SEO on Google+ Profiles and Pages
Personal Profile
SEO Title: Your Name – Google+
Google+ is all about the personal branding, and they insist that you use your real name for your profile. If you want to use a business name, blog name, or keywords, use it in your Google+ Page.
Meta Description: Your Name – Your Headline + Your Occupation
The meta description for your Google+ profile is a combination of different pieces of your profile information including:
Your name followed by your headline.
Your occupation.
Your current employer.
Those items are followed by your introduction text, but by this point you’re usually well beyond the 160 character mark. Make sure that the first 160 characters count by writing a great headline and occupation title, and make sure those areas are visible for everyone on the web.
SEO Elements of the Google+ Page
When it comes to the customizable SEO elements of the Google+ pages, they are about the same as the personal profiles. One exception is that there isn’t an occupation or current employer field in the pages, or at least not for products or brands. Your meta description will be your page’s name, headline, and then the introduction text.
Dofollow Links: Everywhere
The links within the introduction content as well as the ones under other profiles, contributor to, and recommended links are all dofollow. So don’t shy away from anchor text as this is a premier Google property. Just make sure the profile still sounds good and doesn’t look like a big link farm.
How do Google+ Profiles Rank vs. Pages
We see that our personal Google+ profile ranks No. 9 for my name when we use Google Chrome, but it’s on the second page of results when we use Firefox (signed out of my Google account). Our Google+ page for my blog isn’t ranking in the first 100 results for my blog.
Twitter Moderation is for business
With more than 300 million users worldwide in 2011, Twitter is undeniably a good site to promote a business. The micro-blogging and social networking site is being joined by thousands of businesses for marketing goals.
Activities of Twitter users:
- pointless babble
- conversational
- pass-along value
- self-promotion
- spam and news
Joining Twitter may mean doing the six specified activities to boost income, for free.
1. Use a Face As Your Profile Photo, While it is true that a logo is the representation of the business, it would be nicer to use a person’s face as the user profile photo. First, faces are more memorable than logos. Second, the account will not look like a mere business-purpose page. A Twitter account is more attractive when it uses the face of a popular personality linked to the business.
2. There should be posts that are intended for Twitter followers only. Usually, social media pages of a business contain same posts. The business should make sure there are special messages for Twitter follower, as well as having separate messages for Facebook subscribers. This will help the followers realize that they are special to the business.
3. Pick Up Statements To arouse the interest of followers and other users, moderators should be creative enough to create pick lines. The lines must be entertaining, informative. Once followers start replying or re-tweeting a good pick up line, everything goes viral. Usually, moderators flood with interesting questions. This strategy is much recommended.
4. Tweet Something Useful. Users log in to Twitter to learn something. The site is also educational. Followers love tweets that help them in purchasing. Thus, businesses should tweet tips that current and future customers may use. Businesses can also tweet guidelines to remind customers of the proper way of using products.
5. Give Attention to All Responses The greatest reward for a Twitter user is to get a tweet re-tweeted by someone. Messages from followers that are entertaining and informative should re-tweeted. Shared ideas from followers deserve a “thank you” note. Questions should be entertained. Giving attention to all messages may need too much time and effort in the part of a moderator.
Moderators use “hashtags” and codes appropriately for the business. One tip: a successful business hires moderators to do online moderation. This will allow the business to concentrate on its main activities while moderators do the tricks online.
You may also read
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SEO Tips For Small Businesses
Considering the ongoing changes to search engine algorithms (e.g., Google’s recent “Panda Update”) and the big impact these changes can have on a business’s ranking, it is imperative that small businesses take a thoughtful approach to their SEO strategy.
Here are some SEO techniques any small business can do today to boost its search engine rankings:
1. Ensure the technical setup of your website is search engine friendly
Most platform hosted websites do this naturally already, but if you have a custom built website you need to think about your folder structure, site map, and HTML readability.
Most website designers spend lots of time making the graphics layout look visually appealing to their human audience, but you also must remember that search engines look at your site through a very technical lens.
There’s no “style points” here! If your site is heavy on Flash, make sure there’s a text based description that lives in the HTML to help clue in the search bots. Consider removing your splash or welcome page, and instead build a homepage with descriptions and pointers to the main content areas of your site.
2. Make a list of keywords you want your website to appear for
Write down the three or four ways you’d search for your website if you had to find it quickly. Ask your friends the same question and tabulate the results. Chances are there will be some overlap, and you’ll quickly see which terms are more likely to be searched on first.
Next, run the searches yourself, and for each query try to find what position your website has in the results and write it down. Stop if you can’t find it after ten pages. If you can find it by then, don’t expect anyone else to either!
If you can, also take note of the other sites that come up on the results of the first page for each query. Are they similar to yours? Local or national? Are they competitive to your business?
When picking your top keywords, it’s important to be honest about how competitive certain terms might be. You must assume that others will try to keep their site listed high in the search results as well.
See if you can break the list into three buckets:
• Lower rank, great term, low competition – This is the perfect place to start. Put these terms at the top of your priority list. You should see the best results on this set first.
• Lower rank, great term, high competition – Another great opportunity (as evidenced by your competition), but unless you feel you have to take them on directly, it could be more costly in the long run to start here unless you have a higher performing base of keywords.
• Higher rank, great term – The good news is that you’re already doing awesome here, but you should continue to track performance just in case. You can always come back to this group later if you’re still not satisfied with the results.
By this time, you should have two or three keywords that are at the top of your priority list.
3. Your homepage must contain a text description with 2 or 3 of those top keywords
This is where you start crossing over to the artful/creative side of the process. If you want someone to find your website by searching for these terms, where do you have them listed on your website for the search engines to find them.
For small business sites, they typically have one main page. Make sure you add a couple sentences that naturally describe your business, and weave in your top three keywords. To gauge success of these keywords, keep an eye on your site ranking to see if there is movement.
4. Write a page or blog post on your site that’s dedicated to each of your top keywords
This is also a good way to show your customers you know all about the product or service they’re interested in. Picture yourself explaining to a friend or relative in five minutes what you do in that specific area.
The write up doesn’t have to be more than 300 – 400 words and should list the target keywords no more than two or three times. Remember this should be as natural and easy to read as possible, but have the keywords mentioned in a way that makes sense.
5. Post links to your site and/or key pages on social sites like Facebook & Twitter
Once you have these blog posts or articles on your site, it’s ok to post them out on the web. Start with the social sites as these offer the easiest access and contacts.
Search engines are starting to crawl and track these links back to your site, plus it’s an easy way to get your friends and top customers involved. Seems like everyone has a Facebook page these days!
6. Ask people to post something about you on their website
They can use one of the keywords on your list and highlight them as a link to your page. Traditionally, this may also be known as a “link exchange” and although sometimes frowned upon when done in large quantities, it’s a great above-board practice for genuine websites with original content. But the link should be relevant and provide actual value to the reader. The search engines tend to favor sites with more external links pointing to them from a variety of sources over websites with few or no backlinks. A simple way to view this is that search engines view relevant links to a website as a “vote of confidence.”
