Google+ for International Business
Do you need a Google+ account for your business or brand? This question has been widely asked, and social media marketers are struggling to figure out the right answer.
Google+ very recently exceeded 50 million users; the numbers jumped dramatically once Google+ became “open” and did not require an invitation to join. This naturally led to high traffic and a large number of profiles by consumers and professionals. This influenced online marketers and social media marketing candidates to search deeply for business and branding opportunities in the new social network.
Google+ and Search Engines
Google has put great effort into their new product “Google+” for many logical reasons. Google’s motivation goes far beyond “winning the social network war” and is more about generating benefits for their giant search engine and their share of the online advertising market.
Google+ benefits to Google Search Engine are massive because Google is looking for more social generated content to index in their results. It has become evident that social content is more specific and accurate for the average user than general search. Google wants to cement a solid relation with their search engine users and serve up more accurate, fresh content to them.
The Microsoft search engine “Bing” has created a deal with Facebook to index Facebook results in their SERPs. This led Google to take a step forward and cooperate with Twitter for indexing Twitter results into Google search results, but Google disabledĀ Realtime Search on July 4 after its contract with Twitter expired. The lack of integration with Twitter influenced Google to seek their own Real-time updates and social generated content; Google stepped forward to launch their own social network “Google Plus” (Google+).
Google Products
There are many benefits to Google+ because it is integrated with other Google products, like Android, Gmail, Google docs, Google Calendar, Google Analytics and overall Google Updates search.
Everyone is using at least one or two of Google products, which means that Google is taking over your online life with the products they provide. Not only that, but Google is also connecting all of their products together in useful ways.
Google+ started with several unique features that were not available on any other social network, like ” Hangouts” and ” Circles.” This new functionality gave Google a slight advantage over Facebook, and led to extremely fast growth for the new network.
Facebook didn’t “give up” and started implementing its own new features like Skype video chat and the subscribe button. Although Facebook currently has the biggest market share of users, traffic and ads, I think that the “coming war” will be more about business profiles and ads share.
Google Profiles
Google profiles is now one of the most important profiles you can have, because it is connected with all of your Google accounts, like your Gmail account, Picasa account,Ā Google Docs, etc.Ā It is critical for businesses to carefully implement an effective Google profile for two main reasons:
- Your Google profile will have good visibility on Google SERPs including the links you integrate in your profile.
- Your Google profile will be connected with other Google Web tools like Google Webmasters, Google Places, Google Maps and Google docs.
Google+ Business Benefits
Google+ Business is still now in a beta version but it includes cutting edge features that Google has developed to help businesses networking and branding.
Search Results
The search engine is one of the most powerful tools that Google owns. Businesses have one more incentive to create a Google+ business page and begin sharing their links and updating their timeline for a chance to appear organically in real-time on a user’s SERPs. Facebook simply cannot compete with Google in this area.
Apps and Communication
Google has the Apps for Business productivity suite, with tools including word processing and calendars, as well as its booming Apps Marketplace of third-party apps. The 200 million Gmail users and the 3 million businesses using Apps, with the biggest growth among small companies, give Google a significant advantage here.
If Google provides companies with a lot of Web tools integrated with its social networking platform, there would be no reason for Apps users to migrate away from the world of Google products.
Online shopping and Mobile Payment
Google has the Google Checkout payment system, which would prove to be highly powerful for Google to plug into Google+ for businesses. This Ā would help companies to link the payment service to their database of products with Google.
The Mobile payment option is also available on the Google+ app for Android devices, which allows the app to pay through Google solutions.
AdWords and Analytics
AdWords remains a powerful and proven tool with rich metrics for advertisers; this is a very important key point for businesses to consider while using Google+ Business.
Geo Location and Places
Google will sooner or later integrate the new Google+ pages with Google Places, which appear in its Maps search results. This would have a massive impact on the business local search and office places. Users will interact directly with any given company after it appeared on Google Maps.
The benefits of Google+ for Search Engine Optimization SEO
- Google+ Posts – sharing links on your Google+ timeline creates good benefits to your backlinks strategy, as Google will integrate this into their crawling bot.
- Google Profiles – The ‘About Me’ tab of each user’s profile can include SEO links too. This a great advantage to users and brands with their own links. This will add value to your links and keywords for Google SERPs.
- Google+1 is now embedded in Google+ and Google Search and, as Google announced, it has a good effect on SEO and SERPs.
With all of these benefits and features, I believe that Google+ will have a tremendous impact on the social media and online business horizon, so I believe it is time for both – Google and businesses – to take further steps into this process and discover even greater opportunities.
Further reading on social media
As a diligent language translation services agency, GPI always attempts to keep its customers and followers up to date with useful information on social media, among other topics.
You may find further insights in one of our previous blog, “Top Tips for Successful Multilingual SEO.” To appreciate just how far we’ve come in social media and social networking, you may also enjoy reviewing over some of our previous blogs, which include predictions from industry experts nearly a year ago:
- Social Media Localization
- 2011 The Year of International Social Media
- PubCon Part 1: Google’s Matt Cutts shares his SEO vision
- PubCon Part 2: Social Media & Landing Page Optimization
- PubCon Part 3: Google Caffeine, Keywords and Blekko
- Highlights from Search Marketing Expo (SMX) 2011
- Highlights from International Search Summit 2011