Facebook Pages are increasingly becoming a “second home page” for businesses online. And while more and more Page owners are learning how to become expert Facebook marketers, Facebook has recently created many new opportunities for Pages to get more traffic through the tried and true methods of – you guessed it – search engine optimization (SEO).

While Facebook’s “viral channels” – the News Feed, invitations, and messages – play a central role in the spread of content through Facebook, employing important SEO tactics within your Facebook Page can help your Page reach more and more Facebook fans. While viral distribution can help you reach people your fans are directly connected to, search engine optimization exposes your Facebook Page to Facebook’s entire userbase. In fact, Facebook itself has taken major steps to improve its own SEO during recent weeks and months, creating opportunities for Page owners to benefit directly while creating value for Facebook at the same time.

So, without further ado, here are 10 SEO strategies and tactics every Facebook Page owner should know:

1. Choose the best name for your Facebook Page – and don’t change it

Choosing the right name for your Facebook Page is vital. Despite the temptation to stuff your Page title with high value generic keywords – like “Mike’s Travel Agency: Las Vegas, Hawaii, Cancun – Hotels, Flights, & More” – this approach will actually harm your Page’s viral growth rate inside Facebook more than it will help through better SEO. For example, if your page’s title appears too spammy, fans will be less likely to share it with their friends on their profile and more likely to hide your updates from their News Feed.

Second, don’t give into the temptation to choose a fully generic page name like “Travel” or “Hawaii.” Because Facebook’s intention for Pages is that they authentically represent businesses, brands, or celebrities, Facebook has recently been disabling updates for generically named Pages – effectively neutering their ability to reach their Facebook fans.

The bottom line: use your business’s real name as the name of your page. And once you pick your Page’s name, don’t change it. Facebook uses your Page name in the title of the Page, and since Google dings pages when their titles change, modifying your Facebook Page’s name will cost you SEO points.

2. Select the best URL (Facebook username) for your Facebook Page

Facebook recently launched the ability to choose a vanity URL (Facebook calls it a “username”) for your Facebook Page, one of the most important SEO opportunities on Facebook to date. When you choose a Facebook username for your Page, your Page’s URL becomes www.facebook.com/YourUsernameHere. Usernames can be selected at www.facebook.com/username.

Facebook usernames present a better opportunity for businesses to consider incorporating generic keywords for SEO purposes than the Page name itself. While Facebook has created a black list of generic usernames that Pages (and users) are prevented from registering, there are still opportunities for businesses to obtain relatively generic usernames, or usernames that combine their actual name with additional generic keywords.

However, we do offer a word of caution when incorporating generic keywords in your Facebook Page URL: Facebook intends for Pages to authentically represent the identities of businesses, and brands and has revoked privileges from Pages with generic titles in the past, so it’s not unfathomable that Facebook might somehow punish Pages with generic usernames by similarly revoking status publishing rights (or at least the username itself) at some point in the future.

The safest option – and wisest long term bet in our view – is to choose a username that authentically represents your business or brand. For example, we chose www.facebook.com/InsideFacebook. Once you pick a Facebook username/URL for your Page, it cannot be changed – ever. So pick a username you’re going to be comfortable with and confident in for the long term.

One important note: in order to mitigate Facebook username squatting, Facebook requires that your Page have at least 100 fans before it becomes eligible to select a username. If your Page has less than 100 fans, you’ll need to recruit more fans before being able to take advantage of this important SEO strategy.

3. Use the “About” text box to place keyword-dense prose near the top of your Page

One important SEO strategy that should be employed on your Facebook Page whenever feasible is placing keyword-dense prose as close to the top of the Page as possible. Because Facebook limits where Page owners can place large chunks of text on the default Wall tab of Facebook Pages, the “About” box actually represents the highest place in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text.

In order to add text to your Page’s “About” box, click the “Write something about [YourPage]” in the box underneath your Page’s profile picture. You’ll then be able to enter custom text in the input box – there is a 250 character limit, so choose your words wisely.

