How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for SEO

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

There is no denying that Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla of social media marketing. A reported 600 million people visit Facebook every month! Regardless of your product niche, chances are at least a handful of your target audience uses Facebook to varying degrees. Creating a Facebook page for your company is a great way to connect with your customers, but don’t let it stop there. Your Facebook profile can rank in the search engines right alongside your website, so don’t forget to optimize it for SEO!

Here are a few ways to optimize your Facebook page for SEO

1. Create a custom URL
Facebook URLs used to be a string of random numbers. But in June 2009, Facebook allowed users to customize their URL for a personalized Facebook username. If your company hasn’t already done so, be sure to claim your own custom URL. This can help Facebook users find your profile when conducting searches. It is also a good place to incorporate targeted keywords. For instance, the Brick Marketing Facebook URL is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brick-Marketing-SEO-and-SEM-Firm/14204584980. I intentionally included SEO and SEM Firm into the username because those are keywords I’m hoping to rank well for.

Tip: Be sure you create a URL you can live with for a long time. Once you create a custom URL, you can’t edit it.

2. Add content snippets
I use the Brick Marketing Facebook page as a hub of information. I post blog posts from this blog as well as the Brick Marketing Internet Marketing Blog articles that my team has written that have been published on 3rd party sites, SEO video lessons I’ve uploaded to YouTube and more. I don’t always post the entire content to the Facebook wall; sometimes it’s just a snippet of content. These snippets are a good place to go after related keywords and provide an introduction to the content. I don’t want visitors reading all the content on Facebook, I want to drive traffic to my blogs. Getting visitors away from your Facebook page and closer to your actual company site brings them one step closer to becoming a customer. It’s a great way to build inbound links and help drive traffic.

3. Don’t forget the Info tab
Your wall isn’t the only thing you should be focusing on. Your Info tab is a great place to provide a company description and incorporate links to your main site, your blog and any other social networking profiles you may have. Think of the Description section as one giant Meta tag. It’s another great place to go after targeted keywords. The Info tab also allows you to publish your company address. This can help with your local SEO efforts. Also, don’t forget your phone number! The Info tab has a spot for that too. Just like any local business profile (Yelp, Google Places, Bing Local, etc) you want to fill out your Facebook Info tab as completely as possible.