Increase the Visibility of your Google+ Business Page with 3 simple SEO signals
By Julio Fernandez, VP Enterprise Search and Social SEOOn June 28, 2011, Google announced their Google+ Project, and those with invitations could create Google+ personal profiles to share updates and follow other Google+ users.
Brands that wanted Google+ pages for their business were told to wait and as of November 7, 2011, any G+ user could create a “Business Page” for their small business, product, brand, organization, etc. There are many good tutorials on how to create a Google+ Business Page but keep in mind that if you create a business page with your G+ profile, and you need a coworker to add content to the business page, they will need your personal G+ password. Ownership of a page might also become a problem when the creator of the business page changes jobs.But while we wait for Google to improve how a business pages can have multiple administrators, let’s consider the implications of the name of your page and the signals the page is sending to help G+ users and Google.com find your page.
In Twitter, many brands were able to get their @BrandName early, or had to work with Twitter to reclaim trademarks. Brand owners have similar issues with vanity URLs on other social channels. In a perfect social media world, your brand should use the same name on all channels and each channel links to each other. A good example is Ford Motor Company’s YouTube channel, YouTube.com/Ford as they link to their Facebook vanity URL Facebook.com/Ford and their Twitter handle @Ford
There are no vanity URLs for Google+ Business Pages, but Google created a system to help users find official pages by searching for +BradName. Here are 3 simple optimization tactics to help Google understand the relationship between the official brand page and your Web site.
To confirm the ownership of a site, Google looks for two things:
| 1) rel=publisher tag from your Web site to your Google+ page. |  |
| 2) A reciprocal link back from your Google+ page to the main page of your Web site. | |
| Google's rich snippets testing tool can verify the code on your Web site, and you should see a notifications in green like the image to the right with the verification of our page: |
Every Google+ Business Page has a unique ID number. The ID number for our Global Strategies Google+ page is 109632305420139344396. You can find your ID number in the URL of your page, like: https://plus.google.com/109632305420139344396. Copy your ID number from your Google+ Business Page as you will use it to confirm the ownership of your page.
Step One: Visit the Google+ configuration tool, enter your unique ID number, and after you select the size of the G+ icon you want for your Google+ badge, the tool will give you the code you need to add to your Web site. The small G+ badge is a 16 pixel square, but you can also select the medium one with a 32 pixels badge or the large one, like the code below where the icon is 64 pixels.
| Pick the size of the G+ badge that best fits your Web site and add the code where you want the badge to render | |
 |
<a href="https://plus.google.com/YourUniqeIDhere?prsrc=3" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-64.png" width="64" height="64" style="border: 0;"/></a> |
 |
<a href="https://plus.google.com/YourUniqeIDhere?prsrc=3" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-32.png" width="32" height="32" style="border: 0;"/></a> |
 |
<a href="https://plus.google.com/YourUniqeIDhere?prsrc=3" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" width="16" height="16" style="border: 0;"/></a> |
Step Two: Besides adding the badge to your Web site, you also need to add the rel=publisher tag to the <head> of your home page. This is how Google understand that the page with your ID number is the official “publisher” of the content. A fan site, partner site or competitor will not have access to your Web site and will not be able to claim the relationship between your Web site and the fan, partner or competitor page.
| Add the rel=publisher tag to the <head> of your home page | |
|
<!-- Place this tag in the <head> of your document--> |
|
Step Three: Go back to your G+ business profile page and add your logo, the name of the product or service users search for when they are looking for your company and a description. Make sure you select the “Anyone on the Web can see this” option to make your information public. A good search optimization strategy is to add your important keywords to the “Introduction” section of your profile and link to your home page from the Web site section of your G+ profile as well as add your different social channel to the “Recommended Links” section of your G+ profile.
Here is the Google page with how to connect your site to your Google+ page as well as the rich snippets testing tool to make sure you did it right. After you follow the above steps, and enter your URL to the rich snippets testing tool, you should see the "verified" notification.
Add our Global Strategies Google+ Business Page to your circle and send us a message if you have any questions. Next week we will share how to leverage G+ comments as a survey tool to opt-in your followers to your different G+ circles and send them targeted messages.