Blog Posts and Google Authorship
This month I’ve been hitting the concept of Google Plus hard; blog posts and Google Authorship are part of that closely woven strategy that will get your local business noticed online.
Well here’s the skinny on blog posts, Google search, G+ and Google Authorship and why Google Plus is a game changer this year for your business.
Around September 2012, Google instituted a program called Google Authorship. Now remember the purpose of Google. Google is a search engine. Their imperative is to deliver the MOST relevant search results possible to every user on earth. That is a HUGE undertaking. Google Authorship is another cog in the machine of that process of delivering search results.
So what is Google Authorship – its relation to blog posts and why should you care?
Listen carefully and I will try to weave this cloth together for you. Google Plus is the social media platform of Google. Every person and business on the planet has the opportunity to claim or create a profile on G+.
Part of that platform is called Circles. Circles are how you categorize the people you are connected to on G+. You can put people in any number of circles, name those circles in any way that makes sense to you. Think of it as a way of organizing people into various circles of influence within your life and business.
Now Google knows you and your business based on the profile you’ve created on Google Plus. They know which other people and businesses you have placed in various circles of influence. This information is now part of their knowledge base about you and your business.
This brings us to blog posts. That’s where I began this whole explanation. Blogging is the writing of articles on a website. You should be writing for your own blog posts on your own website. If you don’t have either a blog or a website, that’s a problem that we can tackle another day. For now, let’s assume you have a blog and posts are written for that blog on a regular basis pertaining to the area of expertise where your business delivers goods or services.
Stick with me here, we’re almost there. You have a blog, you are an author on that blog creating regular blog posts. You may even be an author on other blogs as a guest including major media outlets. You have a Google Plus profile. You have other people in your circles of influence attached to your Google Plus profile.
Here’s the magic, the big reveal. Someone goes on Google to search for information on a subject that you are an expert in and have written about on your blog. Google has to choose which results to deliver. Keeping in mind that their imperative is to deliver the most relevant results, Google will decide in a fraction of a second, what is most relevant for that searcher. Google will evaluate who is searching, who is in their circles, what topics of information those people and businesses in those circles have authored, and they will deliver search results from those circles first. Often before they will deliver the results of the number one website in the world for that search term.
Here’s a quick example: You own a flower shop and every month write a blog post. One of those posts is titled Holiday Flower Arrangements. You have a Google Plus profile and a page for your business on Google Plus Local. The business has 500 people in circles and is in 1000 circles of other Google Plus users. One of those users goes on Google search and types in “holiday flower arrangements”. Google will look at their circles, see you, know that you wrote an article titled Holiday Flower Arrangements and Google will deliver your blog post as a result to that search.
In the past, it might have taken years and thousands dollars and hours of SEO to end up in that search result. But in an effort to be relevant, Google assumes that because you’re in that circle, what you write about matters to that searcher. And when Google sees a match, they further assume that it’s a more relevant result.
Top Tip: Create regular blog posts.
Make 2013 the year you take blogging for business seriously. The impact it will have on your Google search results is HUGE and only costs you time and effort. Actually, you can pay someone to create blog posts for you and know that this strategy is working for your local business 24/7/365.