A New Weapon in Your SEO/SMO Arsenal: Google+
Google+ (Pronounced "Google Plus") is Google's new social media service that seems to be the first worthy challenger of Facebook since its meteoric rise to power.
Google unveiled Google+ with the same buzz-inspiring exclusivity strategy it used to roll out GMail. Google told everyone about Google+ but only let a select few people join, each of whom had a few "Google+ invites" to give out, thus slowly growing the service through a limited number a web of invitations. Not surprisingly, the strategy worked. And now, the floodgates are open to general public.
Only Google would be so bold as to think that they can get people to use their social network instead of, or at least in addition to, Facebook.
So how will they do this? Google+ claims to have certain advantages over Facebook, and it looks as though they may be right.
One of the biggest problems users have with Facebook is privacy. College students do not want their family or potential employers to see pictures of their partying antics. Employees working in an office environment may not want colleagues, especially superiors, to see posts relating to their personal lives. Facebook offered a solution to this by allowing users to sort their friends into groups and assign specific privacy settings to each group, even individual friends. However, very few Facebook users are willing to invest the time to sort their hundreds of friends into these groups and consider the specific privacy settings for each group or individual friend.
Enter Google+ Circles. Google+ requires you to sort every new friend you add to a Circle. You can customize your Circles however you would like. People from your Friends Circle cannot see posts that you post to your Work Circle. You can create any Circle you would like, Book Club, Immediate Family, Friends from Saturday Night, Ski Buddies, anything! And because Google+ is newly launched, every connection between friends on the entire network will have to be sorted by users. Privacy problem? Virtually solved. It's annoying to spend hours sorting in Facebook, but it's easy to click one drop down menu each time you add a friend.
Google+'s other main boasted features include Huddles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Instant Upload.
Huddles allow users to easily create custom group chats which is intended to make coordinating among a group of friends easier. Ever find it hard to agree on what movie to see with 5 friends? Where to go to lunch? Huddles makes it easy and fun.
Sparks is a service integrated into Google+ that analyzes your interests and sends you interesting material that you can watch, read, or share whenever you have free time. Think Digg or Stumbleupon.
Hangouts allow you to "hangout" with individual friends or entire Circles on the web. In a Hangout, users can watch a video "together," chat, and more.
Facebook users have expressed their love for mobile uploads, in which a user can upload a photo or video from their phone that can be geo-tagged so their friends know where it happened. It is a bit annoying to have to upload photos and videos. With Google+ Instant Upload, you can have photos and videos upload automatically to a private album, from which you may later select what circles can see certain media. This may sound a bit intrusive, but it is very easy to turn the uploading off.
What does Google+ mean for the SEO and SMO of my website?
Essentially, there is now one more major social network to help promote your site content. Many analysts believe that as it grows in popularity, Google+ will offer more effective SMO than Facebook because of its methods of spreading posted and linked content among Circles and users- oh, and the small fact that it's a GOOGLE service (being analyzed and tracked by Google site crawlers). For example, if I post a link about heavy snowfall at a nearby mountain to my Ski Buddies Circle, there is a much higher chance that those users will see my post in their feed, and because it is highly applicable to them, there is a much higher chance that they will click on my link.
Have any further questions about Google+ and how you can leverage Google's new social network for your website? Don't hesitate to contact the experts here at BostonLogic- we will happily discuss any questions or comments you may have!
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Posted on September 23, 2011 Filed Under Online marketing, Real Estate SEM, Real Estate SEO, Real Estate Search Engine Optimization, SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, What's New | Leave a Comment