The Benefits of Google+ for Business and Marketing

You may or may not have heard of Google +, but is becoming one of the most popular social networks available to marketers and business owners. The amount of Google+ users has blown through the roof, as there are over 1 billion users, and the number is still growing. In addition, it has been estimated that the amount of Google+ users is growing 33% every year. Currently, 70% of the brands out there have a presence on Google+; being only behind Facebook (99%) and Twitter (97%) according to the Marketing Tech Blog. It’s apparent Google+ plans on being around for a while, as Google has consistently integrated more Google+ features into the site’s design. Google+ is here to stay, so get on board and stay ahead of the curve. The predicted growth rates indicate that if you don’t, you may be left behind.

Don’t let your competitors whiz on by you, learn some of the reasons why you should jump on board with Google+. Learn more about how having a Google+ presence and strategy can help you and your business.

1. Google+ Local allows for users to discover new places, share places with others, and read reviews of a business. The reviews are all written by the people who are already in their circle, so they get to hear the opinions of places from someone that they know and trust. Encourage clients or customers to write reviews, as it can help you achieve awareness, trust and a strong following.

2. Google+ Publisher will connect your Google+ Local page to your website. This way, when users are searching Google for your business they will see a string of information that is pulled from Google” about your business or brand. When done correctly, users can see your address, contact information, hours, the number of Google+ followers, recent Google” + posts, as well as reviews.

3. In order to help benefit and optimize your marketing strategy, as well as propel your brand, Google+ has a host of resources available for its users. Users have access to resources such as Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Communities, Hangouts, as well as many others. These products are already being used by many people, and by using Google+ you will not have any problems fitting in. Google+ will seamlessly integrate with all other Google products.

4. Google immediately indexes everything you post on your Google + for Business page, and this plays a huge role in search engine optimization (SEO). This will allow the content you post to rank in the Google search results, even if your website does not rank. This allows for more chances for ranking high and appearing on the first page of Google’s search results. Any website that appears within the first few results, or on the first page of Google, get more than half of all clicks from users.

5. You can set up Google Authorship for even better SEO benefits, as Google will authenticate you and will trust you to be a quality source of content. This is the easiest way to take full advantage of the SEO benefits Google+ offers. Doing this will allow the author’s photo display next to their posts in the Google search results, which helps improve rankings and click-through rates. This will help your content stand out, as well as adding a human element to your content; which will increase your trustworthiness.