Internet Marketing: The Intersection of Social Media (Facebook) and SEO
The opportunity to reach customers and prospectives doesn’t just lie in Google search, but also within social media. Small businesses can optimize website content for Google’s standard searchers, but should also take time to do so for content they upload and publish within all social media sites, social networks, and social content sites.
Why take the time to do SEO for Facebook? U.S. search engine rankings published in June of 2010 (a report by comScore), indicate that Facebook search is becoming a popular search tool, significantly increasing in search volume between the months of January 2010 (receiving almost 400 million searches), and June 2010, where approximately 600 million were reported. 600 million Facebook search queries amount to nearly half of the nearly 1.7 billion queries Bing receives, although both are nowhere near the volume seen by Google.
Pennsylvania businesses, it’s worth reaching out to the approximately 500 million Facebook users worldwide by means of SEO. Facebook presents itself as an opportunity for businesses to connect searchers with their content via optimization.
But why does Facebook mean greater search visibility?
Facebook displays results when viewers search its own internal search engine, and these web results are served up by Bing, Facebook’s partner. Both web pages, questions, and Facebook results are shown, essentially a mixed bag of results such as Facebook apps, groups, and web pages unrelated to Facebook. Also, pages hosted by Facebook tend to rank well when searched for and then displayed in other search engines, including Yahoo and Google. You’ll see this when you search individuals or businesses by name.
How To Optimize Your Company’s Facebook Page: SEO for Facebook
Choose the “vanity” URL of your page wisely, and use keywords there if possible, and in the “About” box as well, when writing the page description, and all info tabs available. It’s also a good idea to learn basic Facebook Markup Language to add custom text, links, and images that can all include your businesses relevant keywords. FBML combined with other keyword usage are well-received by search engines and as always, are a good internet marketing practice.
No doubt you’ll also be updating your Company page’s Facebook status, adding photos, and engaging in discussions—don’t miss those opportunities to use SEO keywords when appropriate. Creating a Fan Page presents the same SEO opportunity as a content web page. New opportunities for SEO on Facebook are always presenting themselves. Recently, Facebook has given visitors the opportunity to create “Questions” content, and displays those results prominently in the Facebook results. Carefully title your Facebook Question and add interactive media (perhaps a poll), and be descriptive and interesting.
Internet Marketing and Facebook: Facebook SEO Considerations
Consider adding the “Facebook Open Graph Protocol” to your site. This allows you to “Like” different web pages, and can be popular if your content includes, sports teams, restaurants, movies, etc… This is a set of meta tags you add to the source code of your website, and can influence Facebook rankings, along with the likes and dislikes your pages receive.
Consider linking your fan page from other public pages—pages from external and relevant websites. It’s a good idea to do this in article author bios, social profiles, and other appropriate places that make sense.
If your company is on Facebook, why not take the time to reap the benefits of Facebook search? If not, take the time to sign up, it’s easy and as Facebook promises, free. Learn more about SEO PA and Internet Marketing for Facebook and you’ll appreciate new opportunities.