SEO for Google Plus

If you’re looking to promote your site or brand on Google+, you’ll want to get as much out of it as possible.

What’s interesting to know is that Google+ isn’t like your typical Google organic ranking, so the same strategies don’t apply here.  There are some common threads though, and ways that you can use Google+ to your advantage.

Here’s what you should know.

Searching Google+

When you search Google+, you’re generally given three areas where you can narrow down results:  Search [Everything] [from Everyone] [Everywhere].

If you search for highly competitive terms like SEO, Internet Marketing, Web Designer and so forth, Google will assume you’re looking for a person who does these things, or a business – and it will return people and pages related to your query.

The “Everything” option generally gets used when you’re searching for a thing, like “Nikon Camera” rather than a specialty or position. You can also sort the “Everything” option to show only posts from you or from people within your Circles.

The “Everywhere” option is currently only used for check-ins in larger cities (similar to Foursquare), but may have some local search refinement capabilities in the future – good news for offline marketers!

Tweaking Your Results Pages

Since People and Pages tend to come up when searching for competitive terms, how can you maximize efforts to ensure that your best keywords come up when searched for here?  Simple – you put them in places such as your Introduction, Employment, Places Lived or Education.

Obviously, I’m not implying that you should game results. But, for example, you could easily put Internet Marketing Specialist, San Francisco, CA and you’d likely come up in search results covering those terms.

When or if your page will appear in the search results depends on several factors, most importantly, how many people are in your circles, and how many people have YOU in their circles. These are the most heavily favored ranking factors right now.  Areas like Occupation and how often you engage people on Google+ are not used (or if they are, it’s insignificant).

Filtered Results and Search+ Your World

Here’s the kicker – you’re going to get different results for Google based on whether you’re logged in to Google+ or not. It’s the whole push of this “Search Plus Your World” movement that tries to keep engagement going well beyond Google+.

Currently, Search+ tends to pull results from your circles, but also from basic text matches.  It’s very basic in what it can do right now, but I’d expect this feature to grow exponentially and become as advanced as some of Google’s other algorithms.

Then of course, there’s the +1 button. The more plus ones you have, obviously, the better your reach and ranking in Google+.

This post only scratches the surface of what’s possible within Google+. As the service is still relatively new, only time will tell how it will impact other Google services, including search, videos, places and more.

The one thing you want to keep in mind is that you should always optimize all your social network profiles without spamming. This helps ensure that you have a well-rounded, easy-to-find profile that can help your shared content spread.

If you’d like to add me to your circles, here’s a link to my Google plus profile:  https://plus.google.com/100551926183633496990

Please share your opinion on Google + by leaving a comment below.

Thanks