read, thanks!!
Unfortunately I think I've found this article a bit late I think... Do you think Google+ stills has the same impact on traffic and SEO in 2016?
Gracias
-Ricardo
Good article...thanks
Google plus had changed drastically.
Hi, thanks for this insightful post. I put it to use and saw an immediate rise in my search engine ranking. I was so excited that I immediate curated a post by 7 other experts about how google+ helps seo; I thought to share it with the community here https://danewah.com/how-google-plus-helps-seo/
I always have a good visual coupled with the right words in Google+. People are more inclined to click on one and share when they see a nice graph. For cons, I only rarely uses hashtags because I did not know their reach. This aricle helped me see more clearly.Today, G + is increasing day by day community. It would be foolish not to enjoy.
Great article ..very helpful!!!!
Brillaint article, thanks for the read!! Do people get notified of the type of circle you add them to? Or is it purely "you have been added to a circle"? still getting the hang of G+.......
Was "fortuneatly" used on purpose after point #8? Typo or not... touché.
Very nice article.... Can google+ increase local search ?
Fantastic, it is true that Google+ is different with respect to interaction with potential customers.
In my humble experience as a beginner I sensed some of these points. It is gratifying to see this evidence exposed with order and clarity. This serves a great help. Thank you very much.
Wow awesome resource. I have found Google plus to be extremely useful in building an actual audience online. Thanks for the tips!
Awesome insights about getting G+ interactive with our SEO! I'm still surprised to see about the +1s that pass link equity. I am still trying for the followed link on Google+, but could not achieve. It seems to be quite tricky! Thanks for the wonderful information Cyrus!
Sweet. Really liking how the Google+ comments share your content... I just replaced WordPress comments with this on my blog. Google+ is inevitably going to be huge because it's being pushed forward by the unstoppable force of Google.
But first You must have unique and valuable content to share. Writing about nothing even 1000s posts won't do very much for You. Content, authorship, g+, socials will build Your brand and ctr will be highier too (I see changes in my GA data).
Actually, content doesn't even have to be unique or valuable. Google can't decide what is valuable and what isn't. It's a machine that reads code. That's why they associate valuable with social interest / links, because it's what the machine can read and compute.
Super quality stuff might be easier to market, but there's TONs of recycled crap in the Top 5 of big SERPs making more money than that prim' and proper article.
Unless you are writing for business collateral.
Google Plus is getting popularity as a traffic builder. I am on the path to use it to maximize my traffic. Thanks for your detailed info about using Google Plus.
Awesome Post :). My company always see Google+ as inferior to Facebook. Now I realize more the importance of Google Plus.
You gave Basic basic tricks about More traffic on Google Plus and page.
Thanks for sharing this Cyrus!
Google is no longer the "Ghost Town" is once was. The ability to add information "text" to entice users to read more is very effective. Better still, the ability to email your "circles" once published is fantastic.
Is +1 link equity the new "search strategy" goldmine? Has anyone identified noticeable search results with +1's?
Excellent article! I'm printing a copy and keeping it at my desk! Thank you.
I really appreciate content related to Google+ that doesn't dwell on negative details. My money is on Google + in the long game, so in any given moment things can look comparatively buggier, messier, or more irritating than with other networks. This will all come together over time, and posts like this give people the tools to start building equity immediately.
That's another master piece Cyrus. I was unaware of the formatting thing in Google plus. Although Facebook introduced formatting the headline and description in posts long back but this was expected one and great that you have shared hear. Timing of any update on social media is crucial. Also one more thing, I started practising on to Google Plus Ripples which shows how much was the reach and the persons who shared a particular post. It's a great way to network with influencers on Google Plus. Great post!!
It's really a great article for make your web - traffic smooth. Well now a day we all are running toward Facebook and Tweeter but Google+ is the one platform to increase
your web-traffic.
