E-commerce is relatively something new but it has made many people all over the world wealthy and successful.  

Cyberspace is one realm where even small players can compete on a global field.  Aside from allowing many kinds of businesses to thrive and do their stuff online, it has also paved the way for various new services to help these businesses achieve their goals.

One of these services crucial to the success of online businesses is SEO services or search engine optimization services.  This is a fairly young industry, with many SEO companies just under a decade old.  Though this industry is quite young, it has been steadily growing and the range of services that it offers improves as time goes by.

When you have an online business or if you have a company website and you rely on the web to get your conversions, you will need to have and implement your search engine optimization strategy.  If you feel that you are not up to the demands of search engine optimization, you can seek the services of a reputable and good SEO company.

If you want to succeed in this area, look for a solid SEO company with a good track record to help you out.  A good SEO company with solid experience and expertise in many areas of search engine optimization can help place your firm in an advantageous position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Though you will have to shell out some money for this, it is an investment that you cannot afford to exlude.

Here are some of the search engine optimization services that a well rounded, good SEO company can give you:

Keyword-Research.  At the starting point of any initiation for search engine optimization are keywords.  You would need to know the right keywords to target and use to help your site to get a high ranking in search engine page results.  To achieve acceptable organic search results, you would need to know the keywords used by your potential customers in their search engine searches.  After determining this, then the real work starts.

The process of keyword research is tedious but a good SEO company can remove the laborious process from your staff and in most cases achieve better results.  You just need to cooperate with the SEO company, for them to better understand your business.  That’s more important than you might think. Based on this, they will work out a priority set of keywords to get the  keyword research underway. More keyword research will follow in most cases.

Link Building.  After determining the right keywords to use in your business’ SEO campaign, strategic link building is another service your SEO company can provide you.  A good link building strategy is crucial in any SEO campaign because it is deemed one of the main elements for your site to rank well for a chosen keyword.  Link building is about having anchor text that defines your product page content or service, linking to relevant sites, and getting approved links from reputable sites.  To give your site the boost it needs, your SEO company must come up with an effective link building campaign.

Social Media Marketing.  The internet is usually referred to as social media because it is all about connecting with other people.  Moreover, more and more people are signing up for various social networking and social media sites.  So obviously, one important portal in cyberspace to do some marketing is through social media.  This is why most SEO companies offer social media marketing on top of the usual SEO services they offer.  If you want social media marketing included in your SEO marketing campaign, be sure to look for a SEO company with a solid grasp of Web 2.0 and has a solid track record in working in this particular sphere. It is not as straight forward as some would have you think. Social media is about people and it’s inclusion must have a strong consideration to that point – PEOPLE!

Hope this of some value in your decision making process,

Ray Baker

Backlinks are important components especially with search engines and  optimization strategies.  If you want your site known in cyberspace and to create an awareness for your brand, using backlinks as part of your overall strategy would be an excellent idea.  The simple rationale for is the fact that search engines and people can only find your website if you let them know where and how to find you.

Here are just some of the reasons why you need to build backlinks for your website:

Traffic.  Having backlinks help build and increase the traffic to your site.  Many Netizens like the sense of suspense when clicking on a link and not knowing for certain where that link leads.  Of course, they must like the content of your site for them to be enticed to visit it again.

Aside from letting people who see your link know who you are, you also build your brand and reputation in the process.  It would really help if your links are placed in sites that are credible and considered as authorities.  This sense of credibility and authority will also rub off on your site as well.

If more traffic is driven to your site via your backlinks, you can generate more activity and, consequently, more revenues.  Moreover, you can have your content, products, or services get recognized in the process.

Get Indexed By Search Engines.  If your website is indexed by search engines, it will show up on search engine results of people who are searching for queries and terms pertinent to what your site offers.  If you want people to know of your website’s existence and the value of its contents or products or services that you offer, getting indexed by search engines is the way to go.

If you have quality backlinks, search engines find it easier to index your site.  The search engines will not find you unless you give them a clue on where they can find you.  This could not be done unless you build backlinks to your site.

