Since the launch of Google+, Google has described it more as a “social layer” that runs over the World Wide Web, than a single social networking website. All the SEO experts know that “links” have a certain weight when it comes to search engine optimisation. Although Google+ has started using nofollow attribute for the links posted on the network, the primary shared link on a profile still offers valuable link juice to a website.

So does Google+ help the organic SEO of a website?

Google+ does not have a direct correlation to the ranking in Google’s organic search results. However, there is a lot of debate going on the subject, and, in my opinion, Google+ does seem to have a certain indirect effect on search engine optimisation. It can be seen that the posts which originate from Google+ have a tendency to rank better in search result pages (SERP) of Google, given the post is related to a certain search query. So it is advisable to have a Google page for your website.

Another way that Google+ affects the search engine optimisation is through its “+1 button”. The button is used by Google to personalize their search engine results even further. When a person performs a search on Google while being logged in to Google+, he will see a more personalized results page than when searching without logging in to it. The users can +1 (“plus one”) the web pages with good results they find for a particular search query, and the next time they perform a search it will have a certain weight on his personal results page. This affects the search engine optimisation process in a revolutionary level as to get +1’s from users, the webmasters have to offer good and informative content to the readers. Since this only affects the personal search results, spamming the button is also not going to work.

In addition to this, you can always see that websites that have a good social networking footprint are always performing extremely well. So having a presence in Google+ is really essential for any online business.