How to Take Advantage of the Best Features of Google Plus
By simply creating a Google+ profile, businesses have been able to claim additional control over their information on Google Plus.
Today if you search for “what happened to Google Plus?” and a clear story emerges. We are informed that “Google Plus… will now only be available for G Suite accounts”.
New Shut-Down Announcement from Google
“We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API. We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced. No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.
With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days.” – David Thacker, VP, Product Management, G Suite
We recommend redirecting your time formerly spent on this platform to publishing Google Posts, which produced content better suited for voice activated searches and gaining Google reviews.
NOTE: From here the remainder of the post is from the page when published.
Social signals that we used to gain on Google+ correlated with better positioning and took second, according to a report released by Search Metrics on top website ranking factors. Relevant terms took tops for contributing factors to a business’s brand-building efforts, claiming .67 %.
If your business already has a Google+ business profile, you’re already gaining some benefits. By more actively engaging on Google Plus, some benefits you may be missing can help your business improve in local search and much more. Google+ offers so many features to explore, why not benefit from someone with proven expertise? The number of Google+ users is expected to expand to between 300 and 400 million users by the end of this year. Unleash the power of Google Plus for your Google Business Listing and customize your Google Assistant Directory Page. You can benefit from building up positive online business reviews.
Google Plus Updates
Google Hangouts on Air is moving to more of a YouTube platform. Some speculate that hangouts may transition into a series of features (perhaps Applause), that may later gain access from YouTube Live at a later date. Rest assured, we are told that previously recorded Hangouts will still be available for everyone to view.
How all the updates will impact Google+ users and communities will be clearer over the next few months. It is logical to assume that Google will strengthen its integration with existing company products and services. This includes YouTube foremost, while in the process of making Google+ a more useful extension of its existing suite without becoming a whole new platform. After the emergence of Google Spaces*, today the page informs people who navigate there that “Spaces was discontinued on April 17th, 2017”.
Ways to Get More From for Your Google Plus Business Page
There is more depth to the Google+ marketing platform than many users are aware of. After a business has invested valuable time building up a presence on Google+, it is time to learn how it’s adding to business brand awareness. With analytics, you can utilize more Google+ features, nurture healthy relationships with your followers, introduce your products, and know how to move the needle of brand loyalty upwards. Knowing how to engage and track industry influencers will lead decisions on fostering engagement with web content. The methods tried are innumerable; however, the winners find it requires a universal and current approach to online relationship expansion.
You can benefit from information that is available as to how well your business Google+ page is performing with a Google Brand Page Audit. By employing insights gleaned from a website audit, we can help you quickly make changes on what you are doing wrong. Additionally, there is always room for more improvement on what you’re doing right. Utilize the best features of Google Plus to make your social signals on Google+ correlate with your website
While there are many features in Google Plus that can help you grow your business, you may not have realized that it can dramatically improve your search engine rankings. This has merit on its own as is a sufficient reason to get involved more on platform. Take advantage of what Google+ offers you here to expand your brand through this powerful social media channel. You can both enhance your SEO efforts and multiply your business’s online reach. If you would like assistance, request an overview of our Minneapolis digital services for lead generation. We would love to partner and make this social media network work powerfully for you.
10 WAYS TO MAXIMIZE GOOGLE+ PLATFORM
For the purposes of this article, let’s jump in and take a look at some of the awe-inspiring ways to use the best features available on Google Plus.
1. Utilizing Google+ Buckets for Audience Management
2. The Practice of Gleaning Google+ Mentions
3. Choose On-line Inter-Linking Strategies Carefully
4. Communities Interested in Your Business Vertical
5. Post Ripples Offer Google+ Analytics Insights
6. Integrate the Google+ Collections Feature
7. Google+ is Designed as a Semantic Memory Model
8. New Relations Can Generate Leads
9. Assists in Content Segmentation
10. Launch an Event and Invite Participants
If you invest properly in using this social media platform, your new friends and business peers may offer the same value of someone in your Geo location that you meet with in person.
10 WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS ON THE GOOGLE+ PLATFORM
1. Utilizing Google+ Buckets for Audience Management
Audience management works beautifully because users “bucket” those who engage on Google+ into specific clusters, otherwise called “circles” in this arena. Once a business has established itself with a Google+ presence, tracking the activity of industry influencers can expand engagement. SEO has a lot to do with understanding your competitors reach along with creating and pushing out great content. New feeds aggressively announce new postings, but segmenting activity within circles, a business is in the loop of updates from industry influencers. This opens up the opportunity to re-share key content and make useful comments to offer additional benefit to readers.
