10 Dead Simple Tips to Take Advantage of Google+ for SEO

It's no secret. When engineers built Google+, they constructed an SEO juggernaut to dominate search results above all other social platforms. Although Facebook and Twitter are essential to marketing efforts, both restrict Google from accessing much of their data. This limits their SEO effectiveness.
Not so with Google+.

Here’s an experiment: If you use Google+, perform a search for your name and check the domain distribution of first 100 results. The graph below shows what happens when searching my own name.

Even though I use Twitter and Facebook far more often, Google+ dominates the search results. Google+ even beats SEOmoz and my own blog. Multiply this for 100's of millions of people, and you can begin to comprehend the scope of Google's platform.

Fortunately, there are several ways to take advantage of this SEO domination for your own benefit.

1. Follow your profile links

Consider this: at SEOmoz you must earn 200 Mozpoints before earning a followed profile link (submit good comments!) On the other hand, Google+ not only allows you to link to your other profiles across the web, but you can embed followed links directly into your bio with the anchor text of your choice.

The value of a link from Google+ is, in theory, like any other. It depends on the authority of both the page and domain. My own profile shows the following metrics:

• MozRank: 1.91
• PageAuthority: 49
• PageRank: 3

If you can raise your visibility by getting more people to engage with you, share your posts, or link directly to your profile, the more valuable your profile links become.

2. Embed post links

Like profile links, Google+ also allows you to insert followed links directly into your posts – as many as you want. Simply insert the full URL and Google will automatically format it as a link.

The value of these links increases the number of times the post is shared, linked to and +1’ed.
For example, check out this one sentence post from Alexia Tsotsis, which has a PageRank of 3 and is cached by Google every couple of weeks. (Even though PageRank is not highly correlated with rankings, for Google+ it’s often the only metric available.)

If your post goes viral or is reshared by high-authority profiles, the value of those links increases.

3. Optimize your G+ title tags

The first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag, which is highly correlated with rankings and greatly influences click-through rates. Choose your keywords carefully and consider that the first sentence will be the first thing most people see.

Check out how this simple post from Danny Sullivan ranks for its title.

A widely shared post with a good title has an excellent chance of ranking for its given keywords.

4. Unlimited editing power

Google+ is just like your own mini personal blogging platform. This means you can fully edit any of your posts at any time. Not so with Facebook or Twitter. Facebook gives you only limited editing abilities. Twitter, after you tweet, only lets you delete.
This is important if your Google+ post goes viral and you want to make updates or changes. If need be, you can also update the title tag and any attached media as well.
You may not own the platform, but Google+ gives you a broad amount of control over your own content.

5. Index new content lightning fast

If you share new content on Google+, chances are that Google will index the page very quickly.
Rumor has it that new URLs are crawled almost instantly. This makes complete sense as part of the purpose of Google+ was to replace Twitter when creating Google's Realtime Search.

In the old days, if you wanted a website indexed you filled out a webform and waited several weeks. Today, it's as simple as pressing a +1 button.

“Google+ is the new Google Submit URL box.”
- Rand Fishkin, GROW 2012 Source

Share your new content on Google+, as well as your other social networks, for quick indexation.

6. Stalk Connect with influencers

Google+ lists 17 different notification triggers that can help you connect with influencers in your industry.
Depending on the individual's account settings, these notifications can take the form of an email, phone SMS, or the omnipresent red Google notification bar.

17 actions that trigger notifications:

1. Mention them in a post 
2. Share a post with them directly 
3. Share a post and you're in a circle they subscribe to 
4. Comment on a post they created 
5. Comment on a post after they comment on it 
6. Add them to a circle 
7. Suggest new people to add to their circles 
8. Tag them in a photo 
9. Tag one of their photos 
10. Suggest a profile photo for them
11. Comment on a photo after they comment on it 
12. Comment on a photo they are tagged in 
13. Comment on a photo they tagged 
14. Start a conversation with them
15. Send them an invitation or update an event
16. Remind them about events
17. Any activity on events they created 

Several folks have introduced themselves to me on Google+ by "gently" using the methods above.
Be warned: the few who crossed the line into spamminess have been banned from several inboxes forever.

