If your business depends on, or can benefit from Google search and the visitors that follow, listen up.
By now you may have heard a lot of rumblings about Google this year, in particular, Google+.
Technology pundits have annihilated the notion of Google+ having any success, despite setting record-breaking numbers for users in the shortest period of time. But numbers don’t really matter if the product is not being used. Facebook is still the undisputed king of social networks.
Facebook is and probably always will be, THE place for friends and family.
Social Business Pages
Facebook’s Timeline update was detrimental to Facebook Pages for business. Far too many restrictions were placed in their terms of use, ruining what was once a good thing for brands and marketers. Google+ Pages, on the other hand are a completely different story… more on this in a moment.
To the casual observer, Google+ is more of a Twitter-Facebook hybrid in how it functions than a copy of one or the other. But that’s only on the outside.
In reality, Google has much bigger plans for this entire social project known as Google+. Google is in the search game and returning the most relevant results for whatever user searches for. While it may appear that Google+ is out to compete with Facebook – that is only an illusion. Google+ is going after business. After all, Google makes nearly all of their money from advertisers.
Search Matters
Given the change in the use of the Internet for social purposes, Google realized that to remain the dominant force and continue to provide the best search results, they needed to incorporate social signals from users. Enter Google+.
This has, and will continue, to have major implications on search results. So if your business can benefit from being on the first page of Google for important search phrases related to your business, consider creating a Google+ Page. Add some basic info and watch to see how it performs in the search rankings.
Similar to how Twitter was viewed as a fad that would pass just a few short years ago, Google+ looks to make the notion of their failure comical as businesses continue to embrace the platform and integration into the new Google ecosystem out of, if nothing else, necessity to maintain a competitive advantage.
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