Are you using Facebook? Do you have Facebook Fan Page? Have you every wondered how to drive FREE website traffic from the #1 social network on the planet?
Those are the questions that Internet Marketers, Social Media Marketers and Search Engine Optimization asked every day. Not a while ago, Facebook started a new feature called Open Graph Protocol to replace the Facebook Connect. Why do you need to know about that? What can Open Graph Protocol do for your business?
In the above image, do you see BodyHealth Chiropractic dominate the term Chiropractic in the search result? It is like be on top 5 of the major search engines. It has huge potential to bring FREE web site traffic from Facebook!
Let’s cut to the chase.
Everyone knows a web site become one of the most important things in the business world other than business card. However, a perfect and beautiful designed website doesn’t mean a thing, if no one knows about it. So there was search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing and many other ways to bring the website on top of the search engines and many other media.
With Facebook’s new social search and open graph, a local business or any business can potentially be on top of the world on the #1 social media network. How do we get on top of the Facebook’s social search?
In the above image, we were searching for chiropractic, while the user is located in Chandler, AZ region. Facebook result shows the BodyHealth Chiropractic fan page, a direct link to the third party printable coupons site, a link to BodyHealth Chiropractic’s Yelp page, and two other pages of BodyHealth Chiropractic on Citysearch.
This search result will not be the same for everyone depends on whom and where the search was conducted, but the search result is pretty much targeted based on the user’s profile. In this case, BodyHealth Chiropractic took the top 5 spots on the Facebook search result.
Guess what? With one click, the user will be able to visit BodyHealth Chiropractic‘s Yelp, Citysearch and promotion site. This will generate more targeted and organic traffic to the website and have much better conversion rate than the traditional Facebook fan page.
So how does BodyHealth get on top of the Facebook social search result?
Let’s take BodyHealth Chiropractic’s promotion offer page on the SmartLocalShoppers.com web site for example. When visitor visit the page, they can choose to click on the Facebook “LIKE” button to like the page. This is the same way when Facebook users click any LIKE button on any fan page. Behind the scene, Facebook creates a Fan Page for this web page. Of course, there are procedures and requirements to make this newly created Fan Page searchable on Facebook. If this web page does not have OPEN GRAPH PROTOCOL implemented in the META tags, it’s not searchable on Facebook’s Social Search Engine. We will briefly show you how this Open Graph Meta Tags are created.
If you are the page owner, you will have the rights to administrate your new fan page just like on the traditional fan page. You will see a link at the end of the line. Click on Admin Page will bring you to the fan page on Facebook.
This Fan page will look just like the traditional fan page. The biggest difference is that the fan won’t be able to see the admin page and they won’t be able to add any comments, see who else are fans of the page. I will go over some pro and con about using this technique to bring traffic to your web page.
As a fan of the page, when the owner of the page updates any status, it will automatically show up on your profile’s wall. This is no different than the traditional fan page. So it’s a great way to offer one way communication to the fan.
So. How does one create their own Facebook Social Searchable page? The answer is to use Open Graph Protocol on the page where you want people to LIKE. In the following example,
Please read through the requirements before you add Open Graph Meta Tag to your web page. We recommend every local business to add their website home page to Facebook with customized title, description, and image URL, location info. It is not very hard to gain top search result on Facebook, if you do it right!
From Powerfusion’s point of view, any exposure is good exposures. Especially, for local business, be on top of major search engines, and get listed on every local business directories such as Yelp, Citysearch and local advertising site like SmartLocalShoppers.com will also help you get exposures over Facebook’s Social Search.
Now. There are some pros and cons about implementing Facebook’s Social Search and Open Graph.
Pros.
- Easy to implement
- Easy to get on top of Facebook search result until other competitors jump into the game.
- Can send update status to Fan
- Hard to UNLIKE the page
- Can be used later on with Facebook App and other features
Cons:
- Hard to implement and manage on very large site
- Can not send update through Facebook message like traditional fan page does
- Hard to get people to LIKE, if the page is not very popular.
- Search result can be manipulated by other competitors.
The true beauty of using Facebook social search and open graph is this. Local business can implement their GEO location into their page and get targeted audience and customers with higher conversion rate. When more search engines include open graph into their search engine algorithm, the webpage will gain more exposures outside of Facebook.
