Almost half of the top 200 brands in the Fortune 500 have Facebook pages that don’t appear on the first three pages of Google’s search engine rankings, according to eMarketer.com.
If a brand’s social media page doesn’t appear at least on the first three pages of Google’s search engine rankings, it may as well not exist. Very few users go beyond the third page.
The same Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices that work for regular webpages can also catapult the search rankings for a social media page or profile. For example, if you link a Facebook page or Twitter profile to the company’s corporate website it will pass along some of its Google juice.
Updating social media pages and profiles with fresh, unique content also contributes to the SEO value.
It takes a lot more than setting up a Facebook page to promote a brand through social media. Optimizing social media pages is often the only way to ensure consumers can find the brand’s page or profile through search.
In 2010, BtoB Magazine and Business.com surveyed business-to-business marketers on social media. Almost half said social media helped boost search performance by driving inbound links.
