Your Personal Brand’s SEO Gets a Boost from PeoplePond and Facebook
Today Facebook is announcing what we’ve all been waiting and hoping for… the ability to place our name and/or brand in the Web address of our Facebook profile and fan pages. This will replace the randomly assigned number like “id=592952074.”
Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.
While some see this as taking control of their identity on Facebook to minimize the opportunity for others to imitate them or misrepresent their brand, I see it as an SEO opportunity to better train the search engines to display my content when someone searches for me by name.
PeoplePond uses your username (hopefully it’s your first and last names) to personalize the Web address of your profile. This is one way search engines can associate the page and its contents with your identity. Now if you are linking to a Facebook account that has the same identity (again hopefully it’s your first and last names) in its Web address you are reinforcing this in the search engines giving them greater confidence of the relevance these pages have to the people searching for you.
Some more important information and links from the bottom of the Facebook announcement:
Be sure to check out this FAQ for answers to common questions, and if you’re an administrator of Facebook Pages, get more details here. If you want to ensure you keep the rights for a trademark or other protected name, contact us here.
Set yourself a reminder now. I know I have. Then be sure to update your PeoplePond profile with your new Facebook Web address.
PeoplePond | Joe Beaulaurier | 
June 9, 2009 3:06 pm
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