Does Google+ help SEO?
The aim of this post is to see how much of a difference to the SEO of a page ranking with Google+ posts and shares make a difference.
Where to begin with your Google+ post?
I have started out by using a reliable keyword tool such as www.jaaxy.com and finding a reasonable search phrase that gets at least some decent traffic. I am not looking for thousands of searches per month to begin with just a relevant long tail phrase we can target our on and off page optimization techniques with.
I decided to go for ‘Does Google+ help SEO?’ which I used as the page title and URL. As wordpress does not allow syntax in the URL I opted for ‘plus’ instead of ‘+’
this should also help cover both ways of searching too.
We are also using a reliable social share plugin to allow users to easily share or in this case ‘+1’ our dedicated blog post on related to Google+ and SEO rankings.
Next up we write some useful non-spammy content relating to the subject in question (which you are reading right now) – no i am not going to try and get in the title again, that would be a little tacky 😉 hmmmm but it might help….no i will resist.
Ranking Results from Google+ shares
I avoid the obvious SEO forums like the plague, it’s not for me to be honest. But I am interested on how Google Plus and more importantly Google+ shares can help a website rank better. I have heard a lot of SEO’s talking about this but I am yet to see conclusive data that it in fact plays such a major role in our organic rankings.
Google product + Google+ = Improved Rankings?
So let’s see if this all works then. The post is live we are going to encourage fellow Google+ users to share this and we will report back with hard data which will either show a positive increase in rankings or not.
My first thoughts are that yes of course it will help our organic rankings, after all Social is only going to prove to be more and more important in SEO but what I want to really find out is, at this moment in time having more +1’s to a page or post on your website will it improve the rankings significantly, and are Google +1’s more effective than traditional link building?
I don’t believe they are right now and I will be doing more tests on this soon.
Let’s see what happens…but in the meantime i’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Ranking Update Friday 14th February 14:32
As of 14:32 GMT this post is ranking page 5 position 6 with 10 Google+1 shares and no back links (as yet)
Tom Peary is the director of SEO21 Ltd. Offering SEO, Website Design, Digital Marketing, Google Places Optimisation, Guest Blogging, Copywriting and Link Building Services.