Will Facebook traffic hurt our SEO? Should we put our blog on the core domain or sub domain?

[rvshare]

We are concerned that social traffic could hurt our SEO. What do you think... Our average time on site from organic search traffic is 7 minutes. Facebook traffic has an average time on site of 1 minute. Both traffic sources are going to different pages.

If we generate 3 times as much traffic from Facebook as we do from google this will pull down our overall average time on site and engagement levels big time.

Should we put our blog on the core domain or a subdomain?

Right now we are holding back on promoting on facebook because we are concerned it could hurt our SEO, what do you think?

Should we try to get as much traffic as possible from Facebook even though the engagement is much lower?

Should we put our blog which is generating the low engagement traffic from facebook on the core domain or a subdomain?

[katandmouse]

Mark said: "People looking through the SERPs are searching to rent an RV, while traffic from facebook is coming from RV owners who see a blog post about RVs that interests them."

Let's finish that thought.

Traffic coming from Facebook are RV owners who see a blog post about RVs. But they land on a site that rents RVs so they don't need anything. Is that true? Don't RV rental businesses also sell RVs? And don't they sell equipment? You've brought them in on a topic of interest (RVs), now you can acquaint them with your store. You already know they are your target market. That's a good thing. Your job now is to make sure your presentation is inviting. Assume they are owners (or renters). Can you put an offer on that page, perhaps a download of the best RV spots in your state, or maybe a link to a blog post that lists "10 things no RV should be without" for the owners and those happen to be the things you sell.

We're doing a lot of blogging now for an attorney client, and traffic has nearly doubled as a result. Like you, I see traffic come and go, but that is normal for blogs given the reasons mentioned in other comments here. But I'm also seeing that a percentage of those coming from Facebook are repeat visitors and that some of those visitors go to the home page, then the about page, then our main service page. That's exactly what I want. And because I'm boosting those posts in my client's local area, I'm happy because those might be his clients one day. We're building brand awareness so that when the time comes that any one of those or any one of their friends need an attorney, hopefully they'll know who to call or refer. I like to think we're priming the pump.

[rvshare]

Great suggestions Matt!

On behalf of the entire team here I just want to say thanks for sharing such good feedback.

[Matt-Williamson]

I would definitely go down the sub-directory route and not the sub-domain route for this. There is no need to go down a route where you are trying to separate your traffic on sub domains due to quality in my opinion.

You could still definitely do some conversion rate optimisation around your Facebook traffic - a/b testing variants of landing pages in order to increase engagement. What are some of your most popular pages on your blog for instance - consider making a link to these stick out with a clear call to action on landing pages for Facebook traffic. There is so much to do around this...

[rvshare]

Brendan thanks for the response.

I'm going to check out the whiteboard friday video right now. You shared some great pieces of advice and they are very much appreciated!

[rvshare]

Rob thanks for the response.

We are working on a new layout that should lead to increased engagement, however no matter what we do, we don't anticipate being able to replicate the same type of engagement from social traffic as is coming from the SERPs. The main reason being the intent and the content are both very different.

We were just concerned that if google is looking at our overall engagement across the site generating a lot of social traffic will pull down engagement numbers substantially.

What are your thoughts on domain vs sub domain... We are trying to decide if we should locate our posts that are targeted towards social traffic on (blog.rvshare.com) or (rvshare.com/blog) ?

[rvshare]

Matt thanks for the response.

People looking through the SERPs are searching to rent an RV, while traffic from facebook is coming from RV owners who see a blog post about RVs that interests them.

What are your thoughts on domain vs sub domain... We are trying to decide if we should locate our posts that are targeted towards social traffic on (blog.rvshare.com) or (rvshare.com/blog) ?

[taryn_s]

Hi,

Let's get the sub domain/sub directory question out of the way first. Rand did a Whiteboard Friday on this recently which answers everything you could ever wish to know so take a look. (The answer is sub directory by the way.)

Now, let's look at the trickier part of your question. I understand your concerns but I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Using headline, aggregate data from your analytics really won't give you any insights which you can use to improve the performance of your website and business. All this data will tell you is how all of your visitors (those from organic search, paid search, social, email, display etc) are behaving on your site. This type of person doesn't actually exist in the real world so there's nothing you can do to improve their experience on your site.

A much better way to look at this is through data segmentation. People who are aware of your brand, have visited your site multiple times before and are arriving on a branded organic search will behave completely differently to someone who has just seen your brand for the first time on Facebook. This is totally normal behaviour. By far the best person to learn from when it comes to data segmentation is Avinash Kaushik who has a blog called Occam's Razor. There's a ton of great stuff on his site which I won't attempt to replicate here but suffice to say that by breaking your traffic down into segments, you'll be able to really easily and quickly see how improvements can be made to your site to suit each individual channel.

If you're reporting into someone, it's really important you set realistic expectations from the outset (I know this from personal experience!). Create a report which breaks down your traffic by segment so you can quickly and easily show how each channel behaves and so you can show what work you can do to improve metrics for each. Honestly, they'll love you for this!

Try and think about digital marketing and SEO in the same way you would as traditional marketing. If more people come to your off-line shop but don't necessarily buy something on their first visit, is that a bad thing? Definitely not! It's the same for people visiting your website from Facebook. You're building brand awareness, putting your content/services/products in front of more eyeballs which can only be a good thing. Google will never penalise you for that kind of marketing activity. Making more people aware of your brand is also a great way to attract organic links - another thing Google wants you to do.

I hope that helps but let us know how you get on.

[brightonseorob]

I agree with Matt, he's got some great points there. In terms of the Facebook traffic, this will not have any effect on your SEO. When Google is looking at site engagement, it's in terms of Return To SERPs. So, if someone performs a search, visit your site, returns to Google and visits a competitors website, then that's bad. Referral traffic is a different matter. However, I totally agree with Matt here. You are missing a trick if visitors from Facebook are not engaging with your site. I would look into why this is and try to provide some reason for them to engage. Why not ask your followers what it is they are looking for when visiting your site?

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi

I can understand your concern in regards to bringing down your sites overall engagement if the quality of the Facebook traffic is lower from your experience. However thinking outside the box for a moment - what do your Facebook visitors tend to come to your site for?

Have you looked at ways to further engage them with your site and try to bring up the time on site? I am curious to understand what the motivation behind a Facebook visitor to your site is?

Have you looked at other ways you could possibly counteract their impact for instance through increased relevant email campaigns?

Maybe you could give Facebook visitors a reason to sign-up to your email list and then target them specifically?

I would be really interested in knowing a bit more about your site and what you do in order to try and give the best input possible for your question

In terms of your SEO I don't believe that Facebook traffic will have a negative impact - when it comes to engagement I believe that search engines are looking at what the traffic they send is doing and how engaged it is. Do visitors they send spend a good amount of time on your site? In your case yes. Also do your listings in the search results have a good click-through rate..

Yes engagement is a key factor but traffic sources tend to vary in quality and so in terms of SEO this is likely to be solely gauged on the organic traffic sent. Traffic from other sources could easily be manipulated to give false readings in your Analytics...

Hope this helps