Tag Archives: G+

Building a Google Plus Community

Google Plus has grown exponentially in the past year or so. The funny thing, is that I don’t feel it’s seriously used outside of people in the tech fields, specifically even the SEO field. The hard part, is that Google has made Google Plus an important factor in social signals and ranking growth. I’ve made it a personal goal to learn more about Google Plus, the best way to use it, and the most efficient way to get the most eyes on something quickly. What that means, is that a majority of my time has been spent on learning how to correctly build, promote, and use a Google Plus Community.

I’ve joined a few Google Plus Community groups over the past few weeks. I can safely say I’ve seen an increase in my website visits, interaction, and social reach as I become more responsive with Google Plus. Sure there’s a lot of random SEO fluff from some joke company that wants to promote its services online. Getting past all of that and reaching out to help people who have serious questions is incredibly beneficial, to myself, my website, and them.

Join my Google Plus Community!
Google Plus Community

Shameless plug for my created Google Plus Community – “Local SEO and Small Business SEO” Click the image to join! – Local SEO and Small Business SEO

I know, I know. It’s a shameless plug bug it needed to be done. I’m looking to create a community while growing my outreach while providing a place for users new to local SEO or people in the industry to post their information, ideas, and questions. Google Plus is something that took a hit at the start, and seeing that it’s becoming something completely different than what Facebook/Twitter is, really is a good thing. There should be distinct differences between social media platforms. It was only common sense that Google would make anything Plus related influence rankings and site visibility.

Related posts:

  1. Knowledge Graph Carousel For Local Search Announced By Google
  2. Google Authorship Even More Important Now
  3. Link Building Through Relationships
  4. Google Penguin 2.0 Thoughts…

Knowledge Graph Carousel For Local Search Announced By Google

The Google Knowledge Graph Carousel has been announced Google, and has started appearing for local user searches for “restaurants, bars and other local places.” The knowledge graph carousel was announced in a Google+ post billed as it’s official release.

The knowledge graph carousel simply removes the map listing from searches, and places them above the organic results displaying images, reviews, how expensive it is, and what category it falls under. All in all, local SEO became a whole lot busier in these upcoming months. Luckily, I’ve been able to preach the necessity of getting your Google+ Business page verified and updated prior to this release, because we’re moving past the realm of just showing up in the map section of organic results. Local is now front and center, and will easily take all of the eyes away from the organic structure and place it directly on to the carousel.

This is what you see when you search “italian restaurants Pittsburgh”

google knowledge graph carousel

Another thing that’s clear, is that these Google business pages and map listings are created with or without your consent, giving the user the ability to post reviews/comments for everyone to see. The importance of claiming these listings so you can respond and react to these situations will also be magnified now that more people will surely be clicking throughout those listings.

How to claim your Google+ business page and the Knowledge Graph Carousel
  • Logged into your Google account visit this link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/business/
  • Add all the applicable info and save the page
  • Select the option to verify by postcard(if option for phone isn’t available)
  • Once the post card arrives, type the link on the card and enter in the pin number, your business should then be verified.

This verification process should then merge your local map listing as well as verified Google+ business page listing. Once that’s complete, you’re then able to update information, change the business name, add blog posts, images, and anything else you can think of to help promote your business. Having this page verified is essential to providing a very good step forward in attaining customers throughout Google local search.

The knowledge graph carousel may be new, but it’s a much-needed step in the right direction for Google. Sure, it makes doing SEO that much harder, and it’s another thing to troubleshoot and figure out, but it brings the process of finding a local business away from a website, and directly into Google for the direct result.

Related posts:

  1. Connect Your Google+ Business Page To Your Google Maps Listing
  2. Google Penguin 4.0 Announced and Rolling Out
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Hashtag Support enabled by Facebook

As of June 6th 2013, Facebook officially became a hashtag friendly website. Facebook will now allow users to post and search by “#keyword.” The good thing about this, is that Facebook is also making hashtags searchable, even if they’re on different social media platforms like Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Facebook Hashtag SupportIf you’re new to the social media and inbound marketing game and wondering how it can work with your business, I’ll provide you a few tips to help you get started with this hashtag function.

Creating a hashtag – A ‘hashtag’ can be created by simply putting a # in front of a word, or acronym with no spaces. For example “#keyword,” or “#keyphrase.” The good thing, is that Facebook and the other social media websites all follow the uniform standard when it comes to creating hashtags.

If you’re looking to use hashtags for your business, keep the same ideals when you’re looking for keywords as well. Don’t use anything ridiculous like #cheapshoesnobodyremembers. Nobody will remember or type in a hashtag that long, so refrain from using it. Keep it simple, stupid!

Click on hashtags – By clicking on the hashtag that you posted, or clicking on another one that is relevant to you or your business, you’re then able to find everyone else posting about things like you. Doing this not only gives you more ideas to write about, but also gives you the ability to become the authority on a keyword if it aligns with your business correctly.

Personally, I’ll say to never pass up on being able to answer a question if you know it. You never know what could happen with that post and it could potentially be shared or seen by more than one person.

Check for hashtag trends – Finding trends, or being able to see trends to hashtags can help you create content and continue on with communication. Sure, hashtags don’t always translate to your business. If they do match though, you already know it’s being talked about, so you might as well hop on board and see how much traction you can create with content created for that hashtag. To learn more about what tags are trending, visit Hashtags.org.

Hashtags and the use of them are meant to be simple. Social Media is mostly unexplored with small business owners, or even used incorrectly. The use of hashtags and social media can benefit your business and help you expand out further than you imagined.

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