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I’m thrilled to welcome Brandon for part two about Search Engine Optimization. If you missed his first post, check it out here.
Brandon is a consultant, business marketing grad, strategist, house music junkie, avid reader, speaker, and coffee fiend. He likes to make and break stuff, currently working in the Light Apps division at Corel and the CEO of his own start-up Incentify.
You can find him @BrandonWaselnuk
SEO in Facebook Posts
Facebook is a wonderful platform that almost every business has taken to. It has many benefits and few drawbacks; one of those benefits is boosting your SEO ‘juice’ as some cool kids would say.
When looking at your Facebook posts there’s two pretty big questions most ask when thinking about SEO:
- How do Facebook Posts get SEO?
- How do I Increase the odds of Feedback on my Posts?
How do Facebook Posts get SEO?
The first step in getting any SEO on your Facebook posts is to make sure they are flagged as ‘Public’ posts. Anything that isn’t can never get SEO as they are closed behind the firewall basically.
The More a Post is Shared
Any post you make now has the ability of being shared (and you can track who shared it!) the more people who decide to share the more SEO that post gets. Remember though, it’s a pretty drastically high amount of sharing you require if you’re hoping for your post to show up on a Google search, however if someone is doing a Facebook search, they can come across your Page rather than a competitor if your content is more often shared.
Note: The idea of getting someone to share your posts is simple but difficult in practice. A few tips and tricks are to think like your readers, what would make them enact the need to share what you’ve said with their friends? Also consider the ‘selfish sharing’ factor, something I got from Scott Stratten (unMarketing) it’s the idea that people share things that are important to them, regardless of whether they think all their friends will care. So connect with the individual in your posts if at all possible.
The More Comments and Likes a Post Receives
The more commenting you get the higher your SEO, it’s pretty basic. Much like above, it’s all about giving your readers a reason to engage with you, think like them, what’s a good conversation piece?
How Do I Increase the Odds of Feedback on my Posts?
These are two simple rules to consider, on top of the tips above, but definitely help when you’re thinking about making your posts count.
Increase the ‘Awesome’
Better content means more feedback, engagement, sharing and more, not frequency. There’s no equation for awesome unfortunately so it’s up to you and your understanding of your market, what’s awesome to them? Find it and talk about it to help give your page the boost it needs.
Note: Consider looking at competition for the ‘angle’ they are taking, you can pretty easily see by the number of fans they have VS. The comments and likes a post gets what their feedback % is. Then you have a benchmark to work against.
Ask Questions
Asking open ended questions is usually a really great way to get your audience engaging with you. You can stimulate conversation from there and start to learn who in your audience is really connected to what issues (worldly, work related, or other depending on your page’s function).
E.g. ‘The newest article from SEOMOZ (a popular SEO blog) talks about Google+ implications to SEO. What are your thoughts on all this G+ news lately?’
It’s Too Long
Again, I think that’s enough of a run through some SEO for one blog post. I hope you’ve enjoyed the discussion on Facebook and I’d love to answer any questions you may have, so please comment and/or send them my way!