Content collaboration with individuals of similar expertise fosters audience expansion. Everyone loves being acknowledged for what they know. It is as much about exonerating others who post great content as what you know!
2. The Practice of Gleaning Google+ Mentions
Mentions may contribute either in a positive or negative manner. To expand a business’s footprint online, it is one approach in which to obtain relevant, industry-related communities participating with your content on Google+. Mentions are a great way to inform an author that you’ve shared their content, if used in measured doses and with positive intent.
Integrate your personal Google Plus profile to build Google+ mentions, which reinforces your business brand. While your primary goal may be to win followers for your Google My Business page, there are still plenty of good reasons to blend it with your personal profile. We recommend using both your personal profile and business page in tandem, as this will allow you to use the best of the Google Plus platform both to learn and add value. With the potential weight of Google Authorship in SEO as it evolves, achieving a higher level of mentions will boost your personal profile is a strong one.
3. Choose On-line Inter-Linking Strategies Carefully
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The manner in which your web content inter-links is significant. It tells readers which topics are most important to you, builds page authority, and helps readers easily navigate through your content for topics of interest. By using similar logic on how content is posted and updated on Google+, posts gain a fresh boost and renewed prominence. “We must understand that we have to think in entities and not in keywords. We have to think about the connection between the entities, and we have to be really sure about the context of the content that we are creating,” stated Gianluca Fiorelli on Moz’s Sept, 12th Whiteboard Friday.
Content strategists are enjoying the increased power of topical hubs that stem content. Google + is a vast platform for easy communications where businesses can respond quickly to all the probes for they expertise offered. This can significantly replace the exhaustive volumes of long-tailed keyword pages that were formerly needed to pump up specific content. By proper use of Inter-linking updates back to your original Google+ post, its value is increased and content expertise is condensed for stronger value. Rather than double posting content on your website additionally times, from your G+ business page, link to your original Google+ content. Similar to a website’s backlinks, the more high-quality references to your links, the greater the strength they produce for online visibility.
4. Communities Interested in Your Business Vertical
Communities on Google+ are a simple way for people, and new content to be shared with an audience with related interests yet who aren’t in the same Google+ circle. Without them, the rate of engagements are fewer and often far between. Audiences that already share the same topic interests are the quickest means to widen your brand awareness. If used in correct manner, they can be a great way to implement user engagement and win new brand followers.
Those who put the effort and time into building their own community typically thrive at a quicker pace than business pages that participate in existing Google+ communities. The most successful use of communities is non-promotional and concentrates on top topics.
5. Post Ripples Offer Google+ Analytics Insights
Google+ ripples are analytics offered automatically and provide invaluable insights that reveal levels of distribution channel use, top influencers, and the share velocity for each post. Business don’t have to drive their efforts on this platform blind. From the creator of Google Analytics, post ripples are the plus on Google+ posts.
Facebook and Twitter remain viable social channels for directing traffic to websites. In comparison, Google+ reaches so deeply across all Google products and user platforms that its tentacles reach out to higher numbers of potential visitors. Adding the use of Google+ ripples helps businesses boost their audience base while creating a plausible position hidden from view today but likely to be revealed in the near future.
6. Integrate the Google+ Collections Feature
Using the more recently added Collections feature in Google+ can be quick and powerful. It is a method of using topics to organize your stream. How you set up your Collections will determine how others can follow your collections of topics; some will already be able to, and others will need to find your new collection and click to follow. A tutorial by Ronnie Bincer offer insights on using Collections as a best Google Plus Feature. Former posts can be relocated into a Google Plus Collation. However, If you have multiple posts you desire to move to a collection, do them in a single transaction so Google groups them and eliminate the mishap of unintentionally spamming your followers.
Growing Use of Google+
Over 18 million Google+ users are +1ing for fun and business communications, according to the June 2015 estimates released by Mashable Google+ has not been promoted in the past by any of the company’s other platforms, retaining the social network’s status of being invite-only. It was estimated that Google+ reached this benchmark sometime between July 12 and 13, 2015, and is built to easily reach users on mobile devices. Using less aggressive statistics, Google’s CEO Larry Page confirmed that Google+ had more than 10 million users during an investor earnings call held on July 14.
Upskill yourself with training and hands-on experience using Google Plus for Business, join me on the this Google community. If you would like guidance on how to setup and use Google+, I would love to show you.
