Google+ Is It Worth The Effort?

Despite its detractors in recent times, there’s no doubt that Google+ can have a number of benefits for businesses hoping to develop a stronger online presence including its positive effect on search results, the link to YouTube and higher visibility using Google Authorship.

Much has been written on the good and bad of Google+ with its fans hailing it as a powerful and sophisticated tool that can greatly increase your visibility and detractors saying that is difficult to use and understand. There is no doubt that plus is still a work in progress but it has the potential to become a strong addition to the business marketing armoury.

Google+ YouTube

When you sign up for a Google+ account you automatically get attached to YouTube, the video sharing platform that is now the second largest search engine in the world (after Google itself). If you have videos to share, they are automatically posted on your Google+ account.

The introduction of Google accounts to YouTube was, in part, brought in to cut down on spam comments. This means that your comments now have better visibility than ever before.

Google+ Greater Search Visibility

You may have noticed something different in your searches recently with more Google+ pages showing up. Posting your content in Google+ can help it rank in searches even when your web page doesn’t.

Google has embraced hashtags in searches so including them in your Google+ posts can further increase your visibility. Google+ reviews and mentions also give power to localised searches making business pages more likely to appear in “Local Carousels”.

Google Authorship

Adding Google Authorship to your posts or comments presents you as a credible and real author, providing a chance for you to become more popular and ranked higher because of the number of people who have read and shared your words.

Greater and less fragmented sharing means you become seen as more of an authority.
If you write posts for other sites your Google Authorship still links to your own Google+ page.
AuthorRank keeps track of your popularity and credibility which means that, if you produce consistent good content, you will be noticed more.

Google Authorship was originally introduced to knock down the amount of spam and duplicate articles on websites and also to strengthen Google’s search functions by not purely relying on bots to rank pages. Linking your social media and content to Google+ makes it easier to get your business noticed.

Google+ Creating Circles of Friends

Google Circles gives you the chance to build groups of people, organise them and differentiate who you want to receive which content. You start off with a default number of choices but you can add to these. So, you can have business contacts that you regularly work with or would like to connect with who you can send a specific type of post or comment and you can have a separate group for brand ambassadors or committed fans for your product or service.