فیس بک کا مستقبل خطرے میں؟

اکیسویں صدی کو آئی ٹی کے عروج اور مقبولیت کا دور قرار دیا جاتا ہے جتنی ترقی اور اصطلاحات آئی ٹی کی اس صدی میں آئیں اس سے پہلے کبھی نہ دیکھی گئیں اور آئی ٹی کی وسع اور تیزی سے مقبولیت اختیار کرتی ہوئی ایجادات میں سے انٹرنیٹ سر فہرست ہے ۔انٹرنیٹ کی مقبولیت کی وجہ یہ ہے کہ وہ اپنے اندر منفرد سی سحر انگیز دنیا بسائے ہوے ہے ایک اندازے کے مطابق روزانہ اربوں ڈالروں کی سرمایہ کاری ا نٹرنیٹ پر کی جاتی ہے یہ صارفین کو E-Marketing, اور E-Commerce, E-Learning, E-Banking جیسی بہت سی کار آمد سروسز آن لائن گھر بیٹھے فراہم کر رہا ہے یہی وجہ ہے کہ جو دنیائے عالم کو مقناطیس کی طرح اپنی طرف کھینچ رہا ہے۔
انٹرنیٹ کی مقبولیت کی ایک وجہ سوشل نیٹ ورکنگ بھی سمجھی جاتی ہے جو ایک عرصے سے دنیائے عالم کے فاصلوں کو کم کرنے کے لیے کوشاں ہیں جن میں مقبول ترین سوشل نیٹ ورکس Twitter, LinkedIn اور MySpace سمجھے جاتے ہیں جو صارفین کے دل جیتنے کے لیے دنیائے عالم میں اپنا قلیدی قردار ادا کر رہے ہیں۔ حالیہ ہی میں دنیائے انٹرنیٹ کے مقبو ل ترین سوشل نیٹ ورک Facebook نے آ کر نہ صرف دوسروں کے دانت کھٹے کر دیے ہیں بلکہ سوشل نیٹ ورکس کی دنیا کو چار چاند لگا دیے ہیں۔
ایک محتاط اندازے کے مطابق دنیا بھر میں آٹھ ارب سے زائدکے لوگ فیس بک استعمال کرتے ہیں اور صرف پاکستان کے صارفین کی تعداد ایک کروڑ سے زائدہے ۔فیس بک کی اتنی مقبولیت کی وجہ اسکا آسان فہم اور پر کشش انٹرفیس ہے یہی وجہ ہے کہ وہ چند ہی سالوں میں سوشل نیٹ ورکس کی دنیا میں سر فہرست آ گئی اور سالانہ اربوں ڈالر کا منافع کمانے لگی مگر آج اتنی ترقی و مقبولیت حاصل کرنے والا سوشل نیٹ ورک مستقبل میں گرتا اور ڈوبتا نظر آ رہا ہے۔
حالیہ ہی دنوں میں دنیائے انٹرنیٹ کی ایک اور مقبول و معروف کمپنی گوگل نے اپنا نیا سوشل نیٹ ورک Google Plus کے نام سے متعارف کروایاہے ۔ ماہرین کے مطابق جو مستقبل کا سب سے مقبول اور جدید سوشل نیٹ ورک تصور کیا جا رہا ہے اس جدید سوشل نیٹ ورک کے منظر عام پر آنے سے قبل ہی کروڑوں لوگوں نے اسمیں شرکت کی درخواستیں دائر کر دیں۔ا سکی اتنی مقبولیت کی وجہ اسکا جدید انٹرفیس جس میں وڈیو کانفرنسنسگ، گوگل پروفائل ، گوگل سرکلز جیسی بہت سی دوسری سروسز کا متعارف کرانا کے ساتھ ساتھ ایک وجہ لوگوں گا گوگل پر اعتماد بھی ہے یہاں یہ بات قابل ذکر رہے کہ گوگل اس سے پہلے گوگل سرچ انجن، Youtube,اور Blogger, Gmail, Adsense, Adword جیسی اور بہت سی سروسز سے صارفین کا دل جیت اور دنیائے انٹرنیٹ میں مقبولیت حاصل کر چکا ہے ۔ماہرین کے مطابق گوگل اپنی ان منفرد خصوصیات کی وجہ سے یہ بازی بھی جیت جائے گا اور اسے فیس بک کا حریف بن کہ مقبولیت حاصل کرنے میں دشواری کا سامنا نہیں کرنا پڑے گا جسکی وجہ سے اربوں ڈالروں کی سرمایہ کاری کرنے اور اتنی مقبولیت حاصل کرنے والی فیس بک کا مستقبل اب خطرے میں نظر آ رہا ہے اور سوالیہ نشان بن کر رہ گیا ہے۔

