Facebook Pages and Search Engine Optimization

In this unique article, we're going to discuss our Facebook pages and how they help to broaden your market by incorporating social media in to an online marketing campaign.  There are numerous misconceptions about Facebook and other social media and whether or not they offer any benefit to Google search rank.  This is a difficult question to answer, but in short, it can be both beneficial and detrimental to rely on Facebook to increase your online ranking.

One thing that should be done is creating a Facebook business page with a link to the homepage of the site promoting the business / service.  We have an example here using Turquoise Place condos in Orange Beach, AL in a real estate capacity.  Visit https://www.facebook.com/Turquoise-Place-Condo-Orange-Beach-Al-299379516856567 to view our Turquoise Place condo business page.  You'll notice that we use the "About" section to add a link back to our primary website for condo sales in Turquoise Place.  This is one of the few indexed links that are "follow" and offer a benefit for using.  A "follow" or "no follow" link is an attribute that tells to search engine spider either to index the information or not; maybe indexed is misleading.  Probably a better way of viewing this is no "link juice" or back link credit is given to a site receiving "no follow" links.  It's good to be indexed and linked to, so a "no follow" link is theoretically not important at all.

As far as Facebook likes are concerned, I don't claim to be an expert, but have read much on the subject and as far as I can tell, Facebook likes are not important in search engine ranking.  Facebook likes are good for social networking, which is really the reason for using Facebook, but the desire to squeeze every bit of clout possible to help in ranking is easily understandable.  In fact, it's little things like this that often determine whether someone finds your website at all;  from there they may actually employ your services.

The best way to use Facebook to help with an online marketing campaign is to use it in collaboration with other sites that will help to broaden the market and improve usability of your product or service.  By usability, the ease of using the service or purchasing the product.  This should be available 24-7 in some form or fashion;  a comprehensive informational package with F.A.Q.'s should be published and easily found.  Facebook is one tool in a veritable box of available tools to help perform a single task, in this case, to modify your marketing efforts and expand your business.