Facebook SEO Strategies Everyone Should Know

Facebook pages for businesses have become increasingly popular over time and more and more business owners are learning how to become Facebook marketers.  Facebook has tried to make it even easier for people to spread the word about their businesses by creating more optimization opportunities for pages to get more traffic through SEO.  As a Chicago SEO firm, we cannot stress the importance of search engine optimization enough!  It can do wonders to help you appear at the top of a Google search.  Outside of optimizing your Facebook page, you should also optimize your social media pages, like Facebook.  What can you do to optimize your Facebook page?  Focus your optimization on the following parts of your Facebook:

(1) The URL: We rank the Facebook URL as the most important factor in optimizing a Facebook page.  In the past, Facebook has been known to punish generically titled pages, so we suggest avoiding that in case Facebook cracks down on that again.   Choose a username that very closely represents your brand or business.  That's the best and safest option.  Also keep in mind that once you've chosen your URL you cannot change it, so if you're not sure, sleep on it.  Choose when you're certain.

(2) The page name: Choose the best name for your Facebook page and keep it.  Choosing the right name is vital, so choose carefully.  Your title should not be stuffed with keywords to avoid looking like spam.  Fans will be less likely to share the page with friends and more likely to hide your updates from their newsfeed.  Your name should authentically represent your business.  Recently, Facebook has been disabling updates for generically named Facebook pages, which will negatively affect their ability to reach fans.  Changing your Facebook page's name could hurt your rankings, so once you pick it, keep it.

(3) Info tab: Your info tab should feature metadata about your page.  This tab gives you the opportunity to provide more information about the page.  Filling out the info field gives you the ability to include keywords and links, which could help increase the content score for Google searches.

(4) About box: Similar to the info tab, the about box on your page should again feature plenty of content filled with keywords to help with search rankings.  The about box is one of the most frequently read sections of a person's Facebook profile.  Why is that?  Because of it's location on the profile page.  It is located at the top of the page right below the main picture.  Most people notice that section first, so make sure you provide good, keyword heavy information.

(5) Page stream:  Status updates are a great place to provide links to wherever you would like your Facebook friends to go and are a powerful way to help you place links right near the top of your page.  And get this-- Google boosts pages that link to relevant sites.  It really is as simple as that.  Provide links to external pages that coordinate with the rest of your page's content and Google will take notice, providing you with a rankings boost.

Looking for more tips on optimizing your Facebook page?  Feel free to leave us a comment or contact us.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

Here at Integraphix we love to spread the word about how vital SEO can be to your website and in turn, how vital it can be to your business.  SEO can turn your website into a usable sales tool, working for you around the clock.  Aside from optimizing your website, consider writing a blog based around the industry your business is in for further optimization.  Why you ask?  Here are 5 reasons why your business needs a blog today:

Blogs will boost your web presence:  Looking to get your brand or business more recognition?  Blogs help boost your business's presence on the web.  Social media sites make it easier than ever to "tweet a link" to your posts or add the link to Facebook, which helps expose your blog posts to a wide audience, a majority of which you may not have had access to without the help of social media sites.    

Blogs can create brand advocates: Do you find yourself visiting a blogger's blog site frequently just to see the latest postings?  Do you feel compelled by someone else's blog content and enough so that you are purchasing their products?  Yes, that is the power of a blog.  If your content is constantly new, fresh, and appealing, it can create brand advocates.

Linking abilities to products/services: A blog is a wonderful place to link to products or services that you may find yourself mentioning in a post.  Internal links to outside content are a great way to help blog and product popularity as well.  If your business has a product or two that you'd like to sell, try writing something compelling about it and internally linking your blog post to it.  

Makes information available to everyone: Blogs help keep people updated on what's going on with you and your company.  Maybe people aren't reading your company newsletter, but perhaps they are indeed reading your blog, then use your blog to keep them in the loop.  Even if they don't read the newsletter, they can still get a rundown of what's happening with your company through your blog posts.  

SEO capabilities and blogs: One of the top reasons we love blogs here at Integraphix is the capabilities it gives for SEO.  Google, Yahoo!, and Bing love, love, love fresh content!  Blogs are a continuous stream of new content, which will easily catch the content-scanning eyes of the search engines.  The more you write and provide updates, the better your search engine rankings will be.  Utilizing powerful keywords and internal linking back to relevant pages (like your website) can help boost your rankings.

Want to talk to us about blogging?  Feel free to leave a comment below or contact us.