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Facebook’s Graph Search is now in full effect. It’s currently being tested by users who signed up for the beta program. Owing to this fact, it is generating a lot of hype as a concept with the potential to make a major impact online. The latest Google killer? Let’s not move so fast. Instead, let’s focus on this new social search product and what it could possibly have in store for SEO.
New Signals and Discoveries
Facebook has long allowed people to like, share, and recommend things throughout the platform. Now, those very same functions are being used as signals to help people find other people, pages, and places. This data comes straight from the user base, so the results can be very targeted and personal. For example, you could enter “local bands my friends like”, and the graph would deliver results containing the pages of the acts your friends have expressed being fond of through the popular social act of liking.
According to Facebook, the new Graph Search feature can be used to find everything from photos and interesting people to music and good places to eat. It has the potential to be a great tool for local discovery seeing how lots of us are interested in people, places, and things that are close to us. In this sense, it could give Facebook an edge over the competition because why go to Google or Bing to search for a good place to eat when you can just get centralized recommendations from friends on your favorite social hangout!
SEO for Facebook
From the looks of it, the Facebook Graph update, even if it goes from beta to official, will have very little effect on SEO as we know it. However, it could very well increase the importance of having an active presence and optimizing content on the platform. And because it is an entirely different element of web search, the tactics used to optimize that content will likely be notably different.
Slowly but surely, web search is becoming more social. Still, keywords and link strategies are a big part of the process that drives visibility in the SERPs. In order to gain visibility and traffic from Graph Search, brands would need to take specific actions such as:
Completing Your Profile
As I mentioned earlier, Facebook pages are also included in the graph. For several brands, optimization starts here. Basically what you have to do is make sure your page is currently detailed with accurate information such as Business location, a description of what you do and a lot more.
Creating Sociable Content
One thing Graph Search does has given new power to good content. By good I mean content that gets people to take action. The more likes, shares and recommendations your content generates, the better your visibility. With engagement and reach being such a big part of the social experience, engaged users, virality, and various other metrics could be factored into the algorithm as well.
Going Beyond to Engage
Strong content is key, but the cool thing about Facebook is that allows you to engage beyond interesting content. With Graph Search in the mix, the social giant is recommending that marketers focus on ways to attract fans with a high level of interest, and keep them interested in leveraging the platform’s best engagement tools. This could include everything from regularly posting images and videos to engage fans through the use of contests and polls. It’s all about giving them a reason to interact with your content.
Find the Influencers
In the process of attracting the right fans, keep an eye out for those who could potentially be good ambassadors for your brand. These influences can help your marketing initiatives in several ways, but Graph Search opens all new doors. For instance, users with a large number of friends could increase your visibility in the results when friends go to search for something like “pages my friends like”. At the basic level, these brand ambassadors can help promote you through likes and shares, which is powerful with or without the search element.
Conclusion
To be clear, Facebook Graph Search is no threat to Google’s dominance. Just like before, it’s all internal. However, it introduces a few new twists that make discovery more useful and valuable than ever before. Chances are, this thing is going to stick around, so it would behoove marketers to get educated, and learn how they can take advantage now.
About Author
Francis Santos is a writer for Benchmark Email, a best practice email marketing company.
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