4. Use the “Info” tab to include more important keywords, text, and high priority links on your Page

Facebook creates an “Info” tab for every Facebook Page that has fields containing important descriptive metadata about the Page. It’s important to fill out these fields, because they provide the opportunity to include keywords, prose, and links that will increase the content score of your Facebook Page for many types of Google searches. For example:

• Address, City, State, and Zip code are important fields for local searches
• Company Overview, Mission, and Products are important fields for product searches
• Websites is a valuable opportunity to add direct links to your own websites or other relevant sites in your space

The specific fields present will vary according to the category you choose for your Page when you create it (business, brand, or public figure), so choose the category that best fits your needs.

5. Create “Static FBML” boxes and tabs to place lengthy content and more static links on your Page

While opportunities to place large blocks of static text on the default tab of your Facebook Page are quite limited (see the “About” box section above), Facebook allows Page owners to create additional boxes or tabs that can hold any kind of static content, including text, images, and links. Adding content boxes or tabs to your Page can be a great way to boost the content density score of your Page (note, however, that each tab lives at a separate URL in Google’s eyes).

In order to add a custom content box or tab to your Page, follow these steps:

1. Go to the “Static FBML” application on Facebook.
2. Click “Add to my Page” on the top left side, and choose the page you’d like to add a custom content box or tab to.
3. Once you’ve chosen one, close the dialog box, go to your Page, and click “Edit page” under your Page’s profile picture.
4. In the applications list on the resulting page, you should see an application called “FBML 1″. Click the pencil icon on the right, and choose “Edit.”
5. You’ll be taken to a page with 2 fields: “Box Title” and “FBML.” Enter the name you’d like to give the box or tab in the “Box Title” field. Enter the HTML you’d like to use in the “FBML” field (FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language, and is a subset of HTML.), and then click the Save Changes button.
6. Once changes are saved, click the “Edit” link at the top of your Page to return to your Page’s application settings page. Click the pencil icon next to the name of the FBML application you just created, and choose “Application Settings.”
7. If you want to add the FBML you just entered as a box, choose “Add” next to the Box option. The custom FBML box will by default appear on the Boxes tab, so if you want to move it to the left side of your Wall tab, you’ll need to then go to the Boxes tab, click the pencil icon on your FBML box, and choose “Move to Wall tab.”
8. Or, if you want to add the FBML you just entered as a tab, choose “Add” next to the Tab option. The custom content should then automatically appear on its own tab on your Page. Note, however, that Facebook truncates tab titles after 10 characters, so you’ll need to choose a short title.

And voila! After that somewhat arduous process, your custom content should appear. Be sure to write good copy :)

6. Post direct links to your website (or other relevant sites) in your Page’s stream

Status updates offer a powerful way to place direct links near the top of your Page’s CSS structure. Because Google boosts pages that link to relevant sites – and dings pages that link to unrelated sites or add too many links too suddenly – posting links in status updates can be a powerful and authentic way to boost your Facebook Page’s link score.

There are two ways to post links into your Page’s stream:

1. Including the raw URL in the text of the status update itself
2. Using the “attach link” feature in the Facebook publisher

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each approach from an SEO perspective:

1. Raw URL

When you include the raw URL in the text of the status update itself, Facebook auto-links the text directly to the URL. While you can’t control the anchor text of the link (it is always just the URL itself), the link does go directly to the destination page – and not through a Facebook.com URL that adds the Facebook menu bar at the top when you click through to the destination page.

2. Attach Link

When you use the “attach link” feature of the Facebook publisher, Facebook pulls in the title, body, and images from your Page, and suggests a thumbnail image and text snippet which it places adjacent to your Page’s link. The automatic inclusion of this text further boosts the keyword density of the CSS region near the link, and the thumbnail also links to the destination URL – both nice perks of using the “attach link” feature.

Power tip: You can also change the anchor text while clicking the page’s title before clicking “Share” in the Facebook publisher.

However, importantly, the link itself does not go directly to the destination URL – rather, it goes through a Facebook.com share URL that includes the destination URL as an iframe on the resulting page, with the Facebook menu bar at the top which includes commenting and sharing features. While there is still some debate in the SEO community as to the impact of the specific implementation details of such toolbars, the lack of a direct link when using Facebook’s “attach link” feature does partially mitigate the SEO benefits of posting links on Facebook Pages.

