Boost SEO of your Facebook Fan Page
Companies and businesses are increasingly focusing their attention on improving their activities on their respective Facebook pages. The popularity of social media platforms has introduced another factor for marketing campaigns, and one that cannot be overlooked. The use of social media enables companies to interact directly with their customers and provide fast updates regarding their products, services and offers.
Before the social networking craze, businesses only had to maintain their official website and optimize their pages with the latest SEO techniques. However, with changing times, the ranking of social media profiles has also come into focus. Facebook has been a major player in this social media rush, and if you happen to have a fan page on Facebook, you no longer have to wonder how to boost its SEO after reading this guide.
Instructions
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1
Be Consistent With Your Brand Name
If companies want their fan pages to appear in search engines, they need to realize the importance of selecting a suitable title name, custom URL and even the integrated apps. Search engines take the title of a page as Heading 1, and index fan pages accordingly. Make sure your title of the fan page is a common title which is used on all types of social networks and other mediums. Using the company/brand name as the title is strongly recommended. Facebook pages also allow the creation of custom URLs after the pages have exceeded more than 25 ‘Likes’. It is better that the custom URL contains your company/brand name. Remember that once a custom URL is set, it cannot be changed. -
2
Concentrate On Quality Links From External Sources
Similar to the SEO techniques, having external links pointing to your Facebook page is always beneficial and Google rewards that with a higher ranking on its search. The more the incoming links, the better the chances of higher traffic landing on your Facebook page. Having a recognized source link to your Fan page can greatly increase your search rankings. Google also takes the custom apps links as separate from the main Fan page link. Companies can take advantage of this by promoting their unique apps separately. Facebook Events are also ranked separately and can allow a brand to create an isolated activity, but the source can always be tracked back to your fan page. -
3
Increase Exposure of Wall Post and Custom Tab Content
The comments on a Facebook page wall are indexed by Google and the recent announcements that the comments made on the post updates will also be indexed, taking the search engine ranking to a whole new level. It is also important to keep in mind that wall posts lose their relevance with time as new posts are updated.
As already mentioned, custom tabs are also indexed. In fact, they are indexed separately from the main fan page link, giving it more weight and importance. This way, companies and brands can advertise separate competition thus increasing their exposure on the search index. Apart from this, posts that have a greater number of ‘Likes’ will rank higher on search engines than those that have lesser ‘Likes’. Bing for example has a ranking factor which specifically rates the ‘Likes’ for Facebook content.
Custom tabs, unlike the wall posts, have stronger relevancy and can be linked within and outside the social network platforms. Picking a generic name for custom tabs is also very helpful in creating a stronger search ranking. That way, traffic can be expected from people who are looking for a particular contest or package information about your product.
Make sure that if you’re using a third party server for the hosting of your custom tab, the application is setup to be indexed on Facebook. -
4
Be Search Engine Friendly
Make sure all the content on your Facebook pages is available for public to access and use. Try to avoid using ‘Fan Gates’, as they limit your audience and forces Google to not index the content. This reduces your index quality and results in loss of traffic that could have been attracted very easily.
‘Fan Gates’ do allow companies to use it for viral marketing purposes and to create hype but from a search engine ranking perspective, it is not a good idea to block your content to a limited audience. -
5
Make The Right Use Of Page ‘Info’ Tab
Facebook pages allow you to put information about your company, brand, mission, and objectives. This provides an opportunity to put optimized keywords because Google can index those parts of the page as well. Rather than wasting time on placing keywords in to images, you should focus on writing simple yet effective text in the ‘Info’ tab. -
6
Optimize Interactive Media Content
Videos serve as the best content to attract your audience’s attention and also are the easiest to optimize. Google rates the titles of video content very heavily irrespective of the fact if it is hosted on Facebook or YouTube.
Similarly optimizing the images and logos that you share through Facebook also has a high impact on the ranking. Google is constantly searching for interactive content from Facebook in the form of images and videos. -
7
Keep You Page Active and Fresh
Having a well run Facebook page with the right SEO techniques can massively increase your overall rankings on the search engines. Once you have a considerable amount of ‘Likes’ on your page, all you have to do is keep the page exciting and up to date for your audience.
The ‘Likes’ will increase organically through social sharing by your customers (comments, likes, shares) and the search engine optimization techniques that you applied. It all comes down to how you manage to keep a balance between SEO and customer engagement.