Partner Article

Google+ finally launches brand pages

A successful search engine optimisation strategy is not just about optimising your own website. It’s also about using the best tools available elsewhere on the web to maximise the amount of exposure your business receives on the web. It’s a bit early to say whether Google+ brand pages will be an effective tool for SEO or not, but as they’ve just launched and everyone else and his dog is getting one, they may be worth a look.

Google+ itself launched earlier this year, as the latest contender in the social media arena, bringing ‘circles’, ‘sparks’ and ‘hangouts’ into the lexicons of social networking addicts. Businesses, however, were asked to hold off on creating their own pages until Google+ was ready for specialised ‘brand pages’. That time it seems has now come, with brand pages being rolled out in the second week of November.

How can brand pages help online visibility?

So what do these brand pages have to offer businesses? According to Google itself: “Google+ for Business [is] a collection of tools and products that help you grow your audience. At the core of this is Google+ pages, your site’s identity on Google+.”

The post over at Google’s official webmaster blog goes on to explain that you can use your brand page to: “…engage in conversations with your visitors, direct readers back to your site for the latest updates, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web.”

All of these are potentially useful for SEO purposes, as they enable you to increase the amount of interaction and engagement online between your business and its customers.

But what businesses should really pay attention to is the level to which Google plans to integrate G+ with the rest of its products, particularly the search engine with which it is synonymous. This has in fact already begun, and Google encourages businesses to ‘link’ their websites to their Google+ page, “so that all your +1’s – from your page, your website, and search results – will get tallied together and appear as a single total.” Why is this important? Because, Google says: “Potential visitors will be more likely to see the recommendations your site has received, whether they’re looking at a search result, your website, or your page.”

So Google has big plans for +, but will they come to fruition, or join social networking’s growing reject-bin of damp squibs? Time will tell, but you can judge for yourself by reading the full announcement over at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .