How will Facebook Actions Affect SEO?
After recently implementing Facebook Timeline and Open Graph, which enables a more detailed and chronologically laid out life story of Facebook users to be displayed on their profile page, Facebook has again launched a new tool earlier this week through the Facebook Actions, which takes the usual “like” further by adding a call-to-action feature to the usual posts.
This development has the potential to affect page rankings as well for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes since social media has already been recognized as a valuable tool in determining the relevance of certain topics, hence, they have long been incorporated into the page ranking algorithm.
How does Facebook Actions Affect SEO?
Since Facebook Actions lets users indicate specific products, services, locations, etc., then this carries the potential of affecting the SEO of that particular product due to the added weight that search engines are now giving to social media and the possible exponential effect that the Action itself may have on the poster’s circle of friends, and the friends of their friends, and so on and so forth.
When a Facebook user posts a status such as going to a certain “shop” to buy a certain “brand” of bag, that status will immediately be posted to their wall which will then invite their friends to comment, share, or provide related links as a result of that post. Some may even visit the shop the following day or go to the website of the mentioned brand in the post.
Suffice to say, this places an enormous amount of attention on the shop or the brand of the bag mentioned in the post, which could either be a blessing or a curse as they could either rise to the occasion if they have a good product to begin with or wilt under the spotlight if the initial hoopla was not really warranted. Ironically, the same platform which built them up initially could also be the same platform which could take them down.
However, I digress, anyway following are some of the expected major effects of Facebook Actions with regards to Search Engine Optimization:
- The more interaction that can be generated for a certain product especially if their website has been mentioned or linked to in some of the posts leads to an increase in relevance for the product itself. Search engines have recently placed more emphasis on the worth of opinions generated from social media platforms that they have actually made them significant enough as to factor them into their search engine algorithms.
- Increase in traffic by providing immediate route to your website. The original post will usually provide a direct route or link to the website of the product being mentioned. The company of the product can take advantage of cases like these so as to design their landing pages in order to generate as much interaction with the client as much as possible. Once the client has been funneled to their website, companies can then utilize various SEO techniques such as a very good design for their landing page with corresponding keywords, well-crafted meta tags, and meta descriptions so as to optimize the visit.
About the Guest Blogger: George Peterson currently works for one of the leading search marketing agencies in Denmark – Outrider. He currently works as a SEO manager.
So what do you think about the effects of Facebook Actions and SEO? Have you seen any great examples of using this process on Facebook? Leave your comments and examples below as we love to hear your feedback.