It's not THAT hard!
Well, we all know about traditional SEO, right?
Now in this age of social media, we need to consider how we go about optimizing our social feeds; especially Facebook.
Maybe you didn’t know this yet, but there is such a thing as Facebook SEO and you can optimize your news feed.
What Is Facebook SEO?
Facebook SEO is the practice of optimizing your news feed so that you appear in the top news feeds of users.
What most people do not realize is that your feeds are split into two categories: top news and recent news.
Top news is the default view.
The issue here is that only 10% of Facebook users change their news feed settings to return to the most recent news.
What this means for you and your Facebook fan page is that you need to satisfy Facebook’s algorithm and appear in the top news feed. This will ensure that you appear first and foremost on all your users walls.
So What Is Facebook’s Algorithm?
Obviously FB is going to keep their algorithm a secret just as Google does.
They will never share exactly how they configure results; however, after much searching, I have found four of the highest weighted values they use.
Now, your goal here again is news feed optimization (NFO) or getting your posts into the top news feed section, in other words.
First, let me explain two things.
Google uses Pagerank, Facebook calls it EdgeRank. This determines who and what are the top in the news feeds.
There are two components of Edgerank:
1. The “object.”
Consider everything on Facebook an object: a profile, a post, groups, everything.
2. The “edge.”
An edge is any action on an object; for example, a like on a post or a comment.
Comments hold higher weight because they involve interaction.
These two combined, object+edge= Edgerank.
Simplified - yes, but again here are the four major factors to edgerank.
The 4 Factors Of Edgerank
- Affinity: This is the social value of your object. Meaning, you made a post on your wall; how many likes, comments or “edges” did that receive?
- Weight: Now this one is predetermined by FB, but the basic premise is this: what is the importance of the object? An example here is that a video holds more weight than an image.
- Relevancy: This involves the relationship between the user and the creator. An example is this: a user comments on your post, just as in blogging, you should comment back. You are now creating a relationship with that user and it’s extremely important in FB’s eyes to do so.
- Time: This one is pretty basic. Keeping it fresh and new and relevant to the moment at hand. A good example of this is the Google+ movement. People posting about that the day it launched privately were relevant to the time.
3 Ways To Optimize Your Facebook News feed
How do you translate that in practical terms?
- Post Often, but not too often- the key here is balance. It seems that constant streams of content keeps the FB algorithm happy. If you post several times a day, make sure it is unique content each time. Don’t bore your fans!
- Post directly to Facebook- I know, I know, users of Tweetdeck and Hootsuite won’t like this; however, some insiders think that FB frowns upon auto posted content. So logging into your FB and posting directly as the admin will help optimize your news feed and increase your edgerank.
Here is what Jeffrey L. Cohen, social media marketing manager for Howard, Merrell and Partners, a strategic branding and advertising agency, and managing editor of SocialMediaB2B.com has to say on this:
Facebook also sometimes aggregates posts together solely by the app used. Instead of listing the posts, it may simply display, “And 10 more from [Your Brand] using HootSuite.”
And finally, the third way you can optimize your Facebook news feed is:
- Keep it short- BuddyMedia, the provider of the FB management system, states that posts around 80 characters or less are four times more likely to receive a like, comment or share. This also goes right in line with posting often. Frequent short posts are what the people and FB’s algorithm want.
Marketing Takeaway
So there you have it: a look inside the Facebook Edgerank algorithm and optimizing your news feed.
It’s not the same as doing keyword research for your blog and traditional SEO.
The social media movement is changing and you need to change your thought process to make the most impact in this realm and get the most social media ROI on your efforts.
Optimizing for Facebook is not about linking and structure; it’s about social engagement and value.
Not too far off the Google algorithm path, but something you need to seriously consider learning.
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