How to Optimise Facebook Ads

I attended a Facebook session last week which went into the updates of the social networking organisation. Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more connected. It certainly has achieved this since its launch in February 2004. I learnt a lot at the session and wanted to share some of the stats with you.

Facebook cupcake

Key Facebook Facts

Google Plus – Facebook’s new rival

Last month, Google launched Google+ which is pretty much their attempt to jump onto the social media bandwagon. Before we jump into the stats from Hitwise, lets have a quick recap of What is Google+?

Google vs Facebook

Google+ brings all your contacts in one place, and lets you organise them into different groups. You can have a group for your work friends, school friends and so on. Google+ is made of five key areas:

* Circles — your friends hub. Instead of grouping everyone together as your “friend,” you can create different circles for the different types of people in your life like colleagues, relatives, tennis partners. It is very easy to make new groups and add contacts – drag and drop.
* Hangouts — this is where you can send a broadcast to your friends that you are online and want to chat face to face. You have everyone “hanging out” together – only virtually though. It is like a massive three, four way skype chat.
* Sparks — Designate your interests in Sparks, and Google+ will collect articles, videos, and photos of the things you love from around the web to read when you’re free (like an RSS reader). You can share these items with specific circles of friends instead of all of your friends.
* Instant Upload — With Instant Upload, your mobile photos and videos are automatically uploaded to the web. (So no worrying about backing up your media, you can have it stored online in your own cloud)
* Huddle — A group messaging system, Huddle allows you to chat with a number of friends on the go via your mobile phone.

So do you think Google+ will take off? Only time will tell. Hitwise have come up with the following interesting stats, so it looks like people are using it. I doubt they will give up on Facebook, so the battle between to the two search giants will continue.

- Google+ received more than 1.79M total visits the week ending July 23, 2011. That is a decrease of 3% vs. the previous week (July 16th). The site received 1.86M total visits the previous week
- The average time spent on the site was down as well by 10% from 5minutes and 50seconds to 5minutes and 15seconds
- Among the top 50 Upstream sites, 59% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from other Google properties. Google.com accounted for 37% of Upstream traffic to the site. Gmail accounted 15.59%, a 9% increase from previous week
- 40% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from Search Engines (8% increase). Email provided the 2nd largest amount of Upstream traffic accounting for 19%.
- 59% of visits to Google+ are from Males.
- Among age demos, 33% of visits are from users age 25-34 for the 4 weeks ending July 23rd.

I have yet to really engage with Google+. At the beginning, only those with invitations could use Google+ but now everyone has an invite.

What is Google Social Search?

Google announced a product update last Thursday, May 19th – called Social Search.

Google first launched it in 2009 on google.com only. It was supposed to be, as they say “an experimental feature designed to help you find more relevant information from your friends and the people you care about.” We know Google, they keep developing their products and they introduced Google Plus 1 earlier this year. Now, Google are bringing Social Search to more users around the world.

Social search results in other languages and on other domains are mixed throughout the Google results page based on their relevance. If you are looking for a particular product, it will highlight blog posts, twitter feeds that you are connected to .

Click on the link which is a video showing how social search works.

Google Social Search

So what do these updates mean for those in online marketing? It means you need to make sure you are covering all bases. You have to be present on blogs, in forums, on twitter, have an active facebook page (although Google cannot work out Facebook’s algorithm that mean. Social Search will be rolling out globally in 19 languages and should be available in the coming week, with more languages on the way. You cannot ignore social anymore. It is here to stay, Google have also said they will be rolling out the + 1 feature soon.

Google is constantly updating its range of products and even launched its first blog dedicated to search last Wednesday. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/ I know I will be checking this one out on a regular basis. Google certainly invest heavily in R&D and it has paid off. They are now the number one search engine in the west.

Tweet

What is the Google Plus One

Unless you have all been living offline for the past two weeks, then you would have seen Google’s new product – the +1.

What is Google +1?

It was announced on 30th March, posted on the Google blog by product manager, Rob Spiro. Google basically is jumping on the social media bandwagon and many reference the +1 as similar to the Facebook like button. To recommend something, users will click the +1 on a webpage or ad. The +1s will start appearing in Google’s search results.

Google +1

So I bet you are all asking whether this will affect the natural search listings. The answer is yes. If you have two websites all with the same page rank, optimised pages, lots of link building and one site has more +1s than the other, then that site will rank higher. This means you still have to optimise your pages, this update reinforces how important seo is.

Here is a little bit of blurb for the search engine giants Google:

“So how do we know which +1’s to show you? Like social search, we use many signals to identify the most useful recommendations, including things like the people you are already connected to through Google (your chat buddies and contacts, for example). Soon we may also incorporate other signals, such as your connections on sites like Twitter, to ensure your recommendations are as relevant as possible. If you want to know who you’re connected to, and how, visit the “Social Circle and Content” section of the Google Dashboard.

