DOWN –TO-EARTH MARKETING: GOOGLE LOVES FACEBOOK

OK. I’m not a social media madgirl. Social sites certainly got their use for some B2C services and products categories (especially if they’ve got anything to do with Entertainment or human vanity). For others, FB is almost a waste of human efforts. Marketing should be about cost-effectiveness. So most companies should invest their marketing dollars in SEM for short term gains, or SEO and email marketing for longer term ROI.

But one thing I love about Facebook is the “instant Google credibility” brought about by a well-designed Facebook Group page. Google indexes Facebook pages and rank them according to the number of links pointing to them, the size of their respective fanbases, and Likes.

Even though FB pages are ranked on their own in Google, the interplay of links from and to your Website will certainly add to your overall Google creds and give a nudge to your Website’s ranking.

Here’s a couple of basic SEO tricks to optimize your own Facebook Group Page:

1. Choose your page name with as much consideration as your URL. Use keywords in your “About” box as well as in the “Overview” section of the Info tab;
2. When adding content to your page (pictures, discussion topics, status updates), use important keywords;
3. Use external sites linking strategies to point to your status, discussions, etc. Get links to your fan page or any other public pages from relevant, external web sites;
4. Share fun, relevant and engaging content to maximize viral distribution and Likes;
5. Try to get close to the fans you have: exchange with them regularly – FB ranks Group pages according to social closeness with your existing fanbase, not only according to its size.

Word of Wisdom here: Google has billion of searches daily, Bing gets about 10% of what Google has, Facebook about half of Bing. Your marketing dollar should be spent accordingly.

Jessica Turgeon-Reinecke