Top 7 reasons why everyone needs to be on Google Plus

I spend a good deal of my day translating search and social platform changes and convincing clients that they need to adopt new tactics, or create new profiles in the effort to appear in front of their target online audience.

It seems as though I’ve been spending quite a bit of time working to convince clients of what I believe is a requirement to have a profile and engage your audience on Google Plus (or what I like to call Google’s identity network).  To that end, I’ve compiled a set of resources that you hopefully will find useful when you to explain why spokespersons, authors, and businesses need to have a Google+ profile. 

1.  Google Plus (Google+) is now the 2nd most active global social media platform.

2. A Google+ profile is the 1st step to get a Knowledge Graph listing.

All clients want a knowledge graph listing – just look at how much first page Google search real estate you have if Google has given you a if you are in Google’s knowledge graph:

In fact there’s a great study here on SEOMOz that shows the correlation.

3. Google +1’s can propel rankings.

Jeff Sauer has found that a single +1 from an authoritative Google+ account can propel a brand new site to a top 10 ranking with no other promotional activity involved, as long as the site being promoted is in the same niche as the Google+ account.

4. Google Authorship will directly impact ranking.

If you are accepted into Google’s Authorship program (where you link you Google+ profile to your blog bio), Google will verify you as an author and that will directly impact how you appear in search. Here’s the last sentence in Google’s official announcement of authorship.

“We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.”

5. Verified (Google+) Profiles will rank higher

Eric Schmidt in his upcoming book, The New Digital Age writes about how all verified profiles (author and business) will ranking higher in Google:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

6. Searchers reading content from verified profiles will be shown more from that author.

As verified by Matt McGee’s September 2013 article in Search Engine Land, Google confirmed that setting up Authorship has additional benefits:

“Google has confirmed that there’s a hidden benefit to having authorship status: If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.”

7. Google+ creates rich markup that increases the CTR from search.

Without having to touch your website code, webmasters are provided rich snippets like the ones below that drive more click through rate.

The search marketing firm Catalyst saw a 150% increase in CTR from search by verifying their author profiles. Look at their data below:

The entire SEO community has been focused on the impact Google+ has on search, and Rand Fishkin has a great WhiteBoard Friday video that goes into other great examples about how it’s impacting search results in unique ways – like associating keywords with personal Google+ profiles. You can view that video here.

Still Not Convinced? Google Has Google+ Case Studies.

There are also some great case studies created by Google related to how various brands have successfully used the Google+ platform.

I’m also curious to hear from you. What has your experience been from your clients when you’ve implemented Google+ strategies for them? I’d love to collect more case studies and data, so please share your insights below.