حافظ محمد عثمان

Basic SEO for Facebook Fan Pages

Many have tried, and failed, to write a good post about how to SEO a Facebook fan page.
For example, optimizing the filename of your profile picture is one popular piece of advice that doesn’t really matter, considering Facebook just renames the file something like 198135_10150109366....jpg. Another popular tip: you should link to your main website from your Facebook page. Yes, you should for visitors. But this doesn’t optimize your fan page because Facebook just nofollows, redirects, and clusters your URL in a mess of code anyway.
So let's take a different approach to Facebook SEO today.
I want you to imagine that your Facebook fan page is your website – or another website for your brand at least. While it may not ever rank first for a keyword, you still want it to be optimized.
If you want to keyword optimize your Facebook fan page, these are the areas that actually pull SEO elements from your page's content for additional optimization.

Your Facebook Fan Page SEO

• SEO title: The name of your page plus | Facebook.
• Meta description: The name of your page plus the About description of your page, followed by | Facebook.
• H1: The name of your page.

This is like the search optimization of the homepage of your fan page / website. If you didn't consider keyword optimization when you created it, and you have less than 100 fans, you're in luck. You can still change your page's name.
Two things to keep in mind aside from search optimization includes:

• Branding: It may be more important to have your page as a recognizable brand than a specific keyword phrase.
• Appearance: Whenever you comment as your page, or people tag your page, your entire name will come up, so if you're page is Your Brand - Keyword, Keyword, and Keywords it might look a bit excessive (and lead to less tagging).

Your title can be as long as you choose, but keep in mind the standard length of SEO titles (70 characters) before getting too crazy. Also, since your page name is also a part of your meta description, you might not want it to make it too long and overshadow that.
To edit your About information to make a great meta description, go to your page and Edit Page > Basic Information, and fill in the About field with a 140 character description like you would with any website meta description.

Facebook Fan Page Updates

• SEO Title: The first 18 characters of your update.

If you’re posting a standard status update, the SEO title will be pulled from the first 18 characters (approximately 18 characters, sometimes a bit less). The following update by Search Engine Watch's fan page has a title of Yahoo Search, which is pretty good.

If you're posting a link to your fan page wall, you'll have an option to "Say something about this link..." – the first 18 characters of what you enter in this field are going to be the SEO title for the individual page of that status update.
If you don't post something there, the SEO title for your update will just be Facebook. Plus it won't take up as much real estate in someone's news feed, which means it will be less noticeable. So I would suggest that, regardless of whether you care about the SEO, you fill this part out when adding a link to your wall.

If you’re concerned about optimizing your updates while considering them as individual pages for your overall fan page / website (click on the timestamp for any update to see it on its own page), then you might want to consider sticking some keywords right at the beginning of your comment.
Using the above example, I could simply put the post category / main keyword as start the update such as Google Analytics and then write the rest of my comment. If I continued this trend with my updates, my fan page would have lots of "pages" underneath it optimized for my main keywords.
The best part is, unlike Twitter status updates that don’t go that far back, you can see your Facebook fan page updates at least two years – mine go all the way back to when I created my fan page, which was in February 2009.

Facebook Fan Page Notes

• SEO Title: The title of your note plus | Facebook.
• Meta Description: Your page name wrote a note titled the title of your note plus | Facebook.

Facebook notes – they don't get a lot of love anymore, but they do have a more controllable SEO title when you create them and, of course, they add to the additional "pages" underneath your fan page / website. Notes allow you to add lengthier updates to your fan page without having to take your fans offsite to get more of your content.
Some people use them to syndicate their blog posts on their fan page, but I find this feature is a little inconsistent. Unique notes, on the other hand, could add more value to your page.

Facebook Fan Page Discussion Topics

• SEO Title: The title of your discussion's topic | Facebook.

