How to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings with Google Plus

With Google being the most popular website in the world and hundreds of millions of people using it every day to search for content on the Web, no marketer can afford to ignore the vast potential of search engine optimization. Increasing your standing in the search engines requires taking extra steps to optimize and adapt both your content and your online marketing efforts as a whole so that your website ends up in the first page of the search results. However, Google Search is just one of many popular services which the Internet giant provides. Google also operates Google Plus, a free service which has now become the second-most popular social networking site in the world. Its close connection with other Google services makes it an essential tool in any digital marketing campaign.

Google Plus and Local SEO:
Although almost any business can profit from having a Google Plus profile, the service is particularly valuable for traditional local businesses which serve a specific geographic area. Local search queries are becoming more common every year, particularly as mobile Internet usage increases with people using their mobile devices to search for local businesses while they are on the move.

Google Plus is heavily integrated with other services, such as Maps and Search, and setting up a local business page on the social network will help to solidify your online presence by letting Google know where your business is located and what it does. If you are creating a page for your local business, you'll want to choose the 'Local Business or Place' option when you set up your profile. You'll also need to fill out your business information, and to get listed on Google Places, you'll also need to verify your company address either by phone or mail.

Getting Noticed:
+1s are on your content occur when someone shares it on their own Google Plus profile. Unsurprisingly, getting +1s on content which you post on your Google Plus profile holds more weight in the search engines than the equivalent functions on other social networks. To boost your search rankings, you'll want to get is many genuine +1s as possible, and this means publishing content which people like enough to want to bother sharing with it others. When someone shares your website on their own Google Plus profile, the page will actually end up getting highlighted in the search results, and this helps to instil a sense of trust both in the eyes of your audience and Google's Web crawler algorithms. You can facilitate sharing by including a Google Plus button alongside your other social media sharing buttons on each page of content on your website.

You'll also want to work on building up a substantial following on your own profile page. When someone follows your profile by adding you into their 'Circles', you'll start to see your exposure in the search results increase, and this will even be the case if the follower in question doesn't have any further interaction with you. As is the case with any social network, the whole principle of social marketing revolves around building up a community through engagement, and as you work on achieving this, the search engine results will start to favour you as well. Nonetheless, it is important to go about building up your follower base in the right way, and you should never be excessively promotional or pushy. Below are some of the best practices for drawing in more followers:

Promote your Google Plus profile on your website by adding social sharing buttons and referring to it on your 'About' page along with a link to your profile.

Get involved in Google Communities which are relevant to your industry. Participate in conversation rather than advertising.

Add a link to your Google Plus profile on your other social media profiles as well as in your email newsletter templates.

Frequently share updates on Google Plus, but only when you have something useful or entertaining to offer which is likely to be of interest to your audience.

Add others to your Circles. When you follow others on Google Plus, they'll be all the more likely to add you to their own circles in return.

In many ways, and particularly with regards to the type of content you post, using Google Plus as a marketing tool is really not much different to using Facebook or any other major social network.

Claim Authorship of Your Content

The Google Authorship program has become an essential tool in any content and social media marketing campaign, since it helps to establish trust and become a known authority. Google Plus provides you with the tools you need to claim authorship of your online content such as videos, images and blog posts. Once you have officially claimed your content, it will all be linked together under your same author profile and linked to your Google Plug business page. Effectively, it is a free endorsement from the world's largest search engine which allows your audience to easily find more content belonging to you.

The easiest way to claim authorship of your content is to verify the email address of the domain you use for publishing your content on. However, in cases where you don't have such an email address (i.e.: you have a generic one) or your content is published in various locations, you can claim authorship by linking to your Google Plus profile from your website. The link should be written in HTML in the following format:

 <a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>

Simply replace [profile_url] with the full address of your Google Plus profile. You'll then need to add a reciprocal link on your Google Plus profile through the 'Contributor to' settings menu.

You can ultimately think of your Google Plus profile and your standing in the search engines as a virtual storefront. Getting onto the first page of the results will vastly increase your exposure in a way that is analogous to having a storefront located right in the main street of a city.