7. Optimize your author pic for more traffic

Last spring, I performed a series of tests with my Google+ author photo that led to an increase in the click-though rate for my websites.

If you successfully implement the author tag and have a catchy photo, it often doesn't matter if you rank 2nd, 3rd or even 4th. With an eye-catching pic you can often grab free traffic away from even your competitor's #1 ranking.

8. Test drive a G+ social media dashboard

Google Analytics has progressed greatly with social media reporting, but if you live and die by social traffic you want to bring the information front and center.

Adam Singer created an awesome social media dashboard that you can use for free. At one glance you can view all your essential metrics from Google+ traffic and all other social networks including:

• On Site Social Actions, i.e. Google +1's
• Revenue per Visit by Social Network
• Overall Traffic Stats by Social Source

Bonus: Install this dashboard for free in your Google Analytics account by clicking here.

9. Check your CircleRank

My favorite new tool is CircleCount. Try it now by pasting in your Google+ URL to chart your daily follower growth, the virality of your posts, and even see your "CircleRank" score compared against all other Google+ profiles.

CircleRanks of note:

• Rand Fishkin: 2,214
• Barack Obama: 43
• Brittany Spears: 1

The election is over. Brittany won.

10. Be an awesome (Late) early adopter

Even with it's explosive growth, only 1 in 4 people use Google+ once a month. The rest log in even less, although this number is growing fast.

None of these tips matter unless you actually use Google+. Out of the 400 folks I've circled in my Google+, only about 75 actively participate. No surprise, these tend to be the more savvy SEO and media types.
There's still time. Folks are catching on. Yes, early adopters win the day.

You can do Google+ in less than 10 minutes a day. This means creating a few simple habits to fit it into your workflow.

• Press the +1 button to spread share worthy comment
• ...  add comments on the truly great stuff
• Add +1 Buttons on Your Own Content
• Engage / Comment / Reshare / Start a Hangout / Create an Event
• Circle Great People
• Make it Easy for People to Circle You...

Content Marketing is Right way to make money Online

Branding isn’t your company name.
It’s not a tag line. It’s not a logo.
Branding is just another name for creating a perception.
When marketers ask, “How do we want to brand this product?” what they’re really asking is how they want their audience to think about that product once it comes to market.
A brand is a promise. It’s an expectation of an experience.
The company and tag line and logo and brand colors only exist to call that experience to mind.
Brands can meet that expectation, exceed that expectation … or in the worst cases, fall short of that expectation.
(By the way, the word product can easily be swapped for service, or blog, or newsletter, or any number of things marketers promote. The underlying concepts remain the same.)
Volvo’s name is synonymous with safety, which makes it the quintessential consumer example.
Cisco’s “Human Network” stands out among business-to-business brands.

Cisco makes products that make it possible for people to be connected, no matter how far apart they may be, geographically. ~ Forbes

The Red Cross is a bellwether among nonprofits, with a brand that literally means help is on the way in times of crisis.
The very essence of brands doesn’t lie within your brand colors or site design, even though those are important.
The essence of a brand lies within its meaning. And words have meaning. Words matter.
Volvo’s meaning wasn’t derived from its logo, or even its product design, but by the constant stream of product reviews that published the data on crash tests year-in and year-out.
The brand was built, over time, by third-party validation communicated through third-party content. What other people said about Volvo created the meaning of that brand. The advertising Volvo did just reinforced that meaning.

The rise of user-generated content

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, is now famous for having said,

Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.

As marketers, we try to convince customers and prospects to generate content about our brands. In other words, to talk about us. To create a Volvo-like experience where the meaning of our brand comes from how others perceive us.
How do we inspire people to generate content? To talk about us on Facebook and Twitter, to increase our audience?
Increasingly, we inspire our customers with brand experiences and by publishing our own content.
The uninitiated customer is no more inclined to mention a brand than talk to the shy person tucked quietly in the corner at a cocktail party. If we want our customers to engage us, or our products and services, we have to contribute to the conversation.

