Strength of Google+ Backlinks?

I have been making G+ backlinks as I heard that it works. But I do not know alot of it. I will be waiting to get some info also.

I think the question should be are links less important than they were?

Back in the day Google treated all links as being equal, but this hasn't been the case for some time due to all the spamming and manipulation of link profiles. So that led to the next question - are links from social sources the answer and are they going to replace 'normal' links?

I'd argue that social signals can tell you a lot about trust, timeliness and perhaps authority, but that they are limited in terms of their relevancy - so would that benefit your rankings for a particular keyword? I doubt it.

So where does that leave you?

I'd say don't bother spending all of your time getting links from Google +. Spend time generating links from lots of sources, natural ones, social ones, contextual ones, directory ones, do follow ones, no follow ones, forum ones etc etc etc etc etc.

As Paul says

"Spend time generating links from lots of sources, natural ones, social ones, contextual ones, directory ones, do follow ones, no follow ones, forum ones etc etc etc etc etc."

An unnatural link profile can cause problems so do all of the above.

One think I like about Google+ is that if you link to your Google+ account from your blog, your Avatar appears in Google's results which will improve your CTR.

For an example search google for "roger's traffic generation" and you will see my smiley face

Hi Roger,

Yep - having images (and reviews etc) in your SERPs results has indeed been proven to improve your CTR (depending on your image that is ).

This works really well for eCommerce sites. I've been working through rich snippets for magento, which is what my Uniquely Crackers site is developed upon.

Once I've implemented then, I hope to see the odd product image displaying on the first page along side my listings. So working hard to get my product pages listed in the SERPs too for maximum benefit.

Right, now we know who you are, go and update your avatar

Just realised people had actually replied to this thread - thanks this has all been really useful - do you think the size of your G+ following will affect the strength of the links?

Hi Steve,

My avatar seemed to have disappeared. I have uploaded it again.

Cheers
Roger

From a purely layman speculation point of view, I doubt it because it's something that can (and is) be gamed and manipulated.

I think what will become more important in the future (if not already) is the number of g+ profiles that have a link back to your site, (ie Other profiles, contributor to, links etc).

This is much harder to game, and is good indicator of a sites/page/resources popularity.

If say 50 people have taken it on themselves to point their g+ profiles at your site, then that has to be a significant factor in either the serps and/or Google local results. Plus it would be pretty easy to automate an algo to pick up spammy yoda profiles.

Feel free to link your G+ profile back to the forum, and we shall watch the results

The bottom line is that the SEO effects of Google +, either links or 'likes', are very indirect. This means traditional SEO practices should not be ignored, but some activity towards G+ added into the mix.

SEO methods such as link building, keyword research/targeting, URL structure (and lots of other areas I've mentioned) have a more significant impact on page ranking.

I also don't think the volume of followers would effect anything other than CTR from your account.

However I guess Google + is still in its infancy, and more data needs to be gathered to draw a proper conclusion to its search benefits.