The Google +1 button could potentially turn SEO on its head, it isn’t just another button essential. Google’s +1 of course is very much like the Facebook like button but the big difference is that you get to see what people have liked or rather +1’ed before you have clicked a link in Google search.
People with a Google Public Profile can +1 pages and see how many people overall and which of their contacts have +1’ed sites, presumably numbers of +1s will be visible to everyone in the near future though.
The Google +1 is for Google organic search and for the paid for Google Adwords search results. The +1 button is currently available to people logging in to their Google accounts only on search results where you can +1 results before even clicking through to them, more likely though people will +1 once they have read a page. Also it is important to remember that the +1s are for individual pages rather than the site as a whole, so having the button on all of your site’s pages is vital.
With Google Adwords it may be even more important to get some +1s showing by your result as otherwise your click through rate may dip and your ads slump down a few positions from which it could be hard to get back from.
Anyone with a website with good positions on Google already needs to take action immediately with +1 to get the jump on their competitors and make sure they keep their position: as with organic results how often your result is clicked on when showing for particular keywords does have some bearing on your position in results for that keyword.
Whether the number of +1s your pages have got will ever directly influence your position in search results in the same way as Pagerank remains to be seen but for now the indirect effect of you either increasing your click through rate or losing clicks to competitors is vital.
That is assuming of course that people will pay attention to the number of +1s a page has, it may well take some time until people get used to it and understand what it means. Presumably some types of pages will be more likely to get +1s than others; insurance broker’s websites may get few +1s compared to Justin Beiber Fansites. It will also be interesting to see whether people will pay more attention to how many +1s there are or if they will go for those pages that have been +1’ed by friends.
Looking at which of your site’s pages have the most +1s will be interesting, especially for those sites with a few writers: whose articles are most popular and what kind of content is going down well? In future perhaps we will see +1 data shown in Google Analytics.
From an SEO point of view building up +1s will be important to boost positions quickly and could therefore be an affordable SEO option and help out smaller businesses compete with big budgets of larger competitors.
This proves that Google is truly going social almost 100%. I’d be suprised if +1’s aren’t taken into at least moderate consideration in their algorithm – they just have to get it to the point where it’s as popular as the facebook like, or else only SEOs will be using the button. great post.