Ever wanted a little forum / discussion board, but don't want to invest in forum software? Facebook has an often-overlooked discussion board, with each topic giving you a little SEO title credit.

It might be a nice place for you to have discussions with your fans that they don't necessarily want on your wall. If you don't have one on your profile already, you can get it by going to the Discussion Board and using the Add to My Pagelink to add it to your pages.
by: Kristi Hines

Avast Ye! Talk Like a Scurvy Pirate wit' Facebook, Twitter n' Google

This day is International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2011. Woefully ye noticed all ye pirates be speakin' a little different? Yarr, bein' a Monday, the grog fest be early this year, but yer mateys p'on the good ship Search Engine Watch wanted to give ye a jolly way to hoist the colors afore the moon haunts the seven seas. So, we made 'tis guide to be tellin' ye how to change ye Facebook blabber settin's to scurvy pirate speak, squawk on Twitter, 'n bring ye treasure huntin' on Google a wee bit more o' a ruckas.

Changing Your Language Settings on Facebook to Talk Like A Pirate

It's incredibly easy to change your language settings on Facebook. Simply:
1. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and locate the Language Settings link, which will display the current language setting you are using.

2. Click the link and a dialog box will appear. Click English (Pirate) to change the language setting change and then click 'Close'. Shiver me timbers, Facebook is now all piratey!

A warning comes with this salt-blastedly savvy tip. Turning your Facebook account language settings to English (Pirate) is so funny that you may never change back your settings again. The hazard being that you grow an unnatural habit for calling your friends wenches and sea dogs, refer to your family as kin and robustly congratulating newly-weds for "gettin' anchored".
Not only could such antics be construed as rude, but speaking from experience, you might find yourself wondering why no one else 'gets' your rampaging witticisms. The reason is because changing your language settings only changes what you see - not everyone else's. So, unless you encourage your friends to change their language settings too (which I heartily recommend you do), you may find yourself sharing a giant in-joke... with yourself.

Squawking on Twitter

Twitter's language settings does not currently support English (Pirate). However, if you cut and paste your tweet into this nifty little website, Post Like A Pirate, it will automagically get translated into pirate-speak right before your very eyes.

Click the Twitter link and it creates the tweet for you. The embedded Bit.ly link takes a user back to Post Like A Pirate, which should help your followers join in the shenanigans. After all, it's no fun raving like a lunatic on your own, right?

Treasure Huntin' on Google Pirate

Google, "Tha Old Seadog", has always maintained a swashbuckling version of their flagship at Google Pirate, which now has gleeful translations of their (relatively) recently introduced universal sidebar and plusbar.
There are many other silly versions of Google to be spied here, but as yet, there is no Gmail theme for pirates. Yet, there is a ninja theme. This has proven to be such a carbuncle in the backside of pirate fans that some are petitioning Google.

One Dastardly Tip for Ye Blackbeard SEOs

For those of you who prefer not to run any risk of walking the plank, a fun way to celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day, could be to translate your hand crafted blog posts into English (Pirate) using the plethora of translation tools available (there are subtle differences between the translations).
However, if you are feeling a little churlish this day, then you might want to weird out the web analytics teams in your competitors crow's nest by linking to a piratey translation of their site. The linked translation will force a dastardly duplicate copy of the site to persist on some 'inferior' search engines, such that said site may rank well enough to get traffic from search phrases such as "Blimey, That's Good", "I Needs Ya Gold", and "Stab that Crustacean!"
Such a motherload of curious search terms will surely have those landlubbers scratchin' their bonces!
By: Jonathan Allen,

Social SEO – Facebook & Twitter Best Practices

Optimizing your social presence for search is important, right? That is certainly what we've all been told for some time, but determining why it's important and deciding where to focus can be challenging. Exponential growth of a medium is great and all, but your problems figuring out how to tame the wild beast tend to grow exponentially as well.
Let's discuss a couple of simple ideas regarding conversational media (i.e., social networking sites and blogs) and its relation to search:

1. How to help your social pages rank better
2. How to help your website rank better with social influences

A Little Perspective About the Market as a Whole

The growth in activity at conversational media sites is undeniable. The number of unique has increased more than 80 percent since 2007 to 213 million in May 2011, while total visits to the category grew 136 percent to 6.2 billion.
Since a search click to a website represents one type of site visit, this is where we can begin to connect the dots on influence between navigation events. The number of search clicks to the category reached 845 million in May, accounting for 13.5 percent of the total visits to the category. That number has grown 145 percent since 2007, outpacing gains in both unique visitors and total category visits.

