Can You Perform SEO On A Facebook Page So That It Ranks In Google Search? – 130

Transcript For Can You Perform SEO On A Facebook Page So That It Ranks In Google Search? 130;

Caleb Baumgartner: Welcome to Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I am producer Caleb Baumgartner, and in this episode, we answer a listener question about SEO in unconventional places such as Facebook. Can you apply SEO tactics to Facebook to get a profile that ranks online? Is this a good approach to building your brand? Bob, Jesse, and Sue answer these questions and more. Got a question? Let us know at localseotactics.com/questions. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the show.

Jesse Dolan: Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics where I bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host Jesse Dolan here with Bob Brennan and Sue Ginsburg, ready to answer some questions.

Sue, you look like you’re hanging out on a beach there. Kind of a nice view.

Sue Ginsburg: I wish it was the real beach. It is the virtual beach of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The reason that I am on the virtual Myrtle Beach today is we have a listener’s question, who called in with his question!

Jesse Dolan: Awesome.

Sue Ginsburg: We got a call-in, which is doubly exciting. That question is, is it possible to have a Facebook or other social media page such as Yelp, optimized enough that it can rank competitively in a Google search? Thank you, Jeffery. Thanks for the visual of Myrtle Beach coming up there, too.
Jesse, you want to play that?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. We’ll play it so everybody can hear it. You obviously have talked to him, Sue, afterwards. The audio wasn’t the greatest, so did want to clarify the question and get some more information. We’ll play it here to get it straight from his call

Sue, like we said, you called him and expanded it a little bit more, but the gist of his question is Facebook, Yelp, things like that. Can you rank them to help your SEO some? I know Bob and I got some definite feedback on that, but if you want to set it up a little bit more. Some context first before we dig in.

Sue Ginsburg: Okay. The quote of the day today, “It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.” That’s a quote by Sam Altman, who is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator. He sounds like a pretty smart man, Sam Altman.

This question, not exactly like this, comes up for many of our clients because they are talking to us about one part of their marketing investment, and they have other parts. Whether that’s Facebook or other social media channels. We want to know this, because the better your marketing is integrated, the stronger it will be and the more impact it will have. The need for SEO in optimizing your website has become fairly mainstream, I will say. This question touches on something that I think may be a little less mainstream, so I love that.

I would ask our listeners, as the business owner and the experts in their business, how many of you have thought about this question? How does your website and your SEO in your website integrate with your other social channels. Or, for that matter, any other part of your marketing plan. There are so many options out there these days. How do you decide what the right thing to work on is? How do you decide where to put your marketing investment? Does SEO make sense to do for Facebook, Yelp, and other things or doesn’t it? Is that the right place to spend your time, money, and your marketing investment? Is that something that you DIY or do you hire experts? All of these questions come up surrounding your marketing investment and it all starts with what’s the best way for me to spend it? Where am I going to get the best ROI? I think this is a great question.

No business owner wants to make a decision not well-informed and information is power. Why don’t we see what Jesse and Bob have to say about this and we can all be more informed, and make better decisions on this subject.

Take it away, Jesse and Bob.

Jesse Dolan: I think there’s a multi-part answer here. Bob, I’ll let you speak to it first about … I think the first part is can you have a Facebook page. For example, what Jeffrey called it, can you have that rank? We’ve seen that firsthand over the years.

Bob Brennan: Yeah. If it’s a small enough market and a tight enough niche, almost anything will rank. If your handcrafted buggy whips in Podunk, Utah, your Facebook page is probably going to rank. Probably all you need is that and a GMB. If you have any kind of service that is competitive in any kind of market that’s targeted, certainly you should do a Facebook page. It may rank, it may do quite well. However, you’re going to have to ask yourself as a consumer, depending on what service you’re providing; how legit is this organization that I’m taking my car to, for instance, or whatever it is that you’re doing. From me as a consumer, from a psychological standpoint, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to call that person. It just means it’s going to sit in the back of my mind. One, how long have they been in business? Two, why aren’t they investing in a website that legitimizes their business from, let’s say, a conversion standpoint.

From a tactical SEO standpoint, I believe you can rank it. You can dive into that, but ultimately from that conversion piece, eventually you’re going to want to invest in a website. I’m a big fan of Crawl, Walk, Run. Crawl with your Facebook page, if that’s what you want to do to dip your toe in the water to make sure, hey, we’re getting calls. Okay. Once you know that’s happened, invest even further into some kind of webpage or website.

Jesse Dolan: I think you bring up a good point there. Let’s say if you did do that and you’re getting some traction with Facebook and now you’ve got a website. If your Facebook page is able to rank, you should be able to rank your webpage too with some good SEO, right?

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: It shows the market is one that’s maybe easier to penetrate. Now you’ve got two listings, right? Somebody does a search and they see you, now they see your website and your Facebook page. Maybe even your G&B like you’re saying. That’s where you really start to look dominant and build way more confidence than if you just had your Facebook page. I’d say yeah, you’re right. You can technically rank a Facebook page, yes, but for sure it’s the old SEO, it depends type answer with like you were saying; market size and niche.

