Facebook, The Monster Social Network

Even if Facebook didn’t have all the advertising inside of the platform, the amazing demographic data, etc. one thing it does have for the SEO in all of us is PageRank. Freaking PageRank 9. That’s like Superman on steroids. Only Yahoo, Google (day 2) and Google (day 11)and YouTube (day 3) beat Facebook, and on a good day Facebook can pound YouTube.

Facebook Pages – The Facebook Groups and Facebook Account

Think of Facebook Pages as the Batman villain Two-Face. One side is the friendly friend you befriend. The other side is the spammy side that is Google Groups. The great thing is that much of the functionality of the friendly side is present, such as updating a page, configuring the page, the page can even be fans of other pages. And then there are multi-network update tools which can be used to update the Facebook Page, not just Facebook accounts (the Hellotxt tool is not currently working, unfortunately but they claim on Get Satisfaction that they are working on it, best to just do an rss feed or something. Blargh. Eventually it will all work smoothly (importing blog entries as notes and tweets/dents as status updates)

Facebook Page Configuration

There is an entire protocol we have worked out as a best practice at SEO Chiangmai regarding setting up Facebook Pages and their appropriate use. The thing to realize is there are some things you absolutely cannot change once the page is created.

Populate that page with information, lots of it. Text is good. Text gets indexed. Text gets you on-page SEO, doh! Google likes facebook pages, especially those with keyword URLs, keyword Titles and keyword content, oh yes! Read more here:

• 8 Tips for Getting your Fan Page Found in Facebook Search

Facebook Page Updates

Yep, gotta do them, that and friending activity, chatting, etc. Lots of mindless socializing, that’s the rule. This is why the PR flacks are being put in charge of Social Media, they like that kind of thing.

Link Quality

Here is how it works: when people “fan” the Facebook page, links are created on their public profile. These are follow links. Those go to the Facebook page, which gets a follow link on the info tab.

Dominate SERPs

Yet again, an off-site page can echo content and more importantly engage customers and potential customers, and in so doing accrue PageRank. It’s a beautiful thing.