How Google+ is Winning the SEO Game

If you have looked over some “top SEO tips for 2012” type lists, you may have seen items encouraging you to focus on Google+ in the coming year. But if Facebook has 800 million users, and Twitter is a heavyweight with young professionals and in the world events arena, why bother? Google+ has “only” 62 million. But Google is a steamroller, and it is preparing to level the social networking field. Why should you consider +?

First, because the network is forecast by many experts to reach an impressive 400 million users by the end of 2012. That exponential growth and potential may be reason enough to ramp up your Google+ efforts, but there is another benefit: SEO. Google is a master at this, and it is using every tool at its disposal to make + a powerhouse. + profiles tend to rank far better than Facebook pages because the latter does not allow the search giant to crawl its regular sites (fan pages only). This means your Google+ profile will land near the top of the SERPs, while your Facebook could be below the fold, depending on how much other content you offer.

Another reason that + could be beneficial is that it is easier to grow your connections than it is on Facebook and Twitter. The point is not to look popular – though that may help – but to create links. The more your content is shared, the more it will appear on searches; likewise, it could link people to people who link to you, which is the point of networks.

Google+ is a wealth of potential content, and you can include public posts, bios, photos, links to other people, and everything you have ever +1’d. Average Google profiles have over five times as much content as Twitter profiles, and as much as nine times as much as Facebook profiles. Content is king, and this is a forum that allows you to produce a lot of it. Not only that, it is easier to share and disseminate it.

Google+ is growing, and like Google’s other products, it is going to be a mammoth. Get busy optimising your profile and making connections. You’ll see rewards in 2012.

Posted by Hitesh Patel, Managing Director at Bullseye Media