7. Google+ is Designed as a Semantic Memory Model
Besting Facebook and Twitter, every post you publish in Google+ has most of the attributes of a work of a blog posting.
• When you create a Google+ post, it is given its own URL.
• The initial 45-50 characters of the post will show up displayed in the title tag
• Just like a blog post, entries can be long and complex in order to demonstrate your expertise on a particular topic. Various correlation studies have show a strong relationship exists between lengthier pages and higher SERP rankings.
• Whenever a Google+ post is re-shared, it can accrue internal links from the Google+ platform, complete with relevant anchor text.
8. New Relations Can Generate Leads via G suite and Google Plus User Profile Cards
During the second week of April 2018, G Suite announced convenient new profile information cards on web apps. These will show up on Google Calendar and on Google+.
Strategize how to incorporate advanced marketing tactics through being helpful to other and offer valuable content that compels other Google plus users to connect with you. Provide users information rich with the solutions that are seeking. Being helpful is the most effective form of SEO. After introducing the content on Google+, offer a link for readers who want the deeper insights found on your site. The platform works better with these lead generation tactics that highlighting new product. We recommend optimizing for inclusion in product carousels. Or the link funnel traffic to a relevant landing page and then launch viewers into your regular lead-generation process. Consider your Google+ Communities as the top of your marketing funnel.
9. Assists in Content Segmentation
By building on any Google platform, with categories and using hashtags correctly, what you say and publish adds to your Google dataset history. Then it is easier to filter your content and thereby up the chances for your posts and comments to be discovered. A user who jumps on the Google Plus platform to check for new posts or comment can more easily select the content they want. With savvy segmentation to target your content, the more likely your subscribers will respond and engage you on Google Plus. Segment your subscribers, as well. Then you can offer more relevant content tailored to their interests. Keep your content fresh and stay involved in conversations.
Since Google Plus posts are searchable, why not take advantage of using them like a microblog? Keep track of where you incoming site traffic arrives from in Google Analytics. For me, a significant number come straight from my posts on the Google Plus platform. Each individual business should first conduct marketing research to shape your investment strategy. For your business page, you should create segmented content that stays strictly on a relevant business topic; or your personal profile you can take more liberty to post content on other topics that are newsworthy.
10. Launch an Event and Invite Participants
If this is new to you, try leveraging Google+ Hangouts. It’s technology, you can broadcast or facilitate groups of up to 10 participants at a time. From Google +, you can schedule and announce events, send out updates and reminders ahead of time, or permit guests to manage updates. Hangouts are increasingly popular in communities, as well as for business communications.
Best Length for Google+ Communications
On Google+, audiences are often tightly engaged to a topic and the individuals most trusted to answer questions and lead discussions on it. Members of Google’s form of social media tend to shower a higher intolerance for spam or attention grabbers. Using the platform successful entails building real relationships, even though they often remain purely digital connections. “When you take the time to put a little craftsmanship into your posts, it really pays off”, Winnie Wong says. In her January 10, 2018, article titled The Ideal Length for Every Online Content she advises that “The limit per post for Google+ appears is 100,000. It is best to keep your Google+ text within one line as it enhances the appearance and readability of your posts.”
Google updated the layout of posts so that readers view three initial lines of the original post before the “Read More” link. What this means to you is that, your post’s title and opening sentence has to be compelling in order to win “Read More” clicks.
Best headline and content length for Google Posts:
- Ideal Length of Google+ Headlines: 60 Characters
- Ideal Length of Google+ Content: 200 – 400 Characters
Why the Google +1 Feather Carries so Much Value
After Page Authority, the tally of Google +1s attributed to a URL is more highly correlated with search rankings than the sum of other factors. In proven tests, the correlation of Google +1s come out stronger than other well-known metrics, even when compared to the number of linking root domains, accumulation of Facebook shares, and even best practices for keyword usage. This should not be interpreted as saying that Google uses the raw number of +1s as a direct decision maker in its search algorithm; rather, it is better stated to declare that Google+ posts have SEO benefits with unique advantages other social platforms. Both Google pages and posts on Google+ achieve more than just accumulating PageRank; since the links to other posts are followed, link equity is passed on.
How to use Google Plus for Business
Google Plus Business Pages allow a brand to intelligently interact with a growing online audience. Your benefits will accrue with use and extend far beyond the plus.google.com sphere. Unlike other social media platforms, like Facebook, Google+ empowers you to connect well beyond a social network. It also is built to integrate superbly with Google Search, YouTube, and your Google Drive. All summed up, it is a highly attractive business resource for engagement.
