A presentation from the Fresh Egg social media team titled 'Google+ and Friends'. This looks at where Google+ is right now as a social media platform and shares advice on why use it, how to create an optimised profile and the potential SEO benefits of using it. Also it takes a look at Google+'s 'friends', including Google Authorship, Ripples and Enhanced Listings.

1. Google+ and Friends
David Somerville, Fresh Egg

2. Today’s presentation
• Where is Google+ right now?
• Why use Google+?
• Profile Page checklist
• Google+ and SEO
• Google Authorship – Rel=Author and Rel=Publisher
• Enhanced Listings
• Direct Connect
• Vanity URLs
• Google Ripples
• Google+ Tools

3. Where is Google+ right now?
Google+ and Friends

5. Where Google+ actually is
Source:
Trendstream,
2013

6. Where is Google+ right now?
• December 2012 Google reported that there are now
343 million registered profiles on Google+
• Gender split – 64.3% men, 27.86% women, 7.8%
other/unknown
• Country distribution (% of population using it) – US
29%, India 20%, Brazil 8%, UK 3%, Indonesia 2%
• In Europe, Germany has the most pages, followed by
the UK then Spain, Italy and France
• Most popular occupations of users in the UK: Student,
Software Engineer, Engineer, Software Developer and
Web Developer

7. Where is Google+ right now?
• Most popular profile – Britney Spears with 6,001,083
followers
• Most popular page – Coldplay with 4,193,554 followers
• Cadbury UK has 2,843,799 making it eighth biggest
brand page in the world
• Biggest Community page is ‘Space’ with 111,406
followers

8. Why use Google+?
Google+ and Friends

9. Why use Google+?
• It allows you to find key, influential people across a broad area of
industries and subjects
• It works well as a search engine – use it find out ideas for content,
hot topics etc
• You can promote your content to specific groups (Circles)
• You can join in with discussions, ask questions, interact
(Communities)
• You can see how far your content has spread (Ripples)
• Great for SEO
• It’s owned by Google (who, like it or not, rule the search
universe)!

10. Personal Profile Checklist
Google+ and Friends

11. Profile page checklist
Here’s a checklist of what to do when setting up a profile:
•Add a clear profile picture
•Add a clear (and relevant) cover photo
•Enter website URL (if you have a blog etc)
•About section – Introduction (include links!), contact info, website
(verify this by linking back from site), Links
•Find a few relevant people (profiles) and add them to circles
•Add photos and videos to these sections
•Start to post regularly – ensure posts are not just links but use
optimised copy

12. Google+ and SEO
Google+ and Friends

13. Some possible SEO benefits?
Google says: “+1's from friends and contacts can
be a useful signal to Google when determining
the relevance of your page to a user’s query.
“This is just one of many signals Google may use
to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and
we’re constantly tweaking and improving our
algorithm to improve overall search quality.”

14. Some possible SEO benefits?
• Lots of indexable content – bio, full text of public
posts, photos, all +1’d content…make sure they are
optimised
• Fast indexation of content – posting a link to
content has reported super-fast indexing of these
pages
• Followed Link opportunities – these exist within
your personal or brand profile pages, plus in posts
• Google Authorship

15. Google Authorship – Rel=Author and Rel=Publisher
Google+ and Friends

16. Google Authorship
“Within search results, information tied to
verified online profiles will be ranked higher than
content without such verification, which will
result in most users naturally clicking on the top
(verified) results. The true cost of remaining
anonymous, then, might be irrelevance”
Eric Schmidt, CEO Google, 2013
The sign of Author Rank being imminent?

17. Rel=Author
• Part of Google’s Authorship program
• Used to link PEOPLE to Google+ PERSONAL profiles
• Provides rich snippet within the SERPs (not guaranteed), with
author photo, name and link to G+ profile

18. Rel=Author
• Benefits – results stand out more, therefore higher CTR; improved
authority for writers
• Can be implemented manually or via a plugin (if using Wordpress
etc) – added to every content page
• Make sure you link your Google+ profile to the sites you write for

19. Rel=Publisher
• Used to link BRANDS to Google+ BUSINESS profiles
• Several brands are implementing on site, but there are no
definitive sightings yet of brand logos appearing in SERPs
• Some people suggest ‘Enhanced Listings’ are a result , however
some brands do not have it implemented yet this appears – is
likely to be one contributing factor
• Implementation can be done manually or with a plugin – added to
just the homepage
• Important to ‘close the circle’ by linking the brand Google+ page
to the website and having this verified

20. Rel=Publisher
Benefits include:
•Recognise your Google+ page as the "official" page for the brand,
and give it search preference over any impostor pages.
•Provide eligibility for Google Direct Connect
•Provide increased +1s, as now all +1s done on the site, on the G+
page, in search results, and on AdWords ads, will be aggregated.
•Begin to build a topical relevance and trust profile on your site as a
brand, its web content, its Google+ activities, and other social media
activity linked from its profile, which may influence search results.

21. Enhanced Listings
Google+ and Friends

22. Enhanced Listings
Enhanced listing boxes appear for those brands that:
* Have an active Google+ page
* Are featured in high quality authority sites (such as
Wikipedia and IMDB)
* Post on a regular basis

23. Enhanced Listings
• Appears at the top of the page on the right of organic listings
• Includes the brand logo, plus links to the Google+ page and a
varying number of latest posts
• Can force down PPC ads in some cases
• Some believe that this can be forced to appear using
‘Rel=Publisher’, however for some brands without this
implemented, this can still appear

24. Direct Connect
Google+ and Friends

25. Direct Connect
• This allows users to search for brands on Google search, by using
the ‘+’ operator
• Does not work for all brand pages – Google claim it’s determined
“algorithmically, based on certain signals we use to help
understand your page's relevancy and popularity”
• Implementing rel=publisher can help
• Also requires Google+ page and website to be linked

26. Vanity URLs
Google+ and Friends

27. Vanity URLS
• These replace the nasty current profile and page urls with a more
attractive url, such as https://plus.google.com/+JUSTEAT
• They have only been rolled-out to certain brands – qualification is
likely to be based on how active the page is or how often they
post (or how much they spend with Google!)
• Even when you claim one there is no speed from Google to verify
them

28. Google+ Ripples
Google+ and Friends

30. Google Ripples
• Ripples show the flow and pattern of a trending topic within
Google+ to give you statistics and the people who shared
something
• A useful feature that lets you connect with highly influential
people as well as get ideas for writing pieces that MIGHT go ‘viral’
• Also allows you to trace your posts – enter a URL to see who has
publicly shared it and what comments they have made

31. Google+ Tools
Google+ and Friends

32. Google+ Tools
• Rich Snippets Testing Tool – allows testing for Rel=Author and
Rel=Publisher implementations
• CircleCount.com – host of statistics for Google+ as well as tracking
of your profile and pages. Handy ‘A vs B’ comparisons
• Socialstatistics.com – stats, plus Chrome extension to view graph
of a profile/page growth on Google+
• Google+ Business – tips and resources
http://www.google.com/+/business/

33. Thank you
Questions?
Twitter:
@FreshEgg
@southcoastdavid