Why You Need To Get On Google+ To Promote Your Health Coach Business

Google+ launched last year to lots of hype from the internet marketing crowd.  I like to take the wait and see approach when it comes to the latest and greatest hot thing on the internet.

However, this is Google, which controls the largest search engine on the planet, so their products are always worth keeping an eye on.  Although they have had quite a few flops over recent years, I thing Google+ is not going to be one of them.   Google really wants a piece of the facebook pie and every month they make it more and more enticing to get started with Google+.

In this article, I’ll go over a few of the reasons why I think now is the time to start using Google+ if you haven’t already to gain online visibility for your health coach business.

Google+ Status Updates Are Appearing in Search Results

 

 

Google calls these results Related People and Places.  I have only seen these kinds of results for selected searches right now, but I imagine over time we will be seeing more and more of them.

Not only is the post from Google+ prominently displayed in the search results, but your name and photo are as well.

Author Information in Search Results

Speaking of names and photos in search results, have you noticed more and more little thumbnails of people showing up in your google searches?  This is called author information and basically it links your google profile to your blog posts.  When someone types in a keyword search for something you have written a post about or shared on Google+, your picture will show under the search listing.

Google gives instructions on how to get author information in search results HERE. I think this will change SEO results people are seeing, since I am much more likely to click on a link authored by someone I know that is near the bottom of the page than the higher ranked pages.

This is a little bit technical and involves linking your website to your Google+ page and back to an author page.  This is already huge in all of the internet marketing and social media circles and I imagine you will see it as standard practice pretty soon.

Search Plus Your World Increased the Life of Your Blog Posts

Google recently changed the way it delivers search results and they are calling this “search plus your world”.  Basically this means that if you are logged into google, it gives preference to sites you have visited or are popular among your friends in your search results.

You can toggle this on and off from the upper right hand corner of any google search by clicking on the earth button that says hide personal results.

For you this means if people who are your friends on Google+ search for a certain keyword phrase in Google, you are more likely to show up at the top of the search results than all the high tech marketers out there that have no relationship with the person searching.

Create a Business Page On Google+

Until recently, you could only create personal profiles on googe plus.  In another move to compete with Facebook, they recently started allowing businesses to create pages.  Here is a good article on how to set up a google plus business page.  Until recently, you could only create personal profiles on google plus.

Summary

I don’t think google plus has reached critical mass yet but I expect with all the recent changes that Google has made in the past few months that is going to change this year.

As they link more and more searches to google plus results, this will probably become a very important tool in getting your message found online.

Before last year, you needed to know quite a bit about SEO (search engine optimization) to get found on the first page of google.  With local search and google plus, the playing field is changing in favor of local businesses and relationships instead of strictly SEO.

By Geoff Young