7. Add photos with captions, events with descriptions, and a discussion forum

It almost goes without saying, but it’s important to always be sharing interesting content on your Facebook Page, and always using all available descriptive fields on each type of content shared. When posting photos, use verbose and keyword-dense descriptions. When posting events, take the extra minute to include text and keywords in the event description field that you want to rank for. Add a discussion forum to your Page.

Facebook makes all of the content shared on Facebook Pages indexable by search engines, so use the tools Facebook provides to your full advantage.

8. Get more inbound links to your Facebook Page from the web by posting links to your Page on all your websites

Just as a variety of inbound links from authoritative websites help boost PageRank for traditional websites, getting more inbound links to your Facebook Page will boost its PageRank as well. You can do this with text links, but Facebook has also created a “Find Us On Facebook” badge which it encourages Page owners to use. The new Fan Box widget for Facebook Pages also includes links back to your Facebook Page.

Facebook has created promotional guidelines for promoting your Facebook Page that are worth a read. Basically, Facebook doesn’t want Page owners to claim you have officially partnered with Facebook by virtue of having a Facebook Page. However, Facebook does want as many links as possible pointing to Facebook.com :)

9. Get more intra-Facebook inbound links by getting more Facebook fans

Because Facebook places links to Facebook Pages on the default version of Facebook users’ profile pages which are visible to search engines, the more fans you get, the more links you’ll have to your Page within Facebook. For Pages with thousands (or even millions) of fans, the number of links can really add up.

10. Strengthen intra-Facebook reciprocal linking by getting fans to comment and like content in your stream

When fans comment or like content in your Facebook Page’s stream, Facebook links their name back to their Facebook profile page. As a result, when the profile stubs of those fans who have posted comments and likes on your Page are indexed, Google will see more reciprocal links between your Page and your Page’s fans (in a way that grows organically over time), which it will see as a stronger bond. This creates a virtuous cycle of improved link weight from the indexed profile page stubs to your Page, and vice versa.

Conclusion & Next Steps

While building and expanding your Facebook Page presence requires creative planning and consistent execution, SEO can play a vital role in boosting your Page’s growth rate. While viral distribution limits you to the people your fans are connected to, search engine optimization exposes your Facebook Page to Facebook’s entire userbase – and as we’ve discussed above, there’s a lot that Page owners can do to maximize their exposure through Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and other popular search engines.

Learn more about building your brand and growing your audience with our comprehensive guide to marketing on Facebook. The Facebook Marketing Bible is available at FacebookMarketingBible.com

In a move that may get advertisers wondering about Facebook’s future plans for advertising on the home page, Facebook has started testing a new video ad unit that plays the video in a popup box when the video thumbnail on the right side of the page is clicked. It’s the first time we’ve seen this kind of ad unit on the Facebook home page, which Facebook has kept famously light on advertising since the site began.

Facebook, who earlier this morning reiterated to us that it expects to see revenue growth of 70% this year, is likely testing the new design to see if the increase in price it can charge advertisers is worth any negative feedback it may get from users. The experience was pretty surprising to us, but can be exited easily by clicking anywhere on the page.

Facebook home page video ads are common today; however, they currently play in-line when clicked. Here’s how the new video overlay looks when playing an ad from FreeCreditReport.com – as you can see, the rest of the page is grayed while the video plays:

Many industry analysts have long wondered if and/or when Facebook would start to experiment with more “prominent” advertising units on the home page. This may be the first of many tests we see Facebook conduct as it seeks to grab a larger share of online budgets from large advertisers who are interested in the different ways Facebook may be able to boost engagement with ads on the home page…

Already available on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Boost, Virgin USA, and Cellular South, Facebook SMS service has just launched for T-Mobile users in the United States. Now, T-Mobile subscribers are able to sign up for Facebook’s SMS messaging service by activating their phone number in their Facebook Mobile settings.

Facebook’s business development team has been very busy recently building relationships with mobile carriers around the world. So far, Facebook SMS service is live on 36 carriers in 21 countries. The full list of carriers and countries where Facebook SMS is now live is below.

With Facebook’s SMS service, users can receive text message notifications when they receive Facebook messages, wall posts, status comments, friend requests, photo tags, or pokes. Users can restrict what times of day text messages are sent, as well as set a maximum number of text messages per day they want to receive.

