I gave this 10-minute presentation for Juice Networking and am now sharing it with the world.
Are you more of a do-er than a reader?
I am running 2hr seminars on Google+ for local business 9.30 -11.30 am at The Fleece, Witney in October, November and December.
I can't offer them for free, but I can offer incredible value for money, and 10% off if you book now with promo code PSM10
Google+ was launched in the summer of 2011 and tens
of millions of people signed up for an account but it was quickly slammed by critics for not being social, having no good content or exchanges.
How Google+ works
Google+ works with circles. You create Circles of friends, colleagues, networks, whatever you want to call them and decide who goes in which circle. You can then share content privately with your Circles or publicly with the Google+ community. Similarly, you see content shared by people whose Circles you are in, you see all public content and even follow those you are interested in.
I didn't really bother
No one I knew was using it, I explored it briefly, set up a profile found a few colleagues, experimented with Circles, set up a business page and played about with setting up a community.
But Google has infiltrated my life and my working life more and more, and without realising it I use Google Search, Chrome, Gmail, Keyword Tool, YouTube, Blogger, Maps, Analytics and Webmaster Tools daily.
It hit me when I had to use my Google+ sign in to get onto Blogger that Google+ had got me.
Outstripping the competition
Looking at some research I discovered that Google+ is growing fast and being adopted fast by millions of people as it is the social layer that combines a very powerful and popular set of apps, so those like myself using lots of Google products are forced into an account and those in SEO have to accept that content on a Google app and Google+ is going to be weighted much heavier in terms of ranking.
1. Set up a Google+ account
It is easy to do. Follow the instructions and Google will help you build your profile. You can add an image of yourself and a nice big header image and see your posts just like on Facebook. Explore the side bar for all your options like, Home, What's hot, Circles etc...
2. Set up Google+ Business Page
Setting up a Business Page is easy. Simply click 'create page' once you're in your Google+ account, or start from scratch at http://www.google.com/+/business/
3. Claim your Google Places page
43% of all searches are local or location-based
50% of mobile searches are local or location-based
In some industries (such as restaurants) this conversion percentage has been found (for smartphone users) to equal 30% immediate conversions and 60% conversions within an hour, and 80% go on to eventually make a conversion.
[source: David Kutcher]
4. Add a +1 button to your website
On Google+
When you +1 a post on Google+, the creator of that post and the people the post was shared with can see your +1. The creator of the post will receive a notification that you +1'd their post.To remove your +1, just click on the +1 button again.
Outside of Google+
When you +1 something on a website, your +1 will be added to the total number of +1's shown in the count. When someone who has you in their Circles views content that you've +1'd, your +1 may be highlighted next to the +1 count. +1's are public, so a good rule of thumb is to only +1 pages when you're comfortable sharing your recommendation with the world.
Once you've +1'd something on the web, you can share the content with your Circles on Google+.
[source Google+ help]
Measuring +1's
Use the +1 Metrics in Google Webmaster Tools to see how +1 affects your search traffic.
You can measure/evaluate
Activity: Total number of +1's received by pages on your site.
Search impact: See the pages on your site that received the most +1, and see how +1 affected CTR (click through rate).
Audience: See aggregated info on the people who have +1'd your pages, including unique users, location, age and gender.
Always make sure that you have taken benchmark readings of rankings and traffic before you implement any changes so you can see the effectiveness of 1+.
In Conclusion
No one quite knows yet the exact impact Google+ and Google +1 will have on SEO, but if you take those 4 steps and have some kind of strategy for Google+ and Google +1 you can only be helping your organic SEO especially if you are a local based business with premises.