PageRank.  Improve your site’s PageRank if you want to be discovered by your target audience and target market.  The higher your ranking, the better.  Aside from doing the necessary search engine optimization techniques, linking to pages that are respected, credible, and with high PR value will enable you to acquire even a small portion of that site’s PageRank value.  Though this is only possible with backlinks that have dofollow qualities, this is one technique that you simply cannot afford to ignore.

Having a high PageRank gives your site a competitive advantage over competitors.  This kind of ranking gauges the importance of your site as far as search engines are concerned.  There are many Netizens who also base their judgment on what search engines say.

Target Keywords Ranking.  People using search engines input keywords when searching for information about something.  Consequently, search engines look for sites that have the searched keyword in its content and ones that are relevant.  The results are then according to rank that search engines gave to all relevant sites.

Many sites use keywords as the anchor text of their backlinks.  With these, search engines will have idea of what your site is all about.  Search engines crawl and follow every backlink on cyberspace and these backlinks, in turn, serve as some sort of votes for certain keywords or terms.  The quality and the quantity of your links are important considerations for your site to be ranked on search engine result pages.

As an SEO consultant I can tell you that optimizing for conversion can be done through many strategies and tactics.  These can range from simple to difficult and the results also vary depending on the strategy used.  A website owner can do the task himself or can let a web professional do the job.  For increased conversion rates and website revenues, here are some simple steps to website optimization:

Increase Your Visibility.  Aim to have your website be more visible on cyberspace.  One way is to improve your search engine rankings so that potential customers can easily find your site.  To do this, you must optimize your site with keyword-rich, fresh, quality, and informative content.  Using meta tags, alt tags, and a site map would also help a lot in your aim to optimize your site to increase its conversion rates. Later, learn more sophisticated elements like silo building, synonym usage and LSI.

It would also be helpful if your contact information is displayed prominently in your site.  Giving the option for your website visitors to contact you for further information would also be a great way to build your credibility and to connect with your prospective clients.

Aim For Faster Load Times.  If your website is slow to load, having less conversions and high bounce rates are natural consequences.  Impatient visitors would tend to just leave your page while it is still loading.  To see if how fast or slow your website loads, test the time it takes your site to load using various connection speeds.  If you find out that it loads slowly, aim for faster load time.

You can do this by optimizing your CSS and HTML code and doing away with items that are unnecessary or redundant.  Ask yourself if your site would be okay with or without those items.  If yes, eliminate them by all means.  Another important thing is to compress your images as large images are some sometimes the reason web pages load slowly.

Make Site Navigation Easy And Simple.  Users and site visitors often-times get frustrated when sites are difficult to navigate.  Many of them just simply give up and this results in lower conversion rates.  To make site navigation easy and simple for them, group the content of your site accordingly.  If you are offering products or services, you would need to categorize them by price, brand, or other applicable groups so that your visitors can find what they are searching for easily and quickly.

Shortening the path to purchase is also an excellent idea if you want to improve your site’s conversion rate.  When your customers find they have to navigate through several pages just to place an order, there is a big probability that many of them will abandon their shopping cart mid-way through the process.  In order to avoid this happening, adjust your purchase path to enable them to make a purchase in just a few steps.

The Importance Of Multi-variante Testing.  To determine which combinations of your website elements translate to more conversions, multivariate testing is needed.  With this, not only one website element is tested but the different combinations of content, headlines, images, and pricing.  Identifying the combinations that result in high conversion rates is important so that you’ll know what strategy to maintain, what to focus on, what to strengthen, and what to do away with.

There are many ways to make a web page attract favorable ratings or rankings and to appear in the first pages of search results.  Companies that engage in internet marketing recognize the importance of being ranked favorably.  This would mean added traffic to a company website and, consequently, possible business deals.

