If you have created a Google+ profile for your business, then you probably noticed how incredibly well it ranks in the Google search results. In fact, many online businesses have recently become aware of that their Google+ profile page is currently outranking the websites they have been working on for years.
Considering that this social network has not been around for as long as Twitter or Facebook, most users are thinking that Google is ‘cheating’. However surprisingly, Google sticks to what it preaches and shows businesses and competition how to employ the SEO tactics smartly. Rest assured, Google+ is not reinventing the wheel, but rather uses the SEO techniques that have been available to everyone for years. Here’s what’s going on!
Links
First of all, after Google started displaying author photos in the search query, it wasn’t long until they asked users to provide a link from their websites to the profile. Consequentially, Google+ profile owners have the opportunity to create several high quality links from reputable sites. Even though the other social networks permit similar links, it seems that only Google+ profiles appear in the search results. While you might see all this as suspicious, it is necessary to point out that the quality links are the sole responsible factor for the rankings in the search query.
Internal linking and the high accessibility of joining circles or adding people to your own group play a fundamental role in the ranking of Google+ profiles. While some webmasters needed dedication and time to gather 1,000 likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter, they soon discovered that with Google+ they can be part of double or triple sized circles in less than one year. Furthermore, when a business owner shares content within a larger group, there is a high chance more users will stream and share that content. Therefore, as the search engine bots crawl it regularly, they will deem it important.
Content
The main distinction between Google+ and the other major social networks is that the latter are very restrictive regarding the biographical information that a user or a business can include in the profile. In other words, unlike Twitter that limits this data to about 160 characters, Google+ allow you to include as much biographic info as you see fit, as well as photos, everything that you liked, links to people in your circles, public posts and relevant full texts. In addition, every post you make on Google+ is public and hence, easily crawled and indexed by the search engine bots.
On-page optimization
Similar to Facebook and Twitter, Google+ incorporates an easy method of sharing posts from other users. On the other hand, because Google+ allows larger and more descriptive title tags, the profile owner benefits from on-page optimization. To put it simply, as the other social networks have short title tags – limited to three or four unique words – the chances of the post showing up as relevant in the search results are very low. In contrast, since Google+ allows more than ten words in the title tags, the posts can appear in the query results as their own entries.
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