More than a third of external referrals to Facebook pages come from search engines, and SEO plays a strong role in generating this additional traffic for a Facebook page, according to a study from PageLever.
The PageLever Study
The study was conducted by Jeff Widman at PageLever. He used the Facebook API to get raw data on external traffic referrals and used PageLever to organize the data and separate the search engine referrals. Widman looked at 1,000 pages with a minimum of 10,000 fans each from January 1 to June 30 of this year. His figures represent the averages for that time period.
Widman found that 33.98 percent of traffic came from Google, Yahoo, or Bing. It should be noted, however, that this is 33.98 percent of external referrals – meaning that the search referrals comprise about 9.5 percent of total traffic to Facebook pages.
That number is still surprisingly high, and it’s also a bit strange what a high percentage comes from Google. Google was the source of 27.57 percent of external referrals, compared to 4.11 percent from Yahoo and 2.3 percent from Bing. As Widman notes, “since Bing has a offical partnership with Facebook, I would have expected the disparity between [Google and Bing] to be lower.”
While the PageLever study wasn’t aimed at experimenting with SEO for Facebook pages, it does note data trends that indicate optimization is a vital factor in the volume of external referrals and the total number of pageviews.
“Optimizing for SEO really paid off for several of these Fan Pages,” states Widman, pointing to the large variance between pages and specific pages that received a really substantial portion of their traffic from search sites.
Presumably, Facebook page SEO involved the same core factors as standard page SEO, including the creation of frequent quality content that’s visible to search, building inbound links, and avoiding common pitfalls such as duplicate content.
Related reading
What does visual search mean for ecommerce in 2017?
Since the early 2010s, visual search has been offering users a novel alternative to keyword-based search results. But what commercial opportunities does it offer brands today?
What will Google’s expanded policy on harmful content mean for SEO companies?
Google recently announced that it will be expanding its hate-speech policy for publishers that use the company’s ad network. How does this affect SEO companies, and what can we do to make sure we and our clients stay on the right side of the policy?
Pump the brakes: SEO and its sweeping statements
Search Engine Optimization is an imperfect science, and the sheer amount of sometimes contradictory information available about Google updates and SEO best practices has led to a tendency for knee-jerk reactions and sweeping generalizations among the community. Here's why you don't need to panic.
What do we know so far about Google’s new homepage?
Google has released a new, feed-based mobile homepage in the US, in perhaps the most drastic and significant update of its homepage since 1996. We take a look at what the relaunch entails, and how it might change things for marketers.