Most businesses combine various SEO strategies for their internet marketing campaign.  However, there are certain tactics that needs to be avoided. Improper search engine optimization strategies are usually given penalties that range from light to serious penalties.   You may find your website plummet from its current ranking or you may be banned for a period of time.  This, needless to say, is bad for business.

To steer clear of search engine penalties, here are some of the things you need to remember.

• Keep Your Web Content Original.  Aside from avoiding search engine penalties, ensuring the originality of your web content is a big plus for viewers.  Keeping your content fresh and original will help you create your website’s identity and will help you build a following.

• Avoid plagiarism at all cost.  Plagiarism is a big no-no where you use another person’s work without giving credit or when you claim it as your own.  A penalty could result even with a single copied sentence from another source.  There are various online tools nowadays that can be used to check whether a particular work is plagiarized or not.

Also, be wary of duplicate content as you can get penalized too.  If you really can’t do away with it, if it is that necessary, you can add the tag “rel=canonical” to the site that contains duplicate content.  Many search engines give consideration for a “canonical” tag.

• Is Anything In There? Does your page have hidden content? Using hidden content is a technique used by some websites to get higher ranking for keywords.  This is usually done by using the same color or blending the text with the background.  This is one of the common reasons why a site gets penalized.  If you want to elevate, instead of sliding down, your ranking, avoid including hidden text in your site.

Also, stay away from cloaking.  It is a trick done where the content presented to search engines is different that what can be seen.  This also merits a penalty and your ranking is usually dropped if you are found guilty of this misdemeanor.

• Don’t Overdo It.  Keyword-rich content is a good thing if you aspire for higher page rankings.   When correctly used, the use of relevant keywords in your site helps not only search engines but also users in determining the value of your web page.  A penalty usually results when you forget to rein in your site’s keyword density.

This excessive use and repetition of keywords is a tactic used to mislead the crawlers of search engines in the effort to improve ranking.  There will be web site owners who are not aware that too much keyword density is something that they could get penalized for.  Always bear in mind that to avoid penalties and to help your page climb up the search ladder, ensure that your keywords comprise 5%, at the most, of your content.

• A Few Links At A Time.  Avoid including a lot of links in your site as it can be considered a link farm and be penalized for it.  This is especially true if the influx of links is sudden.  You could get flagged, and ultimately, penalized.

Link building is a cornerstone of the principle of search engine optimization but this process should be organic and gradual.  Search engine companies have ways of knowing whether the links in your sites were artificially generated or not.

You should also avoid linking to banned websites.  Aside from search engines reducing the importance of your site, being linked to a banned site may also not sit well with the people who visits your site.

As more and more people are getting internet access and are getting online everyday, there is also a remarkable increase in the manipulation  of search engines.  Now, more than ever, many businesses seek search engine optimization strategies to increase awareness of their businesses and of course to increase their website revenues.

With the rising demand for various search engine optimization services, the number of companies offering SEO services has also increased.  For any business, choosing the right SEO company for their need is a serious matter. It can be quite a challenge to look for the right company that could give you what you are looking for.

When looking for a SEO service provider, be on the look out for unscrupulous entities who practice black hat SEO.  If your SEO-based internet marketing campaign is handled by consultants or companies that use black hat SEO techniques, you will surely find yourself in hot water.  Your site can get penalized by search engines or be banned from results generated by search engines.  That would be money down the drain and your reputation can be hurt in the process.

Be on the look out for these companies and consultants who use black hat SEO tactics.  Here are some of the warning signs you should look out for.

• Page One Rankings Guaranteed.  Be wary of SEO companies or consultants who guarantee that your site will get page one rankings through their services.  This is simply impossible to guarantee.  The catch phrase here is “guarantee page one” as there are a lot of factors for a site to get top rankings, many of which are not within the control of the SEO service provider.Though there are indeed SEO companies that have accomplished page one rankings for their clients’ site but most would not guarantee  the results.

