With Facebook’s launch of Graph Search, subscription site marketers will need to add another tool to their tool belt — SEO for Facebook.
Be forewarned — social media is not often the best traffic driver or conversion tactic. Email marketing and organic search often far outstrip any other traffic-driving methods for subscription sites. But Facebook’s Graph Search does edge it slightly into the category of search engine, but with a word-of-mouth appeal to consumers that could make it a real threat to Google.
Therefore, it behooves subscription site marketers to start thinking about how to optimize this new technology for their own publications.
Here are the top three tricks we’ve seen:
- Get a vanity URL for your Facebook Page that matches your business name. Keyword-rich helps
- Use keywords in the About section to target your audience. Specify the name of your business, industry/category and a demographic or psychographic that describes your target audience (news for liberals, help for IT professionals, networking for doctors).
- Offer social plugins on your pages to encourage Facebook shares (not just likes). The new algorithm will take into accounts shares, likes and posts, but shares give your content more prominence among your readers’ friends.
