How Facebook Improves Your Search Ranking

Facebook is the #2 Web site in the world.

In Summer 2009 Facebook was #5 or #6, then they moved up to number #4 just before Christmas. Now they are #2. Can you guess who’s first?

Of Facebook’s 400 million active users, 50% log on to Facebook on any given day, and then spend about 55 minutes on the site daily. Of those, about 35 million people post a status update, and more than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month–making Facebook the largest photo-sharing site on the Web.

Why is this important to you? Because when Google ranks Web sites, it takes into account the PageRank and value of other sites linking to yours. With Facebook as the #2 site in the world, no other site besides Google has the power to lift your search ranking as much as Facebook. That means every link from Facebook to your home page or blog lifts the value of your blog. Are you beginning to see the possibilities?

Facebook is a popular marketing tool not just because it has large numbers of users and niche marketing possibilities, but also because its indexed and ranked into Google’s proprietary search algorithms.

For these reasons, small businesses are increasingly making Facebook Fan pages their primary hubs on the Internet. I don’t recommend this, because I still think Facebook users prefer entertainment to business. But, for those without a lot of marketing resources, Facebook can be an attractive choice. It’s easy to set up, it has a captive and loyal audience, and it’s relatively easy to manage. But if you go with Facebook as your hub:

• Tie your page to one or more promotional campaigns and get your first few hundred fans quickly.
• Stay focused on the goal of converting visitors to fans.
• Offer incentives and rewards for becoming a fan.
• Engage with people on a regular and consistent basis.

Are you leveraging the full power of Facebook in your online marketing strategy? Let me know if you’d like a worksheet to help move your pages from “static” to FANtastic.

And for the current list of Top 500 Global Web sites, visit Alexa.com.