Top 10 SEO Methods to Optimize an eCommerce Facebook Page

Social media has long gone from a place of communication to a powerful sales tool. A well-designed Facebook page can sell even better than a large online store. According to Statista, 37% of Americans aged 18-34 shop directly on social media, and more than half of social media browsers use these platforms to find some products to buy.

If you have a commercial social media page, you should consider optimizing it for search engines. It’ll give you more organic search traffic, which ultimately means more customers. Let's look at how you should optimize your Facebook page.

Does Facebook have SEO value?

Search engine optimization and social media management may be two completely different promotion techniques, but they’re more closely related than you might think.

The links to your website that you post on your social media increase brand exposure. In addition, the more people who forward your posts with links, the more reliable your site is. It’s been proven that shares, likes and comments on social media affect your site's rankings. Social signals give search engines insight into how interesting, useful and relevant your content is. All this is reflected in the search results.

As a result, having an optimized and good-looking ecommerce page on social media helps your business to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Get more free external links
• Increase the credibility of your website
• Improve content distribution
• Attract Google crawlers to your site with links in fresh posts
• Work on local SEO

10 SEO tips to optimize your ecommerce Facebook page

In addition to the connection between your social media and website, your ecommerce Facebook page can also rank in search results. To get the most out of this, you should optimize your Facebook page for SEO, too. Here are ten important steps to follow:

1. Make sure your Facebook business page looks aesthetically pleasing

Just like with website promotion, your ecommerce Facebook page should look complete and professional. That will make visitors stay and interact with your page, which is good for SEO. Here are a few points to watch out for:

• Profile photo: If you have a logo, definitely use it as your profile photo
• Cover photo: Use a promo photo or video. For example, if you have a clothing store, use a photo of your showroom with clothes on hangers
• Description: It should be clear at a glance what your profile is about. Describe what you do and what you offer in 2-3 sentences

PRO TIP: Never use stock or other people's photos/videos. That will annoy your visitors and make your ecommerce page look fake. People won’t subscribe or share your posts in this case, and that’s bad for your SEO promotion.

2. Provide relevant information on your business

Your Facebook page is there to get more customers for your business, right? Then you should carefully fill in all the proposed fields and provide the following information:

• Physical address
• Website
• Business hours
• Phone number
• Email, etc

All this data will help increase organic search visibility. Google crawls this information and indexes it for local SEO purposes, so if a person googles any basic info about your brand, Google may reflect the info from your Facebook page with a link to it.

PRO TIP: Fill in absolutely all fields, including all phone numbers, opening hours on different days, price range and so on. For example, if you have a restaurant, add your menu, too. The more relevant info you provide, the better.

3. Use keywords

Just the way your site pages can be ranked for specific queries, your ecommerce Facebook page can also land in the search results if it includes keywords. Use keywords in these sections of your Facebook page:

• Page name
• Brief information about the company
• Description
• Photo captions
• Posts (titles and text)

Remember user intents. The intent can be informational, commercial, navigational and so on. Pages that don’t correspond to any concrete intent aren’t ranked high in Google, so select the search queries that best match each section of your page.

PRO TIP: To find the best performing keywords for your business, use a professional service that offers keyword suggestion analysis. Keyword research and suggestion tools like SE Ranking allow you to analyze your target keyword and see its search volume, CPC and difficulty, as well as find synonyms and related keywords, including long-tail queries. It's also a good idea to check selected keywords in a Facebook search to see which pages are shown for that query.

4. Activate the message button

After examining your page, users may want to contact you to ask some questions or place an order. Make sure you’ve turned on the ability to send you messages in the page settings.

Also, remember that if you have conversations with your customers on Facebook Messenger, there will be an indication of the response time on your Facebook business page. Try to respond no longer than in a few hours – this increases user confidence.

PRO TIP: If you receive too many messages, you can connect a ChatBot for Facebook Messenger that will answer most of the basic questions. But definitely don’t leave the messages unopened.

5. Come up with a custom username

Your page name is actually the first thing your visitors see. Choose it carefully. It’ll be possible to change it in the future, but such a request can only be sent by the page administrator, and the Facebook moderators will have to consider it. Therefore, it’s better to choose a suitable name that will fit your business from the very beginning.

It's also a good idea to use keywords in the name of the page so that users can find it in both organic Google search results and internal Facebook search results. In this case, the name should be short and concise. The keyword suggestion tool will also help you here, thanks to which you can select concise and relevant wording.

Bad example:

YouSport Store – Affordable T-shirts, Hoodies, and Shorts in Boston

The name is too long, and no one will look for it or share it with others.

Good example:

Women’s Workout Clothing – YouSport

PRO TIP: Use your target keyword at the beginning of the page name – it’s also good for rankings in the organic search and internal Facebook search.

