There's lots of talk about Google Plus. From the fastest growing social network to the least used, everyone has an opinion about its merits and benefits. The one things that everybody agrees on though is that it has immense influence when it comes to search results - and happens to integrate a pretty neat social network to boot. We've tried to put together a guide as to exactly what the benefits are and whether or not you should be looking to launch your Google Plus presence. Let us know what you think below - have you found any other benefits to it?

1. WHY THE HELL SHOULD I
PAY ATTENTION TO
GOOGLE+?
Paul Fabretti – Brazen PR
Dan Nolan – theEword

2. WHAT IS GOOGLE+ ?
Google+ is Google’s
attempt at a social
network
Launched in June
2011 it had 10m
users within 30 days
Post images, video,
share content and
play games – just
like you would in
Facebook

3. WHAT IS GOOGLE+ ?
Top Countries:
3.USA: 31.49%
4.India: 13.69%
5.Brazil: 5.43%
6.UK: 3.88%
7.Canada: 2.46%
8.Germany: 2.20%
9.Indonesia: 1.82%
10.Mexico: 1.77%
11.Italy: 1.76%
12.Spain: 1.70%

4. WHAT IS GOOGLE+ ?
Earlier this year, it
had a major refresh
to integrate
seamlessly with:
•gmail
•contacts
•youtube
•images

5. WHAT IS GOOGLE+ ?
There are now over
100 million users
worldwide.
Despite a lot of
VS VS criticism about the
network, people
don’t realise just
how quickly Google
+ is growing.
5 years 4.5 years 8 months It is forecast to hit
400 million users by
the end of 2012.

6. WHAT DOES THE UK LOOK LIKE?
There are 3.5 million active
users in the UK, with a
strong, young male bias.
Top cities:
•London
•Manchester
•Glasgow
•Edinburgh
The good news (if you’re
looking for a date!) is that
35% of these people are
single!
If you fancy your chances,
1.8% say “it’s
complicated”…

7. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
share your thoughts via chat with
statuses post links, video friends
and images
see what’s
trending
see what your
friends are up to

8. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
CIRCLES
Say “adios” to long, boring
friend lists and “hola” to
circles
You have a circle of friends
in real life so why not
online?
“Circling” friends
revolutionised how we
manage our growing friend
lists
We can now keep friends in
many different circles and
only read what that circle
posts – or only post/share
content with a certain group
of friends

9. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
PLAY GAMES
In August 2011, Google
introduced games into
Google+
Angry Birds, Crime City,
Edgeworld and 13 other
titles appeared as
embedded games within the
platform
Integration of these meant
that, exactly like apps in
Facebook, your
achievements and records
could be shared with your
circles

10. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
PHOTO GALLERIES
Create photo galleries as
you would in any social
network and store them in
the cloud (google’s servers)
Have the Google+ app
installed and take a picture
– and it gets sent to your
gallery straight away

11. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
HANGOUT
Hangouts are what many
believe are Google +’s killer
app
Hangouts allow you to video
chat with several friends at
once or, best of all, watch
any video on Google+ and
YouTube together with your
friends
Hangouts are like Skype but
in Google Plus
We all love Will.i.am on The
Voice right? Imagine being
able chat with him!

12. TOP BRANDS ON GOOGLE+
WHO’S DOING WELL?
FORD – on there nice and
early. Strong use of imagery
and frequent questions
asking to generate +1’s
NIKE – Product previews,
hangouts with brand
ambassadors
GUARDIAN – really taking
“Guardian comments” to a
new level. Regular hangouts
and extended interactions

13. THE BUSINESS CASE
EVERYBODY’S DOING IT - it is estimated that 61 of the Top 100 brands in the US are on
Google+.
IT IS GROWING, QUICKLY – 100m in 8 months. 400m by 2012. Even with 3.5m in the UK, it
is growing very, very fast.
CONSUMERS EXPECT - visits to Google+ hit an average of 5.1m before brand Pages arrived.
The month following this update, the average was 6.8m daily visits
FIRST MOVER – there’s still a good chance you’d be first to move in your sector
HANGOUTS – extend the reach of your brand like never before
oh, and I never mentioned that the SEO benefits…

