Content marketing can be tough to succeed at for many new marketers, but Google helps us out with a little social site called Google Plus.
Google Plus does many things for bloggers and video marketers that are trying to get a little extra traffic and exposure to their content through many different ways using this rising social media platform.
Google Authorship
With Google Authorship, you can connect your blog to your Google Plus profile. Why is this so significant? What it does, is it makes your posts stand out in search engines and dramatically increase click through rates.
It shows your picture by the post in Google search results and shows your popularity on Google Plus by having a place showing how many followers you have.
When people see a post with Authorship next to it as opposed to ones that don't, the click through rates increase by as much as 150%. Here's a comparison as to what the different results look like:
Here's a search result with Google Authorship integration:
Here's a search results for the same keyword search, but without Google Authorship:
With Google Authorship you actually get to see the author of the post and how popular they are on social media. It actually tells you who wrote it as well right next to the Google+ circles data.
It just looks much better and catches the attention of people searching for those keywords, resulting in much higher click through rates, more blog viewers, and more conversions.
For more on the benefits of Google Authorship, check out this great post.
Google Plus Search Engine Rankings
If you are a new or even a fairly experienced content marketer, you know that ranking on page one in Google is no easy task. With the Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and whatever other animal updates to their algorithms, it has only gotten tougher to rank on the front page for targeted keywords.
The good news is, Google Plus actually helps you get on page 1 without even worrying about how good a blog post or video is. In fact, you could get on page one of results overnight just with a simple Google Plus post.
How do you do this? You use the targeted keywords that you try to rank for (that your target audience would look for) and do a little post on your Google Plus profile about it with a link to a piece of content.
Who sees this post? All of your Google Plus followers and people who have you in circles will actually see this post not only on Google Plus, but also in search results when they type in keywords you used in the post.
As you can see it really works! When you have people circles on Google Plus, their posts show up in search results when you type in similar keywords. I got the #3 spot in my search results when I typed in “instagram marketing tips”.
And look at the competition for that page of results. There are over 33,000,000 results and I am right up there with some of the top blogs. The screenshot doesn't actually show another Google Plus connection I have, who's post is just a few spots down from mine on page 1.
No matter how competitive the results are, if you make consistent Google plus posts everyday using keywords that your target market would search for, you will grab their attention on the top page and get loads of traffic.
It doesn't even take days for it to rank because I had shared that post just a few days ago from a blog article I had written about marketing on Instagram.
Google Plus has proven that it can be the fastest way to get top rankings for keywords on page one, so all you have to do is build your following on there to take advantage.
Building Your Google Plus Following
To really take advantage of the search results for Google Plus, you need to build as big of a following as possible on there. You need create like your own mini search engine through your Google Plus profile, so that when you post on Google Plus, you will have thousands of people seeing what you posted when they search for the keywords you used.
Who should you try and attract to follow you? Well, my business is obviously based on marketing, so when I look to grow my Google Plus following, I focus mainly on internet marketers, network marketers, business owners, etc.
Whatever you business is about, you must know exactly who your best target market is and focus on building a following on nothing but those types of people.
So lets say you are like me and your target market is other marketers. How do you get these people to circle you and what attracts them to do so?
The Follow Method
One way to attract more followers is to simply go follow them. Find your competitors in the industry you are in and follow their followers. A certain percentage of them will always follow back.
Of course if you follow a large number of people and only 10-20% of them follow you back, that means the other 80-90% aren't as interested in what you post and will only take up your own search results when you use Google.
What I would recommend you do about this, is figure out who won't follow back and then unfollow them, so that you don't have any wasted connection on Google Plus. To do this I would recommend a free tool.
It's called Circloscope and it is great for managing your circles to keep you from wasting connections and still keep growing your following. There is a free and paid version in which you can decide what is best for you, but I recommend you clean out your non-followers from your circles once a week.
If you follow 50 new people a day on Google Plus, then that will steadily increase your following and traffic from Google search results as long as they are people interested in your industry and you keep posting on there daily.
Using Hashtags
The next way to increase your Google Plus influence is to use hashtags in your daily posts. The more popular hashtags you use, the more people will be exposed to your content.
What is a hashtag? It is just a tag that categorizes what your posts are about and when people want to look for posts on a certain topic, they search for hashtags that are based on what they are looking for.
So for instance, if you are wanting to attract people that are interested in internet marketing, you might use these for hastags:
#internetmarketing #SEO #marketingtips
That way, when people search for those popular tags, they will see your post, even if they aren't already connected to you in circles in any way. This was made popular by Twitter and has expanded to social media platforms like Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, etc.
I would recommend at least 5-10 hashtags for each post you do on Google Plus to get a lot more viewers and increase chances having more followers that will see your content. Here's an example post I did when I started using hashtags:
Without even having hardly any Google Plus followers at the time of this post, you can see that I got some interaction on it because of my use of a humorous picture combined with 7 popular hashtags.
When you click on the hashtags you will also get suggestions on some other similar hashtags that you may want to use as well, so you don't always have to go research hashtags every time you post.
One thing I did with mine is make a notepad file with my main hashtags that I use and I just copy them and paste them accordingly with my Google Plus posts and sometimes even add a few more. Doing so, keeps it quick and keeps it organized.
The Use Of Media
If you want to increase your Google following, get more post shares and traffic from posts, you need to use either a video or picture in every post. People don't share or notice anything on social media that is just words and links.
Pictures and videos are what captures attention, entertains, intrigues, etc. Use them in every single post and if you can combine humor and keep it targeted to your industry, like I did with the meme in the example above, you will increase your results dramatically.
Think about it, wh0 doesn't like a good laugh? Don't be all business all the time. Show them you have a sense of humor and are not just looking to pitch or sell to people. Make Google Plus posting fun with pictures and videos related to the post.
The primary goal of these is to capture more attention and create interest in what you're posting about. Check out more on Google Plus engagement here.
Conclusion
Although Google Plus isn't the absolute most popular social media platform in the world yet, I believe it can be the most important for a marketer (especially a content marketer). When you blog or videos themselves aren't ranking on page one, your Google Plus posts are for the followers that see them.
You need to really focus on building your Google Plus profile because of the impact it has for your content and search engine rankings. And make sure you always have a link contained in your posts every single time.
If viewers don't have anywhere to go after seeing your posts, then it would be completely pointless to even use it, unless your only goal is to brand yourself.
The days of just writing content, driving massive amounts of backlinks to it and watching it get to the top page for just about any keywords you want to rank for are over.
This is the age of quality content and social media, so you have to adapt with the changing times that Google's algorithms have created.
With Google Plus, build your following, post daily, connect your blogs and video channels, and just watch what kind of huge results you can create.
What do you think about the impact of Google Plus on today's page one rankings and content marketing as a whole?