It used to be that with the right mix of keyword-laden text, reciprocal links, and clever use of heading text, a crafty SEO expert could push a website up in the rankings. But now the focus is on your Facebook page, and you still need to get your brand or business in the top of the rankings. Here’s seven tips to help you do just that.

1.  Push Your Brand Or Business Name

The names of your Facebook page, custom URL, and custom tabs are of utmost importance. Search engines see these titles in Heading 1, which means they’re heavily ranked by search engines. Craft the title of your page, tabs, and URL carefully, making sure they contain the name of your brand or business.

If you’re the proud owner of Joe’s Garage, but instead opt for “Mechanics You Can Trust,” Joe’s Garage isn’t going to rank highly on the SERPs. Your brand or business name is how you’re known and how you’re found, so be consistent when labeling your page, URL, and tabs. And once you’ve named your page or picked your vanity URL, commit to it.

2.  Get Links From Multiple Sources

As is the case with traditional SEO, getting links to your Facebook page and custom tabs is extremely beneficial. Links are like recommendations. If one friend recommends you eat at a certain restaurant, you’ll consider it. If a number of your friends echo that recommendation, you’ll be convinced.

If Google sees that your tabs and pages are being linked to by numerous sources, both on and off of Facebook, then your page and tabs must be important. But search engines also take into consideration where the links are coming from. A link to a custom tab on your business page will be weighted much more heavily if it’s from a popular, recognized source.

3.  Get The Most Out Of Wall & Custom Tab Content

More of your Facebook page is indexed by search engines than you may realize. For instance, your wall posts are indexed. But since wall posts lose their relevancy in time, they aren’t given much weight. Still, using your target words and phrases in your wall posts isn’t a bad idea.

Your new custom tabs you painstakingly created? Relax, those are indexed too. And given quite a bit more weight than wall posts. Remember, well-earned Likes are a significant ranking factor in Bing, and building Likes is one of the easiest and strongest things you can do for ranking Facebook content on Bing.

So if you haven’t already, build some custom tabs and name them appropriately. Use Heading 1 text, emphasize titles, and add bold text. Custom tabs have staying power, you and your friends can create links to your custom tabs, and you can even provide links to your custom tabs from external sites, so aptly named tabs with multiple links to them will be will be very beneficial in your SEO efforts.

Here’s where it gets tricky, though. If you use third-party applications to build tabs, make sure they’re configured so they’re indexed on Facebook and not on the third-party’s servers.

4.  Don’t Hide From The Search Engines

Google doesn’t “Like” your page. It’s a non-fan. So if you’ve got some key content on your custom tabs hidden behind a fan gate, Google can’t see it. And if Google can’t see it, it can’t be indexed.

While you may be inclined to build these gates to create a buzz about your page and drive up your fan count, carefully consider whether or not you want your content gated, because it will be hidden from search engines.

 5.  Put SEO-Rich Text In The Right Place

It may seem like common sense, but search engines can’t parse images, which means they can’t tell if there’s text inside an image. So don’t put your SEO-rich text within an image that you add to a new custom welcome tab. It can’t be indexed there. Instead, put that text on the About and Info tabs.

But remember that Facebook is a place for social connection and interaction, so don’t go overboard with SEO-rich text. Material that isn’t social won’t hold your fans’ attention, and can even cause abandonment.

6.  Optimize Your Multimedia

Videos are the easiest form of multimedia to optimize because the titles are heavily weighted. So make sure you’re giving your videos good titles, both on Facebook and on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Similarly, the images and logos you use on Facebook can be optimized by naming the files accordingly.

7.  Nothing Beats A Well-Run Page

Being a good community manager is just as important as an SEO campaign. The popular Facebook pages have all those likes because those pages embrace the ideology of Facebook: they’re interactive, engaging, and usable pages. Facebook, at its core, is about connecting with people, so don’t sacrifice the interactivity of your page for the sake of SEO.

Creating Facebook-only Content

Reward your fans for liking your Page by offering them something they can’t get anywhere else. Coupons and special discount codes are often the first ideas that come to mind, but there are so many other great ways to go about gaining user’s interest. Make your fans feel special with exclusive content, keeping these points in mind:

1. Think about why your fans actually Liked your Page to begin with.
2. Try to integrate the reason behind these Likes with your business’s core competencies.