The 7th point "Find the followed links" is quite interesting for me. As you mentioned, "Whenever a visitor +1s your content without sharing it to their stream, this results in a followed link as long as the visitor has +1's set to "public." But, when I shared one of the post in Google+, though it has been liked but still the link is nofollow.
Hi Hardik,
Sorry, I could have been more clear.
All links in your "public plus 1s" are followed. Here's mine: https://plus.google.com/+CyrusShepard/plusones
These are not post I shared to Google. Instead, these are posts on the Internet that had a +1 button (just like the one above on this post). In these cases, I +1'd the post itself, but did not share it to my stream or post it on my Google+ page. Does that make sense? All I did was give the post a +1 without sharing, and the people who follow me on Google+ never saw it.
It would be the same if you hit the +1 button above on this post, but didn't share.
Hopefully this makes sense! Thanks for the comment.
To increase your web traffic it is very important to make your posts viral. According to my observation, timing of the post matters as well with all above described tips.
If you are posting at these times 5pm-6pm, 9am-10am or 2:00am to 3:00am when most of the people are using Google+, there is a good chance that more people would look upon your post.
But of course the post should be interesting and eye catchy as said above.
Timing is surely essential... not sure about the times you share, which surely are the most effective in your case, but not necessarily so for others (i.e.: in my case those timeframes would be quite absurd).
Interestingly, I post most of my content at midnight. Seems Google+ is pretty good about getting my content in front of folks when they are actually awake and active.
But I admit, I haven't done much experimenting with this.
I could add days to send offers and personal newsletters (not offer dedicated to You). IMO the best days to send offer are tuesday and wednesday. Worst friday, saturday, sunday. For personal newsletter are thursday, friday. Worst saturday. Timings too: offers: 9-12am, personal newsletters 3-6pm. I see huge impact in clicks in this hours and days.
I agree with timing of the post having some effect on engagement. My posts seems to do better if posted either early in the morning, 6-7am, or later in the afternoon, 3-4pm. Target audience is people interested in SEO, so I'm not sure if it is people just getting in to the office, and going through morning posts, or in afternoon, chilling out when the day is over.
Very very interesting article. This is totally what i am looking for. I am not that active to google+, but because of this article i should be active then.
Great post, I particularly like the Google+ commenting also. And great tip on finding the follow links, hopefully that will remain in place for content folks find valuable by bothering to "+1" it.
A quick questions maybe the excellent community can help answer:
When should you use a local Google+ page vs. standard Google+ page for business? Google seems to automatically create local Google+ pages for business whenever they submit and verify a business listing.
I recommend ALWAYS using the self-created G+ page for businesses. It's the only way you can control what's on it.
Geoff,
Probably a question more suitable for Q&A. Yes, Google now automatically creates a Google+ page for a verified business listing. Whether you would choose a local page vs non-local depends on your audience and business in my opinion.
The Interactive Post concept is very interesting. I hope my competitors don't find out about it!
Amazing stuff Cyrus, great content sharing strategy, there are some other emerging platforms like scoop.it, stumbleupon, It would be great if you can put together a case study on some high emerging social media channels other than the main ones (Twitter, Facebook, G+)...I would love to have it from your end.....Thx for sharing... :)
Great post Cyrus Shepard - Just spotted something though...
These two:
Both seem to link to the same G+ Post... I think the '5 Takeaways...' link may be wrong, unless I'm missing something?
Excellent post though! Some really good tips.
I love the concepts here and I wish I could apply them.
However, Google+ and its other properties (local, youtube) are so volatile and buggy, they have been a mess for our resort hotel, and Google support is abysmal.
A brief run-down of our issues with our Google properties:
I wish I was making this up.With all the issues I've been facing with Google properties, I honestly don't see how any business could invest time and resources into it until they get their act together.
Can you really afford to not have the Google map listing?
I feel your pain on this. I have to keep up with over 90 G+ pages, all for hotels & resorts aside from our company's pages.
