Tips to Making Facebook SEO Friendly
Facebook can be a fantastic opportunity for marketing your business via sharing, but like WordPress, and other platform based websites, it’s important to incorporate an SEO strategy into your Facebook site to get the best exposure out of them. This article is about making Facebook SEO Friendly.
Whether if you are setting up Facebook yourself, or for a client, you have to keep a SEO strategy in mind. Google say they don’t look at Facebook “shares” as separate parts of their ranking, but traffic is traffic.
The thing to remember with Facebook shares is their marketing value resides in the fact that they are coming from a reputable source; from someone known to you. This makes the shares valuable. Facebook is a marketing tool but nothing a business puts on their Facebook should ever break that kind of trust.
For a business, Facebook is a delicate juggle of “being my friend” and “paying me money.” Always challenging it is important to fall on the side of soft sell. This is why SEO strategies for Facebook are important. SEO lies behind the scenes, and customers can’t possibly depict it as marketing.
Below are some Facebook SEO strategies to make sure your Face is getting the amount of Book it deserves:
1. Choose a Relevant Facebook Page Name
Choose a good business name. Not too generic, and definitely not too spammy. Something descriptive and easy to remember. If it’s too generic Facebook could blacklist the name. Once you have a name, don’t change it. Once it’s ingrained, keep it. Renaming isn’t ever a good idea from an SEO point of view.
2. Facebook URL Names Are Important
Facebook allows vanity names so make sure to create one. The URL won’t exactly be yours but www.facebook.com/designlab is better than www.facebook.com/11565757. It’s important to know that Facebook requires 100 fans before you can pick a vanity name, of which you can do by going to http://facebook.com/username
3. Use Keyword Rich Text for Your Profile Pages
This will eventually place searchable terms at the top of your Facebook page. Make sure to include your address information so that the page will pop up on local searches – a favourite of Google. Add links of your website in the info section.
4. Make Pictures Descriptive
Facebook is a visual platform. Facebook will change titles on photos. Use keywords as often as you can. Read each description from two angles – one for your customers, and one from a computer’s angle. For e.g. “John and Debra enjoying the Keys on their 60th” could be: “Luxury Florida Keys Party by Private Jet Charters for John and Deb’s 60th.” Both of these are better than “John and Deb at their 60th Party.”
Give your clients a reason to stick with you as a graphic designer by showing how they can get free advertising if they structure online promotional campaigns properly. For example, Private Jet Charters could offer a scoupon for parties and events, and encourage them to advertise the party through Private Jet Charters site and/or Facebook page and then supply pictures of the party after using keyword descriptions. The photos will be shared, and every time they are, the words in the photo description, “Private Jet Charters” are collecting ranking points.
As the graphic designer, you will most likely get extra design work. Great designers always show ways in which their creativity is invaluable to their clients. With better templates and platforms around these days, it’s critical that graphic designers deal not only in SEO, but also in marketing. These are two things that a customer can’t buy ready made or download.
5. Use Keywords in Your Status
Updates provide a great way to include keywords and increase SEO. This also drives traffic to your website. Never forget that one of your main objectives for having a Facebook page is to drive traffic back to your website where you can take advantage of the traffic.
When you “attach a link” Facebook gives you the opportunity to edit the text by clicking on it. Include keyword rich text as early as you can. (Be aware that Facebook will channel this link through their own menu bar so this won’t get you a direct link.) Then include the URL of your website. Don’t put everything on Facebook. Provide a interesting and enticing section that will make users want to read more, and make it clear they can on your website.
6. Have Likes & Shares on your website
Although it’s not directly SEO, you should include Facebook likes and shares in your website. Take some time to stay on top of the Facebook Developers news. The developers page is also a great place to come up with new ideas about how to make the platform and get the most out of Facebook.
7. Try Notes and Discussion Boards
The content on both is indexable. Notes and the Discussion Boards are indexable which means they can make for good SEO. Some people just use Facebook and do nothing else online. Using a discussion board gives you a way to reach this group of people. It’s important to note though that the automatic pull in blog posts are now being deleted from Facebook.
Use Facebook as an effective SEO tool. Take time to use the above ideas, and then compare and track the changes in your Facebook code (Available to anyone for any page by viewing “source code” in your browser). Over time, graph long term changes in your traffic to see if the extra time and energy is really paying off.