Optimise Your Fanpage for Facebook Graph Search

Everybody’s been talking about Facebook’s ‘third pillar’ – the new Facebook Graph Search announced last month. While Graph Search is still in the development stages – currently only available as a limited beta preview for American Facebookers – there’s no harm in acting now to make sure your Fan Page gets the maximum possible exposure in Graph Search results once Australian audiences are able to start searching.

Start with the simple changes

According to the Facebook Marketing page, just by ensuring your business name, address, category, web address and ‘about us’ sections are up to date, it will enable Facebook Graph searchers to more easily discover your page.

• Your business name and website URL should be filled in accurately – double check for typos
• Your category and about us sections should include as much information as possible and make sure to work in your most important keywords
• If your business has a physical location, make sure you input your address to make sure you appear in the results when people are searching for location-specific queries.

Choose your custom URL

Setting up a custom URL will also have an impact on your visibility in Graph Search. When you set up your Facebook business page, the default URL of your page will look something like this:

facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness.name/88275958473.

This isn’t an ideal URL for sharing with your potential followers, or for being found in Graph Search, so Facebook allows page admins to choose a vanity URL for their page. But be careful, you only get one chance to choose it so choose wisely. Ideally the URL you choose should look like this: facebook.com/yourbusinessname.

Ours, for example, is https://www.facebook.com/whitechalkroad. In some cases your business’ name may already be taken, so choose something as simple and close to your business’ name as possible.

Be interesting and relevant

Share content that will encourage others to like, share, comment, engage with and follow you. The Graph Search will pull the results with the greatest relevance and engagement for the searcher, so if their friends or friends of friends are engaging with you then there’s a greater chance you will show up in their search results.

Structure your posts in the right way

You may not have noticed before, but each of the posts on your fanpage has its own dedicated webpage, which you can access by clicking on the time stamp on the post. When you click there and go the webpage of your post, you’ll notice that the first 18 characters of your post make up the Title of the page.

Following rule #1 of SEO, the keywords you use in the title of your page are one of the most important factors in ranking for those keywords in search. So, next time you’re writing a post, make sure to keep this in mind when you structure your sentence. Instead of posting something like ‘did you hear about this new SEO tool launched by Google’, think about writing something like ‘New Google SEO Tool – some more details about the topic’ on your social media channels. In this way, Graph Search will get a better idea of what your page posts are about and you will show up in more searches relevant to your area.