There has been quite a bit of discussion lately about how Facebook helps SEO. The consensus seems to be that it does…if used properly. So, how can you, as a business owner, use Facebook to optimize your search rankings? Here are some answers for you.

The easiest way to explain the correlation between Facebook and SEO is to say that social signals improve your search rankings. That means that comments, likes, and shares are beneficial to you, as a business owner. You want people to be interacting with your Facebook page as well as visiting it, and you want to be interacting with them, too, so they’re more encouraged to keep coming back.

You might think of it this way: a person visits your page, and shares something that they see there. This builds a link, which increases your visibility. Then, someone else clicks on that link, which means a greater click-through rate. They then visit your website and spend some time there, which means that your bounce-back rate is lower. Every one of the things that took place in this hypothetical chain reaction would be helpful to you, in regards to SEO.

But now that you know all of this, how can you take advantage of it? What you’ll be wanting to do is come up with the best and most engaging content, so that chain reactions of the sort mentioned above are more likely to take place. If you have a popular Facebook page, then people are going to keep coming back, and they’re going to keep liking, commenting, and sharing. It’s therefore extremely valuable to you to have good content on that Facebook page, and you should be investing some time into figuring out how to make that happen. If you’re unsure of what works best, look at some of the most popular competing Facebook pages, do focus groups with your target demographic, or hire a social media consultant with good references.

As you can see, it would be foolish to discount the importance of Facebook in getting those critical search engine rankings. Search engine rankings equal visibility, and it’s visibility that ultimately results in more sales.