Google +1 For Photographers

Google.  Plus 1.  Plus One?  Plus what?  That’s what I’m hearing from most photographers in the UK at least when I mention the Google +1 button.

In this post I’ll try and explain a bit more, and how you can implement it on your photography website too.

What is the Google +1 Button?

According to Google:

The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

Essentially, this is very much like the ubiquitous Facebook “Like” button that appears almost everywhere.  Google is getting in on the Social web by introducing this feature to websites.

I believe it has a couple of underlying reasons of coming into existence:

• To generate more Google accounts for Google:  In order to +1 a webpage, you need to have a Google account.  Anyone who clicks the +1 button without being logged into a Google account will be prompted to get one.  Clever Google
• To really allow social manipulation of results in the future. Why do I say “in the future”.  At present the Google +1 button is only relevant to the user pressing it.  In their Google account they can see all the pages they have +1′s which can act as a kind of bookmarking tool.  In the future, when Google really get going on the social scene (which they will – remember Buzz and Wave?) it will really come into its own.  Our results may be altered based on what one of our friends have liked or +1′s in the past.

Powerful hey?

What does a Google +1 Button look like:

It looks like this (and you can see one in the header of this site too – go on, press it – you know you want to…).  Note, the +1 buttons do not, as yet, appear to work in iDevices or other mobile browsers.  You can see it in action on my wedding photography site.

How do you get a Google +1 Button:

Its very simple.  Just visit Get a Google +1 Button.  You will need to be a bit of a technical jiggery pokery type person, but there are pluggins etc coming to aid the implementation – Here is a Google +1 WordPress Plugin

My personal take is that this is the start of something much bigger.  You should all see how Google Places has affected the stable Google search results page.  Whilst, at the moment, this is a way of marking a site or page as beneficial it does not affect your organic search placings.

As Google start to roll out more Social enabled features this will change.  You should get a Google +1 button as soon as you can.  The world of photography is a very fickle world.  We listen to our friends and our clients listen to their friends.  We have seen how Google “like” has affected the look and functionality of our websites and the way we interact with our potential clients.  This, in my opinion, will be bigger (eventually).

Just quickly before I finish.  I have now resumed my SEO for Photographers seminars here at the studio.  I’ve added a bit extra too.  All those people who expressed an interest will recieve an email soon but you can look at the training options by going to the SEO for Photographers seminar page.

And, if you missed it in the last post my sessions at the SWPP 2012 Convention are now published.  Please check them out and I’d love to see some of you there.

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