To jump on Google+ as a social network space you want to participate in, our insights below will show you how to best utilize the features of the Google+ platform. It is not always about whether or not your content is great, is it much about how to push it forward. Competitive Intelligence on your chosen social media platforms can make the difference when trying to win new customers from your key competitors. Build out your Google Assistant Business Page in tandem with posting.
It starts with relevant and significant content correctly optimized for viewer interests and GoogleBot to find. Then the other half is marketing that content. Consider it a core component of your marketing to consider it as writing a love letter to Google. Make it easier for search engines to find your content. After all, their success is awarding a search query with the best match.
Traditionally search is evolving. More and more individuals are starting their purchase journeys online. Quality followings on Google+ exist when you create messages that matter to them and not just your brand. Use Google analytics to connect with people, versus being focused on search engines. You can glean key insights about their interests, purchasing choices, and how they want to be engaged.
Where to Start on Google+
You will need to select a category for your business as you begin to set-up your page on Google Plus. You will find five main options. After you click on the one of your choices, you will be prompted next to select a subcategory that best fits your niche. Now you are ready to fill in the basic details about you; be prepared to enter your registered business name, web URL, your tagline, mission statement, and the best age range of ideal readers to interact with your page.
Start with your core audience and see how they engage your posts. See what questions people are asking. Determine if the demand and audience is there. Then post regularly. Your audience wants to know that you are the place to go in the future as well. There is no magic number of Google+ communications necessary. If you feel that in your specific industry and product category has unique demands, create content that makes your efforts work. A highly engaged audience means you start with a plan and a commitment to follow through. Have your next step planned out, so that you have something valuable to say.
You can edit your profile at any time to add information that introduces new services or products as your business is ready to offer them. Prepare concise and keyword-rich copy that helps users discover your page through search. Introduce your brand with powerful messages and images posted on Google+ to help new viewers understand what you are about.
Create new content that your Google+ community members want to read. Make your communications both seasonal and topic rich so that your posts gain more visibility. You can capitalize on different times of the year when interest on specific topics spikes. Center your posting on priority actions that answer reader’s queries and offer solutions. Reaching potential clients is easier on this platform by offering fresh content on web pages that change less over time.
If you are not getting engagement, take the approach of following industry experts and learn from how they are using Google+.
How to Boost your Google+ Engagement Long-Term
Keep you prospects engaged throughout their purchase cycle. Create a Google+ posting calendar that you can maintain. A stagnant Google+ page is a killer. If you have developed followers or a Google+ community, you want to send the message that you are committed and present with your messaging. There are great content calendars available to help you utilize the best features of Google Plus.
Use the suggestions that Google offer in their search results after you type in a word at the top. As the platform suggests posts on the topic, you can learn what participates feel is important and are talking about. This will help you know what title terms that will give you footholds with potential readers.
Additional 8 Quick Tips for Google+ Users
1. Connect with people through links in their posts. Respond where you can offer value on shared interests.
2. Read community rules before posting. The rules benefit all Goolge+ community users, but it will help you avoid posting inappropriate or low value content.
3. Respond quickly to thank those who share or like your content.
4. Reply with communications that match the intent of your audience.
5. Take time to learn from comments left on your posts.
6. Use compelling images to connect quicker with people.
7. Create a more robust experience with your target consumer.
8. Limit certain circle actions to protect users
The point is not to go out and accumulate a bunch of +1s.The point is, and the evidence seems to suggest, that earning a link on Google+ is like earning any other type of editorial link, and these links have actual value with real benefits. – Cyrus Shephard, Moz
You’ll rank way better on Google, which still holds 67% of all search traffic. Check out the second most powerful ranking factor: Google +1s. – Search Metrics
“Nearly 50% of companies rate Google+ as important to their business. Just last year, 15% of marketers acquired a customer from this social channel.” – Hubspot
“Google+ Collections allows users to start categorizing their posts, photos, and videos by topic. Collections differ from Pages or Communities, in that you are the only person modifying the content, and the posts will appear in your profile stream for followers.” – CNET*
Hill Web Creations, a Minneapolis web marketing service, offers Google +1 services as either a stand-alone or packaged SEO and social media service. If you are serious about your marketing efforts, call 661-206-2410 today and ask for Jeannie to utilize the best features of Google Plus. Then you may be Ready for Google AdWords
* www.cnet.com/how-to/tips-for-google-collections/
** www.blog.google/products/spaces/introducing-spaces-tool-for-small-group/