Facebook: The Next Frontier For SEO
Posted on by Ryan Deiss in Search Engine Optimization
Facebook went after Google Adwords with Facebook Ads, and now they’re going after Google Search with their new Open Graph Search Engine.
Most people are excited about this because they love to see someone challenge Google’s empire. But me, I’m excited for a different reason. I can smell a new avenue for some mega-effective SEO.
Before I go any further. I don’t think Facebook is going to be knocking out Google just yet. They’ve got a lot of work to do to compete with Google’s extremely advanced search engine, but you never know what else Facebook has up their sleeve.
So here’s how it’s going to work.
Facebook is giving webmasters 2 tools to use to index their page for Facebook Search. 1- “Like” button to install on their pages that Facebook users can click. 2- A set of tags that allows webmasters to tell Facebook what their site is all about.
The search results that Facebook gives will be based on how many ‘Likes’ the page has received and the information provided in the tags. Essentially creating a search engine based on “likes” instead of “links”.
Here’s why you need to get your SEO skills warmed up and ready.
We’ve seen what Facebook did with Ads, so I think it’s fair to say their search engine has some strong potential to become a big time player, Especially since they have Bing powering it.
Since Facebook is giving us the opportunity to improve our search rankings with them by utilizing some pretty sweet tools, it should be worth getting in on. And like most SEO campaigns, it’s a good chance to save dough and get continuous results without continuous work.
Do you think Facebook Search will succeed? Let me know your thought, comment below!
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Christian Song
18. Aug, 2010
Yes i agree with that sir.. in the near future FB is the best in terms of social media.
Steve Benedict
23. Jul, 2010
I had to re-read this to “get it.” Many FB users are so inconsistent on posting or even viewing, that I couldn’t see the “forest for the trees”. Then, in a flash, I got it!
The above doesn’t matter, if you’re getting “likes”. It’s better than writing FB off and ignoring it’s potential. The trick is to get something posted that gets “liked”.
I’m 62 and kind of slow at this viral stuff. Am I getting warm?
Imogen Caterer
20. Jul, 2010
Great post.
Since I have a WP blog which is part-public and part-private I looked at some customizable Facebook like plug-ins and favor fblinkbutton by Dean Peters, which can be got by searching WP’s list of plug-ins from the download plug-ins.
There’s another one with multi-language capability including Welsh (total speakers about 600,000)
Thanks for the insights. I might not have done anything about this without it.
Mr Bearly
11. Jul, 2010
I think it’s fantastic, in the original sense of the word. Off you go then chasing the promise, again, it’ll certainly cut down the competition in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The take I have on Facebook users is that, like Digg, they come in droves to look at the tagged page but don’t go anywhere else on your site. they don’t join in. they don’t sign up, except for free stuff, and they don’t buy enough to justify the effort.
These are people with very short attention spans, that’s why they’re on Facebook. What do they spend money on? Poker chips, glttery stuff for their Facebook page and not much else.
But have fun folks, at least you’ll all have thousands of friends you have never met and never have to really talk with.
Chris Lang
13. Jul, 2010
@Mr Bearly, – Great point! If you think having 5000 friends will help you sell something you are wrong guys.
However if you can get your 5000 friends to do something that gets you ranked higher in Google or a Facebook (think Likes) search engine or better yet convert them into email list members then, it is worth your time.
Stephen
19. Jul, 2010
@Chris Lang, Great idea–use lemons to make lemon-aid.
Thanks
Chris Lang
19. Jul, 2010
@Stephen, Mind if I use that in some copy? Great analogy!