Content is currency

Today’s web is an endless 24/7 cycle fed by content and social actions. In this cycle, brands are realizing that content is currency … ~ Bryan Rhoads, global content strategy, Intel

Content is currency — something we trade for our audience’s attention.
That currency becomes more valuable every time it’s shared by someone other than ourselves.
Those shares might be validation. There might be debate. There might be disagreement.
It’s our job to create content worth sharing. How it’s shared isn’t up to us.
If you take a look at this infographic, created by PRWeb, you’ll see an array of content marketing options — each with its own balance of difficulty and value.
(Click here for the full-sized infographic.)

Click here for the full-sized infographic Your job is to figure out what types of content are most valuable to your audience — and most likely to be shared. And then to gather the resources to produce the best content you possibly can.

‘No Comment’ is a failure

Every smart crisis communications professional knows that “no comment” creates a vacuum where everyone — except the person or organization in crisis — will be able to shape the conversation.
The applies in content marketing, too. We can commit to an active role, by publishing content worth talking about … or we can abstain and miss the opportunity.
How about you? What experience are you creating with your content? What promise are you making?
Let us know in the comments.

Grow your Business with Branding Identification

Companies want to grow. Obvious statement, right? This is the reason why we all have jobs as marketers; companies need to grow and they need people who understand how to do that.

I have a startup client who uses this as one of their mantras:

I think it's true. Today I want to talk about how small businesses and startups can grow their brand company through smart marketing even when they don't have a huge budget.

Let me also say that I have stopped telling companies "Oh sure, we'll get you ranking for (insert keyword here)," because that's a small-minded approach to marketing and growing a company (especially a startup). I now tell startups to focus on growing their branded traffic, because that is ultimately how you get links, mindshare, and win online. This advice has only increased since the Penguin and Panda algorithms started rolling out. We're not seeking to trick or game the search engines; we're seeking to build brands online.

Here are a few ways to build branded mindshare.

Produce content

As Will Critchlow said in his SearchLove presentation (embedded at the bottom), you don't have to have money, but you do have to have one of these:

• Time
• Talent
• Balls (aka take risks)

Often, what you need to do first is establish your thought leadership, and that is done through content.

Some of my favorite examples are MailChimp's Resources:

And Grovo's resources:

I also respect what the founders of BufferApp have done by getting content all around the Internet to grow their startup. They've written on leading blogs such as ProBlogger, and now they're even being asked to do interviews, such as this one from Blueglass.

Leverage channels other than search

When looking to grow your company, you should not just leverage search (though it is a great medium for growth). For more on this idea, read Matt McGee's classic You Can Diversify or You Can Die from 2007.

We have so many channels to leverage for growth at this point on the Internet. You've all seen this:

I also want you to think about how you can use other platforms, such as forums or social networks, to tell a story and get attention.

For example, Grovo built out their History of the Internet on their Facebook Timeline:

When they launched it, they did outreach through PR and got exposure (and links) from all these places and more, driving over 300 signups:

Their branded traffic increased after being flat, and has kept increasing to this day:

Have a spokesperson

Having a spokesperson, or public face, is highly underrated by most companies. Potential customers don't (usually) connect with a brand, but they do connect with a person.

Would SEOmoz have grown its community, consulting, or software as quickly without Rand as the face of the company? I don't think so. In fact, his author page is the 8th most linked-to page on SEOmoz.

There are many ways companies can get their spokesperson (a CEO, a CMO, an awesome consultant) known:

• Meetups
• Conferences
• Blogging
• Presentations
• Social media
• Q/A Forums (like Moz Q/A)
• Engaging in online conversations (forums, blog commenting, social media)

Display these people prominently on your website.

