'Net Features : facebook pages

Crafting an SEO-Friendly Facebook Page

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Facebook is gradually becoming the standard, go-to destination for consumers that are interested in learning about a brand. In fact, according to an infographic from the marketing research company Lab42, 50 percent of consumers say a brand’s Facebook page is more useful than its website.

On top of that, 75 percent said they feel more connected to brands with Facebook, while 35 percent said they feel like brands listen to them more on the social network. Overall, a whopping 82 percent of respondents said Facebook is a “good place” to engage with brands.

This growing preference for interacting with brands through Facebook means that companies need to start putting as much (if not more) effort into optimizing their Facebook Pages for higher search engine rankings as they do for their websites, because it appears that consumers are going to head there first to check out their brands.

Here’s some SEO you can do to catapult your Facebook page to the top of the SERPs:

Claim Your Name
Obviously, the best place to start with your SEO is with your Facebook Page name and vanity URL; you know, all of that branding stuff. Your Facebook Page name will appear to search engines with the prominence of an <h1> headline, so you should name it after your business or brand and stay away from trying to stuff the title with keywords, which could hurt your viral growth on the social network because the Page will seem like spam to users. Putting your company’s name in the title ensures that consumers will be able to find you with little-to-no confusion, especially when they’re looking on search engines. However, once you select a name, don’t change it unless you absolutely have to, as Google (and presumably others) penalizes pages that change their titles.

And it doesn’t just stop there, because you also have to find the best possible vanity URL for your Facebook Page (although this option is only available for Pages that have at least 100 fans). You can select your username at Facebook.com/username, but keep in mind that the site won’t just let you pick generic keywords for your URL. While there may be some leeway that allows you to use keywords in conjunction with the name of your brand, you will probably be better off just using your brand name (or the closest unused variant you can come up with). Mostly, just make sure that your URL, like your Page name, contains the name of your brand and is carefully crafted to help you stand out on the SERPs.

Make Your Text Count
We’ve all heard about the importance of writing up original content that provides value to users while also taking advantage of the most important keywords in your industry or niche to help you appear higher for related searches. Well, that practice is just as important, although far more limited, on Facebook.

On the social network, you should incorporate as much SEO-friendly text (i.e. heavy on keywords) in your “About” section. This area on a Facebook Page is the only one the site gives you to include a lot of text, and they present useful opportunities to improve your chances of being noticed by searches for some of your brand’s most important keywords, because in addition to the regular About section (which can include a company overview, general description, etc.), there is also space for basic information, contact information and more.

Don’t Forget Multimedia Content
These days, so much of what is posted and shared on Facebook is multimedia content in the form of images or videos. It’s no secret that search engines have a difficult time crawling this content because it isn’t text-based, but luckily it still can be optimized for the search engines.

This is most easily be accomplished by simply appropriately naming any images, logos or videos that you post on Facebook with a filename that is descriptive and, if applicable, uses keywords. Since the titles of videos hare more heavily weighted, it is the easiest type of multimedia content to optimize. Once you’ve got SEO-worthy names, you can add more content to your photos and videos, such as captions or comments, that will also attract search engine bots.

Foster Discussion
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Facebook is a social media platform, and that your first task on the site is to be social with your fans. Conveniently, this sort of interaction can actually be beneficial to your SEO efforts, as well. By fostering discussions with other users on your posts, photos and videos, you’re allowing them to generate a wealth of additional content on your page. So, as long as your discussions remain on-topic, all of those user-generated comments could conceivably help improve your rankings for certain keywords. Unfortunately, it’s not known for sure how much weight search engines give to Facebook comments, but we do know that Google at least indexes them.

It’s (Still) All About Links
Links are incredibly valuable for SEO, a fact that remains true even on Facebook. And, as with traditional website optimization, the more links you can accrue, the better. If search engines see your Page getting linked to in numerous places (both on and off the social network), especially from respected or authoritative sources, it will be weighted much more heavily and likely rank higher.

You can start by linking to your Facebook Page on all of your other available Web properties (i.e. your website, Twitter page, YouTube channel, etc.), but you certainly shouldn’t stop there. If you’re going about acquiring links, you could also ask that they link to your Facebook Page in addition to, or in place of, your regular website.

However, the easiest way to get a bunch of links is simply to get more people to Like your Page. Since the site automatically puts links to the Pages that a user Likes right on their profiles, each new fan you get results in one intra-Facebook inbound link to your Page. Then once you foster more discussions and get fans to comment on and Like content on your Page, search engines will see even more reciprocal links in your content stream between you and your fans, since each user’s name on a comment or Like links back to his/her profile.

Better Facebook Data For Brands

Allison Howen — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:35:00 GMT

Web analytics provider Webtrends, has released Hoverstats, a free tool that will essentially add a new layer of data for brands to evaluate their Facebook performance.

The core feature of Hoverstats is its Post Strength Indicator (PSI), which is a metric that assigns a score to an individual Facebook Page post based on the total reach that is achieved through fan engagement.

