Everything Google does has repercussions for SEO. Now that the largest search engine has recently launched its own social networking platform, Google +, both big brands and small businesses are eager to have their own pages to be part of the newest avenue of online sharing. While Facebook is still clearly the #1 social networking site, Google + actually allows its users to have a cleaner slate – free from all the advertising, mafia wars, and other unnecessary feeds from people you don’t really know.
When it comes to SEO, Google + promises to offer a far more reaching scope because of its search functions. Google + may still be in its beta phase, as it rolled out on an invite-only stage but now everyone can be a part of it, but Ilie Mitaru of PCWorld has given key areas that brands, small businesses, and SEO experts should watch out for.
1. Search Results – Realtime search was suspended starting July 4, which included Twitter feeds in its update. Apparently, Twitter and Google’s contract had expired and the implication being Google not renewing its contract because it plans to include Google + live feed into the searches. Anticipate that there should be live feed from Google + aside from organic search results very soon.
2. Brand Pages – To compete with Facebook, Google + needs to offer Brand Pages for companies, products, and services. Now that SEO is being adapted to Brand Pages, Google + is expected to join the competition by offering brands a compelling page where they can interact with their fans and consumers.
3. URLs – URLs are very important in SEO as search engine crawlers easily find pages that include keywords in their URLs, which is often a brand’s main product/service/tagline/company name. URLs are expected to be available once Google + rolls out its own version of Brand Pages for companies.
4. Sparks Rankings – Sparks is that very tool the SEO community will want to get into as this is Google +’s own content aggregator. Users are able to customize these and feeds are directed into Sparks so brands will definitely want to have their content into other users’ feeds.
5. Posts – As mentioned earlier, Google’s search engine will include Google + into its results, which means that public posts will also be indexed whether users are logged in or out of the social networking platform. Posts that are private, however, will not show up in the search but comments made on public posts will definitely contribute to SEO as they come from real users and not robots.
Google + is a new addition to Google’s growing platforms that enable users to share information. How content is ranked though, needs to be clear. The best implication Google + for SEO offers is that instead of keyword-and-link seeking robots, real users will be the main factors determining, and thereby increasing, rank and content.
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