10 Things to Do in Order to Obtain Lots of Website Traffic from Facebook

By Yasir Khan,
leading SEO consultant,
founder of Quantum SEO Labs,
Canada

http://www.quantumseolabs.com/services

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Every business owner understands how significant an online presence is for the success of his/her business. This fact is demonstrated by the number of websites cropping up today. However, it is not only owning a website that is a prerequisite today for the success of any business. A social media presence is equally important to create an exposure among the public, connect with the audience and eventually generate sales.

Social networking entered the online world with a big bang. Everybody wants an internet connection today so that they can socially connect with their friends through Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. It is no secret that web users spend more time in the social networking zone than any other online platform today.

Why is Social Networking Important for Your Business?

Besides many other reasons that highlight the importance of social networking for your business, the two main reasons are as follows:

1. Social Networking is the Online Counterpart to Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing is the oldest marketing strategy that is effective to this day. Word of mouth marketing drives brand recommendation. When people like what your business or your brand offers, they will recommend you to their friends, who in turn will recommend you to their friends if they like your services. This helps generate sales.

Online recommendations work similarly because when you have a social presence, people who like your brand will recommend you to their friends through social networking. They may do so by clicking the “like” button and using the “share” and “retweet” or “+1” feature on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

And this works! People tend to follow recommendations from their friends online to stay in the safe zone and avoid spambots.

Let’s see how this works for your website with the aid of Facebook:

1. When your customer likes your service, he is likely to click the like button on your Facebook Page. This action shows up on his recent activity (news feed).

2. A friend may observe this activity and click to see what your page is about or the user himself may recommend your page to his friend.

3. This friend may now visit your website (generating traffic) decide to try your service (generating sales) and if he likes it, he likes your page as well as recommends it to others.

Thus begins a chain linking one customer to another potential customer, generating traffic for your website and sales for you in the bargain. This also creates exposure for your business, thus, fulfilling your marketing goal.

2. Social Signals Determine Search Rankings

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are smart. They send out search spiders and get to know exactly what your social signals are so that they can determine your search rankings accordingly. This fact has been confirmed by representatives from Google and Bing, so you can rest assured that “social signals determine search rankings” is not just a passing rumor.

If you try to get to the bottom of why social signals determine search rankings, you may not nail the exact reasons; however, social signals have a direct and indirect impact on your website’s search rankings.

Let’s take a look at the social factors that lead to direct impact on search rankings.

1. Number of likes
2. Number of shares
3. Number of followers
4. Number of retweets
5. Number of +1s

The social factors that indirectly impact your search rankings are:

1. Increased backlinks and inbound links for your website
2. Increased positive reviews for your website
3. Increase in the number of citations of your website
4. Increase in the number of repeaters to your website
5. Higher time on site spent by your visitors.

These are the reasons why you should be active on social networks. If success is what you want your business to achieve, it’s pretty obvious that social networking is the need of the hour.

Optimizing Your Facebook Page For SEO

You may create a presence on every social networking site you know of to optimize your website for SEO; however, even in the social zone, reputation counts.

Facebook is among the most reputed social networking sites. Considering its popularity, a social presence on Facebook can be highly beneficial to your website and generate the website traffic you need.

The “proper” way to optimize your Facebook page is highly debatable because while some believe that a certain factor will work, others will disagree on the same. However, if you want search engines to shower you with loads of love that translates into higher search rank here are the top 10 things you can do on Facebook to generate lots of traffic for your website.

10 Things To Do To Generate Traffic From Facebook

Without any further ado, let’s take a look at the 10 strategies you should be aware of to optimize your Facebook Page for SEO.

1. Select the Best Name for Your FB Page

However basic this step may sound, it is one of the most essential strategies to optimize your brand on Facebook. Choose a suitable name for your FB page. Do not stuff it with keywords as that might make it appear too spammy.
The best option for you while choosing a name for your Facebook page is to stick to your company’s name so that people can associate your Facebook Page to your brand name.

For example, if your company offers travel and tourism packages, offers and deals, the Facebook Page name that would suit you the most is Matt’s Tours and Travels, instead of Matt’s Travel and Tourism Packages Offers and Deals. The trick is to keep it simple.

2. Opt For A Vanity Facebook URL

You can create a unique URL for your Facebook Page after you receive 25 likes for it. So if you want your business and your brand name to reflect in your URL instead of lengthy automated URLs, you can opt for a vanity Facebook URL.

