Sharing on Google Plus (The Right Way) To Improve SEO
With Google including Google Plus statuses in their general search results, it’s no surprise that Google Plus is a great tool for improving the SEO of your website.
Placing links to your site on Google Plus improves SEO in all of the expected ways; incoming links, drawing in traffic from your followers, and allowing followers to share your work to increase links and traffic (more traffic to a link tells Google that the link is highly relevant). Now, Google is also including these links (and status updates) in their SERPs. This provides an excellent opportunity to improve your site’s SEO and do basic content marketing at the same time.
If you want to get the most from this new feature, you need to do it correctly, and to do that, you need to know how Google’s Personal Search works. Essentially, when you do a Google search, the traditional search results are now mixed with results from the people you follow on Google Plus. If you search for SEO, for example, you’ll see instances from when other people in your stream have mentioned SEO. You might also get a couple recommendations on who to follow for more SEO information.
To start using Google Plus for SEO, you need to be a member of the right Google Plus communities. This is a matter of knowing your audience. If you’re sharing blog posts and links about smart business practices, and no one who has you circled cares about small business tips, it’s not going to help you. Chances are, very few people are going to click your link, or do a search where your link would show up as a result. To find people who would be interested in your links, do a search at the top of the Google Plus page for your keywords, and start looking for people who match your audience.
When you start sharing links, don’t just stick the link into your status with a two or three word description. Tell your followers what the link is for, and what they can expect if they click it. Is it a great article on the importance of social media? Tell them that, and don’t leave out the keywords. Sharing articles based on the keywords you’re targeting is a great strategy here, whether the links point to your work or not. This helps to build relevancy.
Don’t just share links. Offer something to the conversation. Google Plus is set up to make it easy for you to share your thoughts about a link when you post it. Write out a longer response and it will improve what shows up in the search result for the appropriate keywords. When someone clicks over to your post, they’ll see what you wrote, and they’ll be more likely to not only click on the shared link but also be more likely to visit your site, as well.
If you haven’t joined Google Plus yet, the SEO benefits should be enough to convince you to give it a try. If it’s done correctly, sharing on Google Plus can bring in a lot of traffic to your site as well as improving the relevancy Google associates with your name. There’s no way that it can’t benefit your site.
Have you noticed different traffic patterns since Google introduced their personal search?
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