5 Surprising Reasons To Reconsider Google+ (That You Can Act On Today)

I’ve personally always been a huge fan of Google+, but it’s been several years since I’ve been consistently active: It simply became too difficult to keep up with posting.

Has the same been true for you?

I’ve always known that Google+ is good for SEO reasons, personal branding, and content sharing; I just found myself moving more naturally toward Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – networks that I could use Buffer to manage all of my posts and share similar content. Sharing to Google+ natively was too much of a stretch from my regular routine of scheduling everything in one place.

Well, I’m excited to share some good news and some helpful G+ tips. Now, you can connect a Google+ account to Buffer, which we hope will make your Google+ brand even stronger. And if you’re still on the fence about the future of Google+ or its value to marketers today, I’d love to share five reasons why Google+ could be interesting for you to try.

 

To make Google+ marketing as easy as possible for you, we’re proud to say that starting today you can connect your personal Google+ profile to Buffer, along with any of your Google+ pages, and fully manage your Google+ presence alongside Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest all from the Buffer dashboard.

Now, onto the five good reasons to make time for Google+ posting.

1. Google+ content gets indexed immediately and shows up in search results

You’ve likely heard that Google+ pages and profiles can greatly help your SEO, and it’s true!

Google+ is a powerful search engine marketing tool for companies, influencers, and your own personal branding. Sharing blog posts on Google+ in particular is an excellent way to …

1. Rank for keyword terms that you might otherwise not be able to
2. Drive search traffic to your Google+ profile and then back to your blog and website

Sometimes it happens without even realizing it. Such was the case for Patrick Antinozzi of Rapid Web Launch who ended up in the search results for Pokemon Go thanks to his Google+ post.

  

How does this Google+ ranking boost happen?

Well, rumor has it that Google crawls and indexes content posted to Google+ almost immediately. Here’s what Moz found:

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.

Content that you post to Google+ is far more likely to show up in search results than other pages, websites, articles, and content posted to other social networks because Google ranks their own social network higher and they crawl it faster. The added benefit is that Google even previews certain Google+ posts with rich snippets (profile picture, media, etc.), giving them even more real estate in a search!

As Laura Donovan shared in her Business2Community article on Google+:

While our company Google Plus page does not have a lot of followers, it does seem to give us a boost when it comes to how visible our blog posts are in Google searches.

Is there a catch?

Well, you do need to build a network on Google+ using Google+ Circles. The more people you add to circles and the more people who add you to their circles, the more likely you are to show up in search results for your network. Imagine if every person you emailed got added to a Google+ circle? You’d have a list of friends, family, colleagues, prospective leads, business partners, and much more who would see your content first! The broader your network on Google+ the more likely you are to show up in search results.

How can you take advantage of this? It’s pretty simple!

1. Make sure your Google+ personal profile and/or your Google+ page is fully complete.

Why bother? Well, Google indexes this information. This is an ideal place to make sure that Google knows who you are (and for those who find you on Google+ to know where to click to learn more).

In order to fill this out completely, you can:

• Head to your Google+ personal profile, hit “Edit Profile” then click the “I” icon to go to your About Me page.
• From there you can add your introduction and use words that relate to your brand in your tagline and about section
• If you hit the + at the bottom of the page, you can add relevant sites and include links to your website or blog
• Double check that the privacy for your introduction and sites is set to “Public” or whatever you are most comfortable with

2. Grab your custom URL with your full name or business name

After you claim your custom URL (you can follow the instructions here for desktop and mobile), it’ll be even easier to extend your branding into the search results since Google indexes the URLs, too.

3. Stay active on Google+

Make sure all of your recent blog content is being shared there, plus any relevant curated articles you wish to share. (It’s as simple as Buffering it now!)

4. Share your own blog posts, using the blog post title, immediately after they’re published

This is the fastest way to get your URL indexed and crawled to rank on Google search. Take care when sharing to Google+ to include the full title of post and even a small description to make ranking even more likely to be indexed and ranked.

5. Keep building your circles

The more people you have in your circles, the more likely you are to show up in search results! One idea: You could add everyone you email to a Google+ circle.

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2. Everyone You Email Can See Your Google+ Profile

One billion people use Gmail every month. Are you one of them? If you aren’t, you’re probably emailing with a bunch of them!

And here’s the great benefit of Google+ and Gmail: Your Google+ profile appears in every one of the emails you send, for whoever opens your email in Gmail on desktop.

It’s this information, right here:

Have you ever tried clicking on someone’s photo in an email and had it take you to their Google+ profile?

I’ve done that quite a few times when I’m looking to find out more about someone, and it’s always awesome when their bio is filled out and from there I can find their website, other social handles, or just generally learn more about them.

How can you optimize this?

• Add a photo to your Google+ profile
• Optimize your Google+ profile by including:
  • Links
  • Bio
  • Workplace
  • Anything else you’d like to tell people <img src="http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72×72/1f642.png&quot; alt="