To continue with my last post, starting this friday at 9pm (Pacific) Facebook will be letting users and  fan pages sign up for “usernames”.  To me this is a big deal, becuase it will allow your page to rank for your Business name in the search engines.  Unfortunately for some, at this point they will only be letting pages with over 1,000 fans (as of May 31st) sign up, but it looks like in late June they will be lessening the restrictions.  The reason they are doing it this way is to avoid a domain style “landrush” where speculators sign up for a bunch of pages, and scoop up all the names.  Another security measure they implemented is making generic terms unavailable such as “pizza” and “flowers”.  

Note- This definitely sucks for the people like ourselves that are running a legitimate business page that had 950 fans as of May 31st, and will now have to wait, and potentially lose out on getting our desired username, but we are definitely in the minority and I understand why they are doing it.

I think it will be extremely important for businesses to get a search-friendly username that matches their business name.  Essentially your page will then be treated like a second website, and obviously Facebook will make the pages as SEO-friendly as possible, so they will rank well and drive more traffic.  This is a bigger deal than some people realize, because I think we will definitely start to see more and more facebook pages cracking into the search results, which we know is a huge business.  I think we will also see people advertising their facebook pages more (like some big businesses already have) because their platform is so user-friendly.

Essentially having a facebook page for your Business with a good username is like getting a second website with great functionality, SEO, and access to a HUGE community for free.

But choose wisely with your username for yourself and your business page, as you will only get 1 chance.  I would recommend going with how you want people to find you or your Business on the web.

Tags: facebook, facebook pages, local business, search

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