I love Matt Cutts, he’s trying to do a good job i’m sure but as the face of Google he comes in for a lot of stick. Google creates this mysterious world where SEO companies like ourselves try and work out what they want in terms of a ‘good’ website and how to help websites rank highly in the search engines.

So when I came across this mash up video of Matt talking about what you need to do to get to number 1 in Google I though I would share it with you, it made me chuckle anyhow.

How to rank number 1 on Google

Following on from my previous posts An Introduction to Google+ and Creating a Google+ Page for your business, this time we’ll take a look at some ways to leverage the + power of social media.

Those with their own website or online business can explore a whole new world of social media marketing with an efficient social profile Page using Google+. It’s fun and easy and can be profitable too.

• Google+ posts that are sent to “Public” rank quite well in Google search results By merging Google properties into Google+ and integrating it with the serach engines you can have a significant impact on where your company appears in the results pages.
• Something else you can do is manage circles by distributing clients into specific categories and then share different posts, news or offers with the various circles. This allows you to connect with fans and share information with clients easily.
• Use Hangouts to engage your customers and colleagues. This is high quality video chat that gives you the opportunity to interact with followers face to face, making it much easier to get to know them, answer questions and also get immediate feedback on products and services.
• Another use of Hangouts is for video conferencing and to push live events and seminars to customers.
• Make use of the Google+ badge to promote your site and your Google+ Page. It links your website and page and makes others aware you’re there. If a visitor likes your site and clicks the icon they are taken directly to your Google+ Page and can share and follow your posts.
• Google+ Direct enables people to just enter a “+” in front of your business name when searching on Google in order to get directly to your Google+ Page.
• The +1 button on Google+ is an excellent way for customers to spread the word about your business and let others know about your Google+ presence. You are also able to connect your website +1’s to your Google+ Page +1’s, which is great as people are more inclined to trust recommendations from people they already know.
• Another useful Google+ tool, Ripples, allows you to keep an eye on your posts and information as they move across social networks, so it’s easy to figure out who is sharing and who is paying attention to your content.
• Analytics provide information about your page’s followers and visitors as well as general traffic and social activity around your business.

What makes Google+ for business unique is that it has blurred the lines between personal social networks, e.g. Facebook, and business networks, e.g. LinkedIn. It really is a social media game changer.

As I mentioned in my last post, An introduction to Google +, businesses are starting to see the value of Google+ with its new Pages feature. This post will look at how to go about creating a Google+ Page for your business.

Google Plus Pages have a small square icon next to the business name to differentiate them from Profiles. Users can add your Page to their circles (which helps increas your follower count), take a look at your business information and check out your business’s photos.

Here’s how to create a Page for your business and take advantage of Google+:

• In order to create a Page for your business, you need a Google+ Profile. Clicking on the “+You” link at the top left of your Gmail dashboard or iGoogle page will take you to the Profile creation page.
• Click Create a Google+ page on the right of your stream and choose a category to begin. For a smaller, less well known business, Local businesses is a good choice. For companies and larger known businesses, Product or brand would work. Company, institution or organization is mostly for those businesses that don’t directly sell something, e.g. not-for-profits.
• Personalise your page by adding a photo or logo and a tagline, and continue with an introduction, information and contact information, then finish with a photo strip of 5 photos.

You’re now ready to start engaging with the Google+ community. A business Page can create Circles (networks) and post information and news on its feed. Don’t forget to add your Google+ Page details to your website or blog and to share it across your other networks.

In my next post I’ll discuss some of the ways you can leverage the + power of social media.

Google+ seems to be one of social media’s hottest new networks, with its popularity growing tremendously since it started in June 2011 as a test version. Its slogan is “real-life sharing—rethought for the web” and it features integration across a number of Google products, including Google Buzz and Google Profiles.

As Google+ notices are posted inside your Gmail inbox, you get 100% real-time Gmail deliverability. If your Circle friends Google a subject that you’ve written about on Google+, your comments and links are displayed automatically on page one of Google, giving you free traffic without any back-linking or on-site optimization. These are just some of the things that make us think it is a social media platform that will probably stick around and grow in popularity.

What makes Google+ special?

• It is focused on targeted sharing within social subgroups you’ve set up (your Circles)
• There is also a section within Google+ that is specifically for viewing, editing and managing multimedia, and which includes an image editor as well as privacy options and sharing features.
• It has introduced a new group chat feature called Hangouts. You can click ‘Start a hangout’ to immediately enter a video chat-room and a message will go out to your social circles to let them know that you are ‘hanging out’ and invite them to join you.

Many businesses are already beginning to see the value of building a Google Plus presence, especially with the new Pages feature. A Google+ Page looks similar to a Google+ Profile except that it has a small square icon next to the brand name to indicate that it is a page. Other users can add your brand to their circles, check out your information and browse your photos. Each time someone adds your brand to their circles, it helps to increase your follower count.

Your business needs to get ready to integrate Google+ into its social media marketing strategy, so in my next blog post I’ll look at how to build your Google Plus presence and build a Page for your brand.

When Google +1 launched as a feature for websites to allow their visitors to easily share their website on Google+ it was unclear as to whether this would be used.  There are so many sites in the social world already and so no one really knew how this feature would be used and also the impact that this would have on your overall internet marketing efforts.

The feature looks very similar to that of a Facebook Like, but the big difference is that the results are incorporated into Google search and integrated into Google’s new social network Google +.  Google + has just been opened up to the masses and like many other social networking sites it allows you to share content and post to your public profile, creating interests and actually providing a lot of information to the rest of your network.

So how does Google + effect search engine listings?

If people start to use the Google+1 button in any great quantity, this could have a big effect on both SEO and Social Media Marketing.  As this is a personal endorsement of a site, it is much more powerful than anything else, research tells us that we take much more notice or peer recommendation that we do from companies trying to promote themselves.  If people in our networks have had good experiences with a business then we are far more likely to place our trust in them.

Interesting times ahead for internet marketing

With Google taking these recommendations into account in the search results we may see a massive change in the way results are displayed.  We are of course a long way off of this at the moment and it will be interesting to see how this feature is used over the next months but it will certainly change the face of online marketing if it is widely used.  Watch this space as no doubt Google + is something that will no doubt appear on these pages in the future.