SEO firm BrightEdge is releasing a new study today that shows that the majority of brands are doing little to optimize their Twitter or Facebook pages to make them more discoverable in search results.
BrightEdge reviewed the social media presence of the top 200 brands globally and found that close to 100 percent hold the top or near top rank in search results for the brand name’s website. But in these same brand searches, the company found that 70 percent of these brands did not have Facebook or Twitter pages in the top 20 results.
For example, if you do a search for Nike, you won’t find its Facebook or Twitter page on the first page of results on Google. The same goes for IBM. But if you do a Google search for Macy’s, the retailer’s Facebook page is the six result.
So how did Macy’s boost its search results for the Facebook Page? Albert Grouyet, VP of Product Marketing for BrightEdge, says that sometimes it comes down to subtitles and descriptions on the social media pages. If you take a look at the company’s Facebook page, you’ll see that the subtitle is “Retail and Consumer Merchandise.” On the other hand, Nike’s Facebook page, has the subtitle of “local business,” which Grouyet says isn’t SEO friendly for the brand.
BrightEdge says that of the top 200 brands listed in the Fortune 500, approximately 68 percent had Twitter accounts that were not in the top 20 Google results. And about 71 percent had Facebook pages that did not appear in the top 20 results of a search for the specific brand name. Additionally, BrightEdge did not always find a correlation between the number of friends or followers and search rank. For example, the Facebook page of a leading photography equipment brand does not rank in the top 20 search results, despite having more than 160,000 Likes. Conversely, a leading auto manufacturer with only 17,307 fans has a Facebook page that ranks in the top 10 of search results.
BrightEdge also looked at individual verticals and found that retailers are the most successful at optimizing their social media pages. Of the top 23 retailers, 13 have Twitter pages in the top 20 search results. The verticals that are currently least effective at optimizing social media are the finance and insurance industries. Only three of the top 43 financial and insurance companies have Facebook fan pages that rank in the top 20 search results.
As more consumers look to brands’ Facebook and Twitter pages for news, coupons, customer service and more, it’s probably important for these companies to take the steps to make sure these pages are discoverable.