Read Time: 4 minutes

On a typical day, a person will turn to Google to search for topics such as 2017 social media trends, photos of adorable dogs or where the best tacos are located nearby.

However, in 2015, Facebook’s own search engine yielded approximately 1.5 billion queries a day, and, at the time, had more than two trillion posts from users, pages, events and so on. Facebook’s desire to become a powerful search engine itself began to come to fruition when they started indexing every single post on Facebook to make them searchable.

As of 2016, there are around 1.65 billion monthly active users on the social media site, and they spend an average of 50 minutes per day perusing their feeds. To put it in perspective, that’s more time than a person spends on any other leisure activity each day, including playing sports or reading.

Given the large amount of traffic on Facebook as well as the social giant’s plan to become a popular social media search engine, every business should use their Facebook page as a second landing page.

Facebook as a Search Engine

Facebook as a search engine

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), the practice no longer solely applies to how high your page will rank on Google. We’ve previously learned how social media and SEO affect each other, but as Facebook gains traction as a search engine, businesses need to adjust certain components that will help them show up in Facebook’s search results as well.

Here are five questions you should ask yourself when optimizing your page for search.

Questions to Think About for Social Media SEO

No. 1. Do your name, address and phone (NAP) match your website?

Your Facebook name, address and phone number need to match that of your company’s website. The spelling, abbreviations and formatting of your NAP should match that of your domain page exactly.

For example: If your company’s website spells out, “Street,” in its address, then your Facebook address should do so, too. In addition, if you use parentheses in the phone number on your site, it should look the exact same way on your Facebook page.

No. 2. Is your photo recognizable?

Your business’s profile photo should be your logo or a recognizable symbol of your brand. When users search for your page, the name and profile photo icon will pop up next to it, so, if they can see your logo, they will know it’s the page they’re looking for.

Recognizable logo or brand

Tip: If you use multiple social media platforms, keep the same profile photo across all of your networks for consistency. This way, there’s no way a user will be confused as to which profile belongs to your business.

No. 3. Does your Facebook custom URL match your business?

Did you know you that your Facebook page has a vanity, or custom, URL? The formula for your Facebook URL will be www.Facebook.com/your username. For instance, SOCi’s Facebook URL is www.facebook.com/MeetSOCI. Why is this important? Because your Facebook URL/username serves as a directory entry, which people can use to search for your brand or business. Other users can also link directly to your Facebook page URL from their website(s). Ideally, keeping your username and Facebook URL the same as your brand’s name will help with recognition and consistency across the board.

Tip: While Facebook automatically assigns your page a URL, you can change it once your page reaches 25 “likes.” Thus, if your business’s name is already taken on Facebook, you can use other identifiers that don’t take up too much space as the username in your custom URL, such as your city or state (e.g., SOCiSanDiego).

No. 4. Did you pick a relevant category?

The business category—and subcategory—you choose when setting up your Facebook page is also crucial for allowing users to find your brand when searching Facebook. One of the main reasons choosing an accurate category is important is because it helps Facebook’s robots determine whether your page will be relevant to a user’s search query. If your page’s category aligns with a search query, Facebook is more likely to display your page in their search results.

Facebook details for Internet company

No. 5. Are there long-tail keyword phrases in your descriptions and posts?

Take advantage of your page’s long and short descriptions by inserting long-tail keyword phrases that users associate with your service or business into them. Pertinent keywords on your Facebook page act like pertinent keywords on a website—they help Facebook’s bots crawl and index these search terms, again, indicating to the bots that your page may align with a specific search query.

For example, an apartment community in San Diego may want to include terms such as “luxury San Diego apartments for rent” or “one-bedroom pet-friendly apartments in San Diego” into their descriptions to help improve their visibility in a Facebook search when a user types in a similar search query.

Tip: Incorporate long-tail search terms, or keywords, into your cover image and profile image descriptions too!

Keyword search graph

Your page’s posts provide additional opportunities for search optimization. Include keyword phrases users might be looking for when it comes to your business into your social posts!

Here, you can utilize hashtags as well, so users can easily see everything related to a topic or your brand in one feed. Facebook’s latest search engine AI, Deep Text, can deduce the context and sentiments behind phrases, so keep this in mind when strategizing.

These five social media SEO tips will help your business page appear in Facebook’s search results—as well help your Facebook page rank well in Google’s search results! Nonetheless, Facebook will continue to alter and improve their search engine to avoid losing users to Google, so businesses should stay up to date with the social media giant and make adjustments as necessary.

Are there additional steps you take to optimize your page for Facebook? Tweet us @meetSOCi!

Learn how SOCi can help take your
localized marketing to the next level.