First of all, a barnacle can be defined as: A marine crustacean, that permanently attaches itself to a various surfaces, such as the hull of a ship.
The term was originally coined by Will Scott and expounded upon by my Local SEO cohort and friend, Phil Rozek over at Local Visibility System.
So, how does a barnacle apply to SEO? Essentially, it’s about establishing a small presence within a bigger picture (e.g. your business page ranking well on Yelp or a mention of your business appearing within a popular site which ranks well for local results in your category).
[blockquote]Your goal – as a humble barnacle – is to latch onto those big ships. They can take you places. There are a few ways to go about doing that.
Phil Rozek
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Phil Rozek goes into detail about the various methods of attaching your barnacle-self to the mother ships over on this awesome post Your Field Guide to “Barnacle” Local SEO, so jump over there and soak-in Phil’s knowledge. Otherwise, stick around as I offer an example of how I generated a Barnacle SEO search result related to a client’s Facebook business page.
Creating Facebook SEO Barnacles
There are a few important steps which should be followed in order to increase the chances that Google will pick-up your SEO Barnacle on Facebook: [fancy-ul style=”tick” variation=”olive-green”]- Attempt to brand your Facebook business page url to match your actual business name or personal name – if that is your brand.
- When creating a post on your Facebook business page, be sure to include a target key phrase within the link structure pointing back to the relevant page on your primary domain.
- Add your Facebook business page url under “Contributor” section on your Google+ Personal Profile.
- Be sure to reference your Facebook business page url on your primary domain & also seek additional opportunities on relevant 3rd party sites.
- Encourage your fans to share your business page and/or share specific posts.
If fishing is good… you may generate a Barnacle SEO search result as I illustrate in the following example:
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