Get real

This goes along with the spokesperson point above, but one of the best ways to start getting your company known is to be involved locally. I don't care if you are a tech startup or an international pharmaceutical brand - being involved in your local as well as online community is one of the best ways to build your branded searches and brand advocates.

Here's one example:

Yes, yes, SEOmoz is doing marketing that increases their branded searches (for both SEOmoz AND Mozcation). They're not trying to get us to link to them saying "SEO software," either :-)

Be lovable

I've often challenged clients with "What makes your customers happy, and what is going to make your brand lovable?" In my opinion, there is nothing worse than a faceless brand. It's not trustworthy, it's not likable, it's not fun. Even if you are in a serious industry, you can have a brand that people love because they connect with it.

For example, do you know this guy?

Or this guy:

Or this gal:

Mailchimp has Freddie, and they've even sent out large plush versions such as this one in SwissMiss's studio in Brooklyn:

We associate the face or mascot with the brand. It's called affinity and it works.

Look for search opportunity

Finally, one way to do this in the search results (see, we're still talking about SEO as it pertains to marketing) is to look for areas of opportunity. What are your competitors not doing that you can do? Are they not marking up their sites with Schema? Are they not leveraging image search? How about videos and video snippets in the search results? 

That's where you need to go. And use Tom Anthony's SERP Turkey to test if the investment to get those results is worthwhile.

Will Critchlow and Rand Fishkin's presentations from SearchLove

To wrap all this up, I'd like to leave you with a few thoughts. Building branded searches, honestly, is harder than building rankings. Branding is a longterm play, and it's not something that you can do overnight to gain traction. If you're looking for a quick hit to suddenly get a lot of users, branding isn't your answer. But ultimately, it's the right answer for growth and a successful business.

I'd also like to leave you with a couple of presentations about inbound marketing on a budget. This kind of inbound marketing will also win you branded searches. Will and Rand went head to head, as they are known to do at Distilled's conferences, about "Inbound Marketing on a Shoestring Budget". Both had stellar presentations, so I wanted to provide them here for you to flip through and get more ideas:

Can't Buy Me Love from Rand Fishkin

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-brand-and-grow-your-company-through-marketing

Checking for Social Media Followers tools

Is it ethical to buy followers and likes to boost business or name?

You can now purchase twitter followers, Facebook likes and Youtube views rather than waiting for ages to gather them naturally. Never be surprised when you happen to pass-by such an ad placed, as this is already into practice. Brands and celebrities hunt for fake social count providers for commercialization purpose.
 

Search for 'buy twitters followers' in whatever search engine you use, and it turns up results from sites such as USocial.net, InterTwitter.com, and FanMeNow.com. An unemployed former accountant operating from a house in Warrington, Cheshire has set up a site named 'buyfollowerstwitter.co.uk' two months back showing guaranteed results in just three to four days. Other such sites are - Blumpo, uSocial and Social Promotionz.

This recent issue of politicians and celebrities who exploited 'Twitter followers' just for the purpose of self-promotion made headlines when Mitt Romney’s Twitter following jumped by more than 100,000 in one weekend, a growth rate with no feasible explanation.  Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, Rihana, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, Ellen DeGenerres, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, and Shakira, are few among others, who got stripped down. 

 

 

 

 

Tool to sort fake

Status People introduced a new application, capable of detecting the number of fake followers that a particular Twitter account has. This tool can analyze 100,000 most recent followers of a particular account, and could give you the accurate count of fake or inactive accounts which are among the huge fan-list of celebrities. 'Fake' means those accounts which are setup just for the purpose of following people or send out spam, which have no followers for themselves but are active followers of too many of the others. 'Inactive' means that account which lacks activity for quite a while. A good account refers to one with followers and being followed with regular tweets and conversations.

 

Every twitter account will have some fake followers for sure. If the fakers are below 20 percent then you are on the safer side. This tool is for sure to warn people from buying fake followers, though it will not be able to put a full stop to this problem.

