12 SEO Experts Shared How +1 Button Can Impact on the Google Search Results

Does your business rely on search engine traffic or you are trying to get more traffic from Google?

If yes then this is the time to pay attention to the social signals especially how +1 button can impact search engine rankings for your website or blog.

Since Google launched +1, everybody is talking about it’s impact on the search result.

In this post your will find out what some of the top SEO guru’s have to say about “How can +1 button impact on the search results in coming months?

# 1 Aaron Wall

Aaron is a one of the top authority in the world when it comes to SEO. He has been actively involved on the web as a publisher and an SEO practitioner since 2003. He launched seobook.com in 2003, which is one of the oldest standing SEO sites around that is still regularly updated. The site originally was designed as a blog that offered DIY SEO tips and helped sell the leading SEO ebook, which had sold well over $1,000,000 in volume.

“For most people I see it as a waste of time & an added jump to hoop through. User adoption has been abysmal, but you can count on Google tilting their relevancy algorithm (and announcing intention to it) to drive adoption, just like they did with the Google Checkout buttons on AdWords ads.

In the past they went so far as highlighting how you got a 10% higher CTR (which equates to a 10% discount on your ad prices) by using it. My guess is that Google will publicly hint at using the data much more than they actually do. It remains to be seen if that message will spread outside the SEO niche.”

# 2 Neil Patel

Neil is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. Through his entrepreneurial career Neil has helped large corporations such as Amazon, AOL, GM, HP and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Google has included +1 stats in Webmaster Tools. Through it you can see how many people have clicked “+1” for your website and how it has impacted your search engine traffic. This shows how Google is taking Google Plus votes into account when it comes to search engine rankings. So if you can get your visitors and friends to +1 your website in the long run you may start seeing a lift in your traffic.”

# 3 Cyrus Shepard

Cyrus joined the SEOmoz help team in 2010 and later was named web strategist for the company. He enjoys blogging about SEO, planning new content, ignoring his personal website and interacting with the customers. Cyrus works on the SEOmoz marketing team as the SEO Navigator (aka in-house SEO.) He helps plan and strategize link building, content creation, site optimization and SEO outreach

“The reach and impact of the +1 button really depends on the success of Google+. If Larry Page and team can make their social network the next big thing, then the +1 button will be ubiquitous as the Facebook like button – the difference being that Google will use it in a manner that influences search in a bigger way.”

# 4 Danny Dover

Danny is a passionate SEO, influential writer and obsessed life list completer. He is also the author of the best selling book Search Engine Optimization Secrets. He was previously the Lead SEO at SEOmoz.org, one of the world’s leading SEO companies, where his articles were read more than a million times. His expertise has been cited in Time Magazine, PC World, Smashing Magazine and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has been translated into Japanese, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and Hungarian. He has spoken at numerous conferences (spanning three continents) and his work has been accessed online in more than 175 different countries. Danny spends his time checking items off his 150+ item long bucket list (half of which are now complete) and working at AT&T.

“I think the search team at Google will be running tests to see how the +1 data improves search results. This provides marketers with a unique opportunity to take advantage of the fluctuations of in the importance of this metric. This could result in big wins for short periods of time.”

# 5 Daniel Cristo

Dan has been online since 1999, and has been performing SEO since 2002. Dan has managed web development shops, optimized fortune 500 sites in-house, and has spent the past several years at one of the largest agencies in the world, serving as Technical Director of Organic Search. Dan is currently working as a director at catalyst search engine marketing company.

“Like most social signals, the Google +1 button will have a high correlation with top rankings, but the +1 button itself will not have contributed much to the actual ranking.

The reason being is that the +1 button is quite susceptible to black hat techniques. I can buy +1’s, I can trade them, I can trick people into +1’ing something they did think they were +ing. I can even withhold premium content, deals and offers in exchange for a +1. It is so easy to game that Google’s algorithm would turn upside down if they put a substantial weight on the +’s.

Expect Google’s +1 button to have relatively low weight on it’s own. Looking down the road, +1’s could be quit impactful if the right authority on the topic +1’s your, but that will only happen after Google’s social graph matures and it figures out how to fight blackhat techniques.”

# 6 Nick Stamoulis

Nick is the President of Brick Marketing & also the found of Search Engine Optimisation Journal. With over 12 years of experience Nick has worked with hundreds of companies small, large and every size in between. Through his vast and diverse SEO, search engine marketing and internet marketing experience Nick has successfully increased the online visibility and sales of clients in all industries.

“I think Google+ will continue to grow and become a bigger part of Google
ranking factors.  Since building a solid brand and building online trust
are 2 key factors of long term Google SEO success, Google+ will play a big
role into that.  In the coming months/years social signals will include:
Facebook, Twitter and Google+.  Although it will be interesting to also
see how Google can control any spam issue that will arise as well…”

# 7 Zarko Zivkovic

Zarko is the founder of Practical SEO company and also link building team leader at Dejan SEO company. You can connect with Zarko on Google+ and Twitter.

“Google has certainly made a strong move towards recognition of brands and authors, I personally love it. The way they did that is with some tweaks in their algo and with the implementation of the +1 button.

As you know the +1 button makes it easy for us to confirm our authorship as it connects our author profile (Google profile or Google+) with everything we wrote on the web (given that you linked your accounts and added rel=author or linked to your G+ profile).

