Open Site Explorer: Facebook Shares, Likes, etc.

[seointern]

I don't fully understand what this means in the report for our site: http://screencast.com/t/aG5jbkYWLA here is our site: www.discountqueens.com & we have thousands of fans & facebook likes and all the time on all our posts. For example yesterday we had 73 likes on this post alone: http://www.discountqueens.com/amazon-ultimate-shrinky-dinks-jewelry-designer-1495/

So here's my questions:

• Is there an error in the reporting?

• Are we using a social sharing method that isn't giving us valid credit for these links?

• What should I consider doing differently & why isn't our likes, shares, tweets & Google+ being calculated into our score?

[seointern]

Yea, what I'm thinking I'll do is now that I've got the base of fans just focus more attention on getting them to now 'Like' the URL. Shouldn't be too difficult & will help to increase our 'SEO' worthy likes. Up until now, I just never new there was a difference, so thanks for the insight, huge help!

[FedeEinhorn]

It would be a good experiment, but are you willing to lose Fan page likes (regular readers) against URL likes (one timers).

I just made a search to see if there was any info on a test but couldn't find anything (no one tested that yet, apparently) but practically the same answer to your question: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/16810/best-practices-for-facebook-website-like-vs-page-like

[seointern]

Excellent, thank you for the insight! Yes, I would agree being able to reach our 73 fans is more valuable to use, especially with our niche, than to have them one time liker's on our URL. It would be an interesting comparison though with our search rankings on how much of a bump it would give us with organic traffic if there 73 were counting towards our URL.

[FedeEinhorn]

Exactly, those 73k likes are liking your facebook page, not your site (URL). Test using your facebook page in OSE, how many facebook likes does it show? I am guessing about 73k

It has nothing to do with "where" the like took place, visiting your site, the user can click the LIKE button within your facebook page plugin and they are liking your facebook page, not your Website.

No one knows how or even IF social interactions help rankings, we are all guessing they do, but no one is certainly sure or knows how much they help. That said, a like to your URL is more valuable SEOwise, however, people liking your URL just liked your URL, while if they like your facebook page, you can have constant contact to those users.

You decide whether to have the like button or the like box, both, or a like button with your facebook page as the href. I would actually go with the like box or the like button using my facebook page, that way I can earn users that I can actually reach later.

[seointern]

Interesting, so with our 73k fans: http://screencast.com/t/Qzxh99VZeX are you saying they are not being reported in OSE because the 'like' didn't happen directly on our home page - rather within Facebook or somewhere else?

I'm guessing this is intentional within the report? If that is the case, are you saying that if our 73k fans were showing up in the OSE report, would it make a dramatic difference not only in the report but with our search rankings & competitiveness? Which I would conclude means that a like from a page is valued more, than a like from within Facebook?

Sorry for the ramble...just trying to understands what's going on here & why it would be intentional? Do you have any articles you can refer to that might help to better understand why?

Thanks!

[FedeEinhorn]

OSE doesn't report the "likes", "tweets" or "+1s" that you may get on your pages or accounts. If you make a post on Facebook or have a page with millions of likes, it doesn't matter at all for the OSE report.

What matters is actually the amount of likes your URL received, the same applies for g+ and twitter. To increase that, you should place the Like, Tweet and G+ button on your homepage, or change the "href" of whatever buttons your have in your site.

This like button:

will return 19 likes (which are the likes that URL received). Almost the same amount OSE reports

This one:

will return 73 (same happens here: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.discountqueens.com%2Famazon-ultimate-shrinky-dinks-jewelry-designer-1495%2F).

Hope that helps!