• Assurance Of Permanent Top Rankings.  If it is not possible to guarantee page one rankings, so then is the assurance to be permanently on top of the rankings.  As there are no guarantees in almost anything in life, a respectable SEO service provider would not give you this but will instead confer with you about trends and will give you a general estimate on the possible length of time for your site to be indexed. Getting good rankings is an outcome of constant and consistent efforts.  Beware of service providers that assure you of permanently good rankings with just one major campaign.  To put it in other words, you just can’t expect your cabbage patch to survive if you only water it once a year.

• Link Buyers/Link Farms.  Backlinks are important components of any SEO-based internet marketing strategy.  You can boost your ratings with search engines and improve your website’s traffic if you build quality backlinks.  If you buy links for this purpose, you will find yourself in a quandary. If a SEO service provider tells you that you should buy links, keep your guard up.  Also, some links the provider may be talking about can be of poor quality and often come from “free” link farm sites that will not give your site the traffic that it needs nor wants.  You could be banned by search engines if you fall for this.  Though there are sites that charge for submission like Yahoo directory, buying links in general is not a good practice in Google related SEO.

• The Gateway Pages Advocate.  Search engines are pulled towards gateway pages or doorway pages through improper tactics like keyword stuffing.  (Rarely works anymore) The user is then redirected to another page by a gateway page.  These kinds of pages are considered as spam.  If your site is discovered using such tactics, it could get banned by search engines.

Stay away from SEO service providers who advocate the use of gateway pages.  Instead of getting favorable rankings, your site can get penalized or, worse, banned.

In my opinion, this approach to building back-links shows desperation or indeed the lack of skills to establish quality content or link bait on behalf of their clients. Fortunately, the firms I’m referring to were not Australian but who knows how long it will be before this irresponsible practice of filling the web with junk hits the shores of the land of Oz too?

SEO firms have the responsibility of fighting this spammy behaviour and protecting their clients reputations and online image.

It’s not that hard to trace back links to see where they are coming from and which links point to which site. You don’t even need sophisticated tools for that exercise. How long do you think it will be before people start to identify and nominate sites that have poorly written articles developed from article spinning software and declaring them underhanded. Not long I’ll bet.

Article spinning software

Deals pop up all the time and I haven’t seen the results of one that can produce a decent, interesting article let alone get the grammar and sentence structure correct. So what are the general public seeing and thinking?

I don’t believe any one firm can put their hand on their heart and say I’m doing this with honour and integrity for my client. For starters, not even a fool follows a badly written article to end up salivating with frustration and angst while looking for the link to take him to the next piece of content dribble or website. Nearly everyone clicks away before reading just a few words. The only visitors who use the link are those curious to see who would be stupid enough and more likely, underhanded enough to choose this idiotic link building approach. There, I said it!

Take the best scenario. The spelling is correct and the punctuation is correct but the story will be rubbish along with any intended message and if it uses a thesaurus swap technique, then you’re in a for a real shocker!

Providing good content is the rule of thumb. Why? Because that’s what brings real buyers and interested visitors to the destination site to sign-up, buy or take action in some way. They need to believe in their experience thus far. Good content make you or your client an authority especially when related content is ubiquitous.

I am not saying that if you are outstanding with SEO you must be a brilliant, envied writer as well (although it would help) because there are many services available to help you along the scribing route. ie. http://rentacoder.com, http://guru.com, http://elancewriter.com to name a few. They are not affiliate links BTW.

Even a browser search under “freelance writer” will put you in front and you don’t have to pay the earth. Most experienced writers are reasonable and charge for their level of ability. I prefer writers who have been under the scribe for a lengthy period and have a qualification. They seem to know what you need without a list of  ‘must haves’ with each project.

One really good (I mean researched and planned) article will do you and your objective more good than a thousand spun articles both short and long term every time and it works out to be more cost effective if you do the sums.

If you are an SEO consultant and you want to continue on that path, don’t use articles from spinning software or writers who can’t spell the word ‘pen’. Do it, manage it, or outsource it correctly. Keep this industry clean, professional, results oriented and special. That’s why your clients hire you, & more importantly, continue to do so!