You can include keywords about your business in your vanity URL. For example, if your business deals with travel and tourism, you can create a URL that reads as www.facebook.com/mattstoursandtravels.

3. Include Keywords In Your “About” Box

Your word count is limited while writing content in your “about” box, so make sure you choose your words wisely. Keep your “About” box content concise and precise. Including keywords in this content is the wise thing to do and you can do so by describing what your business does.

For example, if you provide customized travel and tour packages to customers, including this in the “about” box content will be favourable for your website and your business.

Also make sure you include a link to your website in your “about” box content so that people can visit your website if they want more information.

4. Do Not Leave Any “Info” Fields Blank

The information fields on your profile help you target more keywords in terms of your geographical location, products and services you offer, an overview of your company, your contact details (telephone number, address and e-mail address) and your website.
One way in which this helps is while a particular user is running a local search. You are more likely to turn up in their search results for “travel and tour packages Texas” if you have mentioned Texas as your geographical location.

5. Include Your Contact Details, Especially Your E-mail Address

Do not leave any contact details blank, especially your e-mail address. Customers may want to get in touch with you and find out about what you have to offer them. This is likely to convert potential customers to customers.

Mentioning your company e-mail address shows that you have an online presence, hence, your patrons are more likely to visit your website to check for further information.

6. Link Your Facebook Page to Your Website

Facebook allows you to provide a link to your website of your Facebook Page. You cannot recreate the exact replica of your website on Facebook and neither can you stuff Facebook with everything that is present on your website. Your customers will need something more comprehensive to obtain more information about you; that’s when they will turn to your website.

Make sure you provide a link to your website on Facebook so that your fans will not have to go looking for it and also because this action is beneficial to drive up website traffic. Even if this does not convert your fans into customers, most of your fans will still want to visit your website out of curiosity and greater web traffic is beneficial for search rankings.

This also applies to linking your other social networking profiles to your website.

7. Link Your Website to Your Facebook Page

Effective SEO is not only about improving the search rank of your website, but it also includes improving your Facebook Page rank. You can link your website to your Facebook Page by adding a “like” button to your website. In this way, your website visitors do not have to exit your page to open up Facebook and can “like” content or photos on your website directly.

8. Include Keywords in Your Status Updates

Even before social networking was linked to SEO, the most tried and tested method for SEO was keyword optimization and the good news is that it still works. You can optimize your posts on Facebook by including 2 – 3 keywords in it so that search engines can attract your content when a search with similar keywords is being run.

9. Post Content Wisely

Make sure you do not stuff Facebook with volumes of content. For example, if your website has a new article, do not upload the entire content of the article on your Facebook Page. The wiser thing to do would be mentioning what the new article is about on your Facebook Page, providing the introductory paragraph and a link to your website to continue reading the article.

Those interested in reading the article will obviously click the link to your website to read the article, increasing website traffic. However, this action calls for a very well written article. The title of the article, introduction and description should captivate the reader making him want to read the rest of the article.

Thus, it is essential that you post relevant and interesting content and that you post it wisely. This content can also feature 4 – 5 keywords.

10. Optimize Your Photos On Facebook

Ranking high among search results on Google’s image results page is not bad either. However, this can only come from optimizing your photos on Facebook. Facebook allows you to add captions to photographs, mention a short description and also indicate where the photos were taken. Make use of these fields and fill it with keyword rich content. This benefits your website when people are searching for images with similar keywords.

When people click on the image, Google mentions the webpage of the image, making people want to click for more information if the picture is captivating.

Creating and maintaining a Facebook Page is a lot of work, but optimizing it for SEO purposes can get even more challenging. However, there are a host of tips, tricks, strategies and tactics out there which you can learn and implement yourself to make your Facebook Page more favorable for SEO.

We have come far from doubting the power of social networking in SEO. It is now more than obvious that social signals are considered by search engines when determining search rankings. This is why neglecting the power of social media is not great for your business in the modern world.

Your online presence can speak volumes about your business, this makes it essential for you to have online presence and a social media presence on sites likes Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

This guest post has been contributed by Yasir Khan, leading SEO consultant in Canada and founder of Quantum SEO Labs. Quantum SEO Labs offers you a range of services to help you optimize your Facebook Page.

Published - April 2013

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