The social media world is buzzing with the much anticipated release of Google+ Pages for businesses. Blog posts and chatter are popping up all over the internet. This isn’t a post about how to set up a page or even why you should, but rather how to leverage a Google+ page for website SEO. Aside from the obvious SEO tactics like completing the profile, uploading images and video, building circles and communities, syndicating valuable contact, and encouraging social interaction and signals, Google offers up what they call Google+ Direct Connect.
Here’s what Google has to say about it:
“Google+ Direct Connect lets you quickly navigate to a Google+ page (and even add that page to your circles) when using Google Search. For example, if you searched for the query ‘+youtube’ or ‘+pepsi,’ you could be immediately taken to the YouTube Google+ page, or the Pepsi Google+ page, and given the option to add the page to your circles.”
SEO Implications
It’s too early to tell exactly how this will affect rankings, but it’s safe to assume it will. By Google building in this social integration into their search engine they are essentially creating a social signal mine. The information collected from these social signals is invaluable for building a better search engine and providing users with the most timely, problem-solving, or entertaining content. So, after a Google+ Page is setup it’s imperative to get the company’s page eligible for Direct Connect.
How to Make Google Pages eligible for Direct Connect – Google’s comments:
“A page’s eligibility for Google+ Direct Connect is determined algorithmically, based on certain signals we use to help understand your page’s relevancy and popularity. In addition to this analysis, we look for a link between your Google+ page and your website. To help Google associate this content, be sure to connect your Google+ page and your website using the Google+ badge, or by adding a snippet of code to your site, in addition to adding your website link to your page.”
Houston we have a problem. . .
It’s easy to add a company website to a Google+ Page so it’s not necessary to go into. However, dropping in a snippet of code can be an issue for some websites. Not because it’s technical, but because Google only gives webmasters one Google+ icon design in multiple sizes to choose from (see image on right). What if it completely clashes with the other social media icons on a site? The only option would be to design a custom logo matching the social media icon convention of the site (see below), link it to the Google+ Page and forgo the potential SEO benefits of the javascript.
Not so fast. . .
Not so fast. . .Actually, Google gives the option of “No badge” in the selection. As soon as the Google+ Page is set up make sure to copy the no badge code and paste it into the header tags of the appropriate website. That way, any Google+ social media icon can be designed and deployed without losing the Direct Connect benefits from the code snippet. To access this feature login to Google+ and click here.
The jury is still out on whether or not Google+ is going to be successful or fizzle out like Buzz. However, this doesn’t matter so much for SEO practitioners so long as Google’s search engine is the king of the hill and Google+ data is used in ranking algorithms. For more help with SEO and social media visit our resources section and don’t forget to add Kuno Creative to your Google+ circles.
Social Media SEO = Social Media Infrastructure