For example, if you’re an admin of a Page for a primetime TV show, behind-the-scenes video clips would likely grab the attention of your users. Or, let’s say you’re a smoothie company. Posting your “secret menu” of specialty drinks is a great way to make your fans feel as though they’ve been given insider information. It’s all about a perception of exclusivity.

If your Facebook-only content is compelling enough, you will be rewarded for your extra effort. If you’re using social features correctly, active fans will share exclusive content with their friends, your fan count will grow organically, and these new fans will be genuinely interested in your content. Good content is always king, and will remain the key driver in drawing fans to your Page in the first place.

Contests & Promotions

Contests and promotions are such a big deal that they needed their own section — they’re arguably one of the most effective of tools for keeping your fans interested and engaged with your Facebook Page.

There are a number of great reasons to run contests on your Page. Due to their interactive nature, contests encourage a high level of interaction from fans, and at the same time, they also work really well as Facebook-only content. Users can only participate in your contest if they are actively using your Facebook Page.

Another great reason you should run a contest? User-generated content! When users begin to share their own content and do more than just comment on your posts or Like them, you know you’re really hitting on the definition of “engaging”. Running a contest that has users submitting essays, photos, or videos encourages users to actively participate and become invested into your campaign.

This does much more than a passive sweepstakes. Keep in mind, though, that while these types of contests can be great for your brand, they’re not necessarily simple. The prize must be worth the amount of effort a user must put forth to enter the contest in order for you to see real ROI.

Contests also allow you to collect valuable data about your fan base. Ask entrants what they like/dislike about your brand or Page, and go for more than simple demographics. Get feedback about the promotion, and ask for suggestions on future contest ideas.

After you collect all of this information, use it! Show your fans you’re listening, and implement some of their ideas. People love being heard and recognized for their input.

While landing tabs definitely have their place, they aren’t the best way to engage users after they have Liked your Page. Bring your visitors back to your Page by providing them with unique content and fun ways to interact with your brand. Remember, it’s not the number of Likes you have, it’s how you engage with them that really matters.

It shouldn’t be difficult, either — there’s no reason to spend time and resources developing an in-house solution regardless of your size or budget. Rely on the expertise of others by using third-party tools to aid you in the creation of interesting, interactive and custom Facebook tabs. Your Facebook fans will thank you.

Since landing tabs primarily target those who don’t already “Like” your Page, what’s in it for your fans, and are your fans even aware of the stuff you’ve got tucked away in your sidebar?

Creating a worthwhile Facebook tab is an art, and using it effectively, both before and after a visitor has Liked your Page, can be a challenge. In the first installment of this two-part series, you will receive some tips on how to make your tabs more interactive.

Make It Interactive

Take a cue from the video game world, and design your tab so it provokes interaction. What does this mean exactly? Don’t imitate your website with static text and images; you’re on Facebook after all! Being social means fostering participation and engaging with media, so try adding a few tricks to your custom tabs.

Video

Video can be fun, engaging, and effective; for many, watching a quick 60-second video is a more attractive option than reading an entire blog post. Video can create more opportunities for your fans to share your content too. Video, along with links and images, is one of the most popular forms of media shared across Facebook

This tab features video, a sign-up form and a PDF download (This tab was created using ShortStack)

Polls & Surveys

People love to give their opinion! Present your fans with a poll, and give them an easy way to share their opinions with your brand. Don’t forget to make your fans feel like they have been heard — make use of the poll or survey data you’ve received and put good ideas into action.

Photo & Product Galleries

While static images have their place, if you’re trying to show off your summer product line, or display the pictures from last week’s company outing, photo and product galleries are definitely the way to go.

In the 520px world, conserving space and preventing the “forever-scroll” is key, so watch the height of your content. By including a lightbox feature or slideshow-scroller in your gallery, you’ll better engage with your visitors by giving them content right up front with an active way to see more.

Virtual Gifts

Virtual gifting is hugely popular among Facebook users, and the best way to have success with a virtual gift is to create something that’s both unique and matches your fans’ interests (humor never hurts either).