To get started +1’ing the stuff you like, you’ll need to create a Google profile—or if you already have one, upgrade it. You can use your profile to see all of your +1’s in one place, and delete those you no longer want to recommend. To see +1’s in your Google search results you’ll need to be logged into your Google Account.”

When will it appear?
Google will slowly be rolling out +1’s, starting in English on Google.com. You can also see what it looks like before the launch be going to Google’s experimental search site. Initially, +1’s will appear alongside search results and ads, but in the weeks ahead they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web). If you’re an advertiser and want to learn more about how the +1 button works on search ads and websites, visit our AdWords blog.

Google did say at the beginning of the year and at Search London – New Year Search Club that 2011 was the year for social, so keep a look out on the updates coming out this year.

Tweet

Twitter & Facebook impact on SEO

Clients have often asked if the number of twitter followers you have and facebook fans affects rankings and it does. As seo professionals, we always knew it was important but there was never any confirmation from the search engines till this week.

On December 1st, Danny Sullivan, from search engine land published an interview he took with Bing and Google which confirmed that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings. You can find out more here:

http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Below is the interview by Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Bing:

We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google:

Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article [NOTE: see the end of this article for more about that].

Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?

Bing:

Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)

Google:

Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life

Danny Sullivan: Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?

Bing:

Yes.

Google:

Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.

Danny Sullivan: Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?

Bing:

Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.

Google:

We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook, either say via their personal wall or their fan page.

Bing:

We don’t do this on Facebook. On Facebook, we only get what’s public, only updates and things you’ve posted to everyone as viewable. We don’t get things only shared with friends, so we don’t know how authoritative you are on Facebook. There isn’t the whole convenient retweet mechanism we see on Twitter.

We do see valuable content shared by Facebook users, even though we only get what’s public. For example when Gary Coleman died we saw a video from Different Strokes, saying his favorite line “what ya talk’in ’bout Willis” gain popularity. It happened to be what a lot of people are sharing on the day he passed away.

Google:

Again, the treatment is the same as for Twitter. And we have no personal wall data from Facebook.

Danny Sullivan: Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who shared it on Facebook?

Bing:

We can tell if something is of quality on Facebook by leveraging Twitter. If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.

Google:

Same as question 5.

So what does this mean for seo? Well it confirms what we already knew and the same best practices of seo can be applied here.
Facebook and Twitter can be seen as an external link building channel. The more varied the links from the different Twitter and Facebook fans, the better. So you can’t go on retweeting a post x number of times from the same account, hoping to build more authoritative links, it just won’t work.

I am pleased Google and Bing confirmed the impact of social media on seo as it proves my point that integration is the key in this digital space.

Can you optimise Facebook for seo?

Yes of course you can.

To make a good facebook page, optimised for both customers and seo, you need to get your fans talking about the brand and the experience.

The page needs to be kept fresh, full of relevant content and be kept active.

Here are a few tips:

• Relevant and timely content
• Special offers/ promo codes unique to facebook fans
• Ask your fans when you have a question – feedback is important
• Multimedia: add photos, videos, events
• Use facebook ads to drive new fans to your page
• Advertise by targeting your competitor’s fans
• Make it conversational, not salesy or spammy
• Use Facebook to build relationships with current customers, not to get new customers.

Optimising for seo

1.Choose the best name for your Facebook Page and stick to it.

Don’t put too many keywords in the title as it will be seen as spammy and will stop the viral growth of your Page.
Don’t make the facebook page too generic. Facebook want all pages to authentically represent business, brands or celebrity.

Use your business’s real name as the name of the Page.

2. Select the best URL (Facebook username) for your Facebook Page

The URL is one of the most important SEO opportunities on Facebook.
When you choose a Facebook username for your Page, your Page’s URL becomes www.facebook.com/YourUsernameHere. Facebook recently launched the ability to choose the vanity URL.

Once a username and URL is selected for your page, it cannot be changed, so choose wisely, use the business name with generic keywords which represent your company.

Facebook requires that your Page have at least 100 fans before it becomes eligible to select a username.

3. Use the “About” text box to place keyword-dense prose near the top of your Page

Place keyword-dense prose as close to the top of the Page as possible. There is a limit of 250 characters.

4. Include important keywords, priority links on the “Info” tab

Complete all the fields on the Info tab with keywords and links to other parts of the site. Make sure you also include your company address, company overview as this will all help to increase the content score of your Facebook Page for many types of Google searches.

Address, City, County, Post code are important fields for local searches

Company Overview, Mission, and Products are important fields for product searches

Make sure you choose the category that best suits your business as the different fields are dependent on the category.

5. Post direct links to your website (or other relevant sites) in your Page’s stream

Status updates are a great way to place direct links at the top of your Page’s structure and it can boost your Facebook Page’s link score.

There are two ways to put post links into your Page’s stream:

- Include the raw URL in the text of the status update itself

- Use the “attach link” feature in the Facebook publisher

6. Add photos with captions, events with descriptions, and a discussion forum

Always share interesting content on your Facebook Page.
Make sure that all photos and videos have titles and captions
When you post events, include text and keywords in the event description. Add a discussion forum to your Page.

