In our attempts to improve SEO rankings
we do miracles and try everything we can think of. Of course, even if
we could, it makes no sense to try absolutely everything. What makes
the most sense, is to try something that does have great effect on
our SEO rankings, yet is not known to everybody and their brother.
G+, Google's social network meets these requirements – seems to do
miracles for rankings, while most people, (except those who try
everything), who do employ social networks for SEO, concentrate their
efforts on Facebook
because it is more popular than G+. However, it turns out G+ pays
more for our efforts than Facebook and the other social networks.
Here is why.
Why Google Plus Is Especially Important for SEO
While Google denies any direct relationship between Google Plus content and
activity on one hand and SEO rankings on other, very often good
ranking sites have good Google Plus activity. While in theory this could be
pure coincidence, the results speak for themselves. Here are some
reasons why Google Plus is especially important for SEO:
- Google owns it and no matter if they admit it or not, as empirical evidence shows popularity on Google Plus is a huge factor for good rankings.
- Some links are dofollow and they help to improve rankings. Not all links are dofollow but unlike on other sites, at least the so called "shared" links (the links under your post) are dofollow, so take advantage of that. Additionally, when you post something interesting that gets reposted, you earn multiple links to the same page.
- Links from Google Plus get relevant anchor text - the title of the post is the anchor text (which obviously is much better than "Click this", "Here", or other generic anchor texts) and the best is that this anchor text sounds natural and won't hurt your rankings.
- Ultrafast indexing of all pages is another benefit. While it is true that Google is fast to index any site that gets frequently updated, the advantage of Google Plus over Twitter and Facebook where all or most of the content is hidden from search engines is hard to beat.