Some Google+ Housekeeping Matters

0
35

Share on LinkedIn

Everyone has had a shot at blogging about Google+ and discussing the benefits for business. One of the better articles that has been circulated is ‘Google+ SEO’ by AJ Kohn.

So I am not going to follow suit, I am not going to tell you why you should be using Google+, I’m going to assume you’ve already figured out why. This post is simply going to highlight a few Google+ housekeeping matters.

Connect your Google+ page with your website

It sounds simple doesn’t it? Janet Driscoll Miller stated at SMX West recently that 57 percent of Fortune 100 companies have a Google+ page but 98 percent do NOT have Google Direct Connect enabled. Google Direct Connect is simply linking your Google+ page and your website.

It’s so important to do and i’ll briefly explain why. Essentially Google is looking to verify all those search listings to ensure they’re providing the most accurate results. Therefore, we use both of these codes to tell Google which is our content so when someone searches for something relevant, Google is confident in the source, it’s legit and not some automated content.

So how do you do you link your Google+ profile and your website? For your individual Google+ profile, edit the right-hand section where it says ‘Contributor To’ and add a link to your business website. To connect your website to your Google+ profile, simply include a Google+ badge to your site. These badges look great and will encourage more people to join your network.

Author and Publisher verification using the ‘rel=author’ and ‘rel=publisher’ tags

I’ll start with ‘rel=author’. This is great for those businesses that have an active blog. Inside your Author Bio (if you haven’t got one do so) include your links to all of your social media profiles but more importantly include Google+ in the following manner:

Visual: Add him to your Circles +Quentin Aisbett
HTML: Add him to your Circles +Quentin Aisbett

It’s important to note of course that you use your own Google ID (the sequence of numbers) and also when you copy your profile URL make sure you remove the junk in between .com/???/your profile ID before you include the ?rel=author code.
This update will then tell Google that you wrote each article on this site with your Author Bio attributed. This is also thanks to the connection you made from your profile.
The ‘rel=publisher’ is a little trickier. It is based on the premise that Author is for the individual and Publisher for the business. But before I get too much further into it, Google does not guarantee that they will verify the ‘rel=publisher’ unless you have more than 1,000 people or more with your business Google+ page in their circles. But go ahead and put this code into your header –

You can check out your handy work to see if it’s been done correctly by using Google’s Rich Snippets Tool.

Stop Sharing and Posting to all of your Google+ Circles

Have you been checking that little box in the right hand corner of your Google+ page? Checking to see if anyone has added you to their circles? Only to realise that it is repeatedly one or two connections sharing everything directly. It’s annoying. So when you’re posting, unless an individual has a particular interest in your post don’t send it to your circles, simply post it to public.

Google+ Cheat Sheet

Are you finding your way on Google+? Need some help? Check out this Google+ cheat sheet published on Mashable.
Here’s a few tasters (if you didn’t already know):
Surround a word with an asterix to bold, i.e. *word* = word
Surround a word with underscores to italic, i.e. _word_ = word
Click on the time within a post and it will give you a direct URL link to that post
Tag people in your posts by adding + or @ i.e. +Quentin Aisbett

Of course we’re all finding our way on Google+ but hopefully this quick little housekeeping will help you out. If you have any other matters you would like to raise for everyone please leave a comment.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Quentin Aisbett
Quentin is a co-founder and the SEO strategist of the Australian-based agency Searcht. He is an information-hungry Gen Xer, often found lurking in the deepest corners of a client's Google Analytics on a quest to dig up something insightful. With 12+years of SEO experience, he’s the man behind Searcht's 5-star client reviews and a regular contributor to GoDaddy.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here