When you think of Google+ you probably know it as the social media extension of Google that nobody uses (compared to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at least). Google+ continues to update its platform, most notably to help businesses better connect with customers and prospects. Although you may have overlooked Google+ for your social strategy, with the new year right around the corner, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at why you should be using it come 2017, or better yet tomorrow.
Yes, Google+ is a great tool for SEO purposes. Blog posts being shared on the platform is a great way to rank for keyword terms along with driving search traffic to your Google+ profile and then your website.
Content posted on Google+ is ranked higher than other social networks by Google and is crawled faster. This results in your content showing up on results better than other pages, websites, articles, content, etc. Just be sure to establish a broad network on Google+ so that you’re more likely to show up in search results.
Most estimates are around 4-6 million active monthly users and the most common usage of Google+ is for hosting pictures with 1.5 billion pictures uploaded every week. It’s an active platform, with Google Communities now seeing 1.2 million new joins per day.