Is Google+ a must for you? 
If you’re a serious online blogger, you are probably always looking for new ways to get more traffic and readers on your blog or website.
More traffic means more money from ads, affiliate links, and product sales, right?
If you are looking for good ways to get more visitors to your blog, joining Google Plus, Google’s social media site, might be a quick and easy way to do it. Let’s explore why.
Get Social Media Referral Traffic to Your Blog
Joining Google+ is easy and has many big benefits for online bloggers, though most of them don’t know it yet.
If you’re a new blogger, joining Google+, posting links to your new articles on your profile, and being added to your friends’ circles will bring new site visitors.
Otherwise known as referral traffic, to your blog even before your new posts and pages are indexed and visible in the Google search rankings.
For best results, it’s a good idea to not only join Google Plus but also to be as active in as many circles and communities as possible.
Commenting is a great way to get more attention and traffic to your profile, which will in turn correlate to more and more referral visits to your blog over time.
Add Google Plus Social Media Share Buttons to Your Website or Blog
Yet another easy way to increase the traffic to your website is by adding the Google+ share button to popular posts and pages on your blog.
While most social media share plugins skew towards Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus share buttons are showing up more and more.
Social media buttons are kind of like the impulse buy rack at the grocery store: if the buttons are there, your site visitors are more likely to click them, but if they’re not your readers probably won’t go out of their way to share your article if you don’t provide them with a simple and convenient opportunity to.
Adding Google+ buttons to your pages makes it that much easier for site visitors who are already active on Google+ to share your article and increase your readership.
Your Google+ profile and presence might be a little weak right after you join, but you never know when a Google Plus guru will randomly share your article and give your blog hundreds of new visits just because he or she liked your article and clicked your share button.
A surge of new traffic and visitors may be all your blog needs to take off, so don’t pass up a simple opportunity when it may be your ticket to more traffic and better rankings.
Authorship Markup to Increase your Click-Through Rate
Once your blog starts getting indexed and actually showing up in the Google SERPs, it’s sometimes hard to make your post stand out from all the other articles that are showing up right along with it.
If you’re doing a good job with keyword selection (another necessity to running a good blog), odds are other bloggers have already targeted a similar keyword, so how do you get noticed in this competitive space?
Obviously you’re always going to want to rank as far up in the SERPs as you can, but adding Google Plus authorship markup is again a very easy and great way to draw attention to your page and increase your click through rate (CTR).
Having your author name show up in your snippet is not only going to add an extra line to your description, but having an image right next to your site will also draw your visitors’ eyes right to your blog post!
It makes sense, right? What is there to lose?
Strong Links Back to Your Website from Google
As most bloggers know, getting high quality links back to your blog is one of the best ways to increase your website’s rankings and get more people reading your content.
Here’s a simple question for you: what website (or even company, for that matter) is stronger than Google right now? So who would you rather get backlinks from than Google?
Many bloggers don’t realize it, but links to your blog articles on your Google+ profile are links to your website from Google.com.
As most SEOs know, getting strong backlinks to your website is not exactly easy, so you might as well join Google+ and get the best ones you can with a minimal amount of effort on your part.
What Do SEO Experts Say About Google Plus?
While many SEOs like to laugh at Google+ and call it a “failure” because it didn’t have the explosive success of other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, even SEO authorities like Moz can’t deny that sites that use Google+ seem to enjoy higher traffic overall than those that don’t.
While it is hard to confirm theories like these with quantifiable and undeniable data, using just plain common sense will tell you that Google might favor websites that use their markup and social media platform (even just a little) when calculating their own search engine’s rankings.
Common sense, people!
In the end, joining Google+ is an easy way to give your site the best chance of getting more traffic.
Is Google Plus a surefire way to enjoy overnight success and a huge traffic spike on your blog or website?
Not exactly, but getting some referral traffic from online friends and communities, increasing your CTR, and getting a few strong backlinks from Google can’t hurt your blog, either.
Spend a few extra minutes each day posting a link to your newest blog post and commenting and you will see that joining Google+ really can make a difference in your site’s overall performance.
David Price has several years of SEO experience and currently handles internet marketing for Calera high speed satellite internet service. Add Dave on Google+ and you’ll have one more person in your circles!