It also helps by figuring out the connections we have on G+ as well as other social networks through our links on Google profile, as well as other ways, so where is that headed and how will that impact the SERPs?

It will lead us to create a brand out of our own name, leaving spam out, as most people wanting to get some real results will be forced to concentrate on quality, branding as well as image and reputation management.

From what we have seen there is a great impact of an author image showing in the SERPs, people tend to click through those links more than they did before. Also if we look at who recommended (+1’d, which is shown in the SERPs) the link we are more likely to visit that page.

The results in the SERP we will see will be modified to match our social media connections based on personalization, so the bigger brand we are the higher the traffic will be for our pages shown in the SERP.

Also, there are still suggestions based on correlation data that +1s have direct influence on the rankings, as much as tweets and likes do, but it’s not just about the volume, it’s about who recommended you and how big is their network as well, how big of an influence they are.

Again, +1 is a move forward to getting rid of spam, creating more personalized results for our network of friends. Even out of our network it is bound to influence the SERPs if there are a lot of social shares, but for the most part, +1 button is here to expand, connect and deliver recommended results in the SERP.”

# 8 Debra Mastaler

Debra is the president of Alliance-Link, an interactive marketing company focused on providing custom link building training. In addition to client projects and link training for Fortune 500 companies as well as a number of top SEO firms in the USA, UK and Canada, Debra is a featured guest speaker at the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), is a guest blogger for Search Engine Land and Search Engine Guide, has done numerous High Ranking Seminars, Small Business Unleashed Seminars as well as the Link Building Training session for Search Engine Strategies (SES) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).  She is also the Link Building Moderator on the SEOBook Community Forums, Small Business Ideas Forum and Sphinn.

“Once they launch Google + for brands and the base of consistent G+1 users increases, Google is going to have a lot of data they can use to augment quality signals in their organic search algorithm.  How they extrapolate those signals, assign “”””trust”””” and relevance factors will be key and something I look forward to watching”

# 9 Ryan Clark

Ryan is the CEO of Linkbuildr Marketing and the brains behind branding and blog content. He specialize in effective marketing strategies for hotels, luxury brands and real estate. If your brand is in need of a boost then don’t hesitate to contact him for a free proposal. You can follow Ryan on twitter @linkbuildr

“The biggest “plus” I see from the Google+ content going live in the SERPs will be your ability to snag a lot of hot search traffic if you post at opportune times. For example, you’re a bullion investor and you cover the latest merger in your industry. All your followers are most likely going to see your blog post on it and that could be a great traffic driver. They’re of course going to share with their circles and this is only going to lead to good things!”

# 10 Leo Dimilo

Leo is an internet marketer and has been marketing online for over a decade. He currently uses search and social iterations to generate a viable plan for small to mid size businesses to build and grow their business online.  You can find him on his off days posting at his vanity label, leodimilo.com.

“Personally, I think that the Google + button in and of itself won’t effect global search but is just one of several components that will be used to determine relevance on a personalized level.  The recent authorship tags combined with personal surfing behaviour and the person’s social network cluster will all have an influence on who ranks where and why.

All of these things combined can help Google define who’s influential and more importantly, real, that goes far beyond giving merit solely based on the amount of links that you can manufacture.  Authorship verification will weed out the search marketing opportunists and an expansive social reach will verify importance of the website.  Couple that with personalized search and you have a beast that will make “gaming the system” much more difficult.”

# 11 Rob Young

Rob is a freelance writer. He has been working in the field sine 2002, and has worked full-time with search engine optimized web content since 2008. He has written literally thousands of articles, hundreds of web pages, various manuals & company documents, and much more.

“+1 is still just peaking its head out of the ground. As users start to recognize it as a standard option and more of the mainstream population create Google Plus accounts, we can expect to see the frequency of +1ing expand dramatically. While the influence of +1’s on the SERP are minimal for the time being, it’s not likely to stay that way. Those who get on board early on will gain the greatest advantage.”

# 12 Jim Lodico

Jim is a commercial copy writer and marketing consultant specializing in social media and content marketing. During the past 15 years, I have worked as director of public relations for one of the largest residential real estate brokerages in the mid-Atlantic and served as editor of a neighbourhood weekly newspaper. I’ve written technical manuals, marketing letters, sales presentations, audio scripts, training programs, educational curriculum and newspaper articles to name a few. Bottom line–if you’ve got a copy-driven or communications project, if I haven’t done it, I’ve probably done something like it.

“With +1, Google has managed to incorporate social relevancy directly into it’s search engine results without the need for a third-party provider such as Twitter.

Google will also be able to build the data from +1 into its algorithm to provide real-time search results that factor in the conversation of the moment. Unlike Twitter, which is very temporary and of the moment, +1 data has the potential to have a lasting impact on a web page or blog post. In the same way that Google uses incoming links to build authority, it is highly likely that Google will use +1 in the same way.

This means that those looking to achieve high rankings will need to not only traditional SEO but also social media optimization.  Although the impact of Google +1 has yet to be determined we do know that the SEO experts and the SMO experts are about to become very close friends.”

I would like to say big thank to all of the above experts for taking time and sharing their views.

What do you think about the above view points, will these help you plan your social media marketing strategy better?

On April 2, 2019, Google shut it down the consumer (personal) version of Google+, a social network by Google. If you have a G Suite Account, as part of your work or school, you can continue to use Google+ within your organization.