Google+ Pages

Early this month, Google announced it was launching “Pages” for Google+. This was a great announcement for businesses that are seeking out new marketing techniques to reach new customers, especially with all the success businesses, brands, and products have had from Facebook Pages.

Google Pages are very easy to set up. The entire process of creating a new page for your business, product, or brand takes about five minutes. If you have the free time, I definitely recommend setting one of these pages up because it is so simple and takes very little time.

Do not expect immediate sales, recognition, or a huge following for your Google+ pages. Even large public companies with widely popular products, are not getting a huge rush of people circling their page. SEO firm BrightEdge is reporting that 61 percent of the world’s top 100 brands have already created Google+ pages. According to Techcrunch.com, “Consumer brand stalwarts like Coke, McDonalds, and Verizon had only dozens of fans on Google,” (but have millions of Facebook fans). In fact, a review of Facebook and Google+ properties for all 100 brands showed a collective total of almost 300 million Facebook fans, compared to approximately 148,000 Google+ followers for these same brands.

Even with this huge disparity between Facebook and Google pages, it is still worthwile to set up a Google page. For starters: it’s free, and any extra advertising you can get for free is a worthwhile endeavor. Also, even though Google has not confirmed this yet, popularity on Google+ or even the existence of a page will surely be factored into Google’s algorithm for their search engine. Having a Google+ page will add legitimacy to your listing; being more popular than other companies in your field will show Google that consumers would rather see your listing before your competitor’s. This is speculation of course. Google is very secretive about their algorithm and what it does or does not pay attention to. However, it makes perfect sense that they would use their own social network to gauge credibility of companies and products. Also, the Plus 1 button for Google will play a role in SEO of the future.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Ryan Williams