How many FaceBook likes do I need to start making a difference?

[manintights28]

Just started the social scene.

We have a FaceBook page

https://www.facebook.com/SMSPro.Safety.Management.System

Only about  a year old, and until two weeks ago, we had about 8-10 likes.

Then I started working on getting likes (please like this page if you can).

Question: How many Likes do I need for Google to start counting this as significant?

Would also appreciate any comments on FaceBook page to help.

[williammarlow]

Facebook is one of those areas where you are better off (in my opinion) by counting the human feedback you generate, rather than the SEO ranking.  In other words, you are literally creating conversations with lots of people, so you should be evaluating the topics of those conversations (are they relevant? positive? interesting?).  You should also be reviewing the source of new fans, names, and whether or not they go silent, etc.  From there, you should look at the "reach" within Facebook itself to see how many unique people your posts are hitting.  If none of this appeals to you, then FB is probably not going to be a good investment, but if it does, then FB should be awesome, and you will probably get some SEO value out of it as well.  Someone smarter than me might be able to tell you exact numbers that start driving Google results, but my own experience has been that if FB isn't valuable to you for some non-SEO reasons, then you are unlikely to have strong company buy-in for very long.

[manintights28]

most of my clients (decision makers) are older generation and not FaceBook users.

These are managers in the aviation industry. I don't think FaceBook will be a prime marketing strategy. I just need to get some Google power from it because Google is evaluating the "social" aspect and using it to help determine rankings.

[manintights28]

btw, thank you for taking time to respond!

[EGOL]

In my opinion, FB likes don't generate any direct search engine benefit.  However, if you have content that people share and those shares lead to visits - then you have something of value - maybe.

Funny, OMG, weasel and rant topics will generate more traffic than any sort of biz generation.

[manintights28]

RE: "Funny, OMG, weasel and rant topics will generate more traffic than any sort of biz generation."

This is why I failed to see the value of FB in the beginning.

I really don't get this. Promises of Madonna showing her panties will get more Likes and traffic than any legit business.

I have a competitor in Australia who is a new entrant into aviation safety software. My site (http://www.aviation-sms.com)has considerably more content, links and time in existence than his. aerosdb.com.

Competitor ranks higher than me, and I see that he has a lot of tweets and FB likes. Hence the start of this "Social Networking" crusade.

And the reasoning behind the question: how many FB likes do I need to make a difference. Maybe I should put a campaign promising to show Madonna in her panties. If they Like me, I show a picture. (just kidding).

[williammarlow]

In that case, I probably am even more convinced that FB isn't the right place for you.  For many B2B companies, I usually lean towards LinkedIn  and Twitter, and focus on producing high value and high credibility thought leadership content.  That type of content is valued more highly on Twitter/LinkedIn, whereas FB is more about some form of entertainment.

There are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about how social affects search rankings.  First, you have 'personalized search,' which means that you can potentially influence the search results of the small group of people who are in your second degree connections on different social networks -- this works extremely well on Google+ for certain types of things, but I think it works somewhat on other social networks as well, and may get better in the future.  The second type of influence goes beyond second degree connections, and results when you have viral content that triggers lots of legitimate social signals (+1s, Likes, RTs, faves, etc.).  In order to see positive outcomes from this type of thing, you need to create something that is ACTUALLY awesome.  To get the results from personalized search, all you need to do is very basic stuff.  To get the much larger results of hitting beyond your 2nd tier folks, it is not just a numbers game, and I never recommend it unless you are prepared to really put your back into it.   In fact, you should check out this post by the Oatmeal (formerly of SEOMoz) to see the answer of how to succeed on FB.

[manintights28]

Outstanding, William! Simply outstanding! Thanks for pulling my head out my rear.

[KeriMorgret]

On a related note, keep an eye on the YouMoz blog. Next week there's a post coming up about how to market the experts in your field who aren't necessarily a big deal on the internet.