This is part 2 of our 3 part series on Meta data.
- Use Meta tags to increase traffic from Google and Bing
- Use Meta tags to increase traffic from Facebook users
- Use Meta tags to make your Twitter tweets more enticing
Going Viral with the Facebook Like Button
On many websites today, you will see a Facebook “Like” button somewhere on the site, perhaps on a product you are viewing or a blog post.
If you click on the Facebook Like button, you will share a story about the web page you are viewing on your Facebook timeline and your friend’s Facebook news feeds. The story will contain a picture, a text description, and a link back to the web page.
As you can see, if you are a website owner, having your developer place a Like button on your products, services, and blog posts is a great way to drive traffic to your site. If a Facebook user has lots of friends and likes one of your products, her friends will see that in Facebook and click the link back to your site. Maybe her friend likes your product too and shares it with his circle of friends who then share with their circles of friends. This is the viral nature of social marketing. You let other people get the word out for you.
Take Control with Facebook Meta tags
Now let’s say you have a popular product and Facebook users are “liking” it. But the problem is that when the product’s story appears in Facebook, it is displaying the wrong picture and the text is coming from some other place on the web page. This is strange because on some other product pages, everything is working fine. The problem seems to be random!
By placing Facebook Meta tag code (formerly Facebook’s Open Graph protocol) on your product’s web page, you can define exactly how your product will appear in Facebook.
Here’s what the code looks like:
<meta property="og:title" content="Alberto Fasciani Black Riding Boot" /> <meta property="og:image" content="http://www.shopodile.com/…/Alberto-Fasciani-Girls-Riding-Boots-Black.jpg" /> <meta property="og:description" content="Classic girls' leather riding boot with back zipper and snap closure at top and bottom of boot. In Black. Made entirely by hand in Italy." /> <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.shopodile.com/alberto-fasciani-black-riding-boot" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Odile" /> <meta property="og:type" content="product" />
Ugh! Code! The problem is that it’s not so easy and error prone to create these Meta tags yourself. You may not even have access to do this on your website. You need a developer to add a module to your website to make this easy for you or, even better, automatic!
Now when you see the story in Facebook, you can see that Facebook is pulling the story from the Meta tags on your product’s web page.
Next Steps
Contact your developer and ask him/her to add Facebook Like buttons to your products, services, and blog posts.
While you’re at it, ask if he/she can create a module that will make it easy for you to customize the Facebook Meta tags so that your story displays the correct title, picture and description.
Learn how to drive more traffic to your website by reading the next article in our series: Use Meta tags to make your Twitter tweets more enticing.