In addition, Facebook recently launched three new SMS services for Facebook Pages as well. Now, users can become a fan of a Page by texting “fan username” to FBOOK, and fans can subscribe to SMS updates from Pages by clicking the “Subscribe to SMS Updates” link under the profile picture on any page. Page owners can now update their status through SMS as well.

SMS is an important component of Facebook’s mobile services, which collectively serve over 30 million users each month, according to Facebook. Mobile usage patterns vary greatly from country to country, but mobile is playing an increasingly important role in Facebook’s growth and engagement metrics in many countries around the world.

Here’s the full list of countries where Facebook has launched SMS service, and the carriers they have partnered with so far in each country:

Argentina

• Claro

Austria

• 3

Bolivia

• Tigo

Canada

• Bell Mobility
• Fido
• TELUS
• Rogers
• SaskTel
• MTS
• Virgin Mobile Canada

Chile

• Entel PCS

Colombia

• Tigo

Indonesia

• 3
• AXIS
• Telcomsel

India

• Tata Indicom

Macedonia

• Vip operator

Maldives

• Wataniya Telecom Maldives

Montenegro

• Pro Monte

New Zealand

• New Zealand Telecom

Philippines

• SMART

Pakistan

• Telenor
• Warid Telecom

Paraguay

• Claro
• Tigo
• Personal

Serbia

• Telenor

South Africa

• Vodacom

Sri Lanka

• Dialog Telecom
• Mobitel Sri Lanka

United Kingdom

• O2
• 3
• Orange

United States

• AT&T
• Verizon
• Sprint
• Nextel
• Boost
• Virgin USA
• Helio
• Cellular South
• T-Mobile

Uruguay

• Claro

Facebook Mobile SMS settings: how Facebook enables users to configure which Facebook-related text messages they get

As Facebook grows, more analysts are paying attention to the company’s financial performance. While Facebook hasn’t disclosed much information publicly, it has shared some stats and projections – though not all analysts believe Facebook will hit those numbers.

Here’s what the company has said: Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is expecting to see “70% growth in revenue year over year” in 2009 and that Facebook will be “cash flow positive in 2010″ based on current estimates. Then, last week, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said Facebook would do $500 million in revenues in 2009.

Nevertheless, market research firm eMarketer isn’t as optimistic about Facebook’s revenues. In a recent note, Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer’s senior analyst for social media, said she doesn’t expect Facebook to hit the numbers it has projected for 2009. According to Williamson:

Our estimate for worldwide ad spending on Facebook in 2009 is $300 million. That breaks down to $230 million in the US and $70 million outside the US. So if you add our estimate of $300 million in worldwide ad spending, plus about $75 million in virtual gift revenue, that equals $375 million. Assuming Facebook launches a payments system, that could bring in several million more in revenue (I don’t have a specific estimate on that).

The end result would still be lower than $500 million, and the reason for the difference is that while I am optimistic about Facebook, I am not as confident as Facebook is on its ability grow revenue 70% this year. With total US online ad spending slated to rise just 4.5% this year (according to eMarketer’s most recent projections) it will be an immense challenge for Facebook to increase total revenue 70%.

Just to make sure Facebook’s 2009 projections haven’t changed in recent weeks, we asked the company if its revenue growth is still tracking with projections.

“We don’t disclose revenue figures or otherwise break them down, but I can affirm that we remain on track to grow our revenue by 70% year-over-year,” Facebook’s Larry Yu told us.

Where is the $125 million Williamson is missing? We don’t know how she came up with her $300 million ad sales estimate, but we presume that number includes brand ad sales and performance ad sales, both of which are growing for the company. The $75 million estimate for direct to consumer virtual gift sales is in the ballpark of what we’re hearing. And while we have covered Facebook’s payment tests extensively, and do expect payment processing to become an important part of Facebook’s revenues, we do not expect merchant fees to significantly contribute to Facebook revenues in 2009.

