To piggy back on Angie’s article yesterday about the launch of Facebook Graph Search, I wanted to provide a little more information specific to how to give your business and place pages their best chance of appearing in the results, at least from what we know so far.
The following advice is what Facebook has provided regarding optimizing business pages for the Graph Search:
- The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the “About” section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
- If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
- Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis
The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the “About” section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
In more basic SEO terms, this is the optimization piece of the algorithm, and one that is probably already taking place. It’s considering the primary ways that the target consumers refer to or search for a business and making sure those keywords are integrated into the “About” section. The name and vanity URL really should already be brand name based, and hopefully when developing the business page the most appropriate category was selected.
It’s also possible that the content shared on a business or place page could play into the algorithm, certainly when it comes to how much that content was engaged with, but also how the content was optimized.
One additional thought is whether or not Facebook will be pulling in results from the content linked to by Facebook users, as opposed to just the Facebook pages themselves. It’s certainly a possibility and one we’ll want to watch out for, but it’s more likely that Facebook will want to keep users within Facebook rather than driving them to external content. However the content that is shared within a business or place page may have some effect.
If you have a location or a local place page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
While this seems like a no-brainer for many, large multi-unit and franchise businesses in particular will want to take heed of this advice and make sure that all of their locations’ place pages are appearing with correct information. Using the parent-child integration will help make this process much more manageable.
Focus on attracting the right fans to your page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis.
This is the crux of EdgeRank, the Facebook search algorithm. The first two suggestions were mere house-keeping. While they may have put it in such simple terms above, it’s also by far the most complicated and time consuming. From a 10,000 foot view, this means producing and sharing great, unique content (no surprise there) and having an active and genuine engagement strategy that has your brand interacting with potential consumers on a regular basis.
So really there is nothing new here from what we’ve already been talking about the last couple years. The same robust content strategy that should be included across all marketing channels applies to Facebook Graph Search, it’s just another reason why having one is so important. Content with a purpose, content that serves the needs of your target consumers, content that inspires them or makes them laugh–this is what so much of a true digital presence means today.