How Google+ affects SEO and your website's ranking?
Are you a webmaster looking for ways to promote your website through the newly arrived Google+ ? In this article I will discuss how Google+ affects SEO and how Google Plus influence the search engine ranking.
Remember the days when you search for some hot topics, Google would show the live twitter feeds in the search results? Those days are gone. Google does not have the tie up with Twitter anymore to show the live feeds in the search results. Okay, so that is next? Obviously, Google+
In July 2011, Google introduced Google+, a social networking solution. Even though Google did not mention who their competitors were, it was obvious that Google+ is aimed to compete with Facebook and Twitter. Google+ combines a lot of features of Facebook and Twitter. It offers much more privacy and control of what you share.How SEO works with Google?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This means, optimizing your content to please search engines so that your web pages will be displayed in the search results when someone search for relevant keywords. Each search engine has it's own rules and algorithm to determine which page to be displayed when someone search for something. Obviously, it is impossible to strictly follow all rules from all search engines. So, most webmasters try to optimize their websites to please 1 or 2 most popular search engines like Google and Bing.
Google recently implemented a major change in their search system called "Pand Updates" which was meant to optimize their search results by ignoring or penalizing black hat SEO tricks. The aim behind this change was, only quality content should appear in the search results instead of the page in which a lot of SEO tricks are applied.How Google+ affects or influences search results?
After breaking up the tie with Twitter, Google has started indexing the public posts from Google+ and started showing them in search results. For example, consider the below query:
How to tag me in your Google+ posts by typing +
If you search for the above string, you can see my public Google+ post is shown in the Google search results. This is a proof that Google started indexing Google+ public posts and they are shown in search results.
Image: How Google+ affects search engine rankingHow Google+ affects search engine ranking?
Google and other search engines use a lot of signals to decide which pages rank better for a specific search. No one knows what are the exact rules, but we all know links from other relevant web pages significantly influence the search results. This means, links to your webpages from Google+ posts can help you improve the search engine ranking of your website or web pages. That is another reason to start using Google+ now!
Facebook allows "Pages" for brands, websites and businesses. However, Google+ is not yet ready for businesses. If you are a webmaster and like to take advantage of the SEO aspect of Google+, you may want to wait a while until Google release the Google+ solution for businesses and brands.
UPDATE: Google started offering Google+ Pages for business.
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