If your business is not on Facebook yet, you are missing out on one of the best (and cheapest) ways to find new customers, to understand what your target market wants or thinks, and to establish your online presence. Facebook also helps to promote Search Engine Optimization.
So how exactly can you use Facebook for SEO?
EdgeRank
EdgeRank is simply the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine which posts will show up on your Newsfeed. It considers interactions among the users through social signals, such as likes, comments, tags, shares, personal messages.
To use EdgeRank effectively for SEO, make sure that you engage your fans by posting updates, photos, and videos that they consider useful or interesting. If the fans like or comment on the posts, your activities will continue to appear on their Newsfeed.
Backlinks
Backlinks play a very important role in SEO because they help direct traffic to your website. Having several backlinks to other sites whose content are relevant to yours will help you rank higher with search engines.
Get a quality backlink by placing your website’s URL on your Facebook fan page. You can also create backlinks within Facebook by tagging or referring another page with related or pertinent content.
Promote your Facebook page in the other social media platforms to help drive new visitors and improve your site’s search engine visibility.
Keywords
These are ways you can use keywords for SEO on Facebook:
URL – You can customize your fan page’s URL by using keywords, which will help customers identify your brand and what your company is about.
About Page – Fill the page with relevant information about your company. Use keyword-rich descriptions so you can achieve the best SEO results.
Other fields – Use keywords in the page name, overview section, descriptions, image name and captions, comments, links, and event titles for optimization.
Content
Knowing the thoughts and behavior of your target market will allow you to create relevant content on your blog or website. Try outsourcing social media posts if you find this too time-consuming. Once the post is up, copy the URL, and paste it to your fan page.
Remember to include content that will not only benefit your company but will also help your audience so that they will like and share the links.
Finally, update your content on a regular basis because search engines favor websites that offer new information constantly.
Cross-links
Cross-linking is mainly the process of linking two sites, which allows users to check related websites that may be of further interest to them.
Make it easy for your fans to follow you on different platforms by providing cross-links to your other social media sites like Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, WordPress, Pinterest or YouTube accounts. Include as many links as possible but make sure that the content of each site is unique so users will see the value in checking the different links.
Don’t limit the ways you can use Facebook for SEO to those above. Keep looking for new methods that will set you apart and on the cutting edge.
How does your business use Facebook?