If you are familiar with Google plus I am sure you’ve noticed the recent design and layout changes Google has made to the social network. For individuals who manage Google Plus profiles and company pages, there are a number of ways to utilize these changes to improve the way viewers interact with the page.
The size of the cover photo is the first thing people tend to notice because of its significant increase. The previous dimensions were 940 x 180 pixels and now it is 2120 x 1192 pixels for a graphic. This allows companies to be more creative with a cover photo. Here is a great opportunity for companies promoting a new product to display it as their cover photo to grab viewers’ attention upon visiting the page. If you are a local company you could display your logo with contact information readily available for viewers. Take time with the cover photo to display how you want your business to be represented.
The local reviews tab is for personal profiles allowing people to show their reviews of local businesses. Some companies may have the tab already so it is crucial that when Google has this tab available on all Google Plus business pages you reach out to your customers for reviews!
The last noticeable change is the layout of the Google Plus profile and how the contact information, tagline, bio/description and circle are displayed. They are displayed in separate boxes with colors and headers for easy reading, editing, and navigation around profiles and pages.
Something that we can look forward to with the Google Plus changes are more user friendly URLs. Right now a Google Plus URL’s look like this, https://plus.google.com/u/0/114160237898221423648/posts, soon we can see https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BostonWebMarketing/posts. For avid Google Plus users and SEOs such as Matt Cutts, this change has already been made to their profiles. This is good to know for the future when creating Google Plus pages for companies or helping friends with profiles to use your full business name and keep it professional and easy!