When Business Insider experimented this tool with a list of 20 top ten brands in hand , the results as they claim were shocking. The results are compiled as follows:

Consequences:

 

Have a look at an ad placed by a fake follower’s provider - "I will deliver 1,200 retweets plus 1,200 favorites and promote it to 430,000 followers within 12 hours for $5." If this practice continues and social networks when they reach a state of exhaustion cleaning their interface, it ends in a state where people will no longer rely on numbers (even if they are for real). If one third of the numbers ends up as fake, that will be the only go, since people will get confused to conclude. 

 

The main reason behind companies getting fake followers is to boost their ad revenue, since ads are placed on the basis of the number of followers they have. 75 percent of those who have purchase fake followers have their web address in their profile page of Twitter. Brian Blau, Analyst at Gartner says, "I think what they're intending to do is get a handle on it before it gets really out of control." It’s worth noting that marketing people place advertisements in your fake account page. If this continues, it is for sure to emerge as an irreversible sin over social media and its reliability. 

 

What is socialmedia's stand?

CNET reportedthat about 4.8 percent of the Facebook accounts were duplicates, while 2.4percent were user-misclassified accounts, and 1.5 percent was undesirable ones.Lately after these allegations, Facebook announced that "less than 1% oflikes on any given Page will be removed" and the new system "will nothave any sizeable impact on any Page, providing they and their affiliates havebeen abiding by our terms.” Their official blog says, "Newly improvedautomated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts,deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes." Facebook has started takingefforts to crack down on all fake activities that persist in its medium. Thecourage to act upon criticism is one best thing to be appreciated. 

There are anumber of service providers who sell fake twitter followers for the sociallydeficient. What makes it unfortunate is that the only way to get rid of thesefake twitter accounts is to individually block them or report them for spam.After that, "Protect my Tweets" option is to be turned on and alsodeclining every other requests coming from spam accounts is important to avoidsuch faker problems in future. 

Making haywhile... 

Cleaning up asocial network which engages a huge number of people's interests and theirbusiness activities altogether is essential, since it paves way for people toland on the page they wish to as well as to get more accurate count of theirfan base and demographics. 

A prestigiousissue for celebrities with Twitter accounts to have huge fan following."Who has credibility/is huge/is popular?" kind of queries raise insuch cases. Rather than building fake numbers, what PR people (associated withcelebrities and brands) should concentrate on is to have some sorts ofmeaningful and useful engagements for their clients to get news buzz. Lots ofthem prevail, and the challenge lies in identifying them right.

 Source: http://news.submitinme.com/newsdetails-227.aspx

Advantage of Google+ for SEO

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Hello Friends, it seems apart from being expert in their job Google engineers also have the ability to foresee the future this am saying because while developing Google+, they also developed an SEO carrier which governs search results better than made by other search engines. However going through the relevance of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter as a latest trend of promoting your products, but both of them impede Google to access their data.  This results in restricting the effectiveness of their SEO campaign. But this problem does not happen with Google+.

Let me explain this with an example. For this search your name on Google+ and check first 100 results on SERP. Just view the graph shown below you will notice difference in the results:

However you can also use this example on Twitter and Facebook, in-fact I also conducted same research and I noticed that Google+ mainly controls the results. Even SEOmoz was taken into consideration by Google+. This was one example you can carry out the same example for huge million of people to understand relevance of Google+. To utilize benefits of SEO there are different ways, in today’s tutorial we shall be focusing on 10 different ways that will enable you take an advantage of SEO.

1. Follow Links of your profile:

Before performing this step I would suggest you to conduct this exercise on SEOmoz you will earn 200 Mozpoints . I would suggest you to provide qualitative comments before you earn these Mozpoint. Whereas Google+ enables the person to get it connected with other profiles. It also facilitates you to implant those links to your bio supported by content which you want to insert. The value of link displayed by Google+ comparative to other platforms is much better indeed. It is authorized by both page and domain.

