I mention another social network and my clients look at me with frustration but the truth is you do not need to be on every social network available. My suggestion would be to choose a few that you feel are right for your market and then focus on those. I thought I would take this opportunity to chat about Google+; one of the biggest social networks to hit the digital world. So the question from the frustrated client is “Do we really need to join this?” The answer, quite simply, is yes!
So who or what is Google+? Google+, Google plus or otherwise known as G+ officially launched in September 2011 which makes it fairly new in comparison to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Some key features are enhanced privacy settings; Hangouts and Circles. Google Hangouts is a video conference call feature similar to Skype but allows up to 10 people in the call. “Circles” are where you group friends into different categories such as “family”; “business” or “close friends” and you can choose to share content to each of these groups exclusively.
Still not convinced that you should join? Recent studies show that the more your content is shared through social networking the more likely you are to have a better Google search rank. Google+ is making it really easy to share stories and recommendations by using their +1 feature and by doing this it is giving websites credibility and personalisation. Google’s main aim is to provide high quality and relevant results for internet users and Google+ has been created to help them with providing this service.
So does all of this have a positive impact on SEO? I would say it most certainly does but not in a direct way. You will not be “awarded” a higher page rank for your website because you have a Google+ account, you need to use Google+ to share content and get internet users to view your business as credible. Keep the content on your Google+ page relevant, fresh and exciting and hopefully your fans will do the rest by sharing it!