I do think it’s important, regardless of that, to do SEO, or air quotes here in the video, “SEO” on your Facebook page. Yelp, like you mentioned, Sue. Really anything that’s your main profiles. If you search for your products or your services on Google, anything you’re seeing on the first page or two of Google, if you’re seeing Facebook pages show up. If you’re seeing Yelp listing show up, whatever it is. If you’re listed within those directories or those social networks, whatever your profile or your listing page is, SEO that thing. Meaning, use your keywords, use your geographic references. The same type of content you’d put on your webpages or your GMB, do that to all these other profiles, because this is all online information whether it is your webpage, or Facebook’s webpage, or whatever; that’s listing your business. It’s got your name, address, phone number type stuff tied to it, Google is still going to see that stuff. It’s going to assimilate it with you and give you credit for better or worse with that on your brand.

You can even take that stuff a step further using schema on your website. You can tell Facebook, this is my Facebook page, this is my Yelp listing, this is my YouTube channel; and further get the benefits of that entire ecosystem tying it all together. But yeah, Bob, definitely I know what you’re saying. Long term strategy, I wouldn’t only try to rank my Facebook page for SEO. But, in a basic sense, you can do SEO on your Facebook page. You can rank it. We’ve seen people even use their Facebook as their GMB link. If you’re in your Google My Business listing, you can list a website or link your website. We’ve seen people link to their Facebook page.

Again, it definitely gives you a presence if you have none, but it doesn’t build a lot of confidence if I’m looking, in your example, if I’m looking up some different competitors there. I hope that helps Jeffrey out. It’s a little bit of a meandering answer on yes, you can do it, but maybe you shouldn’t in certain situations and how they maybe even leverage it further for your overall brand strategy. For me, a big takeaway is even if you don’t think it can rank, there’s still overall SEO benefits for filling these profiles out properly using the same keywords and these kinds of things.

Sue Ginsburg: It’s interesting that it sounds like you both interpreted that to mean do you want your Facebook to rank if you don’t have a website. What if you have a website and you have a Facebook page?

Jesse Dolan: That’s where I’m saying you definitely want to use the same type of content on your Facebook page for your about us or maybe some of the services or products you can list. You should be able to take your developed content or your developed concepts off of your webpage and apply them to Facebook. I wouldn’t expect your Facebook page to outrank your website. I think Bob and I both gravitated to that-

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: … With what you said, Bob, the crawl, walk, run … In the mindset as business owner, why would I want to rank my Facebook page? Well, I must not have a website yet, right?

Bob Brennan: Yeah. I’m a big fan of literally starting from the basement. I think you can start a business, and should start a business … I think you should have a full-time job and start a side hustle or a business with little risk. I think we all want the shortcut. Throwing thousands of dollars at something or hundreds of thousands of dollars at something and say it’s going to work. We can’t be doing that unless we’ve got that money to lose. It’s a great way to test the market. Do your Facebook page, try to optimize it for SEO. But, understand your Facebook page isn’t going to rank if you’re in the auto repair business, plumbing business, or any of the common businesses unless you’re in a town that’s population is 3,000 or sub 10,000 then that will probably work at that point. But, in any major metropolitan, it’s just not going to work.

Jesse Dolan: Agreed. There’s the exception to the rule, right? I’m sure somewhere out there somebody found one, right? In Chicago, some certain service, gets some Facebook page that has 185,000 followers or something, right?

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Generally speaking, yeah. I’d say that’s 100% spot on.

Sue Ginsburg: It’s interesting, because it used to be that LinkedIn very regularly would be the first thing that popped up when you did a search if the company had a company page on LinkedIn. I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. Maybe Facebook is one of the top things that does pop-up?

Jesse Dolan: I think as you’re saying that Sue, I would expect that if somebody was searching for my brand, my company. It’d still be very possible. LinkedIn is a very trusted website, very authoritative. But, if you’re looking for more of a service keyword, right? Like Bob’s saying. Auto repair in Minneapolis or custom buggy whip in Podunk, Utah is an even better example from this episode. That is something … You’re not talking about the brand, right? Then, it’d be the SEO of that page. Not so much the branding of it.

Great question. Like you said on the front side, Sue, thanks to Jeffery for calling it, leaving it, and playing it. It’s just funner to play somebody’s question than to have you read it, right?

Sue Ginsburg: It’s really great, yes. Okay. I will say if you guys don’t have anything else to add?

Jesse Dolan: No. I think that wraps that one up.

Sue Ginsburg: If you remember one thing and one thing only, yes, you can get your Facebook or other social pages to rank. The question for business owners is where do you want to rank and what do you want to show up first? If you have a website, don’t you want that showing up before your Facebook or with your Facebook? All of those considerations, just like this quote says, “It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.”

Make sure whatever it is you’re working on is what matters, and what’s going to make the biggest impact, and get you good ROI.

Jesse Dolan: Right on. Thanks again to Jeffery for calling in the question. Everybody else out there, if you’ve got a question go to localseotactics.com, go to the bottom, click on the link for questions. You can either type it in with a text form or, like Jeffery, you can call it in and we’ll play it on the show. As a reminder, and Jeffery can be on the lookout for the FedEx man, to drop it off here somewhere in the next week, if you call it in, we’re going to send you a free Intrycks t-shirt. You’ll be lucky enough to have Sue follow-up with you, get that information, and we’ll fire that thing off as soon as you call in. Don’t be shy. We’d love to hear from you.

I think that wraps it up for this episode, guys. Great question, Sue. Good insight, Bob. Hopefully, that helps some people out out there. All right.Take care guys, we’ll see you in the next one.