Everytime we ask our clients to create quality content for their websites, the most common reaction is, “… I’ve been writing blogs but no one clicks on it but if I post one Photo on Facebook, thats where we get the clicks.” And its easy to understand that frustration because taking a photo is much easier than writing a blog. The problem is that Search Engines don’t respond to photos posted on Social Media but they respond to content on your website pages so finding a happy medium is our end goal. What is that happy medium and how can we use Facebook to help increase Website Visibility? Here are few suggestions:
- Post Photos on your Website Blog or Article Page and not on Facebook: When taking a photo and posting on Facebook, you get immediate gratification via the number of clicks. The problem is that, that doesn’t help your website increase Search Engine Rank. The best thing to do when taking a photo is to post it on your blog with a short story. Ok, I lie, not short but something in the neighborhood of 300 words. The writing on your blog helps increase your word count and helps search engines categorize that page. When you have completed your blog, post that blog on Facebook. If your Facebook OGP (open graph protocol) has correctly been integrated, the photo will pop on Facebook anyway and having that backstory will engage more users to click to your Website. If the photo doesn’t pop up, you can always add the image on the post.
Example of using photos on a blog and posting it on Facebook
Example of posting a photo on blog and then Facebook
When users click on that photo, it goes to this page. How does that increase your Website rank? Well, Google can tell when you have site visitors and what actions they perform on your website. If the User clicks-through to other pages or even when the User clicks off your site atleast your website had a site visit and thats always a good thing. It would be so much better if the User click-through because that would increase your CTR (click-through-rate) rate, which is what your end goal should be. Having high CTRs tells the Search Engines that your website has a User’s intent in mind.
2. Increase your Clicks when you write about something interesting: And if you don’t think you can think of anything interesting, you would be wrong. There are so many things that interest Users. Some examples below…
- If you are a Real Estate company located in the Caribbean, instead of writing a blog about your property you are trying to sell, talk about all the Celebrities that have owned property in your Island. How many clicks would that get? Also talk about the value of the real estate and location. To get users to click, create a link that says, “See other properties in that location” — curiosity will always get Users to click
- If you are a Condo rental property in the Caribbean, instead of writing a blog, I would suggest creating a video — if you have videos of live animals (ie iguana, chickens, crabs) a video of them posted onto your blog with a summary of the type of animal and information about their habitat, eating habits, etc. would garner so many clicks. You won’t even have to do research because a phone call to the DoE would help answer all your questions. Post that video to youtube and then integrate that video into your blog. Post that blog onto Facebook and tah-dah… wait for the clicks!
- If you are a Recruitment company and your competitors are from other Caribbean Islands, something I would suggest doing is a table illustration of the difference between the two destinations and seriously highlighting what your island has to offer.
- If you are a Car Rental Company you want to create a list of FAQs (frequently asked questions) that informs Users that driving in the Caribbean is different. You can also create videos of where you can go when you rent a car. There is an endless list of content you can come up with if you are in this industry.
- If you are a Scuba Diving Company you can create a database of dive areas on video and then post each video on a page on your website. You can expect to see so much more traffic on your website when you create something like this.
There is an endless way of creating content on your website that will keep your Users clicking. Just make sure you are using your website pages and not just your FB pages so that its benefiting the rank of your website.
3. Create content that is not easy to create. Quality content is not easy. Most great content take a lot of time to create and implement. Sure there are viral videos that took a few minutes to make but those are never about company / product or services, they are mostly human interest. For example creating a table that compares Real Estate between the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas would probably take a week of research to do. But that content would be something interesting to a potential buyer. Another example is when you are creating content that has visuals. Its not easy to get good stock images and some are expensive. But my point is this: The harder it is to create content, the longer the site visitor will be on your website, which is your goal.
In Summary: Everyone should definitely be using Facebook to increase their Search Engine Traffic. You want users to come from Facebook, click on to your website, stay on your website, convert by either completing a form or contacting you and either way it increases your CTR or Click-Through-Rate. When you are able to make that happen, you will definitely help your Search Engine Ranking.