By offering your fans something specifically designed to be sent to their friends, your fans will be doing your job for you by exposing their friends to your business’s Page.

This tab allows users to select a virtual gift to send to a friend (This tab was created by Likeable Media using ShortStack)

Quizzes

Check out any newsstand and you’ll see a plethora of magazines featuring a quiz (What kind of boyfriend ARE you, anyway?). Silly, sure, but they exist for a reason — people love to learn about themselves and test their knowledge, especially if the topic speaks to them.

Try working a quiz into your Facebook tab, or ask your fans a trivia question every week on your wall.

Contests & Promotions

If you really want to jumpstart activity on Facebook, a properly run contest or promotion can boost interaction like nothing else. There are many ways to go about introducing a contest, so this will be discussed more thoroughly in part two of this series.

Integrated Facebook Functionality

Always integrate core Facebook functionality into your tab by adding the ability to “Share”, “Comment” and “Invite Friends” throughout. It’s what Facebook is all about. Social media is supposed to be social, so allow your visitors to share your content on their own walls. You’ll reach beyond your fan base and expose your brand to users who might not otherwise hear about your brand.

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are a number of third-party tools out there, and by using an iframe application built on the Facebook Platform, the sky really is the limit, so get creative!

Next month, we’ll dive deeper into contests and promotions, as well as the value Facebook-only content.

The ability to keep an audience engaged, updated, and responded to so consistently and easily is a tool that many are, and if not they should be, taking advantage of.

However, using the page is one task, but monitoring that use and the users is quite another and can be a bit overwhelming. Knowing what to look for and how to use Page Insights is not only valuable, but can definitely prevent a headache.

The Insights page on Facebook allows a page administrator to look through data pertaining to their page. This is a valuable resource for an admin because it holds the current and past analytics of a page and allows them to utilize the data to increase fans and engagement.

Here are some general things to look at on the Insights page, and how they can be used to help your page:

• Users
• Interactions
• Demographics
• Activity

Let’s break these down a bit and see how each one can be used to increase your fan count.

Users

This is an invaluable category. The Users info will show the number of active users, daily, weekly, and monthly. Also, it will show their breakdown, how they’re viewing your page, what they’re liking, commenting on and posting on your wall. This is a great way to examine the user base and see how they react to posts, and use the info to create more engaging and interesting posts, giving incentive to interact to both current and potential fans.

Interactions

This shows page interactions, such as how many wall posts or comments the page receives each day. Using the Interactions function, one can narrow down the best times to post content based on when a page typically gets the most interaction from its fans (Page Activity). This is a direct insight as to what type of content is best along with the best time to post it and keep fans coming back for more.

Multi-hundred percent green numbers are always a good sign!

Demographics

Being able to see exactly the people that are viewing your page makes aiming content at them way easier. With demographics, you’re able to use the data to look at gender and age as well as where they’re from and what language they speak. This helps you as an admin because you get a better sense of what you can post as far as content to truly engage your page users.

Activity

Activity shows you what type of activity you get on your page from your users, By activity, we mean posts, likes, comments, unsubscribes, and other forms of feedback that lets you keep up on your posts and how many impressions they get. More impressions equals more fans!

On that note, impressions are definitely the way to keep not only your current users interested, but gain new fans as well.

Did you know that posting an update on your Facebook Page doesn’t guarantee that the post will always appear in your fan’s news feed? There are different variables for this of course, but generally, the more interaction your post gets, the more impressions it will get you. For example, take a look at this post on one of the pages I admin:

With 46 likes and over 11 comments, that post got over 5,000 impressions, obviously that’s going to be high up on the news feed due to the algorithm Facebook uses to arrange news feed posts by amount of interaction.

There are some pretty good ways to ensure interaction on a post. First off, make sure the post has engaging content. Ask questions, opinions or advice from your fans, every comment and like helps. Also, post content that is naturally engaging, images and videos always seem to get a lot of likes and comments.

And there you have it, now you have a better idea of how to analyze your page and use that information to engage more fans, growing your numbers, and getting more people following your business!