Mediarun Search Marketing News

Facebook enters the website optimisation fray

June 25th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Google is still sitting on top of the search engine optimisation throne and outperforming its competitors by a substantial margin. It is hard to imagine that anything could change this at the moment, but that hasn't stopped a number of firms trying to knock Google off the top spot.

Most notably Yahoo and Microsoft have been trying their utmost to extract more cash from the website optimisation sector by boosting their user bases. Re-brandings, service changes and third-party partnerships have all played a part in boosting their number of users - and the companies' respective market shares.

But despite the repeated challenges, practically every SEO Company has maintained its focus on creating website optimisation strategies for Google. Simply because the organisation's user base is so strong and its reach and depth of service is vast.

But that hasn't stopped other players entering the marketplace; the latest being Facebook. And the social networking site is hoping that its new Facebook Connect offering will make it a viable, cost-effective target for any SEO agency.

The company has teamed up with Open Graph sites - a move that could shake up the search engine marketing industry; particularly in light of the growing popularity of social networking. With the new Facebook Connect platform, Open Graph sites can integrate many of the social networking site's features into their own webpages - including the new 'Like' feature - making Facebook's value as a marketing channel far more effective.

Marketing industry experts Coast Digital claim: "We're likely to start seeing a huge drive for Facebook users to 'Like' pages as this becomes more important to search engine optimisation and online marketing directed at Facebook users."

"With 'Liked' pages now showing up in Facebook search results, Facebook has stolen a march on Google, Yahoo and Bing with what is effectively a socially-driven search engine. It'll be interesting to see how these competitors respond," the organisation added.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, growing demand for online video and social networking websites is resulting in increased expenditure in the online display and search engine marketing sectors.

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