Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [69]
In essence, you work hard to keep the “home base” of your main site as the primary search result for those things you hope to rank for, and use Google+ as your outpost and make posts there a way to guide people to your offerings. More about this in a moment, but first, look at some professionals who can help you better understand how Google+ might impact search.
Social Signals
If you notice that all the big names in SEO are actively trying out Google+ and experimenting, you can see that something important is going on. One of the changes search deals with is how Google weighs the value of links shared via social networks versus links shared via blogs and websites.
Google (the search engine, not Google+ the social network) looks at many factors to decide which web page to promote as the most relevant to someone’s search. Some of these traits include understanding how many other sites have linked to a certain page, what text they used when explaining the link, the value of the sites linking to a page, and more.
I asked Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land to explain how social signals work. This is when Google looks at how people use social networks to point people to a certain page. Danny has been active on Google+ since day 2 and has been working just as hard as all the other top search experts to uncover what matters most. Here’s what Danny had to say:
“Google already looks at social signals as a way to influence its results. Social connections on Google+ are looking like one of the most important of these—and potentially might be more important than gathering links.
Being “friends” with someone on Google+ means that your search results, if you’re logged in, are heavily influenced by what they like and share. Things you wouldn’t see in the top results can get pushed higher.
A good example of this was with Ford. It’s one of the few companies currently allowed to have a “brand presence” on Google+. By being friends with Ford, I found that suddenly, they were ranking in the top results for “cars” in my search results—something that didn’t happen when [it was] logged out.
Being friends, in this case, was the number one ranking factor for them doing well, for my results. So being on Google+, having people like you, follow you, is one of the best new SEO techniques out there.”
There are many points to consider in what Danny has uncovered. It does matter who you add to your circles because Google now uses information it collects about those people to influence what information it gives you when you search. This has implications, obviously.
In Danny’s example, being “friends” with Ford Motor Company made generic searches for “cars” rank Ford higher than other brands. That’s a huge company with huge competition. You can see this trickling down to smaller companies with even less brand awareness, and suddenly the people you friend, what they search, and how they react to your online presence influences what you buy.
From there, we get into the most important takeaway, as Danny explains it. If being “friends” becomes the #1 ranking factor and is so influential, it suddenly matters that people add you to their circles. How do you get added? You provide interesting information, and you respond to their comments and mentions. So, decades later, Dale Carnegie’s book on winning friends and influencing people might now turn out to have some monetary implications.
What is the ROI of using a tool like Google+? Well, if what Danny Sullivan explains is any indication,