2. Implant links of other posts:

Google + also enables the person to implant other links on your posts. For this you just need to mention the URL address and Google automatically formats as link.  The worth of links enhances every time whenever it is shared or linked. For this let us view the following example. It is a post posted by Alexia Tsotsis, it has Page Rank 3 and Google caches it at regular intervals by Google.

Now if your post becomes universal or is shared, the value of links also increases.

3. Optimizing Title Tags of G+:

The very first word written on Google+ post is considered as part of title of your post, that is apparently related with ranking and place an important role in determining ranking of your post. It is therefore suggested to make selected keywords very carefully. You should know that it will be the first impression of your post on others. This can be better understood with help of illustration mentioned below. It is one of the post that is posted by Danny Sullivan.

4. Superior Editing Features:

Google+ facilitates blog writers as their own blogging place. In simple words it facilitates blogger to amend his blog according to his choice as many as times he wishes. But this is not same with Facebook or Twitter. However Facebook provides you this facility but to certain extent on the other side Twitter provides you the facility to delete your tweet once you have posted your tweet. The relevance of this feature increases when your blog is universal and you want to update with latest information at regular intervals. You also have facility of editing title and any attached document also. All this is possible only with Google+.

5. Indexing new page rapidly:

If you post any new content on Google+, than Google will index that page instantly. There rumors that new URLs are instantly crawled by Google. This truly vouches the relevance of Google+ that is replacing twitter while performing Google’s search option.  In earlier times when you wished your website to be indexed, you had to fill an application form and wait for your turn. But this is time in current scenario but just clicking +1 button.

                           “Google+ is the new Google Submit URL box.”
                           – Rand Fishkin, GROW 2012 Source

6. Get connected with inspirers:

Google+ provides the facility of almost 17 different notifications options that facilitate you to get connected with the inspirers within your own circle. These notifications can be received in form of notification emails, SMS or through phone depending upon the requirement of person. The 17 notification which you may receive may be like this:

I. Mention them in a post

II.  Share a post with them directly

III. Share a post and you’re in a circle they subscribe to

IV. Comment on a post they created

V. Comment on a post after they comment on it

VI. Add them to a circle

VII. Suggest new people to add to their circles

VIII. Tag them in a photo

IX. Tag one of their photos

X. Suggest a profile photo for them

XI. Comment on a photo after they comment on it

XII. Comment on a photo they are tagged in

XIII. Comment on a photo they tagged

XIV. Start a conversation with them

XV. Send them an invitation or update an event

XVI. Remind them about events

XVII. Any activity on events they created

7. Optimization of your snap to grab traffic:

It is believed that optimization of your photo may also result in increasing traffic on your website. If you have an eye catching photo followed by superb author tag will undoubtedly enhance you to even lead over your contender.

8. Taste social media dashboard on Google+:

With its inception Google Analytics has progressed well followed by social media reports. But if traffic on your website decides your survival than you need to place any information at front and placed in center. Going through this requirement Adam Singer has developed a remarkable piece of art i.e., social media dashboard that can be used for free. This will expedite you to with every necessary information from Google+ traffic and other social networks Including:

•   On Site Social Actions, i.e. Google +1′s

•   Revenue per Visit by Social Network

•   Overall Traffic Stats by Social Source

9. Have a look to ranking of your Circle:

An interesting tool on Google+ is circle count. This can be carried out by pasting your Google+URL to chart that will display increase in number of your followers. This will enable you to compare your posts with other profiles on Google+.

10. Make Practice of early adopter:

Although Google+ has witnessed dynamic growth but still only 1 out 4 people uses Google+ in a month, although number of logging users is increasing but still very less log in. It is of none use until unless your circle member log in to Google + regular. Even 10 minutes of visiting Google+ daily resulting in increasing number of your circle. This can be done:

•  Press +1 option to expand meaningful comment;

•  Add comment on interesting thought;

•  Add +1 button for your own content;

•  Engage/commen/reshare/start a hangout/create an event;

•  Circle known people;

•  Make easy for other to circle around you. 

Source :: http://blog.ribbun.com/tactics-for-enjoying-advantage-google-for-seo/