Yesterday afternoon Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting hosted an online discussion with several SEO panelists including Dr. Pete Meyers of Moz, Mark Traphagen of Virante, Marcus Tober of Searchmetrics, and Joshua Berg of REALSMO.
The initial focus of the discussion was a study performed by Eric Enge to measure the impact of Google+ on SEO. A summary of the study can be found on Eric’s blog. Nearly all the panelists agreed that there were fundamental flaws in the methodology of the experiment, yet the debate it sparked provided several insights into how you can view the role of the Google+ platform in relation to your other SEO efforts.
[youtube http://youtu.be/JNkUXj0DVYA]
In measuring the impact of Google+ on SEO there are so many variables that cannot be controlled, measured, nor isolated that it is difficult to design an experiment that is both accurate and reproduceable while still representing how things actually happen in the wild. This does not mean that we should not keep trying to discover the properties of the black box, but the evolving nature of the platform and the randomness of human interaction with it poses significant obstacles.
The following ideas were generated as a result of the debate:
- Content and links are crawled and indexed very rapidly
- Google+ links behave differently than traditional links
- Authoritative Shares seem to have less impact than expected
- Personalization and Authorship will have a larger weight in the future
- Google + Links are not a “Magic Bullet”
- Google+ can drive significant traffic to your properties
- “Trust is now King”
Several panelists agreed that Google+, while powerful and significant, should be part of a larger overall strategy using proven traditional SEO techniques augmented by a social component that includes all social media outlets, including Google+. There was an emphasis on the creation of high-quality, sharable content that can be placed in these pipelines which will allow the content take on a life of its own and drive traffic and ranking to your properties.
In conclusion, if you are looking for Google+ to be a “Magic Bullet”, you are going to be very disappointed in the results. However, if you view Google+ as Google itself does, as an “Identity Engine” and as a platform to build a network, reap social signals, post unique, meaningful, and interesting content then it will be a powerful component in your overall SEO efforts.