Facebook is quickly becoming a key player in the world of SEO and online marketing, which means your SEO strategy needs to include optimizing your Facebook fan page for the search engines and for web visitors. There are several reasons for this, and for creating a
- Facebook (as of the middle of 2011) applied for a search patent
- More and more organizations are using their Facebook fan page as a “second home page.”
- Facebook is developing features for fan pages to get more search engine traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing.
- Facebook has access to customized user information which Google does not, making them an attractive alternative to Google.
In addition to these, web users now have the option of making Facebook their home page and when you consider that Facebook will soon be offering socially driven search options, it’s possible that people might soon be “Facebooking” to find information as well as (or in place 0f) “Googling.” So in this article, we’ll be looking at five simple things you can do to optimize your company’s Facebook fan page.
#1: Choose a Relevant Title for Your Page
Web page titles are important for Google SEO and the same is true for Facebook fan page titles. It’s important that your title is relevant to your company name, your product or your service…depending on which term you want to rank for. It’s also important that you choose a page title that you can stick with since changing page titles can cause penalties from search engines. Finally, be sure that your page name is easy to remember so that you can advertise it to people on business cards or other printed media.
If your fan page is too complicated or hard to remember or if it contains too many special characters, it might appear “spammy” and turn off potential visitors to your page. Follow these simple rules in the title of your Facebook page as well as in your fan page URL.
#2: Start a Facebook Content Strategy
Quality content is king on the internet, and this rule will certainly apply as Facebook becomes more popular in the search results and people start doing searches on Facebook. Using Facebook page managers, you can add additional text to your Facebook page as well as images and hyperlinks. It’s likely that as Facebook becomes more of a player in the world of SEO that there will be more options for adding content and possibly build blogs just as you would using WordPress or Joomla. So if you haven’t yet adapted your content strategy for Facebook, the time to start is now.
#3: Start an Off-Page SEO Strategy for Your Fan Page
All SEO experts know how important off-page SEO is for gaining favorable search engine rankings, and this is based on the principle that backlinks to your site cause it to appear popular and credible. This “social proof” is a fundamental principle of SEO and one which applies to all search engines, which means it will also be important with Facebook. So in addition to your link building strategy for your regular website, start creating incoming links for your Facebook fan page.
While there are not yet any uniform guidelines for building links to your Facebook page, your best bet is to follow the same backlink building principles as you would when creating backlinks for your regular website:
- Keyword-rich anchor text
- Link to credible sites
- Link to relevant sites
#4: Follow Good SEO Principles with Your Content
Keyword density, content relevancy, fresh content, and outbound links are important in the Google world of SEO, so it’s a good idea to follow the same guidelines when creating content for your Facebook page. Avoid content duplication on your separate pages and make sure that your content is useful and engaging for visitors. Also, keyword-rich content in the most conspicuous places on your page shows the search engines AND your visitors exactly what your site is about.
For example, in the “about” box, the top of the “info” tab and other places that are immediately visible to a new visitor, include content and keywords which tell them exactly what your page is about. This way, your visitors are more likely to stay on your page because they have an immediate assurance that your page has the information they’re looking for.
#5: Solicit Positive User Behavior
The ultimate goal of your Facebook page is to solicit positive behaviors from your visitors:
- Getting new fans for your page
- Getting fans to “like” your posts
- Encouraging users to comment on posts
- Generating traffic to your opt-in and sales offers
- Creating a positive user experience to encourage more time spent on your page
Recent updates to the Google search patent have been more and more focused on positive user behaviors, not to mention that the entire purpose of creating a website or Facebook fan page is to effectively market your company. So have a specific goal for your Facebook page such as lead generation, credibility building, or generating traffic for a sales offer, and structure your fan page and create your content accordingly.
For more information on creating a Facebook fan page that markets your products or services, see our article on Strategic Facebook fan page creation.
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