I’ll now get off my soap box…

Ray Baker
SEO and Internet marketing consultant, Sunshine Coast – Australia

Anchor text and back links

How to use anchor text for backlinks

What is an anchor text link?

This term is often misunderstood with other things in linking but for the main, it means a link which indicates in its text that which you would expect to find on the landing page if you click on it.

So if the anchor text link on a website page stated the words ‘Australian venomous spiders’ what would you expect to find on the landing page that it linked to? That’s right! A landing page with content relating to Australian venomous spiders. It really is as simple as that.

Most search engines rely on these anchor text descriptions to identify the subject matter of a webpage. If the page however is misleading and the search engines find out (and they will) that page is likely to be penalized by dropping it to the bottom of the heap (supplementary pages). Learn more about search engines.

The sites you would find on the first page of Google will respond to such a search but only those that have been optimized and are recognized for their relevant subject matter will show. Meaning that there would need to be some kind of backlink,  part of the title, H1 tag or url that identifies the pages as ‘australian venomous spiders’. I should quickly add here that all of the above would be closer to worlds best optimizing practice. Remember – never cheat, you could be burned at the stake and your website hurled into pergatory if you are naughty.

How to Anchor Text

This is pretty straight foward really but some clarity never goes astray.

Let’s say your site’s domain name is http://aussie-venomous-spiders.com and you wanted it known for providing information on australian venomous spiders. This is how the anchor text should be structured.

Here’s a sample anchor text html

<a href=”http://www.aussie-venomous-spiders.com”>australian venomous spiders</a>

Notice I included the www in the link. I recommend you do that too.

Anchor Text Backlinks

When someone on another blog or static website wants to refer to your site they hopefully use a similar anchor text as above. This would then become a back-link. Why? Because it’s pointing back to your site.

These kind of back-links are very powerful and they are good practice. The more you have pointing back to your site from other websites around the globe, the better. Internal linking should not be overlooked using this practice either. Too many webmasters and designers discount the value of internal linking using anchor text. I have used some internal links in this article.  See my article on SEO and link building.

One more thing, the higher the page rank of the page pointing back to your site, the more significant effect it has. Higher page rank back-links will push your page (and site) up through the pages quicker than lower pagerank back-links. Here are ten simple rules for good SEO and increased website traffic.

It really doesn’t matter if the anchor text says either australian venomous spiders or australian venomous spiders for sale. The same outcome will be achieved. There is much more to this subject but for now we are only covering anchor text and how to set one up. If you’re hungry for more tips and information, register and download my free internet marketing course. There are ten chapters and each one is emailed to you every couple of days.

Search engine image

When it comes to optimizing a website or blog so that it gets a lot of attention from Google and the other search engines, there are a lot of things to think about.  Some of these things are really obvious, and others are obscure but nonetheless very helpful for good search engine rankings.

Here are ten tips that will help move your site up the charts:

Bold your keywords Use the bold tags around some of your target keywords on each page of the site. You do not need to use them every single time, but do use them consistently. There is a theory that bold keywords get more attention from search engines, and they also draw the visitor’s view directly, so it’s a good idea to use them for emphasis.

Link deeply.   Getting links to your site is great, but getting links coming in to a bunch of different pages on your site is 100% better. It tells the search engines that you have a lot of valuable content on your website, and it’s not all on the home page.  When all of your incoming links go to your home page, it looks as if they’re automatically generated or that your site is shallow. In order to get deep links, you should put relevant, worthwhile content on your internal pages. Articles, services, and online tools will draw people to your site, and have them link back to it from their websites.

SEO directory sites.  In the United Kingdom and in Canada, there are lots of directories for company websites based in those specific countries. If you can secure a business address in one of those companies, you can also be included on the SEO directory.

Social bookmarking.  If visitors like your page and want to be able to return to it easily, clicking on a social bookmarking link not only helps them do that, it also helps with your search engine rankings.  You’ll want to take advantage of a widget that you can add to your page or blog so it’s easy for visitors to bookmark you.  These are some of the most popular social bookmarking sites:  Digg, StumbleUPon, Reddit, Squidoo, Blinklist, and Blogmarks.net.  There are literally hundreds more.

