Yesterday I received a survey. “What comes up first when you type your company name in at Google? ” it asked. It was a multiple choice question: your website, Google places, Merchant Circle, Facebook… There were a few more. It asked about the first three places on the search engine results pages.
My website comes up in the first three places. But this is not true for everyone. We’ve talked with several people recently who have their social media coming up first. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
In some ways, it’s a good thing. If you can’t yet rank for your company name or your primary keywords, it’s better to have your Facebook account on the front page of the SERPs than just to have your competitors there.
On the other hand, it’s not ideal. You have less control over your Facebook page (LinkedIn page, etc.) than you have over your website. You can’t always make your social media pages look the way your want them to in the SERPs, you have less control over where they rank, and they may not present exactly the look you want when people click through to them.
Work on your website’s ranking by optimizing the site and adding good content. In the meantime, make those social media pages look as good as possible, make certain that they all contain your web link, and put your phone number where it’ll show in the SERPs if at all possible.
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