Facebook is already big but for businesses Facebook is set to be bigger and may possibly compete with Google, in the near future. Facebook has a clear goal to connect with everyone and at all times, which will make it the number one personal and business platform of the future.
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook’s 3 year goal will be to continue to build its community and provide new ways for people to share what matters. However, its 5 year goal is to build its newer products into fully fledged ecosystems, with businesses and developers.
In short, Facebook is determined to compete through its social platform, search engine, messaging & video calling apps and virtual reality.
Facebook is aggressively moving into search in a bid to challenge Twitter and Google. In 2014 Facebook launched ‘true keyword search’ and this enabled people to search everyone’s personal and professional public posts.
Facebook’s first goal will be to become more like Twitter in the aspect of being the first choice for people and businesses to post about their feelings, thought and news. Already, 2 billion searches per day are made on Facebook from people looking up other people, business and things of interest.
This compares to 3.5 billion searches made per day on Google. The big difference here is that Google searches are monitised and to capitalise on this, Facebook may soon add web indexing to its search engine. Facebook may also separate its search app from Facebook.com to allow its search platform to directly compete with Google.
Facebook has evolved from mostly text to photo and will soon change again as video first becomes the preference of its users. Video is set to be at the heart of all Facebook services and apps and people and businesses are already starting to share what’s happening in more creative and engaging ways, with Live video.
The Facebook news feed could well be all video in 5 years time as Facebook Live is used to stream views, news and conferences live.
The future role of VR is still to be imagined but with Facebook’s £1.5 billion purchase of Oculus, it is clear that this is the future of sharing and connecting and we can expect to see advertising deeply ingrained within VR.
Already, over 1 million people are using Oculus on mobile phones each month, through the Gear VR partnership with Samsung. More than 300 apps in the Oculus store and Facebook is already seeing an increased demand from retail.
Facebook has become more of a mobile app, than desktop experience, with 84% of ad revenue being generated through mobile. This has seen a growing number of digital marketers using ad products, making the advertising of businesses more effective and relevant.
Google announced last year Google that they will release version 4.0 which they’re calling the ‘real-time’ Penguin Algorithm. This update will undoubtedly affect the performance of websites rankings and organic search traffic on Google.
Essentially any websites with bad/poor/spammy links could see demotion a lot quicker than before (real-time updating). Equally, anyone who takes steps to address and remove these links as well as those who build good quality links into their website will see promotions quicker than before.
More information on the algorithm update can be read here on this post and others on Search Engine Land – http://searchengineland.com/preparing-penguin-make-sure-youre-penalty-free-2016-235834
As mentioned above, the new release of Google’s Real-time Penguin 4.0 will start to see demotions and promotions of websites and their rankings according to whether they have bad/poor links linking into their website.
The effect of this could severely impact businesses that rely on organic search as a main channel for brand awareness, traffic and sales or leads.
As a result it’s vital that you have your backlink profile analysed and any bad links removed or disavowed with Google (getting Google to disregard back links). It’s also important that you get good quality, relevant links coming into your website.
The following process should be deployed by anyone who has a website:
Odyssey New Media Ltd are vastly experienced in SEO, link analysis, recovery and getting websites better rankings and improved traffic through search engine optimisation.
For anyone concerned about the effect this will have on their website and organic search rankings contact the team at Odyssey New Media directly on 0844 500 6911 or email us on info@odysseynewmedia.com we can help.
About the Author:
Rob Stoubos is the Managing Director & Owner of Odyssey New Media – a leading full service Digital Marketing company based in Birmingham, UK. Rob has been working in digital marketing since 2005 and has helped many UK and international clients improve their sales, return and overall ROI through digital marketing channels.
302 redirection to 301 redirect Google | Image Source: eamonlooney.com
During a Google+ hangout on Oct 16th 2015, Google’s John Mueller announced that Google may decide to view 302 temporary redirects as 301 permanent redirects.
Mueller mentioned that there is confusion around 302 temporary redirects. It’s deemed okay to use 302s and that they pass PageRank and link weight through just like 301s. When a 302 redirect has been setup, initially Google will show the originating URL in the search results because Google will count this as a temporary change. Then over time, Google may interpret that the 302 hasn’t been removed and class the URL change as permanent i.e. view it as a 301 redirect the same as a normal 301 redirect.
Here is an embed of the Video from the 22:15 minute mark where John Mueller discusses 302 redirects:
Here is the transcript from the YouTube Video
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I think there is a bit of a misconception out there on 302s being bad for your web sites and being bad for your PageRank… In face, it is definitely not the case.
When we recognize a redirect and we see it is a 302, we assume it is a temporary redirect first and we assume you want the original URL indexed, not the redirected target. In general, that is one thing we like to do there.
However, when we recognize it is actually more like a permanent redirect and 302 is something that you may have accidentally set up, then we do treat that as a 301. We say, instead of indexing the redirected URL we redirection target.
So it is not a matter of passing PageRank or not, both of these redirects pass PageRank, it is just a matter of which of these URLs we actually show in the search results. Is it the one that is being redirected, which would make sense if it is a temporary redirect. Or is it the one that is it being redirected to, which would make sense if it is a permanent redirect.
We do look at the HTTP result if it is a 301 or 302, we also try to be smarter about that and try to fix any mistakes the webmaster might have made.
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Robert Stoubos – Founder & Managing Director at Odyssey New Media, a leading Digital Marketing Agency based in Birmingham, UK. With over 10+ years experience in Digital Marketing Rob has is a results-driven marketer with the skills required to successfully implement cross-channel digital marketing campaigns that generate increased brand awareness, sales and ROI. Specialising in search marketing i.e. SEO and PPC. Other channels Rob has experience and interest in include Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Social Media and Website Conversion Enhancement. If you want to improve your sales, increase sales leads and grow your customer base then contact us today and see what we can do to help your company acheive your goals. Email info@odysseynewmedia.com or Call us now on 0844 500 6911.
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