7. Get more inbound links to your Facebook Page from the web

Post links to your Facebook Page on all your websites

The more inbound links you have to your Facebook Page, the more it will boost its PageRank.. You can do this with anchor text links and the “Find Us On Facebook” badge which it encourages Page owners to use.

8. Get more intra-Facebook inbound links from your fans

Facebook places links to Facebook Pages on the default version of Facebook users’ profile pages.
These links are visibile to search engines which is great for seo. The more fans you get, the more links you will have to your Page within Facebook.

And there you have it, a few tips to make sure you are top of the facebook search results and Google.

facebook is Google’s biggest competitor

In the news last week, I read a very interesting article in the Times about how facebook is the biggest rival to Google.

According to Hitwise, for the week ending March 13th, facebook got more traffic than Google in America. Who would have thought this social neworking site set up by Mark Zuckerberg would have achieved this milestone.

Facebook now has more than 400million active users which makes it the third most populous “country” behind India and China. In the UK, it has more than 23million users, or a third of the population. The speed at which facebook is growing is staggering. Visits to facebook has increased 185% in the last year and Google’s number of visits has increased by 9%

There is a threat to Google, called “discovery” which is the finding of products/services on facebook that has been recommended by friends. More people will go onto facebook and search for products and reviews from their friends and peers instead of searching on Google. However, this information within facebook cannot be seen by Google as customers have to sign in to their account.

Social media is changing the search landscape. More people will be using social networking sites to find out news and information. Even Google wanted to get onto the social media band wagon with “buzz” but it failed to have made any headway in that area. People spend a lot of time on social media sites. According to Nielsen, facebook is the third most visited site with 2.5billion hits in February 2010 which is close to Yahoo’s 2.7 billion and Google’s 3billion. So Google better watch out, it doesn’t want to lose its position as the number 1 search engine.

Popular websites

According to research by Nielsen, the two most heavily used web brands are Facebook and MSN/Windows Live. They account for almost 11 billion of the 48 million minutes Britons spend online. Coming in third is Google and fourth place is eBay with total UK users spending a whopping 2,560 minutes and 1,978 minutes respectively on these sites in April 2009.

Facebook is one of the major reasons people are spending more time online. People in the UK spend a total of 22 hours and 20 minutes online which is up on 34% a year ago. (April 2008 – April 2009) However, facebook recorded people spending 3.8billion more minutes in April this year than April 2008

The most heavily used web brands are those in the communication and entertainment industry. Hotmail’s instant messenger has people hooked for hours online, chatting away to friends or sending work files to colleagues. YouTube is the entertainment channel for most users online, allowing those to search for quirky videos or funny clips.

The 10 most heavily used brands online are the following:
1 Facebook
2 MSN/Windows Live
3 Google
4 eBay
5 Yahoo!
6 AOL Media Network
7 BBC
8 YouTube
9 Microsoft
10 Apple

How many social networking sites are there?

There are over 160 social networking sites covering various countries and topics at the time of writing this blog.

Social networking sites can drive seo traffic to your site. People can share links talk about the site with their friends and family. They can also talk about your site on their own blogs.With twitter they can easily follow your site. What is social networking you might ask? Well it is is the grouping of individuals into specific groups. It is like having your own little community but on line.

Most people use these social networking sites to:

Communicate with people in their extended social network
Stay in touch with people they already know (support pre-existing relationships)
Research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations
Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections
All have common offline element – eg went to school together
Not used to meet new people
Facebook users search for people with whom they have an offline connection
Don’t tend to browse to meet complete strangers
91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends

Social networks are growing in populartity and the social networking sites took over email in global reach at 68.4% in Feb 09. The reach is highest in Brazil (80%) but fastest growing in Germany (from 39% – 51% in one year). Facebook popular in UK and USA. According to facebook there are more than 30 million active users, not bad for a company that was originally set up for Harvard College students. However, Mixi is the leader in Japan, Orkut in Brazil, Stayfriends, Wer-kent-wen and StudiVZ top 3 social networking sites Germany. Twitter gaining popularity, grew 131% between Feb and March 09 to 9.3 million US users.

facebook

By now most of you will have heard of facebook and I am sure a lot of you have or had a facebook account.
Some people have hundreds of friends, but they are not real friends.

Here are some facts about facebook

What is a facebook friend?
Someone who you have not spoken to for over 10 years and you found them on facebook. You exchange a couple of emails and plan to meet up, but most often do not.

What is the wall?
An area where you can snoop in on conversations your “friends” are having. People don’t realise your wall messages can be followed by anyone if you have not amended your security settings.

What is the info on the wall?
The area where people reveal their whole biography, where they went to school, where they work, their life story.

You must be careful what you put on your facebook. One 16 year old recently got fired as she said that her job was boring. Another worker got fired when he called in sick, only for his colleague to see on facebook that he actually was just hung over.