6. Generate a vanity URL

A vanity URL is an URL that’s descriptive, easy to memorize and pronounce. That is, instead of a long URL consisting of numbers and letters, you get a short and brandy link.

To set your vanity URL, go to the About tab on your Facebook business page and click on the Create Page @username section. Your name should be no longer than 50 characters and reflect your brand or your products. This very name will be displayed in the vanity URL once you’ve saved the changes. Google also ranks the URL, so be concise and be sure to mention your brand.

PRO TIP: Remember that your username should be unique and follow Facebook guidelines. If your username is non-unique, misleading or might offend other users, Facebook won’t let you save it.

7. Choose the CTA button for your page and add CTAs in posts

Just like any website needs a call-to-action (CTA) to guide the customer to conversion, any Facebook ecommerce page must have a CTA button too. Google considers website CTA as an essential element of user experience. Therefore you should stick to these SEO tactics on the Facebook business page as well.

Choose the call to action that best suits your business. So on Facebook, the setting of the following buttons is available:

• Book – If you want people to make reservations right from your Facebook page
• Contact – Here you can choose any form of contact, including Facebook Messenger, phone, email, etc.
• Download – Offers to download an app or play a game
• Learn – A Learn More button can take the visitors directly to your website or any other resource
• Shop – By clicking on a Shop Now button, users will be taken to your online store

In addition, use CTAs in your posts. Everything works simply here: people do what you tell them to do. If you attach a link to a site page in a post, ask your users to click on it. If you post some interesting information, remind your users that they can share it with their friends and Facebook pages. That would be an excellent social signal for Google!

PRO TIP: One post = one CTA. Don’t mix different CTAs in one post.

8. Enable reviews

Real testimonials from your users are another big plus for the SEO promotion of your business. Google shows the overall score based on user reviews on Facebook. Of course, your goal is to achieve a high overall score. Therefore, allow leaving reviews only if you’re sure of the high quality of your products and services.

Expanded reviews are user-generated content (UGC) and influence your ranking in the Google search results. UGC provides Google with new and highly relevant content to be indexed. It has natural SEO attributes (like keywords, links, and LSI words). Also, it helps you rank better for long-tail queries as they’re just the way normal users formulate their reviews. Not to mention that reviews are powerful social evidence and increase conversions for ecommerce pages.

PRO TIP: If you’re just getting started on your Facebook page, you’ll will likely have few reviews. To get more reviews, you can create an automatic follow-up email asking you to rate your service or product on Facebook. You can also add a CTA button to your site with an invitation to leave a review. Finally, encourage your customers to check in to your business.

9. Build relationships

It’s no secret that consumers want to be reassured before they make an online purchase: 93% of consumers claimed that online reviews influence purchase decisions (conversion). That’s why enabling reviews isn’t the final step. Working on user feedback (positive or negative) and building customer relationships will directly impact website conversion rates and Google rankings accordingly.

If you're managing an ecommerce Facebook page, aim to build an active and loyal community around your brand to keep high conversion rates and not to lose organic positions in the long run. To do this, be sure to interact with your subscribers:

• Respond to comments
• Use questions in your posts
• Be sure to respond to reviews, especially if they’re far from great

PRO TIP: The way you respond to your audience should match the overall tone of voice across all social media posts and your website content. Also, try to provide extended answers, as this is also part of the textual content that Google ranks. Link an ecommerce Facebook page to Google My Business new tool to manage your reviews in one place and track consistency.

10. Customize images

People come to social networks for the sake of cool, funny and juicy pictures. Use bright, eye-catching photos to showcase your products or services, heighten brand awareness and increase the time of interaction with your page.

When uploading a photo to your ecommerce Facebook page, optimize its description fields for higher SEO ranking, just like in the case of filling in alt description for images for your site. Use your target keyword for descriptions and file names. A good example would be your CTA with brand name + product name, e.g., Check out YouSport hoodie in pink. If you’ve done everything right, images from your Facebook will rank high for specific keywords in Google Images.

PRO TIP: Don’t forget to diversify your ecommerce Facebook page with funny memes, collages and statistics. Remember that people use social media for entertainment and don’t like it when they’re forced to buy anything in every post.

[Extra Tip] Connect Facebook Pixel

This tool is designed to measure the effectiveness of advertising and increase the impact of all types of promotion of your business on the Internet. Facebook Pixel allows you to study users’ actions on your site for further advertising campaigns through Facebook and Instagram.

After installing the JavaScript code on the site, it’ll begin to collect the following customer information:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Clicking on links
• Purchase of goods

With detailed information about your target audience, you’ll increase the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and SEO promotion and direct your efforts to a clearly defined audience.

Retargeting is also becoming available with Facebook Pixel – you can “catch up” those users on social media who were on your site and viewed some products but didn’t make a purchase.

PRO TIP: Facebook Pixel can generate a lookalike audience – these are users who like the same products or services as your website visitors. Use this data for launching advertising campaigns.