Google+ guide for beginners

I have to admit that Facebook used to scare me; I work as an SEO consultant for several companies and getting good Google ranks for my clients’ targeted keywords is what I do for a living. I was getting great results with the search engines, but from time to time I would hear things like “Facebook grows faster than Google”, “Facebook finally gets more traffic than Google”, etc.

I feared Facebook because I thought that using paid traffic would be the only way to grow your business in the future; it was looking like the days of free (organic) traffic coming from Google are numbered. To me, nothing compares with the joy / sadness you feel when you get up in the morning and see that your client’s website has moved up / down a few places in Google.

Fortunately, Google was secretly working at its social network (Google+) and at a social voting system, named +1 (not necessarily a great name, I’ll agree with that). If you use Facebook, you will discover that +1 is similar with Facebook’s like button; if you are logged into your Google account you can vote for websites you like, helping them move towards the top of the search engines and letting your friends know that you find them interesting. There are several free +1 plugins already, just like the one that is installed on my blog, and while +1 was released before Google+, it is now obvious that these two products were intended to work together from the very beginning.

This is pretty much it when it comes to +1, so let’s get back to Google+. I was lucky to receive an invitation a while ago and I was surprised to see that at a first glance it looks very similar to Facebook. First of all, it has got a “Stream”, just like Facebook’s news feed, where you can see your friends’ activities. Then, it’s got status updates, photo sharing, link sharing, etc just like Facebook. And all the contacts / email addresses that can be found inside your Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts can be easily imported into Google+.

However, one of the unique Google+ features is “Circles”, an option that allows you to separate the people you follow into several categories like “Friends”, “Family”, “Business contacts”, and so on. You can create as many circles as you want, define custom circles and only share posts with the desired circles; this way, you can really keep your private stuff for your inner circle and you won’t have to fill auntie Clara’s news stream with your techie links. It’s such a simple and powerful feature, and yet the Facebook developers haven’t implemented it until now.

Another great invention: “Sparks”. It is similar with (and probably derived from) Google alerts, helping you stay up to date with the topics that really interest you. Feel free to pick one of the suggested feeds (movies, recipes, comics, etc) or add your own sparks by typing the desired keywords (“iphone”, “mac”, etc) in the search box, and then use this (sort of) RSS feed to learn more about a particular subject, share quality stuff with your business-related circle or friends, and so on.

Google+ “Hangouts” uses Google Voice to create text and / or video conferences with one or more people. Just click the “Start a hangout” button and you’ll be able to start chatting with people the way you do it on Skype; nevertheless, Google+ allows you to connect with more people than Skype at the same time. If you’ve never used Google Voice before, you will have to install it on your computer, but this is a very straightforward process.

Can you take Google+ on your mobile phone? The answer is a sound YES; the application is already available for most smartphones, having practically the same features as the web version.

How will Google+ change the way we do SEO? It is quite clear that Google+ and +1 have already an impact on the search engine algorithm; from my experience, the number of shares and +1 votes help certain websites rank a bit (1-3 places) better. The impact on the actual ranks might not be that big in the future, but more and more people will see personalized results, websites recommended by their friends; the people that follow you will see different results depending on which websites you’ve +1ed. One way or the other, it is quite clear that if you get many +1 votes for your website and posts you are increasing your Google ranks, so please click the +1 button below and let’s see where it will land in Google’s search results.

Another thing: if you get lots of followers on Google+, your +1 votes will influence their search results as well. Feel free to use some of the Twitter account growth techniques (following many people) in order to grow your Google+ following; in the end, don’t be afraid to ask for +1 votes and shares, especially if you have created a good piece of content.

Will Google+ outgrow Facebook? It’s been the fastest growing social network so far and it’s got over 10 million members as of today, but frankly, I don’t know and I don’t care if it is going to overpower Facebook or not. I’m simply happy to know that with Google behind this new project, we’ve got a great alternative to Facebook, so the free traffic coming from the search engines will never disappear. Well, I guess I’ll have to make a confession: seeing my clients’ websites moving up in the search engines is my morning coffee

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