14. THE BUSINESS CASE
THE SEO BENEFITS
ARE HUGE
…so here’s Dan to explain why!

15. SEO 101
WHAT IS SEO? “The process of making changes to a website so that traffic from search
engines increases.”

16. WHY BOTHER WITH SEO?
MOVING ON UP – Optimised websites appear higher up the search results
CONSUMER REACH – More than 1/3 of natural search users click the top result
MORE TRAFFIC – If you move from position #3 in Google to #1 you get a 300% increase in
website visitors (if you move from #10 to #1 it’s 1500%!)
MORE SALES – Higher rankings means more visitors, which means more conversions
Improved Increased More
rankings traffic conversions

17. WHO GOES TO THE TOP?
THE SCIENCE BIT – Google uses algorithms to decide which websites should be positioned
high up the search results
MIXED SIGNALS – The algorithms look at different ‘signals’, including quality of content
and your inbound linking profile
SOCIAL – Never used to have an impact on SEO, the past 18 months have seen it becoming
increasingly important
IT’S GOOD TO TALK – The social ‘signal’ most valued by search engines is the amount of
discussion and sharing around a brand’s website/links

18. GOOGLE+ AND SEO
IT’S ABOUT DATA – Google uses its own network to compile social data on users, doesn’t
have to rely on Facebook (like Bing does)
SPEAKING OF THOSE TWO – Because of its dominance in search, Google doesn’t have to
directly ‘compete’ with Facebook. Why?
COMPELLING USP – One of the key benefits of Google+ is enhanced search performance for
brands who use it properly/effectively
BASICALLY – Google has worked it so that if you do well on G+, you’ll have better SEO
(and all of the benefits that go with that)

19. HOW GOOGLE+ CAN HELP
NEED A LEG UP? – Google+ basically gives you another route to attack page one of the
search results
KEY FEATURES – There are three key ways in which Google+ can help boost SEO:
- PEOPLE AND PAGES
- PERSONAL SEARCH RESULTS
- +1 RECOMMENDATIONS

20. PEOPLE AND PAGES

21. PEOPLE AND PAGES

22. PERSONAL SEARCH RESULTS

23. PERSONAL SEARCH RESULTS

24. +1 Recommendations
• Google’s answer to the Facebook ‘Like’ button
• It looks like this:
• Appears on
• Company websites
• Search results
• Google+ Pages

25. +1 RECOMMENDATIONS
• +1 recommendations that your customers make can be
seen by all of their friends
• There are two key benefits to this:
• Improved clickthrough rate on page one

26. +1 RECOMMENDATIONS
• The second, more important, benefit is that +1’d sites
appear higher up the search rankings
• Google search for ‘SEO Manchester’
• Results in positions #3, #5 and #10
• 30% of natural search space covered
• This gives brands who are smart with G+ a significant
boost in natural search

27. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
• Quantity: Google looks at number of shares, +1s etc
• SO – encourage shares (be obvious about it too)
• Create content and promotions that deserve attention
• Timing is also important

28. WHAT CAN YOU DO?
• Quality – Google looks at interaction around your
social activity
• SO – encourage debate among your customers
• Ask questions, set interactive competitions
• Again, frequency is as valuable as quantity

29. IS IT ALL A BED OF ROSES?
SIZE – are there enough of your audience on there…yet?
TIME – circle curation takes time – you are basically doing a crm job to
categorise your fans.
Posting to your Page has to be done manually – are the rewards there at the
moment?
Most staff have Facebook/Twitter accounts – how many have Google+ ones?
Training is required
HANGOUTS – can webcams alone do the job. Broadcast can be expensive.