Newsletters and articles for ezines.  Ezine publishers sometimes archive their ezines, and the links to your site might remain active and feeding your site traffic for many years.

Text links should always be first in the source code for any pages on your website. Sometimes websites will have image links in the navigation bar, but there should always be text links first as the search engines will only follow the first link they hit on for each page.   Also make sure that those text links are relevant and valuable to your site.

Multiplicity.  If you have one website, why not two?  If you have a number of different topics that could each fill up an entire site on its own, it might make sense for you to have more than one domain.  Wouldn’t it be great to come up first AND second on a search for your particular product or service?  Plus, you can list both of your sites on the directories for more traffic.

Exchanges.  No, not the tired and pretty much worthless link exchanges, but rather exchanging articles with another site. You can publish an article on your site that is relevant and worthwhile to your readers, with a link back to the other site.  They will also post your article on their site with links back to you.  Fresh content for both sites, and high quality links for both sites- a win/win situation for you both!

Title your links.  This helps readers to know where you are sending them, and also is figured into the page relevancy by some search engines.

Overdoing the anchor text is not a good thing, because it looks like it’s automated. You should change it up; use the company name, what your product is, sometimes your URL.  The key is to keep it changing consistently.  Your anchor text should be something descriptive of your site, or your company name or website address.

Use a site map if your site is big; link to it from every single page on the site. Search engine robots can then find all of your pages quickly and easily for indexing. Even smaller sites need a miniature site map, the navigation bar, for search engine reasons.

For more information on optimizing your site, check out your seo marketing checklist.

Computer screen

If you have a website, you need it to rank high in the search engines.  If your site ranks high with Google and Yahoo it means you have lots of traffic coming to your site, and more sales or advertising revenue.

Think first of the phrase you want to rank well for; if there are only a few other sites using that phrase, it is relatively simple getting good placement with the search engines.  The trick is to be sure the exact phrase you want to rank for is in the <title></title> tag and in at least one other area on that page.   Not everyone catches on to this simple tip, and in fact many times when looking at someone’s page the keyword phrase is not included anywhere.  Be sure to include your phrase on your page, and also make sure it’s not included in a graphic of any kind- such as a logo.  Google does not read graphics and doesn’t know what words are contained in any graphics included.  Be sure to change the <title> tags on your page as well; you don’t want it just to say “Home” unless “Home” is your keyword phrase.

For more competitive phrases, you’re going to have to do considerably more work.  Here are some things that will help raise your rankings:

• Write a distinct <Title></Title> tag for every page, precisely describing that page.  Your title should be relatively short and definitely not more than eight to ten words.
• Add content, and pages, regularly. Shoot for two new pages a week to keep the content fresh. One page each week is okay, two is great, any less than that are you are not helping yourself.
• New pages should be compelling, unique, and a source of reliable information. If you want your site to rank high for alcoholic beverage recipes, then make it the absolute best resource for drink recipes out there on the web.
• Be sure to make your pages available through normal <A HREF> links.  Don’t use Flash links or JavaScript only
• Link to good quality sites which have content that is relevant to the readers of your site.  Ask, nicely, for a reciprocal link, but don’t demand it.
• Make your website design as user-friendly as possible. It should look good, give great information, and not have any annoying little ticks.
• Stop trying to trick the search engines into ranking you high.  If you build informative, high quality pages for visitors the rankings will naturally rise and stay that way.  Focus on quality and bringing the readers of your page excellent, compelling content.  Ultimately, your rankings and the money will follow.  Your site will not rank well if you don’t spend the time it takes to build a quality site; tricks might work temporarily but will not last.  Make sure that your site is better than all of your competition and eventually it will rank number one.  Google’s secret algorithm, which defines how sites are ranked, is a rapidly moving target.  Some tricksters think they can get shallow and shabby sites to rank high, and often they can on a short-term basis.  Google quickly figures these games out and weeds out the bad sites from the top rankings- after all; it’s their reputation on the line.

