As all of us anxiously awaited the Facebook announcement on Tuesday morning (January 15th). Of course there was much speculation about what the actual announcement would entail, especially since the recent (and ongoing) updates with their Bing partnership. Many of my SEM friends thought that it could possibly do with search, and if not search, perhaps be surrounded mobile. Well, they were right. And with the introduction of Graph Search, businesses begin to learn the in’s and out’s of this new social search engine…before it is even launched to the public. Currently, Graph Search is limited to a small audience. To request early access, go ahead and sign up for the waiting list. And until it is officially launched, Facebook has provided businesses a little insight on how to prepare their pages for the unveiling, making sure they are properly optimized.
Several businesses still have not created a page, therefore in order to be even in the game of this social search engines, businesses must create a business page. But it’s more than just creating the page. Snag your vanity URL, add up-to-date About Us and Contact information. This includes supplying the physical address of your business, if there is one. This will help when someone is searching within a specific location.
Think of it this way, the name of your page is the Title and your About Us is the meta description. The Contact information is the geographic identifier for local optimization. And a vanity URL helps a ton to help users locate your business as well as makes it easier to remember as opposed to that long strong of number/letter nonsense.
Next, maintain on-going efforts to increase engagement is necessary. The “Like” will actually have weight (shocking, I know) and will serve as one of the measurements on where your business will appear in search. That, along with regular posting of content that encourages shares, “likes”, and comments will help your overall page’s ability to appear in the social search.
Absolutely more information will appear as the full service rolls out to everybody, but right now, it’s important to optimize the elements you can and continue efforts to create a memorable experience on your business page. Definitely interested to see what happens as this social search revolution continues and what impact it will have on SEO. Thoughts?
