Facebook remains a king among social networks.
It serves as your second homepage. This is where your customers will go when they want to learn more about your business or check peer reviews.
It also gives your brand greater exposure, shapes your audience’s perceptions, builds stronger relationships with them, and, ultimately, improves your conversions. Precisely because of that, the number of businesses starting to see the importance of a solid Facebook fan page is growing at an astounding pace. Still, there is one more tried and true method that can take your Facebook page’s performance to a whole new level.
Yep, you guessed it. I’m talking about search engine optimization. Want to see how to integrate SEO with your Facebook page optimization?
Check out these 15 tips I listed for you!
01) How to Create a Facebook Fan Page
This is one of the most important aspects of creating a Facebook page. Given that page categories and features vary across different page types, it’s critical to choose the right page type from the very beginning. Here is what you can choose from:
- Local Business or Place
PRO TIP – This category is relevant only to small local businesses that have no intention of expanding. In other words, if you have only one location, but you want to grow your business in the future, then this is not the right choice for you. - Company
- Brand or Product
- Public Figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or Community
02) Handling the Problem of Multiple Locations
What if you’re already running a business in multiple locations? Fortunately, you don’t need to request location pages from Facebook anymore. So, if you already have a Facebook page, you can use it as a parent page for your location pages.
Next, you need to optimize each location page properly by including your accurate name, address, phone number, username, category, website link, email, and write the “About” section.
03) Pick a Memorable Name for Your Page
No matter how logical it may seem, choosing the right name for a Facebook fan page is one of the most common problems marketers face.
While doing my research, I searched for the “plumber” keyword on Facebook. Here are a few examples that grabbed my attention immediately: “Ryans Direct – Bathrooms, Plumbing & Heating,” “Alesha Master Plumber Review Materials and Architect’s BOARD Exam Reviewers” and “Newcastle Plumbing & Heating Supplies Ltd?”
So, what’s wrong with them?
First, unless they have a photographic memory, searchers won’t be able to remember such long page names. And, that’s bad, given that the major goal of your social media presence is to increase brand awareness and get more people to come back to your page.
Second, stuffing your page name won’t put you in front of the right audiences. On the contrary, it can only hurt your online presence. Once they see your spammy name, your target audience will be less likely to click on your page and engage with your content.
Just like your domain name, your Facebook page name builds trust with your customers. It reflects your brand’s mission and core values. It sets you apart from the rest and grabs your target audience’s attention. That’s why you need to choose it wisely.
- Keep it timeless. If you’re planning to expand your business over time, then make sure your Facebook page name will remain relevant even then.
- Keep it short and memorable. Your main goal is to get people to remember your name easily.
- Avoid generic names like “Plumber” or “Travel” for a few reasons. First, in its guidelines, Facebook emphasizes that it tends to eliminate generically named and misleading pages. Second, generic pages may target the wrong audiences- ones that are not interested in buying from you.
- Use your company name as a Facebook name. This is a great opportunity to increase brand exposure and people’s awareness of it.
4) Choose a Short URL
In the world of SEO, URLs play an important role in your online presence. They’re one of the first things your target audience notices when performing a search. As such, they need to be highly informative, spam-free, and short.
The same goes for your Facebook page URL, also called Facebook username.
Namely, once you create a Facebook page, the social network will give you a lengthy URL that is far from being user-friendly.
Fortunately, you can replace it with a custom, vanity URL that will look something like this: www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname or you can check ours here.
You just need to go to Facebook’s Username Page, choose the right page in the dropdown menu, type in your desired name, check its availability, and if it’s free, you’re all set up.
This option gives you the opportunity to create a memorable Facebook page URL and, most importantly, optimize it organically for your keywords.
Now, here are a few things to consider when claiming your vanity URL:
- You can change it only once. So, choose the one that will make your users happy in the long run.
- You cannot give the username ownership to someone else.
- Facebook doesn’t let you violate other marketers’ trademarks.
- Always choose a Facebook username that is as close as possible to your company name to make it easier to find.
5) Implement Keywords Strategically
When people land on your Facebook page and want to find out more about it, they will go to your “About” section. And, if they don’t find the desired information fast, they will kick your page without converting. Now, every good About page needs to contain your Company Overview, Mission, and Products. To appear in relevant searches, local businesses should also make sure your address, city, state, and zip code information are up to date and accurate.
