Google Plus SEO – Insider Tips for Ranking Benefits

Optimizing Google Plus means aligning the on-page SEO elements within your profile, optimally integrating Google Plus with your website, and developing a network involved of followers to whom you can promote interesting content, at least some of which then links back to your website. This article is an overview of a few somewhat higher level techniques doesn’t go into setting up Google Plus basics. That can be found here: https://plus.google.com/

Optimize Your Google Plus Profile

The links from your About page are do followed (they pass flow), so feel free to target the anchor text and link to your website. You can also add additional links in the Links section. While we’re on the subject, if you guest blog and link back to your Google Plus profile from an author byline, send that link to the about page, since that’s where your outbound links are located. Linking as such will pass more flow than linking to the posts page, which Google Plus displays by default when you login.

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Get Google+ Followers

Getting followers is essential to getting your content out to people that want to see it. You don’t need to know someone to get them to follow you. All you need to do is post interesting content and get their attention by following them first. We recommend following other people with similar interests or in a similar niche. Make sure your profile is complete and looking good before starting this process or your profile might be viewed as spam.

A quicker way to follow people in a particular niche is to seek out circles. Circles are groups of Google Plus users organized by a particular trait, hobby, affiliation, etc. You can find more circles or share your own here: https://plus.google.com/111551895671908911144/posts

Essential Google Plus Integration for Websites:

Google Plus One Button

Add the Google plus one button counter to the header, footer or sidebar of your website. This is a counter that links to your personal or business Google Plus page. Use a business page when applicable, or a personal account if you’re a blogger or you are your own brand. Google developers continue to make modifications to this button, and you can use their “badge” instead of a simple counter. For integration, click the link above.

Google Share Button

You also want to have a Google Share Button on your site, so that users can share your posts and pages to their Google Plus profiles. This is hugely important because when people share your content, you get Do Follow links from their posts, and this sharing gets new content indexed by Google incredibly quickly.

For WordPress users, the quickest and easiest way to add a Google share button is via a plugin. We looked for a long time for elegant solution, and eventually ended up building our own Social Share Plugin that gives options for which social networks are included as well as the ability to display or hide the buttons for individual pages. Feel free to download it here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pagepost-specific-social-share-buttons/

Optimize Google Plus Posts

Now that you have followers and you’re website is linked with your profile, it’s time to start sharing content. The most important thing about sharing links to content is that you share publicly. This tells Google to index your content. Of course, feel free to share with your circles and even extended circles, but for indexing (and ranking) purposes, you’ll want to share publicly.

Google-Plus-Post-Optimization

Posts-Optimization-Google-PlusAlso, make sure you optimize the description of the link you plan to share. Your comment or description is the title tag of that post and tells google what it’s about. Simply sharing the link alone is not enough. Adding a description makes sure that the post gets counted as a citation.

If you add the + symbol in front of someone’s name in your post, Google Plus automatically links to that person’s profile. Doing so is a great way to get other people’s attention and engage them in a conversation that will get more people viewing and acting on your content.

Final Words of Advice for Google Plus SEO

Google Plus can be a powerful promotional tool for search engine optimization, but keep in mind that solid content and real engagement are its two cornerstones. They are the two elements that will grow your follower base and light up engagement signals for the Google ranking algorithm and pass ranking juice to your website.