It’s possible that Williamson’s estimates omit payments Facebook is receiving from Microsoft as part of its advertising relationship, or that eMarketer is simply more pessimistic about the growth in Facebook’s core advertising sales efforts in general (Williamson reiterates that total US online ad spending is only slated to rise 4.5% this year above). We’ll have to wait until Facebook shares more information before we really know how its revenues break down.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, July 6

• Payment Industry Perspectives: Q&A With Wayne Waxman of Coinstar
• Are Free-To-Play MMOs Worth It?

Tuesday, July 7

• EA Stepping Up In-House Social Gaming Efforts
• TweetCraft is a New In-Game Twitter Client for World of Warcraft

Wednesday, July 8

• Industry Perspectives: Q&A with Siqi Chen, CEO of Serious Business
• Mochi Media Launches New Payment Platform for Flash Games

Thursday, July 9

• Facebook Credits Can Now Be Bought in 14 Foreign Currencies
• The Sims 3 Sees Strong iPhone Sales in First Month

Friday, July 10

• oneTXT Raises $2 Million to Power Mobile Payments for Social Games and Apps

Earlier today, popular Facebook application Causes announced that it has reached an important milestone: $10 million has been raised through the app in the past two years, half of which came in over the last six months. 26,000 causes received donations by 192,000 unique donors. The “Birthday Wish” feature alone has accounted for $1.4 million of the total.

For Causes, which currently has over 25 million monthly active users, the goal has always been converting interest into action: it’s one thing to join a cause, but it’s another to share content, recruit friends to join, fundraise on behalf of the cause (on your birthday), and ultimately donate your own money – increasing the ask level as users become more actively engaged.

Today, the app is proving that it can be a more powerful fundraising tool that some think. Still today, some causes with large member bases have raised less than those with significantly fewer members, suggesting that one of the most effective fundraising strategies is to leverage your own personal relationships.

According to Causes, the $10 million raised means:

• Clean drinking water for 50,000 people for 20 years
• 1 million bed nets to stop the spread of malaria
• Safe, private shelter for 10,000 refugee families of five
• First-time internet access for 100,000 low-income households
• 50,000 baskets of baby chickens for families in Cameroon

Congratulations to the Causes team!

The title of this photo submission: “Why I desperately need a Beautyrest” – mattress, that is.

Mattress maker Simmons Beautyrest has partnered with social media agency Votigo to announce a Facebook video and photo contest designed to encourage customers to generate content and then get their friends to vote for their submissions.

The contest can be accessed via Simmons’ custom Facebook application, a Facebook Connect-enabled microsite, and a contest widget. Through the app, users can submit and vote for entries, as well as share the app on their profile and invite their friends to participate in the contest themselves. Here’s how it looks:

The microsite basically has the same functionality as the app. Once users login to the site through Facebook Connect, they can view a stream of what Facebook users are doing on the site and publish comments they leave to their Facebook profile – but not in the form of a full Feed Form story that is visible to others in the News Feed. This may be a missed opportunity to gain viral traction and pique the interest of the Facebook friends.

But this is a good effort so far, and contests are known to work well. We saw this with BMW’s Graffiti Car Contest. Voting, of course, allows not only contestants to participate, but brings their friends into the picture – the viral factor. Conversations are taking place not only between brands and their customers, but also among customers, making it so that community is naturally built around your brand.

Related Resources:

• Inside Facebook’s Best and Worst Facebook Marketing 2009
• Inside Facebook’s Facebook Marketing Bible

Social network aggregator Power.com, which Facebook sued in January for the way it accessed and stored Facebook user data, has counter-sued Facebook for “anticompetitive practices” in US Federal District Court in Northern California.

At the heart of the matter is whether Power.com should be allowed to store Facebook users’ credentials and “scrape” their Facebook data without using authorized Facebook APIs and programs like Facebook Connect. Facebook says doing so violates the Facebook Terms of Service and threatens user privacy and security, and sued Power.com in January after it refused to change its site after several weeks of direct discussions with Facebook.

In its response and countersuit today, Power.com is essentially claiming that the court should force Facebook to allow Power.com to scrape and store user data because 1) doing so is “common industry practice” (citing Facebook’s own contact importer), 2) Facebook’s own terms of service say Facebook doesn’t own user data, and 3) Facebook’s behavior in not allowing it to do so is “anticompetitive.”

