According to Facebook’s SEC filing in February, approximately half of their traffic is driven by mobile devices. In addition, a recent Pew Internet Project survey showed that 53 percent of mobile subscribers currently have smartphones. In his article on Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling offers some “optimization secrets” for those looking to drive mobile traffic to their own websites through Facebook.
Mobile Organic Search
You have to bring in the mobile traffic before you can drive it anywhere, and that simply isn’t going to happen if your Facebook page doesn’t rank well in Google. “Mobile searchers aren’t clicking through to Page 2, ever,” writes Sterling. “You need to be on Page 1 for brand queries at the very least.”
To help your Facebook page rank well organically, Sterling suggests the following tactics:
- When linking to your Facebook profile from your desktop site, avoid using the standard “Find us on Facebook” anchor text. Instead, try to include your brand name.
- Try to include some choice keywords (without getting spammy about it) in your Facebook profile name. This will optimize the URL and title of your Facebook profile for keyword matches. (If you’ve already named your Facebook profile, you can manually request a change if you have more than 100 fans.)
- Take advantage of Facebook’s text fields (such as the “About” and “Description” sections) to add important keywords, but don’t overdo it! For local merchants, Sterling recommends that you “quote some reviews from your Google Places or Yelp profiles, and let that keyword-rich user-generated content start working to increase the relevance of your profile.”
- Use other social profiles (such as Google+, LinkedIn, or Yelp) to link to your Facebook profile. When possible, try to include your brand name in the anchor text.
- Rather than linking directly to your Facebook profile URL, consider using redirect “tracking” links instead (such as target.com/facebook). This will let you measure how much activity and traffic you get between your different social profiles. And as Sterling points out, “[i]t’s especially useful for monitoring crawler activity on your Facebook.”
- If you have a small (or new) mobile site, it might be better to focus on getting your Facebook page to rank in the mobile SERPs, rather than your own website. “Do a classic PageRank comparison between your Facebook profile and your website,” suggests Sterling. “There are other factors, but you might be surprised by how much more link equity your Facebook page already has at its disposal.”
Admittedly, with 155 million Facebook Mobile pages currently indexed in Google, getting yours to rank will be a challenge. “Yet,” Sterling writes, “Facebook has not yet begun serving mobile-friendly content to Google’s Smartphone bot. And I suspect rollout of Timeline will have some negative impact on crawlable profile content, and organic listing descriptions.”
Mobile Paid Search
A lot of brands are now using their Facebook profile as a mobile PPC landing page. If this is your strategy, Sterling offers these tips to “maximize mobile engagement” from visitors:
- Make sure you connect to the right mobile landing page. Facebook currently redirects smartphone users who aren’t logged in to their “Info” page, although this is likely to change once Timeline is rolled out for mobile users.
- Remember that links to your mobile Facebook page usually require users to log in before they can take action. “Most consumers abandon at this step,” writes Sterling, “which increases your cost of acquisition and lowers quality score.”
- That said, Facebook is currently the most popular app on Android and iOS, and users who have that app installed are already signed-in. To address this, Stirling recommends using URL schemes to open your page on the Facebook app for Android or iOS.
- The URL scheme for your brand’s profile is fb://profile/{page_id}. To determine your “page_id,” simply view the source code of your Facebook profile. Just remember, not all users have the Facebook app installed, and not all platforms recognize URL schemes.