What constitutes a “quality” page to a search engine?  The same kind of things we look for: relevance to what we are looking for and the page is an authority on its topic.   If you do a search for types of bananas and get results for pages that sell jewelry—how happy will you be?  Likewise, if you do find a page about types of bananas, but the content doesn’t really tell you much- how useful is it?  Useful information is imperative!  Hopefully, your banana page will also be part of a larger site with lots of information about related items- maybe other fruits in this example.  It also is helpful if the page has been around for some time, loads quickly, and is free of broken links and cheap keywords.

Another article that might be of interest: Search Engine Optimization: The Weakest Link for Most Web Sites

Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Facebook Fan Pages are now being used by many businesses to advertise, often to the extent that it’s used as the company’s home Page, or to point users to the company website. This sort of strategy works well for small or local businesses, or those that cater to a niche market.  Facebook has made some recent changes that help companies gain search engine (SEO) traffic.

Another method of getting the message out to potential customers is through Status Feeds, invitations, and messages, which are considered the “viral channels.” Using SEO tactics on your Page can help your Page reach lots more potential “fans” for your business, including those that you have no direct connections to.

Here are a few ideas for Facebook Page advertising:

1. Pick a great name for your Page.

While the temptation is there to stuff it with keywords- DON’T! Titles that look like spam will hurt your Page’s natural (AKA “viral”) growth rate, whereby your fans pass on information about your business and your Page to their friends, and so on.  If it looks spammy, people won’t share it with their friends and will be likely to hide updates from their News Feed.

Likewise, really generic names, like “real estate” or “travel” will have a negative effect, because Facebook has caught on to these generically named Pages, and has started disabling the updates on them, effectively putting these Pages out of business.

The best strategy is to use the business’s real name and not to change it.  Changing the name later on will cost you SEO points and a Google penalty, so pick a name and stick to it.

2. Pick a great URL

Once your Page has more than 100 fans, you have the ability to pick a vanity URL. (Facebook calls it a Facebook username.)  This is a relatively recent improvement, and offers a good SEO opportunity because you can incorporate more generic keywords for SEO purposes.  By combining the company’s actual name with generic keywords, you can help drive traffic to your Page.

Be careful picking your URL/FB username, because it can’t ever be changed.  Make sure the name you pick will work for your business now and in the future.

3. Add your Keywords

Near the top of your new Facebook Page is an “About” box where you can add information about the business.  This is where you’ll want to load up your keywords.  Keyword-dense writing near the top of your Facebook Page is very SEO-friendly.  Facebook limits where you can put lots of information, and this area is highest in the CSS structure on the Page where you can add text.

To add text here, click the box under your profile picture on your Page, where it says “Write something….”  The character limit is 250, so be sure to use the best, most relevant keywords while choosing your message wisely.

4. Add text and links on the “Info” tab

Every Facebook Page also has an “Info” tab that has metadata about the business and the Page. Filling this information out completely will increase the content score of your Page for lots of Google searches. For instance, the address, city, and zip code are important when someone does a local search.  Company overview and products are important for product-specific searches.  The websites field allows you to add direct links to your site or to other important sites.  If this information is displayed on your Facebook Page, it makes it easier for potential customers to find you both on and off the site.

5. Add photos with captions and events with descriptions

Just like blog postings, the more often your content is updated and refreshed, the better your page will rank.  It is vitally important to constantly update your page with interesting and relevant information. When you share a photo, be sure to use the caption field to add a description of it, and use keyword-dense text.  When adding events, make sure you use keywords in the description field to help you rank higher.  Also, adding a discussion forum can help you to naturally rank higher for your specific keywords.  Content shared on Facebook Pages is indexable by search engines, so use that capability to your advantage.

For more information about SEO and Social Media, check out this article about Twitter followers