Branded social media searches (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) and people searches (e.g., friends, celebrities) appear to be the two primary growth drivers of search clicks.
Although these types of terms still make up the vast majority of the terms driving traffic to conversational media sites, the fastest growing search traffic segment is actually big name brands. Well-known consumer brands have finally begun to embrace their conversational media assets and are driving a considerable amount of traffic directly to Facebook and Twitter in addition to their own websites.
When combining the top 20 brand names in retail, finance, and travel, their branded searches delivered over 1.6 million clicks directly to Facebook, a 1,300 percent increase since mid-2009.

How to Help Your Social Pages Rank Better

Links on SERPs are like shelves in a store: Owning more shelf space, and the more varieties you have to offer, invariably will drive more sales (clicks). Because you will already own the premium position for your website for your branded searches, further promotion of your social media assets can only improve your end game.
In collaboration with SEO software vendor BrightEdge Technologies, we've identified three simple steps you can take to improve the rankings of your social pages.

Link From Your Homepage

It can’t be as simple as linking from your homepage, can it? Actually, it can because search engine algorithms absolutely value these links when scoring sites (more on this later).
Despite this reality, 6 of the top 20 most searched for Retail brands did not have any sort of social media integration on their homepages. Talk about a missed opportunity! Linking from your home page and using your brand name in the link will have immediate impact.

Use Brand Names in Posts

URLs that match search terms have a built in advantage for high SEO rankings on that search. This same principle will apply to the words you use in your social media posts, so be sure to use the brand names of your company and your products when posting for maximum effect.

Get Likes

Search engine algorithms value crowd science quite heavily in their rankings (link building relationships). This same type of value is given to likes, follows, +1's, etc. This is an inherent trust metric and will impact rankings as well.
Getting likes can be easier said than done. It may require some creative marketing tactics that engage your customers and make them smile.

Helping Your Website Rank Better With Social Influences

The first part of this column discussed how to drive better rankings for your social media pages. Clearly this has become more of a priority than it was a couple of years ago – particularly for branded terms – but will never be of the same volume and SEO coverage as your own websites. The more important goal is figuring out how to use social media influence to impact your owned media assets.
Social signals drive SEO performance, but how important is it? According to data from BrightEdge, between 75 and 90 percent of the top 10 search results on any given SERP have at least one Facebook like or Twitter tweet. These numbers and the related influence will spike sharply, especially for industries such as retail and finance.

Start With the Basics

Visitors to your website are usually interested in your company and your products, so don't miss the opportunity to invite them into your treasured social media circle. Invite them to connect, like, follow, and/or share your company and your product pages.

Target Head Terms With Social Media Friendly Pages

For most companies, head terms make up a large percentage of their referral traffic. Although these terms drive high volume in both searches and clicks, they are often very competitive for page/position rank.
Ensuring that your head term landing pages are social media friendly with further impact your overall SEO ranking for these coveted terms. The more likes and follows your landing pages have, the higher they will rank.  Therefore, encouraging visitors to take social media action with a “bookmark & share” drop down menu will further your landing page SEO efforts.

Create Tools That Are Easy to Share

An easy to share tool is something that is visually appealing and simple to use. Too many times you arrive at a website that has expert only tools available for analysis, searching, sorting, and the like.  Or you find a tool that is easy to use for all of these things, you would love to tell someone about it, and there is no sharing drop down.
Either of these scenarios is negatively impacting your use of social media SEO influence. Think about the types of assets you have on your site that begat social involvement and make it simple to do.

Drive Social Engagement to Your Website

Facebook offers a variety of social plugins you can utilize on your site. Different plugins encourage different types of engagement, so choose wisely on which ones work best for each part of your site.

Conclusion

Social media and search share a two way street of influence. Social media assets have reached enough critical mass to rank on the first page of search results, as well as directly contribute to the SEO ranking of your website pages.
Although many companies are taking advantage of this established medium, many others have not and are missing a sizeable opportunity. By implementing some of the best practices mentioned here, you can ensure that your social media and search teams are working together and that your organization isn’t being left behind.
By: Eli Goodman,