Facebook’s original lawsuit also claimed that Power.com also falsely signed emails it sent as “The Facebook Team” from “facebookmail.com” during a promotion in which it was offering $100 to the person that invited the most new users to Power.com, but Power.com does not appear to be countersuing against that claim.

According to web metrics firm Compete.com, US traffic to Power.com has decreased to 14K uniques in June after its peak in December at 100K uniques. 91.7 million people visited Facebook.com in June.

We think the courts will side with Facebook in this case – even though Facebook is aggressively fighting attempts to access Facebook user data that don’t fall within Facebook’s authorized APIs, it’s premature to apply antitrust laws to Facebook today. Nevertheless, we’ll continue following the case, as it will set an important precedent for similar cases dealing with access rights to sensitive user data in the future.

Update: Facebook has issued the following statement about the suit:

Facebook is committed to its mission of providing people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. We have made numerous attempts to work with Power.com but, after making commitments to comply with our policies, they continued to put Facebook user data at risk. We filed the lawsuit against Power.com only after it refused to follow the rules that we have established to protect the privacy and security of our users’ data. Users rely on us to protect their data and enforce the privacy decisions they make on Facebook. We take this trust seriously and work aggressively to protect it.

We created Facebook Connect, a set of open self-service developer tools, to permit the sharing of user information in a controlled manner and that enforces the privacy decisions users make on Facebook. Facebook Connect has been very successful with more than 10,000 websites using Connect and our other APIs to build rich and robust experiences for their users, including the functionalities that Power.com has now alleged that we are trying to prevent. We continue to build more tools for developers to make Facebook even more open. The open streams API launched in April is a significant example.

The claims asserted by Power.com in its countersuit are without merit and we will fight them aggressively.

Facebook has been in the spotlight for its live video integrations recently, with millions of people using Facebook to watch events like President Obama’s inauguration and Michael Jackson’s memorial service. The ability to chat with other viewers and post status updates on Facebook is making watching online video more social.

Now, popular streaming video service Justin.tv is the newest developer to take advantage of Facebook’s live stream widget. The service doesn’t require any applications or approvals, and there are no fees as the service is ad-based. Ad-free service is available to users that are interested. Viewers are able to see your video on the Justin.tv Facebook app page, and you can easily add a tab for the live feed to your own Facebook Page.

The Justin.tv service follows the release of similar apps from Ustream and Stickam’s StreamAPI. The service, which is more suited to small businesses and individuals, differentiates itself by the lack of setup fee or process and no streaming fees. However, it could be a great solution for those looking to do quick live video experiments on their Facebook Pages.

Overall, the launch of several new products in the space shows the increasing interest from the media industry in the ways Facebook is able to enhance the online video experience.

In May, Facebook certified the first batch of 120 verified applications to be included in the Application Verification Program. Since then, apps have shared with us that they have been quite pleased with the results of the program. But while the program seems to be holding up on its promise of delivering increased visibility to apps that pass verification requirements, quality control is not yet perfect.

For example, despite the program’s rules, verified app Hugged immediately asks users to choose 30 friends to “hug” right after they’ve installed the app. This is equivalent to asking these friends to install the app.

On the topic of Requests, the verification checklist says: “Does the application only ask for invites/requests after the user has performed or received a certain action (i.e., completion of an action is not preceded by an invite screen)?”

Hugged is an app that allows users to send hugs to their friends. Hugs range in type, including Thinking-of-You Hug, Supersized Hug, and Booya! Hug. You can view your hug history, which tracks hugs that you’ve sent and received, and publish these stories to the News Feed. In order for your friends to view the hugs you send them, they must install the app.

Compare this to popular verified app Causes, where recruiting fans to join a particular cause is only one component of the app. Besides that, members of a cause can post links, photos, and videos, and contribute to the Discussion Board, or share comments.

Kiva’s Media Board, which allows members of the cause to post content.

The challenge with the Hugged app is that its core feature is sending hugs, which is the same as inviting friends to install the app. How should apps in this category be evaluated and judged? Should they have been accepted into the program in the first place?

Even if they are accepted, it’s going to be important for Facebook to monitor the behavior of apps awarded the verified seal of approval.