Google+Social Media

G oogle+ 101: 5 tips for a strong Google+ business page profile

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Gary Smith Feb 18, 2014

5 tips for a strong Google+ business page profile

This is the second post in our “Google+ 101” series. View the rest of the posts here.

So you’ve got a Google+ page set up for your business. What now? Today, we’ve put together a few of the major points you’ll want to consider when building a strong Google+ business page profile:

1) Size your cover photo correctly

Similar to Facebook and Twitter, one of the major aspects of an effective profile is your cover photo. You’ll want to choose a visually striking image which is representative of your business. Another major consideration is size. Google+ uses responsive design, so if an image is too small, it will look pixelated and poor at larger screen sizes. To avoid this, make sure to size your cover photo beforehand. Currently, the recommended size is 1080 (width) x 608 (height), with a maximum size of 2120 x 1192.

Google+ Cover Photo Example

2) Provide a compelling business description

This might seem obvious, but there’s a few key points to take into account here. Notably, this doesn’t just appear on the About section of your Google+ profile; it also appears as the meta description for your Google+ business page when people search for you on Google. 150 – 160 characters in a meta description, including spaces, is the general rule of thumb for length, as anything longer is cut off with an ellipses (depending on the search engine). Since Google+ automatically adds your business name to the first part of the description, that cuts your character limit down even more, so ensure that the most important part of your description comes first.

3) Verify your address

As of last year, Google+ no longer holds open verification for general business pages. However, you can still verify your connected web address – either through Google Webmaster Tools, or by pasting a custom snippet into the <head> section of your page (go here for details).  Google+ Local pages are different, and can be verified. This is done either by phone, or a physical postcard sent to the business’s address. For more information on verifying a Google+ Local page, check out Google’s official help topic.

4) Local page? Choose your business category

This won’t apply to general business pages, but it’s a must for Google+ Local. The primary category you choose for your business will appear in your Google+ “business card” on your cover photo, and will also determine when you show up in Google+ Local search results. To edit this, navigate to your Dashboard (which can be accessed from the drop-down menu on the left, as the first item under Home), and click “Edit Business Information,” then find the category section. You won’t be able to enter your own category, so choose the option that aligns best with what your company does.

5) Add photos/videos of your business or product

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: 2014 is the year of visual content. There are a million statistics on this, but the bottom line is that compelling visual content is more likely to grab an individual’s attention than a block of text. With that in mind, you’ll notice that your Google+ profile has tabs for photos and videos. If you can, don’t leave these barren – but also try not to fill them up with content unrelated to your business. If your business has a YouTube account, even better – you can connect the two.

Depending on if your page if a part of Google+ Local, or one of the other standard types, there’s more that you can add (hours of operation for local, custom links for other pages), but these are the main points of concern. In general, the more information you can provide on your profile, the better – and if that includes awesome imagery, you’re off to a great start.

To recap:

5 tips for a strong Google+ business page profile

Looking for more tips on Google+? Tune in next week when we cover getting started with the basic features, or get in touch with us on Google+ itself!


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