The Webtrends PSI uses data from Facebook’s new Page Insights API to provide scores for a brand’s individual posts. This will give brands a simple way to evaluate fan engagement through specific posts.

Each post receives a number score from 1 to 100, based on indicators such as likes, shares, comments and reach. Scores are updated regularly, and past posts can also be rescored.

"With our new PSI score system, we're helping marketers, one post at a time, develop and publish Facebook wall content that fans truly engage with," says Alex Yoder, chief executive officer, Webtrends. "Overall, we see this as a way to help make the Facebook ecosystem a better place for both brands and users."

Currently, Hoverstats can be installed through a Google Browser plug-in by anyone who manages a Facebook Page. However, in the near-future, Hoverstats will be available on other browsers, including Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Facebook's Page Browser

Mike Phillips — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:30:00 GMT

Facebook has an interesting feature that you might not know about - recommended page subscriptions, or the Facebook Page Browser.

Essentially, its a page of Facebook Pages that are recommended to you based on your Facebook site activity. It's a continuously scrolling page that, by clicking once, subsribes you ('likes') to that page and all its future updates. It also broadcasts that you "like" the page to all of your friends. It's a simple thing, really, but with powerful possibilities.

As it stands, the reason this could be so monumental is that these are not advertisements nor are they presented that way. Unlike the standard Facebook ads that you see on your Facebook home page, these are personalized recommendations. So, the barrier to a click is dramatically smaller than when clicking a sponsored ad. Also, the one-click subscription is intriguing. This makes it very easy to subscribe to a page, although I could see a double opt-in requirement sooner than later.

For now, the Page Browser feature is not accessible from your home page - the only place I have found a link is on my own profile, under the 'Info' tab and listed under 'Likes and Interests' with a link that reads 'Discover more Pages.' That will likely change soon. What I'm most interested in is whether this will become a revenue generator for Facebook and an advertising option for businesses. Twitter rolled out sponsored tweets and trends and claims to have had success with them. They are also rumored to be working on even more advertising options. Surely, this is not lost on Facebook.

From a content discovery point of view, this is also interesting as it presents yet another alternative to standard search. These are lightly personalized recommendations (although I suspect that, over time, they will become increasingly personal) that make it very easy to discover content before you even have a chance to search for it.

Check out Facebook's Page Browser.

Listen to a recent Website Magazine Radio podcast about users' shift away from search.

Facebook Peak Times for Business

Mike Phillips — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:20:00 GMT

By now we all know that Facebook is dominating the world. It won't be long until Facebook implants are installed at birth and Mark Zuckerberg demands a framed photo in every living room. Well, maybe that's a little extreme. But Facebook is dominating the Web these days and for businesses, its important to know how and when to take advantage of the opportunity.

Every business should have a Facebook Page - a place where consumers can become fans and see updates in their personal feeds whenever you post to your Page. In terms of social media, there's no better way to become entrenched in users' online lives. But when is the best time to reach out?

Social media services vendor ViTrue has released results of a study "...compiled from nearly 200 million fans impressions on Facebook pages over a 5 month period (March though August 2009)." What they found is that Tuesday and Wednesday represent the highest click-through rates (CTR) on wall posts. Tuesday's CTR is an astonishing 9.89 percent, while Wednesday is no slouch at 9.87 percent. The worst days, somewhat surprisingly, are Thursday (4.39 percent), Saturday (2.7 percent) and Friday (2.67 percent). So, maybe Facebook users have social lives offline after all? Yes, that's probably true. And that's a good thing - it means you're reaching out to real people in real-world situations. That's big incentive to make your clickable wall posts inviting, value-driven and useful.

On average, the study shows an overall CTR of 6.76 percent, supported by an earlier study with Ad Age that showed CTRs of 6.49 percent just a few weeks ago. In those estimates - and these are educated estimates - those clicks were broken down by age:

13-17:   40%
18-24:   30%
25-34:   14%
35-44:   10%
45-54:   4%
55-plus: 2%

And by sex:

Female: 56%
Male:     44%

Impressive, these numbers are. What's more, they might actually be higher. ViTrue CEO Reggie Bradford explained in August, "If a site has 100 fans and your wall post gets five clicks, that's a 5% CTR. But if you assume only about 20% of those folks actually saw the post, it's really a 20% click-through rate." While his math is slightly off, the point remains the same - not everyone is going to see your wall posts, particularly when users might have hundreds of "friends." So, timing is also critical. You want to be present during the highest points of activity, but you don't want to get lost in the noise. The only real way to find your hot zone is to test it out and track your results.

All of these numbers are encouraging and the CTR far far exceeds those of traditional online ads. However, keep in mind that not everyone on the Web is on Facebook, and the site is relatively new to most people (as opposed to online ads in general). You can expect these rates to drop over time, as more people realize that becoming a fan of a business is a lot like opting in to an advertising campaign. Post nothing but ads or post too frequently and you'll soon have fewer fans. Or worse, they might remain a fan but hide your updates - skewing your numbers terribly. So, those businesses that prioritize value over clicks will be the ones that benefit the most from Facebook fans in the long-term.

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