Facebook vs SEO

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debayo

New member
I've been reading a lot about Facebook. Frankly, I've been blown away. Their system makes perfect sense! The "Like," "Comment" and "Share" options are more powerful than they look.

Would anyone share his insights on how this might affect all body of knowledge about SEO? I have this feeling that SEO would have to redefine itself. Or why would Google Buzz adapt the "Like" system?
 
Facebook and SEO are not mutually exclusive. Social Media is a very big industry at the moment, and much of the SEO work we've been doing lately has been revolving around Facebook, Twitter and similar systems.

If a topic is HOT, Google wants to know about it. The LIKE and COMMENTS buttons indicate to Google that there's a hot trend on something.

There are many companies out there now offering a service where they'll have "X" number of people click LIKE on your Facebook page so that you get a boost in Google. These kinds of techniques will only last for a limited time, but they're some great Blackhat techniques if you're looking for instant results and don't care about being sandbagged after christmas.
 
I can only Second Connor and Steve, Facebook and other social media are essential tools in your marketing arsenal. They do play a particular advantage in SEO, but also increase brand awareness and may also directly relate to sales.

Perhaps my best example of the power of social media was our first attempt at it, in essence we simply responded to a discussion in the form of a comment on Facebook. Within 3/10 seconds of said comment going live we had over two to three hundred visitors from Facebook most onsite for around 10 to 30 seconds and roughly 40 sales.

All for the time spent writing a comment :D, the SEO impact of the comment i couldent qunatify however the sales speak for themselves.
 
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I see the point of Facebook and SEO not being mutually exclusive.

Just three issues at this time:
1. I'm curious about how Google would know the number of likes pointing to a particular link.
2. Even granting that Facebook and SEO are not mutually exclusive, which one delivers results the fastest? CSN-UK seems to suggest the answer to this question.
3. Which between Facebook and SEO would ensure that a person from a lesser known county in Asia would be able to promote his website only to people around his location? Facebook appears to offer a fatter chance.
 
Niche Targeting is a breeze when it comes to Facebook. Since this is a member site rather than just an open search wihout needing registration, it means that all the users info is already in the system. You know their age, their birthday, city, likes, dislikes and passions. You can then drill down into their friends andget their information. The demographic targeting within facebook is a HUGE boost to being able to target people.

That being said, we see more traffic and more sales via Google. Many people on facebook are on there to talk to their friends etc and while some people glance at the ads on the right side, a lot of people do not click them (at least for our market anyway).

I think quick sales and coupons are great on facebook, but it's mainly products and not services.

For comments, facebook is instantly viewable and can drive instant visitors if they wanted to further check you out. It's no different though with forums or blog postings. And blogs and forums have a more lasting impression as it resides for many years and gets picked up by google etc. Facebook posting gets shoved to the bottom of the pile within a few hours.
 
At this point, Google is still the main driver of traffic. But it's the conversation with a blogger that really caught my attention. He said that 12 months ago, traffic from Facebook has been almost none. Today, Facebook traffic accounts for around 20% in his site.

I'm not sure if we can technically call Facebook as "part" of your SEO strategy. Fact is, it's not the search engine that works in Facebook. It's the endorsement of friends through the 'Like' or 'comment' or 'share' buttons that bring attention to one's site. I'm more inclined to call that a social media strategy, not SEO.
 
handsonhosting said:
Niche Targeting is a breeze when it comes to Facebook. Since this is a member site rather than just an open search wihout needing registration, it means that all the users info is already in the system. You know their age, their birthday, city, likes, dislikes and passions. You can then drill down into their friends andget their information. The demographic targeting within facebook is a HUGE boost to being able to target people.

That being said, we see more traffic and more sales via Google. Many people on facebook are on there to talk to their friends etc and while some people glance at the ads on the right side, a lot of people do not click them (at least for our market anyway).

I think quick sales and coupons are great on facebook, but it's mainly products and not services.

For comments, facebook is instantly viewable and can drive instant visitors if they wanted to further check you out. It's no different though with forums or blog postings. And blogs and forums have a more lasting impression as it resides for many years and gets picked up by google etc. Facebook posting gets shoved to the bottom of the pile within a few hours.
Click to expand...

Facebook and other social media can be a great way to get your product in the public eye, but I wouldn't suggest purchasing Facebook ads. We've done some advertising on Facebook and will admit it can send you a lot of traffic with the right ads and choosing the right targets to display the ads to, but in our experience the ROI was extremely low.

As an advertising medium, Facebook just doesn't work very well. It's not too often you'll hear someone say "I need to log into Facebook and find a new host". Therefore, unless you have a large advertising budget, it doesn't make good business sense to pay $1.50-$10.00 a click for someone that has no intention of buying your service.
 
debayo said:
I've been reading a lot about Facebook. Frankly, I've been blown away. Their system makes perfect sense! The "Like," "Comment" and "Share" options are more powerful than they look.

Would anyone share his insights on how this might affect all body of knowledge about SEO? I have this feeling that SEO would have to redefine itself. Or why would Google Buzz adapt the "Like" system?
Click to expand...


Like, share and comment are definitely powerful, cause the number of likes that you have reflect only the users who are interested in your product, and therefore much better rate of conversion is there this way.
 
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media campaigns are sort of two different beasts, and one will not necessarily help the other, but they can.

For instance, a viral campaign of either a video, blog post, tweet, facebook post, could conceivably end up on a high ranking site that would then 'link' to your main site, thus creating new SEO opportunities. On the other hand, social media campaigns should be viewed as ends as themselves, and are always great opportunities to help engage with your customers on a personal level.

But don't think that simply just SEO tweaking or Social Media will always boost your rankings; one should always concentrate on organic traffic generation and using social media as a tool, just like any other marketing strategy. The focus should be creating original content. The more content, the more your SEO and social media reach will grow. Good luck!
 
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Facebook and the social bookmarking projects can be considered as ways to increase traffic shares, not necessarily links counts, of domains while SEO focuses on improving the organic traffic gains of the websites, generated from the major search engines like Google. It is recommended to make use of both systems because today not 100% of traffic is coming from organic search results.
 
xzbackup said:
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media campaigns are sort of two different beasts, and one will not necessarily help the other, but they can.
Click to expand...


Not only are they two different beasts, they also have a ton to do with the type of customers you are looking to attract. We use SEO but like it has been said previously search engines like what is in the "now" so adding a Facebook presence never hurt. We personally do not see why tweeting would benefit the hosting industry, do you really want to know when we put a new server online? Maybe you do? We want to know our web presence is accessible as much as possible to as many as possible. So use all the tools available to you. If you do not you never know what opportunities would have presented themselves.

One thing we do know about connecting to Facebook and other social media outlets. You must update the content there as well, if you do not update it regularly you might as well not even make the connection. It just hurts you in the long run.

Good luck!
 
Social Media is excellent for viral marketing but IMO SEO is best in the long run, since the Social Media world is always changing (myspace and hi5 is down, facebook, digg and reddit are the kings) so its kind of harder to have a long-term plan using those
 
There is a difference in concepts: Like and Seo.
Like - is for people you will receive some links. If you like them you enter.
Seo - is for search engines where people search for specifics!
Likes is ... look at this - doesn't mean you want / know about it.
 
The only suggestion. IF you created a facebook fan page for your business, Use the application called FBML. Make sure you create a custom landing page for your page. Usually linking to your wall is a horrible Idea. We found that out after spending good money with Facebook.

Just thought that may help you out.
 
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