[Build Backlinks Online] Barnacle Reviews on Google+ Local

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Barnacle Reviews on Google+
Local'


Posted by David Mihm

Since Google+ Local was released last May, its safe to say that everyone in the
local search community -- business owners and agencies alike -- has been waiting
with bated breath for the launch of Googles rumored Business Builder dashboard.
For whatever reason, it still isnt out yet, but while youre waiting, theres no
reason you cant take advantage of the most underrated feature of Google+: the
ability to interact on Google+ as a business page. And in particular, to leave
reviews of other businesses as your business page.

Why leave reviews as a page?

Business owners, if this concept doesnt immediately make sense to you, think of
it like this: you probably go to networking events with your local chamber of
commerce, Rotary club, or your industry trade group all the time. When you go to
these events, youre likely wearing your business owner hat, rather than your
"weekend warrior" or "soccer mom" hat.



Thats essentially what this feature allows you to do: network socially with
your business owner hat on, rather than your personal hat. Just like you would
refer business to other business owners you trust and admire in these networking
environments, the idea behind page-to-page recommendations on social networking
sites works the same way.

Facebook gave its page users this functionality years ago, and many of you are
likely accustomed to leaving comments on other Facebook pages and generally
interacting with their community as their page rather than an individual
profile. You may not have known, though, that you can do the same thing on
Google+.

Why "Barnacle" reviews?

As far as I know, Search Influence's Will Scott was the pioneer of this
conceptin local search, which he defined as:

"Attaching oneself to a large fixed object and waiting for the customers to
float by in the current."

As most of you would probably admit, it's hard work to optimize a local
business website/Plus page/etc. So why not leverage pages that arealready
visible in your marketsfor your own visibility? That's the idea behind Barnacle
SEO.

Will's original concept applied to link building to prominent Internet Yellow
Pages profiles like Yelp business pages or Yahoo Local listings to increase the
rankings of those profiles. As Facebook became more popular, he also applied the
idea to Facebook conversations on popular pages in a given community (such as
the home of your local newspaper or major/minor league sports team).

The problem is that with's Facebook's Timeline interface, comments and
conversations drop "below the fold" awfully quickly, especially on popular pages
with lots of conversations.

The results on Google+ Local pages, when done well, can yield much "stickier"
results.



Getting started: using Google+ as your page

This part is pretty easy. Simply go to http://plus.google.com and log in with
the Google Account under which you claimed your page. At the top righthand side,
you'll see a dropdown that shows the pages on which you're an admin. Simply
select the name of your page. Google will then take you to that page, and when
it does, you should see the icon of the page show up at the top righthand side
(rather than your personal profile photo).

You're now using Google+ as your business!

Getting your feet wet: reviewing friendly businesses


Going back to the Rotary club analogy, you probably already have a network of
existing businesses that you refer friends and clients to in the offline world
-- pay it forward and put your speech about why you would refer people to them
out there for the entire Internet to see.

Chances are, when they Google themselves, they'll see your business' review
right at the top of the list and might even leave YOU a review once they notice
it.

Here's an example of this in action with my friend Mike Ramsey's business.
You'll see, because he doesn't have that many reviews for his newspaper site, my
face-for-radio shows up publicly right at the top of his list.





Kicking it up a notch: finding popular businesses

OK, that was simple enough. But most of your friends aren't likely to run
tremendously popular businesses that are getting a lot of traffic from search,
let alone organic activity on Google+. You want to identify who the most popular
businesses are in your market. You probably have some idea of what they are
already, but here are some algorithmically-influenced ways to find them.

1) Perform a search for "things to do" in your market

Google is showing more and more of these carousel-style results for these
searches every day. The businesses and points of interest shown in this carousel
tend to be the ones that get the most visibility on Google+.



2) See what businesses Google recommends at maps.google.com

Visit http://maps.google.com and see who Google shows to the left of the map --
both in text and image format. Again, these are likely to be popular businesses
with lots of visibility on Google's local products.




3) See where top reviewers are going

Hat tip to my previously-mentioned friend Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing whose
team authored this excellent piece earlier this week about how to find top
reviewers on Google+ Local. Just follow the instructions in that post, and
you'll get a screen like this. Chances are, most of the places visited by top
reviewers are pretty popular.



4) See what places are popular on Foursquare

Visit foursquare.comand see what businesses are mentioned when you search for
"best nearby." These places are going to have a lot of visibility among
techies--good for a variety of reasons that I won't go into in this post.



Finishing things off: reviewing those businesses

So, the final step in the process is to leave a review of those top businesses.
I don't have any earth-shattering tips for best practices when it comes to
actually leaving a review, but I will point out that the more effort you put
into leaving a killer review, the more likely it is that effort will be
rewarded.

Why is that?Google+ sorts reviews by "Most Helpful" by default.This means that
the better your review is, the more likely it is to have staying power over time
-- which is the whole point of this exercise. You want people to gain real value
from your review and have a positive experience when they see your brand for the
first time.

Just like no one wants to talk to an incessant glad-hander or self-promoter at
a networking event, no one wants to read reviews that talk about how great their
own business is. Just imagine that you're talking to people face-to-face at one
of these events, except instead of a 1:1 interaction, it's more like a 1:100 or
a 1:1000 interaction.

Note that my business' review, though I left it over two weeks ago and haven't
asked anyone to mark it as helpful, is still ranking second out of all reviews.
Imagine the permanent "stickiness" of a review marked as helpful by even a
handful of Google+ users.





Conclusion

Obviously, this technique works best for retail- or hospitality industry
businesses, who are probably referring their guests to top attractions anyway,
and are most likely togettraffic from out-of-town guests in the process of
planning their trips.

But my guess is that (especially) in larger markets, even in-town residents are
likely to do "recovery" searches on popular destinations -- where Google is
increasingly pushing searchers towards Knowledge Graph results and popular
reviews from prominent Google+ users. Make sure your business (or your clients'
businesses) have a chance to gain this "barnacle" visibility.

In the comments, I'd love to hear if anyone has used this technique on their
own, or on behalf of their clients, and what the results have been!
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