Facebook started allowing Business Pages on their social media platform back in
2007, but it didn’t necessarily help with the discoverability of your business
at that time.
It wasn’t until 2014 that they launched their new and
improved version of the Places directory and local business search became a
focal point for Facebook as a way to compete with Foursquare and Yelp - which
kicked off a new way to search for businesses on the platform.
Are you utilizing your Facebook Business Page as a local
search marketing tool?
Keep reading to learn why you should…
Why Facebook Search
is Important for Local Businesses
Facebook has caught up with typical search engines and
started implementing keywords in their algorithm and database. In fact, Facebook
now sees over 1.5 billion searches every day.
With that, over 600 million users visit business pages every
day.
This shows just how important it is to try to understand the
value that Facebook Search has for local business discoverability on the
platform (not to mention its assistance with rankings on other search
engines).
According to a survey by Square, 52% of consumers discovered a brand through Facebook.
That’s a pretty significant number to ignore.
When searching for a company in Facebook’s Search that’s
near you, you’ll get results that are very similar to the local 3-pack on
Google. If we know anything about local results, it’s that there’s usually an
algorithm behind them that determines which businesses get to show up and in
which order.
However, unlike Google, Facebook has historically been more
mysterious when it comes to how they rank businesses in their search. Thought
they have given us some hints - Facebook
Describes How Its Search Results Work
The best course of action is to fully build out your Page, including as much detail as possible, verify your Page
(get your grey checkmark), and work to post quality, engaging posts with your
audience.
Facebook Search Ads
Starting in 2019, Facebook began beta testing new search
ads.
The advertisers selected for the beta test were able to pick
the placement of ‘Search Results’ in Ads Manager when setting up a traditional
ad. A business cannot currently run a search ad without running a news feed ad
first. Thus, it currently serves as an extension to an existing ad, but it can
still offer useful insights to Facebook about the success of this experiment.
Furthermore, there is no option yet to target specific
keywords or phrases in the beta phase, which could change in the future if
search ads roll out to more advertisers.
Facebook has not shared screenshots of how the ads will look
yet.
While this is not
available for everyone yet, it shows that Facebook knows two things:
1) Ad space on news feeds is decreasing.
The fact that Facebook is testing this doesn’t give us any
insight into how their organic search results are working, but it does show
that they believe in the power their search results have and that they see a
real opportunity in their own search engine.
Summary
Currently, there is not much info out there on how to best
optimize your Facebook Business Page for better search placement within the
platform. However, it’s important to understand the functionality that
Facebook’s search has and how it can impact your business.
With more people going to Facebook to search for businesses or even to do
research on your business, you want to make sure you are putting your best foot
forward.
If you need help with Facebook or any other marketing strategies for
growing your business, call Sales & Marketing Technologies today at
(407) 682-2222.