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Search engine optimization can be a confusing mess when you’re working on your website.  But for Facebook, there are some surprisingly easy things you can do to help boost your page ranking with Google and those other search engines that people say exist, but I’ve never seen.

• Pick a relevant page name and don’t change it.  Your page name appears in the title line of your page which helps search engines find it.  But Google will dock you some search love if that title line changes, so try not to switch your Facebook page name.  (After you have a 100 fans, you can’t change this anyway.)  The best bet is to use the actual name of or church, ministry or organization.

• Claim your vanity URL.  After you get 25 fans, you can get a custom URL like facebook.com/churchjuice. 

• Use important keywords or phrases in your “about” box.  On the left side of your profile, somewhere below your picture, you’ll see a blurb labeled “About.” This is one of the few places you can customize information that appears high in the code of you page, which is good for search engines.

• Fill in the boxes on your info page.  Every page has an info tab.  This is another place you can be intentional about using specific keywords or phrases that explain who you are.  Make sure to include links back to you church website, too.

• Caption pictures and give good descriptions if you create an event.  All of this info can be available to search engines, so take advantage of it.

• Encourage engagement.  The more traffic and interactions you get to your Facebook page, the better it is for search results.  Like anything, content is king.  Write good contact and interact with your fans.  Ask a question to start a discussion.

• Get inbound links to your Facebook page.  Put a link to it on your church’s website, your own blog or wherever you can think.  The more people linking to your page, the better.

What about outbound links?  Well, there is some debate of this.  Links you put into your status updates are labeled by Facekook as “nofollow.”  Basically that means if you link to your church website, that link will not get tracked by Google and, thus, will not help your church page get more SEO credit.  That said, links can always be good for creating content on your Facebook page and can result in more visits to your site, which is good.  So you can get more awareness and traffic to your website, which is good, you just won’t get the SEO juice you deserve.