Open graph has been the current buzz word on the social and search media of online marketing. No doubt Facebook marketing and the like are absolutely critical for a business in today’s competitive world but is Facebook really pushing dominance of social media over organic search that fuels web traffic with it’s Open Graph?
This post tries to uncover the myths and fog around this issue and perhaps even shed some light.First lets try and understand what Open Graph is all about!
If think like a developer, this is your OOPs (remember Object Oriented Programming during your Engg. times!? Welcome back!) for internet interaction! In simple terms, Facebook’s open graph looks at each page on the web as a social object. Now, this page = object describes something which is picked up by Facebook.
How does Open Graph work?
Simple, in the recent past Google started to give important to Rich Snippet and microdata that gives quick description that can be incorporated on the SERP [Search Engine Result Page] with the standard schema. Facebook enhanced this simple RDF [Rich Data Formats] to establish communication with Facebook easily to analyze and index the object/page.
The code may look something like this on HTML (hit Crtl-U or Cmd-U for Mac to see open graph implementation on any page. Caution: need to be atleast 25% Geek!)
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”
xmlns:og=”http://ogp.me/ns#”
xmlns:fb=”http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml”>
(this could even be included in the scope of development when initiating building website)
So, now that Facebook has established a standard and almost everyone you know around you are on Facebook, it obviously becomes an important issue for you to ensure that Facebook sees your page as you would want it to and this would help improve your Facebook presence and campaigns.
Now, next big question – How does this impact SEO?
Lets assume Facebook did not exist and that your traffic to the site would be purely from search engines with all honesty. With this assumption, you would do everything to increase traffic via search, as you are well aware that traffic does play a vital role in search visibility and likelihood of ranking better.
Now coming back, when you have enough traffic from Facebook and are carrying out active social media to drive traffic because your potential target audience lives on Facebook, it would be imperative to ensure Facebook visibility as much as organic search visibility.
This also means that with open graph implementation, you are more likely to showcase the image along with the link share on Facebook and get a click out of it. Plus a backlink (not to forget) and some social media friendliness when someone shares your page on Facebook.
With the above short justification (if I can call that!), it would be important to lay your foundation right for the website to ensure your site is on top of a constantly evolving web and social search.
Although Open Graph search is in its beta search, open graph implementation would highly be recommended and would help enhance social search integration.
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