Facebook even lets you optimize your sidebar tabs according to your needs. So, instead of common fields like Home, About, Photos, Reviews, Likes, Events, and Posts, you can add some personalized tabs like “We’re on Instagram” or “Check out our Blog” to cross-promote your online channels and include your keywords.
It’s important to fill out these fields with relevant data, as they give you the opportunity to include your major keywords, build trust with customers, and add relevant website and social media links.
6) Write a Brief Page Description
You Facebook description is important for a few reasons. First, it appears in the SERPs and entices a searcher to click on your link. Second, it has a prominent place on both desktop and mobile versions of your page. As such, it’s one of the first things your visitors will notice. Finally, similarly to your site’s meta descriptions, it’s valuable to search engines because it tells them who you are and what you do.
Precisely because of that, you need to use your page description wisely. Just like with Twitter, you have a pretty limited space to inform the public about your page and provide a link to your site. This description should be up to 155 characters and it should be engaging, keyword-optimized and, yet, spam-free. Don’t forget to include your site URL to make it easily findable by those visitors that want to find more about you.
07) Include Your Phone Number and Address
When discussing local SEO practices, many digital marketing experts emphasize the importance of NAP (name, address, phone number) information. The same goes for your Facebook fan page. As many of your sales will come directly from social media, you need to make it easier for your customers to connect with you. Don’t make them leave your page and jump from one app to another to find your contact information and call you.
Instead, provide them with a seamless buyer journey. Give them the opportunity to call you directly from your Facebook page. Most importantly, include a map to make it easier for your local customers to find your store and visit it.
08) Get the Most Out of Your Content
Content marketing drives SEO. It engages customers, brings value to them, and proves your professionalism. When people understand that you really know what you’re talking about, they will be more likely to buy from you. This is why it needs to be superb. Marketers need to create content that is at least 10x better than the one that already exists online.
Once you create such content, the next step is promoting it on your Facebook page. While promoting your content on your Facebook page will give it greater exposure, send more traffic to it, and increase conversions, quality content also brings numerous benefits to your Facebook page. It will boost its visibility on Google and increase your Facebook followers’ engagement.
Creating high-quality content and sharing it on your page is also a great link building opportunity. First, this will make your content visible to authoritative people in your niche and inspire them to share it on their social networks. This is great, given that Google indexes social networks just like any other web page.
The only problem with this plan lies in the fact that you cannot write loads of top-notch articles on your own. This is where curated content steps in. This is content created by other reputable resources on the web. By sharing it on your Facebook page and tagging its authors, you will get yourself noticed by their audiences, bridge the gaps in your content promotion calendar, and increase your page’s credibility.
Sure, you can curate and manage your original and curated content manually, but this is an extremely time-consuming and nerve-wracking process.
Instead, invest in a reliable social media management tool like Buffer and Hootsuite and it will do these boring, repetitive tasks for you. When promoting your content, make sure you test your headlines, post length, and hashtags to see what practices work best for your audiences and focus on them in the future.
09) Promote Your Page on Other Channels
In 2019 and beyond, backlinks will remain one of Google’s fundamental ranking signals. They indicate your site’s authority and get Google to rank it higher in its results.
Additionally, they increase your brand visibility and help you position yourself as an authoritative source of information. Precisely because of that, building quality links should be a key element of your SEO strategy.
The same idea applies to optimize your Facebook fan page for search engines. Make sure you link to it from your website, personal blog (if you have one), author bio in your guest posts, and your social media channels.
10) Optimize Your Profile and Featured Images
When optimized properly, a Facebook page will help you build a recognizable brand and reflect its values and missions. One of the first steps you need to take to achieve that is to customize your profile picture and cover photo.
Facebook gives you a bunch of ways to express yourself. Your cover photo needs to be visually appealing and related to your specific products or services. It needs to promote a straightforward message and evoke emotions in your customers.
Just make sure you follow Facebook’s rules when creating your profile and cover photos. Namely, Facebook’s above-mentioned guidelines emphasize the following:
“Your Page’s cover photo or profile picture must not include a verified checkmark, and also must not include third-party products, brands or sponsors.”
