The Facebook Like Button – Getting Tons of Free Traffic
Everyone is looking for new methods of getting tons of traffic to their blog or website. Now, you can leverage the power of Facebook to accomplish that. There are some serious benefits to doing this and somethings that search engines like Google just won’t like.
Facebook Introduces “Like” button for off Facebook websites
There you have it. Facebook has decided to allow off Facebook sites to include “Like” or “Recommend” buttons on websites, which means you can include this feature on your own blog or website very, very easily.
Just like the image above, someone can easily be reading your blog, decide they like your post and simply “Like” it. By doing so, it will put a link directly to that page on their Facebook wall and recently activity page, just like the image below.
This is great if your viewer has lots of friends that may be interested in that topic.
It also helps build social proof and support as the Badge also lists how many people have also “Liked” or “Recommended” your site or post.
Why Google Will Hate This
The SERPS (Search Engine Page Results) display pages based on content and links, unfortunately, Facebook feeds are not indexed. What that means is that your link from Facebook will not give your site any additional weight when it comes to Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
What is DOES mean, is that now Facebook will begin to carry more weight from social networking recommendations. Essentially, Facebook’s own internal search engine could very easily carry more power when it comes to articles, posts and content that does viral.
What About Wall Spam in Facebook?
Since “Liking” a topic or post is completely up to you, no-one else can spam your wall with links from this new out going “Like” feature. That’s great news.
So bottom line is, provide valuable content, make lots of Facebook friends and the new Like feature can be a great benefit to you since your link can now show up on hundreds or thousands of Walls.
How To Add Your Own Like Button
There are plenty of new WordPress Like button plugins available. They all essentially do exactly the same thing. Since this is all fairly new, they are all carry about the same rating and downloads. You’ll need to experiment your self.
I choose to use the “WordPress Facebook-Like” plugin and it has been performing fine so far.
If you don’t have a blog and want to include your own recommends or like button on a regular HTML website and know a little bit about HTML tags and code, you can follow the instructions located on the Facebook Site. The Facebook plugins page provides details and a like wizard to make it easy for you to include the Like button and other Facebook widgets on your site.
If You Like It, then “Like” It
If you found this information helpful, then scroll up to the top of this post and “Like” it for me. Also, please post your comments and questions below.
I simply don’t understand why google would not like the ‘like’ button traffic links? Google acts like they want to be nice and humble but they’re really a force for evil, they share things without asking like with Buzz. A lot of sites already use a “share” button to connect with Facebook, letting users post links to their news feed, but a “like” button seems more in line with the simple interaction offered by Digg.
That’s true that FB is getting lots of free traffic because of this modification. But this is business and every penny counts so if they are earning because of us what’s the issue in that? And only friends can do so. Hence, it is of no harm.
You make an interesting point but all I can say is the “Like” button has worked wonders for my film publication. We had respectable numbers before we implemented the button but since we’ve added it to our articles our traffic has doubled in only a month! And stories that would otherwise see an 80% decrease in traffic after only a few days have since maintained much higher numbers. The beauty in the “Like” button is that it drives traffic exponentially. One person “Likes” a story and all their friends see that and then “Like” it themselves and then their friends and their friends and so on.
I have not noticed any spike in traffic for my podcast/blog. My posts get several likes but I have yet to notice any traffic increase because of it although to be fair, now that it is summer, my traffic has dropped considerably. Hopefully I will get enough people liking my stuff soon enough that it will help but at this point I see it as kind of pointless.
Well, that’s just great … the whole change to “like” seems terribly misguided. And I wish Facebook would fix the things that really don’t work properly, like transferring ownership of a fan page, then “fixing” things that are working just fine.
The link that is posted on your wall can go to wherever you want, but the actual item that you like can only be associated with your domain, so that you can’t spam people. I agree that allowing any link on a wall is misleading, but at least it’s a one time thing, and “outsiders” can spam a news feed with unwanted information.
Like buttons are a step up from the other sharing buttons that have been on the web for years. Unlike those for Digg and Twitter, which just display a blind count of aggregate clicks from everyone on the social network, the Facebook Like button shows you how your friends are interacting with the page you’re on.
Thanks for the article this is very helpful. Actually I have added the iframe code to my site, and when people like my blog posts, they show my home page title rather than the specific article title/page title of the post they liked. Is that too related with this like button thing?
I guess we can certainly expect other social networks to pick up on this model and start serving up lists of your friends, and maybe even their faces, along side their own social widgets.