Is google plus really useful?

[Bamservices]

Hi guys first of all i am really thankful for such an opportunity to test such a wonderful app and i didnt know there is a Q&A community here i was actually searching on google about google plus and end up here but the thread i bumped into is a bit outdated anyway a little background on what i am doing.

Our company have a 15 local branches, its a service that we provide on our local clients. I am totally new to SEO like 6 months and i am really learning a lot and i am now learning on how to build my own backlinks and my 1st struggle is on google+ actually i am dismayed that its too confusing (at first) but somehow i manage to understand but still unsure please correct me. So google+ has 2 type 1 is for personal and 1 is for brand am i correct?

So since we have 15 local branches what i did is create a personal page and make it as our business page and then claimed all the 15 branches on google maps and all is verified now.

You think im correct on creating a personal page and make it as our main business page? I asked because i want to create brands page on each branch or do I even need brand pages for my branches?

Was thinking of this custom URLS

1. for our main page (which is our personal page) +OurBusiness

2. for the branch brand page +OurBusinessCity

you think it would be cool? then on about sections (brand page) where i can add links on tag line description i will put the dedicate branch page of our website www.ourbusiness.com/city, then on that website page i will also put our google plus brand page +OurBusinessCity so its a 2 way link.

Please bare with me as i am fairly new to this and i am not really sure if my ideas are stupid so please dont laugh

By the way my another question is about the ABOUT ME section of google+ personal page, when i add link on the description its a nofollow, i know cause i have this extension on my browser that detects do/nofollow links but on the link section its a dofollow. On the other hand google+ brand page has no links section so if you have a link and want to include it on your google+ brand page easy way to do it is put it on description and i just found out its a do follow HOWEVER it seems like the links on both pages (personal, brand) are not seen by search engines i tried it on several google search simulator and also checked the source code of the pages and i cant seem to find the links so my question is, is google really that useful when it comes to backlink building?

Another question is that when i build brand pages i have to use our brand name and so all the branches have the same brand names includes our personal page so all of those 16 pages have the same name, will it be ok?

Another question is that is there anyway that i can edit its meta description? please i am really new to google so bare with me.

Thank you so much in advance and hope to hear from the gurus

[nhhernandez]

Hi Belen,

I think having one brand page is enough. You don't need to have 15 Google+ pages and I don't think having more than 1 has an impact on SEO or backlinking. You can use this G+ page to promote content and post updates like any other social media account, and link to it to your website's header/footer. Apart from what I've mentioned, I think there's really no other use for G+, unfortunately.

[EGOL]

Hi Belen,

I am sure that lots of people saw your very detailed and well-considered question.

I don't know why others didn't reply.   I can say why I didn't reply.

Is google plus really useful?

To me, the answer to this is "no".  I have no use for Google Plus.  I find no value there.

How many times do you encounter a Google Plus page when you are searching for information?    For me the answer to that is almost never - and my use of the word "almost" is generous.

How many people do you communicate with through Google Plus?  My answer to that is zero.

I believe, and I might be wrong, that Google started Google Plus to offer an alternative to FaceBook  -  and very few people have adopted it and stayed with it.  I know very few people who put any effort into Google Plus.

I started using Google Plus when Google suggested that authors of web content should make a Google Page and authenticate their content by linking it to their Google Plus page.  Google did a few things to benefit the people who did this but then any visible effort by Google to continue this effort disappeared.  So, I stopped using Google Plus and it is currently completely off of my radar.

That's the input that I can offer.  I know that I am not representative of web users in general or web marketing people in specific.

I hope that someone can add information here that convinces me that I can move some of my efforts to Google Plus and find a greater return that what I receive by putting that effort into my websites.

[Bamservices]

anyone?