Understanding How Facebook Likes and Shares Help My Site

It seems that almost everyone is on Facebook these days. It is so popular that it reached one billion users in September. What many businesses in the Bay Area don’t realize is that they can use Facebook to reach potential customers and maintain communication with their current customer base. Since so many web site owners aren’t aware of the potential benefit of using Facebook’s “Likes” and shares to help their site, they may want to work with Bay Area Online Marketing to learn the ins and outs of this method to increase their search engine rankings.

Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing acknowledge their use of social “signals” to determine search engine rankings. It isn’t uncommon for a company’s Facebook page to outrank it’s business web site. Since this is the case, it’s easy to see how being active on Facebook can affect how your web site is perceived and found. In fact, Facebook, Twitter and the other social networking sites can directly impact your business web page rankings. The trick is learning how to use this knowledge effectively.

You’ve undoubtedly seen the “Like” buttons if you’ve been on Facebook. What people don’t realize is that each time a “Like” button is clicked, it’s like voting for that web site. The more “Likes” a company Facebook page has, the more popular it is and the more likely other users are going to view it and possibly add their own “Like”. What is the benefit of being “Liked”? When people “Like” a site, they are more willing to share content on their own Facebook page and link to your company’s web site. For each link that is shared, the potential new audience increases.

Building links through a Facebook page isn’t uncommon. Facebook makes it so easy to share links that people who say they don’t understand computers can add links like a professional. The web site owner can also add links by commenting on topics that interest them or answering questions users might have. Each comment can link to relevant content on their own company web site. The link leads users to your web site and the search engines pay attention to the “social signal” from that link.

Companies in Fremont, Danville, Walnut Creek, San Ramon, Pleasanton and the surrounding Bay Area can also take advantage of the Facebook Like widget. This has become very popular and is frequently added to personal and business web sites to encourage users to “Like” their site. The search engines see these “Likes” as confirmation that a web site is good quality and popular which often means higher page ranking. Conversely, spam linking (low quality links from non-relevant web sites) is not as beneficial as a Facebook “Like” and therefore should be avoided because it is not seen, in terms of SEO, as being the same quality because it is an indirect link rather than a true link.

When planning your web site marketing plan, be sure to use a comprehensive plan rather than depending upon only one method. Even though Google and other search engines count Facebook “Likes” and they can increase your web site’s popularity, use a variety of tools to increase your web site’s ranking in the search engines. Turn to Bay Area Online Marketing to help you understand how Facebook likes and shares help your web site, but also how to benefit from other search engine optimization techniques for your Bay Area business.