Last week Facebook rolled out a relatively minor update, but it may be one that has important consequences for your business' exposure on Facebook. Taking a break from changes to the the ever-evolving newsfeed algorithms (changes that have steadily decreased pages’ organic reach), this time Facebook switched their focus to the search capabilities of the social media platform. With the new changes, the Graph Search tool is now capable of searching through posts for content and keywords. What does this mean for your business page? Well, it appears that with a little diligence, your posts could see an increase in organic reach through this new feature.
The major effect this change has for your business page is that your posts now have the potential to show up in a user's search results. Although, this is not guaranteed. Where posts previously were designed to maximize “likability” and “sharability” to increase organic reach of the post, search engine optimization (SEO) will likely now be a prevalent factor in how many people see your post. To get the maximum organic reach out of your posts, make sure to start using all of the same SEO strategies you use on your website and blog for every Facebook post. You could see a hike in your reach without paying a cent. Although this feature is not yet to the point of being a total game changer for businesses on Facebook, it is a positive move for business pages, and a sign that things might be changing to make Facebook even more critical to a business’ online success. If more changes are made in this direction, we could potentially see more and more searches for web content be done natively in Facebook, drawing users away from Google.
If you are interested in reading more about how to use SEO to your advantage, Fstoppers has published some great articles in the past that explain almost everything you need to know. Check out Gary Martin’s article “The Most Important Tip For Running A Photo Blog” and Nick Fancher’s article "SEO Tips for Photographers” to catch up on the SEO tips and tricks that you should have been implementing in your business’ online presence years ago.
