As a continuation from yesterday’s Google + article, I think I may have stumbled upon another factor that affects ranking; it is fairly simple and has more benefits than just a higher position.
The new factor is simply adding people. I know this sounds silly but I added everyone for the term SEO and SEO UK, which got me about 250 people in my circles. Now I know this does seem a little spammy, but it isn’t at all. You can follow as many people as you want on Twitter and you can do the same on Google +. It is a worry to have on your profile, “SEO Positive has 250 in their circles and 5 people have SEO Positive in their circles.” But you can hide this information from users so feel free to add as many as you want!
Like I said, I have added all profiles that come up for SEO and SEO UK. Now I will use my account with no history to measure the new found rankings. FYI the previous positions were from the last case study which was before I added anyone into my circles.
| Keywords | Current Position | Previous Position | Movement |
| SEO | 54 | 61 | +7 |
| SEO UK | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| UK SEO | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| SEO Company | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| SEO Companies | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| SEO Services | 1 | 150 | +149 |
From this report we can see that SEO services has shot right up the rankings and is now at the top, SEO is THE most competitive term out there in this industry, but it is good that some movement has been made.
Conclusion
It seems adding relevant users has a positive effect in terms of rankings. Adding a huge list of people can also help with exposure, connection and if there are a lot of users that add you to their circles then it looks good on your profile.
The next thing I will be looking into is content (updates) and to see if they have make a difference. I will be doing one a day and I will record the results in an article next week.
Tags: +, google, optimization, plus
