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Facebook is one of the much talked about web companies. From a humble beginning, if we are to believe market reports as it came a couple of months ago, it is next only to Google, with an estimated value of around 100 plus billion dollars in stock value. However, that apart, what will interest you is the wide reach it has cutting across different nationalities and people, especially college students and the younger generation.

As a business owner looking for more sales or someone in public life, or as someone aspiring to get celebrity status, your quest for a decent Facebook presence is understandable. Creating your profile may not be much of a problem; it can be done in no time. What matters more is how best you can optimize it. Most elements that go into optimizing your Facebook Fan Page, the place that your followers will see more often than anything else, has a lot in common with the ways you traditionally optimize your website with honest SEO practices. For your Facebook to work, all that you have to do is a little tweaking here and tweaking there.

Here are some best practices you may want to try:

Name Your Facebook Fan Page Appropriately

If you had ever researched the several Facebook pages’ names, you would also not have missed those silly names that mean little or nothing to followers. This may not be a great tip that you are getting, but certainly it means a lot to getting a decent following. Silly names, selected without putting much thought not only sound unprofessional, in fact, they can affect you adversely making your followers think that you are spammer.

Likewise, being too generic can work against your interest. Being specific is more important if your objective is to build a brand image for your products or your image itself. Choosing generic names like travel, fishing and others can not only turn off followers, but also stand the chance of being shut down by Facebook. In case you are not aware, remember, Facebook, on an average shuts down 20,000 pages a day. See to it that your Fan Page is not one amongst it.

Acquiring a Custom Fan Page

Getting a username from Facebook is no mean task, and to qualify you must have at least 25 likes to your credit. And username, remember, is the same as getting a unique URL for your Fan page and hence the great importance attached to it. Why a unique URL, you must be wondering? Don’t forget that URLs carry a lot of weight when it comes to indexing by search engines. When you try selecting the right username, if you notice that someone has already claimed your business, there is little that you can do to make it yours. But, not all is lost; just add that information about your business in the URL and it will work just as fine.

Making Keywords Work Harder for Your Fan Page

Playing with your keywords like in a typical website is important when it comes to your Facebook Fan page as well. Give no place to be misunderstood that you are spammer. That is very important. Keywords will have to included in the ‘About’ section, ‘Mission,’ and ‘Description’. Incidentally these are exactly the places from where information about you and your Fan page will be taken for SEO. You can get additional leverage by providing your address with city and state information. Consider giving a 140 character description about your business to ensure that it shows up as a small snippet.

Create Back Links to Your Fan Page from Other Channels

If you ever have been into SEO for your website you must also be aware of the great importance that search engines attach to back links. That is not the end to it either. The back linking channels too come under the scanner of search engines. So you can see the need for quality links pointing to your website as well. Your Facebook Fan page is no different from website when it comes to back links. So, create back links on other quality websites that you own. Try not to buy back links. Seldom have they worked.

Get the Best Out of Status Updates

Did you know that the first 18 characters you use for posting an update will also be used as the Meta tag of your Fan page? If you did not, better you start using it optimally to get the best out of your Fan page. Veteran users use it by including text that is relevant to their objectives as well as to the readers. In the body of the updates, you can also include direct links to your websites. They will help you spread word about your business far and wide.

In short, optimizing your Fan page is all about being honest and giving readers the value for the time they spend reading your updates. More important, every bit of hard work you do for search engine optimization works for Facebook Fan pages as well.

About the author
This is a guest post by Lance Goodman of dishtvoffer.com, a site that offers savings and current information on dish tv everywhere near your region, as well as dish.com services.