11) Use Reviews to Build Trust with Potential Customers
Many SEO experts claim that adding trust signals such as customer testimonials and reviews to your site can skyrocket your conversions. And, that’s true. Statistics say that online customers trust online reviews as much as their friends’ and families’ recommendations.
And, this is yet another significant SEO tactic you need to replicate to your Facebook fan page. Namely, social media is all about customer engagement and building stronger relationships with them, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Start by encouraging customers to review and rate your location page. Go to Settings > General > Reviews and choose “Allow visitors to review this page”. Sure, if you’re afraid of negative comments, you can always disable this option, but this is something I never recommend. Namely, customer reviews increase your brand’s transparency and trustworthiness. And, the way you handle them indicates how professional you are.
Most importantly, negative comments are there for a good reason. If something’s wrong with your brand, people want you to fix that. And, if you’re just neglecting their suggestions, they will stop following you and buy from your competitor that values their opinions.
Your goal is to take both positive and negative comments seriously and respond to them professionally. By helping your followers solve problems fast, you will encourage them to share the positive word of mouth about you, and even turn them into paying customers over time.
12) Make Sure Your Page Looks Great on Mobile Devices
Just because your content looks great on desktop devices, it doesn’t necessarily have to look that good on mobile ones. And, as you know we’re living in the mobile-first era, where meeting your mobile users’ needs is of paramount importance.
Therefore, you need to check your Facebook page to see how it shows on mobile devices. Remember that, sometimes, even your “About” page looks different on desktop and mobile devices. The same goes for any other critical information, such as your logo, tagline, CTAs, your cover images, and the content you share. You need to test these elements regularly to make sure they stay prominent, in a mobile-safe area.
13) Have Strong Calls to Action
In SEO, calls to action are extremely important. They grab your visitors’ attention, intrigue them, and inspire them to click on the button and convert. However, not all CTAs are the same. Generic options like “Buy Now” don’t resonate with your audiences and won’t bring you the desired results. To harness all their power, you need to create powerful, persuasive, unique, and informative CTAs that tell your customers what to do next.
The same rules apply to your Facebook fan page. You can add a strong CTA that will either start a customer’s conversation with your brand or help them find out more about your business. Always make sure that your CTA agrees with your content and resonates with your target audience.
14) Claim Unofficial Facebook Pages
Have you ever searched your business’s name on Facebook and seen a bunch of pages with your brand name you cannot control? These pages incorporate a map, loads of reviews and ratings and yet you cannot manage them. What’s wrong?
These pages are created by Facebook if there is no official brand page. This way, it allows visitors to leave comments, rate the place, and check-in anyway. Unfortunately, Facebook sometimes gets carried away and create such supporting pages for brands that already have official location pages.
Luckily, this problem is easily solvable. All you need to do is claim those unofficial pages and merge them with the official ones. This will give you full control of customer reviews on Facebook and make your brand more reliable.
Now, there are numerous ways to claim a Facebook page. You can do so through a phone call, email, phone bill, business license, and so on. The verification process usually takes 24 hours, after which you will be able to merge a duplicate page with your official page using the “Merge into a verified page you manage” option.
15) Conduct Regular Facebook Page Audits
Once you create a Facebook page, start sharing content, and building relationships with your target audience, you need to know whether your messaging really speaks to them.
Facebook page audits are similar to SEO audits or content audits. The idea behind that is simple. You need to constantly compare what you’re giving to them with what they really expect from you. Once you find out the major pain points in your strategy, you need to improve them to maximize user experiences.
Of course, to audit your Facebook page, you first need to configure it properly and include the features and tactics mentioned above. Run A/B tests of your Facebook posts to see what content resonates best with your audiences and choose it. For example, what content descriptions generate more clicks from Facebook- shorter or longer ones? What content resonates with and engages your audiences- textual, visual, or videos? These are all crucial SEO factors you need to consider when testing and optimizing your Facebook page.
Ready to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Search Engines?
Not so long ago, a Facebook page was simply a place where a business connected with wide audiences and promoted their products and branded content.
However, things have changed.
Today, wise marketers use these channels to boost user experiences, increase brand loyalty, and drive qualified traffic to their site. Most importantly, they use them to build firmer relationships with their target audience.
Precisely because of that, your Facebook page needs to be perfectly optimized. And, I hope these 15 tactics will be your valuable starting point!
Is there anything you’d like to add? Please let us know in the comments!
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