There is no denying that Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla of social media. In fact, Facebook seems determined to be not only the #1 social networking site, but also a one-stop-shop for all of our online activities. Company Facebook pages are becoming an increasingly important way to connect with your target audience, share content and build your link portfolio and grow your overall online presence. In order to make your Facebook page a valuable tool for your SEO, here are three important optimization tips:
1. Get the vanity URL.
Once you’ve gotten 25 Likes for your company page (which, depending on the size of your company, might be an easy internal task—just have all your employees Like your page to get the ball rolling) Facebook allows users to create a vanity URL for their brand page. This is an excellent chance to focus on branding and on SEO. Check out the Brick Marketing Facebook page’s URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brick-Marketing-SEO-and-SEM-Firm/14204584980. Notice how I put both the brand name and top keywords into it? This means Brick Marketing’s Facebook page can rank for branded as well as non-branded searches, increasing our overall online presence. The username cannot be changed, so choose it wisely.
Here are a few examples of how some other brands have customized their URLS:
- https://www.facebook.com/cocacola
- https://www.facebook.com/AppStore
- https://www.facebook.com/uclabruins
- https://www.facebook.com/dexter
2. Fill out the company information as completely as possible.
The more content you give the search spiders on your website, the more chances they have to index and pull your site for certain search phrases; the same holds true with Facebook. If your Facebook page can rank alongside your company website, that puts you one step closer to dominating the SERP. Write an optimized company biography, put your business’s full address (it helps with local SEO) and phone number, include pictures and videos and make sure you link to your main website and company blogs! You want to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with your brand; give them the information to do so.
3. Publish any and all content.
If you want people to interact with your Facebook page, you have to give them a reason to do so. Social signals are playing an increasingly important role in SEO, so getting your content published and shared on Facebook is a must-do. You can link your Facebook page to your company blog’s RSS feed so that every time a new post goes live, it is automatically published on your Facebook page as well. Publish snippets of your guest blogs to Facebook, post videos, link to online press releases and news articles featuring your business and so forth. The more content you can feed into your Facebook page the easier it is to connect with your social network. One update every couple of days will probably pass by unnoticed.