Unfortunately, Google's choice to crowd-source their data corrections wasn't well thought out from a spam protection point of view. You're dealing with OTA's, competitors & any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to want your listing changed to their information. It's easier to steal, hack, & inject data into an existing listing than it is to create a fake, new listing or additional duplicate listings that actually show.
I'm sure we could trade horror stories on this topic for days.
----
As to your support issue, I was on the phone with their help desk yesterday, but it took me 40 minutes of sitting on hold before I was able to speak with anyone.
https://support.google.com/places/troubleshooter/3125936?hl=en
Google plus is making waves now. You can't ignore Google plus. I can see Google+ posts coming up in search engine results so its definitely worth using it.
The getting started with interactive posts link takes you to a helpful resource. A possible concern to note on that page is, "I’d look into setting up some password protection on that directory since anyone who knows the URL can compose and push posts from it.". That would really stink to set it up and have strangers post from your site.
No-doubt all the points are valid..... i am really impressed with this list for Google +. I've started using your suggestions right away and hopeful to see some benefits in coming future.
thank you so much Cyrus for sharing this article.
Cyrus, a continuity error, the second bullet on the left says Bolded Italic on the right it just says Bold... Just FYI, pedantry matters ;-)
Great content Cyrus!! What's your opinion about the reciprocal +1s in some Communities? Because I've got a lot of +1 in my posts thanks to this! It would be penalized??
Thanks!
Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. Keep sharing such ideas in the future as well. This was actually what I was looking for, and I am glad to came here! Thanks for sharing the such information with us.
It is so much true that for business G+ is far better than Facebook cause we can find the relevant audience here.
Thank you for the great share.The tips are just fantastic for the marketing on G+.
Excellent post, thank you! I find that it's been hard to find a good, in-depth article on Google Plus tips for SEO. Very timely and helpful.
thanks Cyrus-Shepardhink that's a great article.after reading this article people are very cleared that how a business receive traffic from Google+?and how a business can get a great benefit with there Google plus page
Cyrus - two questions.
1) "Hot on Google+" - do you know how Google selects which posts are quote un quote hot. I saw one the other day listed as Hot on Google+ yet it has zero +'s, zero shares, and zero comments. In my opinion, Google has been giving special treatment to certain companies. Curious if you know how a post with zero activity could be considered hot. Note: the post had been 1 hour old when it had no activity.
2) G+ now shows "views". Do you think it would be a bad thing to have many views, but not many followers? Does this signify people visit the page, but don't wish to follow the person. I have approx. 3.5 million views on G+ profile page but only a little over 2000 in circle. Wonder if this would become a problem.
Thanks for the article about G+.
Lovely post. Each point would help companies and users in leaving an impact on those who matter in the right manner.
Thanks for the confirmation i have been trying to get benefit of google+ through strategies and i assure you all it really works my company is just 3 weeks old and it already in gogle first results with specific keywords. I didnt know all the features google+ can cover but now after reading this mind blowing article i ve come to know those bomb points as well will definitely try to use them to boost my ranking
Cheers
Ranawaqas.Com
There are actually 2 exceptions to the no followed links on G+. The "About Us" tab with the description field accepts links that are still followed.
That would be interesting. Do you happen to have a screenshot?
I can provide several, but here's one for example. (the joys of having a developer plugin that strikes out nofollow links)
https://screencast.com/t/kvrKovckORy
I had the opportunity to meet with Vic from Google Friday before last in Dallas for a G+ hangout. I'll provide a link to my article about it when we finally get it posted on our blog.
Yes, looks like in Google local they are still followed. Nice catch.
Very Informative...good article.
Thanks.. I will follow all of your points to increase website traffic.
this best article. this is a way esaey for seo
Great post. Very valuable information. Thanks.
Rhonda Harris
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Excellent article! Very interesting!
Very Impressive
Thanks for sharing this article, Its very beneficial for "Increase Website Traffic".