Facebook has been toying with search from the launch of Graph search in 2013 when it started to provide users the ability to search its database of users, photos, posts, groups, pages, and markets.
Few have noticed that Facebook has now started to provide search results from external pages outside Facebook with its global (all) and links results section.
In this article, we will cover aspects of the Facebook search engine functionality and how you can leverage this to drive traffic to your site.
Let’s start with some boring statistics ..
Facebook has continued to grow year by year since it launched in 2004 and is now home to 2.45 billion monthly active users.
Due to a decrease in usage by teens, 74% of the Facebook users are high earners making more than $75K.
Among their active US Facebook users, 74% of the people use the site daily. Facebook is currently matching 1.62 billion users daily.
How Facebook search works
Facebook search has a lot of similarities with Google. As with Google, the core aspect is the keyword. The keyword density in the title and description will guide the search engine to pick the links to show to the user.
As with Google, you can use the search bar to your advantage to see what terms are being used by users around specific keywords.
The search autocomplete, provides a suggestion of search terms most produced by users. You can use this information to create posts around those keywords.
When it comes to ranking, Facebook utilizes a principle similar to Google. Google uses backlinks as a measure to calculate the authority of a link. The more quality backlinks you have to a page, the higher the probability of ranking in the top 10 results.
Facebook bases its ranking based on the following factors.
- The activity of the Facebook community. The number of shares and likes. This will give the link a higher authority.
- The age of the posted link on Facebook. Pushing fresh content to Facebook will give you an edge on other links, even if they have more likes and shares.
- Pages and Groups followed by the users.
Final Thoughts
Social media sites have an important role when it comes to SEO as they provide a reputation to your site. Giving search engines like Google markers to rank your website above the competition.
You can use the Facebook search engine as a mechanism to engage users to drive traffic directly to your site.
We at Gainchanger automate the tedious part of an SEO expert’s job, to allow you to scale your results exponentially and focus on what really matters and rank higher for very specific keywords.
Get in touch for a free 5-minute consultation or to start scaling your strategies today.
Simon Bonello is Co-founder of Gain Changer. His main area of focus is Business Process Automation, Software Technical Architecture and Technical SEO
