Google Plus and SEO — behind the magic
By: Dorothy M
Tags: SEO, Google Plus

Let’s examine what we know about Google Plus and search engine optimization.

“Google Plus is good for SEO” is a phrase that’s often repeated but less often explained.

The Google gods are notoriously cagey about the details behind their search algorithms, but let’s examine what we know.

Google Plus pages are findable by the Google search crawler

G+ profile pages are indexed just like any other web page. (So are Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, for that matter.) This means that your G+ profile page is another indexed, branded outlet to which you can attach keywords and content for search optimization.

We don’t know if Google weights G+ profile pages more heavily than ordinary web pages in search rankings. Google has not provided any official statement on this. Are they gaming the system to promote their own social network? It’s possible, but speculative.

Search engines require inbound links and/or manual notification to locate and index a brand-new website or web page. Search engine crawlers do not automatically find and index new pages.

But Google knows about every G+ profile page that is created. Because G+ is controlled by Google, we can speculate that it might be easier for Googlebot (Google’s search crawler) to initially find your new G+ profile page than it would for it to initially find a non-G+ web page. So theoretically, a brand-new G+ profile page might appear more quickly in search results than an ordinary brand-new web page.

Outbound links from G+ posts are valuable

Links to a destination page, and the keywords used in those links, are used in calculating the search ranking for that destination page, unless those links are tagged “do not follow.”

Links from G+ posts are not tagged “do not follow,” whereas links from Twitter posts and Facebook are. Thus, by creating a G+ post to your non-G+ website, you have the potential to boost the search ranking of your destination website; the same doesn’t hold true for links inside your Facebook posts and tweets.

A “+1” for a web page or G+ post does not in itself contribute to search ranking, according to Google guru Matt Cutts. Matt advises to focus less on +1s and more on creating great content.

A logged-in Google user’s +1s do affect how search results appear to that user and his Google connections. If you and your Google connections use “Search Plus Your World” and are logged into Google while searching, an ordinary Google search will also indicate which of your friends have shared or plus-oned a given search result.

Thus, if you +1 a post or page that you control as a webmaster, your Google connections will see an indication of that in their search results, providing your content with a little more visibility.

This alone doesn’t boost search ranking. However, if your friends share your page or post on their G+ profile, this backlinking will boost the search ranking of your post or page — but this requires an active step by your contacts.

In my opinion, this feature will be important to watch in the coming years, because because both Facebook and Google are heavily promoting “social search,” touting the benefits of seeing what your connections have shared or indicated to be useful.

So there we have it: Google Plus isn’t exactly magic pixie fairy dust for SEO, but it can help you. Remember: