Google is the master of web world and will remain forever (I wish). The way Google+ has beaten Facebook and Twitter from Google’s top SERPs is worth mentioning. The SEO strategy seems to work great for Great G.
But, how is that all possible? G+ is a new born whereas FB and Twitter is dominating social media market over the years. They should have more presence on search results. But then…
Well, let me simplify this to you.
Say, you have your own Google + profile that you have created recently. You too have accounts in Facebook and Twitter that you are maintaining for couple of years. You may have also planned to Buy Followers on Twitter.
Now if you search your name on Google you will see your G+ profile outranks your other online identities that you have worked on years long. Your Twitter and Facebook profiles come next to Google+ even though you use them far more often than G+. Did you check this before?
It is not that G+ profiles are only ranking high. Even individual Google+ posts frequently appear on Google search results.
So how has Google ensured such a solid real estate on their own search pages in short span of time? Are they cheating because it is their own playground?
No, it is not so. Google employs smart SEO techniques than any other online identities, especially while competing for top rankings. However, for Facebook there is a different story altogether.
FB actively prevents Google to crawl most of their contents. Google bots can only access FB fan pages, not regular profiles and their information. Now when Google has entered into social game with G+ this conservation policy has become a boomerang for FB. FB results started dropping in rankings and the same with search real estate.
So the lesson is – “one should make use of competitive advantage of SEO, does not matter what the niche is. In this regard, G+ has deliberately added new facilities and functions for G+ profile holders“.
Let us see what has worked for Google+ that FB and Twitter could not afford to think or do.
1. Adding web pages to profile: Google+ allows authors to add links from their web pages to their Google profile. This in turn creates millions of high quality links from most of the influential online publishers to multiple Google+ profiles.
2. Quick internal linking: In Google+ it is quite easy to be in lots of social circles in quick span of time. You can add lots of people of your own. In Twitter where people spent over a year to build 1000 followers have easily found themselves in 2000 or 3000 Google+ circles.
3. Creating lots of indexable content: This is one area where FB and Twitter is far behind G+. Your G+ profile presents a wealth of information to search engines. This includes your biographical information, full text of public posts, photos and the posts you have+1’d. On the other hand your Twitter account limits to 160 characters of biographical information and Facebook profile reads like an auto-generated one.
Now if you see the source code of any G+ profile or use SEO browser to see how many words appear on each profile they will look like –
FB: 275 words, Twitter: 491 words, Google+: 2621 words
This clearly shows how search engine-friendly Google+ profiles are as compared to the other two.
4. Creating longer title tags: Title tag is the lifeline of On-Page optimization. While showing up shared Google+ posts in search results Google choose longer and more descriptive title tags. Twitter and Facebook, on the contrary, show shorter title tags, which are no longer than three unique words. You may test it for any shared posts (in all three accounts) that has been crawled and indexed by Google.
5. More UGC (User Generated Content): Google+ plus is more open and broadminded when it comes to sharing posts publicly with large content. Such posts often appear on search engine results.
Though Facebook and Twitter posts too are public by default, they have their limitations. Twitter’s 140 characters cannot produce rich content to be visible enough on search results. For FB, Google displays shared posts from fan page only, not posts from regular profiles.
6. Showing author profile in search results: I bet any author would love to see his own profile in search results. By linking a web page to Google+ profile, authors can simply do this, which no other social media service can think of.
Well, does this mean Google cheat others by favoring own property?
No, it is not. For an author, connecting his profile to a website that he owns make much sense. Google+ has to ability to create powerful and rich snippet that automatically attracts the eye of search engines. Moreover, such snippets increases Click-through Rate (CTR) of a website.
The final take:
Thus, Google+ proves that it can present large amount of search-engine friendly content on a regular scale that too with variety and flair. If you think it is all possible because of big G is favoring its own property, the reason is not justified.
Google remains neutral and unbiased and will be forever. It is only because Google+ has more to share, more to link, more to display and more to access than any other social media has, it appears more on SERPs. It is simple and clear.
If you have reasons to disregard these observations or opinions, you are welcome to comment here.
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Pankaj Jangir
Max Therry
Walter Moore