Facebook is not only the largest social media channel but also an excellent place to help you reach whatever business goals you might have. It allows business users to connect with their audience, regardless of location or time. Both B2B and B2C businesses can use it to raise brand awareness, promote their products, provide customer support, increase website traffic from Facebook, and share ideas with their community.
Increased website traffic from Facebook provides an opportunity for brands to convert Likes and visitors into potential clients. Increased traffic also boosts the website’s search engine rankings. This leads to more discoverability and the potential to attract more customers.
If you are looking for tips on how to use Facebook to generate website traffic, read on!
1. Optimize Your Business Page to Generate More Clicks
Think of your Facebook business page as an entrypoint to receiving traffic from Facebook to your website. In essence, use Facebook to generate website traffic. The platform should give your social media audience a preview of what your website contains and what your business is about. To achieve this, you should optimize your Facebook page in an engaging way. Use prompts to encourage them to click the link leading to your website. Remember, your Facebook followers can’t click through to your website if they can’t find a link.
Some of the best places to insert your website link include;
You should also include a Call to Action (CTA)button on your Facebook profile. This is a handy little feature of the many Facebook features that exist appearing at the top of your Facebook page, located next to the Like button. The CTA button can be linked to any webpage of your choice. Facebook CTAs come in handy for reaching your customers through Facebook messenger, phone, and email. They also help if customers need to book for a service or make purchases.
The Facebook milestones is another crucial place to include your website link. For instance, if you recently moved to a new address, you should include the link to the page on your website indicating directions to your new location. Alternatively, if you have a milestone for when you began providing particular services, include a link leading to your service page.
If you forgot how to add Facebook milestones, check out this video below:
2. Add Facebook Buttons on Your Website
There are many ways to promote your website using Facebook, but the easiest way is to have Facebook buttons on your website. All website editors come with various compatible Facebook sharing buttons that can be integrated onto the website. Among them, include;
- Facebook like button – this allows your visitors to like and recommend your website on Facebook without having to leave your website.
- Facebook share button – the button lets your website visitors add a customized message to your website link before sharing it on their timeline. The button also allows them to customize who can view their Facebook update.
- Facebook follow button – the follow button, as the name suggests, allows your visitors to subscribe to your Facebook updates.
- Social link bar – this button allows your website visitors to view all your social media webpages, including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and more.
Here is an example of what some of these look like when implemented on your website:
3. Regularly Post Fresh Content on Your Website
Most businesses post links to interesting YouTube videos and other facts, which is a great way to engage and entertain their followers. However, using these links will obviously drive traffic to the other person’s website or YouTube channel, and not yours. The best way to keep your followers engaged is by creating and posting fresh blog content on your website.
You should then share the links to your fresh website posts in your Facebook posts. This will provide your followers with interesting and insightful content to keep them coming back for more. That aside, Google favors websites that frequently update with new content, implying that doing this regularly improves your website’s search engine rankings.
Don’t forget to optimize your new content for sharing. This makes it simple for your Facebook followers to share content with others on the platform. As mentioned, you can use social sharing buttons, which provide one-step simplicity.
4. Optimize Your Facebook Posts
With fresh and interesting content on your website, you should then optimize how you post on Facebook. You can use one of the three different ways to post your website links to Facebook. Depending on the current Facebook algorithm and your audience, you will get different results with each method. The methods include;
- A traditional and simple method involves cutting and pasting the website link into Facebook’s update status section. The link will pull your website’s photo and metadata automatically. One issue with this method is that the photo pulled from the website can show up smaller, which may not be suitable for Facebook visuals.
- The second method involves posting a photo and the website link separately into the status update section of Facebook with some little description of the link. The best thing about this method is that the description goes live with the photo when shared, providing assurance that you can control the message. The photo also displays larger in the news feed, which is suitable for Facebook visuals.
- The third method, which is increasingly becoming popular, is pasting the link to the status section and removing the link data to change the post into “text only.” An advantage of using this method is that text-only posts receive more reach on Facebook. However, you should be cautious with this, as Facebook recently indicated that the new algorithm would favor fewer text posts from Facebook pages.
You can test the three approaches separately to determine one that gets the most engagement and drives more traffic.
5. Use Large Images
Facebook posts with large images receive more engagement compared to those with small or no photos. You should make your Facebook images prominent to get more likes, shares, comments, and click-throughs. The best way to do this is by using full-sized images in your Facebook blog post updates. The best dimensions for photos that look good on Facebook are 1200 X 628 pixels. For better-looking images, you can double the pixel dimensions, but ensure that the ratio remains 150DPI.
If you are skeptical about this, check your blog site metrics using Facebook insights to assess the success of full-sized images compared to small pictures. As mentioned, to upload full-sized images, you should upload the image directly. You can then add the links to your website post in the text update section.
6. Create Compelling Text
When sharing your website updates on Facebook, the text that you include with your link could affect your results. Your text should describe the website content briefly but in detail, giving your Facebook followers a reason to click through into your website. To avoid sounding spammy in your texts;
- Remember the internet hates clickbait – your Facebook followers may click through your content but end up leaving your website almost immediately. High bounce rates from your website are detrimental to your Facebook reach and website search engine rankings.
- Avoid capitalizing everything – writing your entire text in caps equivalents to shouting. Only use capitalization where necessary and avoid having all your text in capital letters. It is a turn off that can cost you Facebook followers.
- Use a friendly and conversational tone with humor. Remember that Facebook is a social platform and write your posts as you would converse with normal people.
- Use compelling blog titles – your blog title will show up in the link preview. As such, ensure that it is compelling and irresistible enough to have Facebook users click through.
7. Convert Likers into Followers
Not everybody who likes your Facebook updates follows your page. You will find that a good percentage of those who like your posts don’t follow your page. This means that they will miss out on your post updates, and you miss out on traffic building opportunities as well. To avoid this, you can simply ask Facebook users who liked or reacted to your posts to follow your page. If they liked your posts in the first place, there is no reason why they wouldn’t appreciate an invitation to follow your page.
To invite likers, click or hover at the reactions of your previous post. A pop-up list with names of those who have liked and reacted to your post will appear. From the list, you can easily see Facebook users who have liked or reacted to your post but don’t follow your page. Fortunately, there is an invite button just next to their profile names. You just click the invite button to invite them.
8. Use Short Updates
Your website article has a lot of text, which is not good for building traffic from Facebook. For Facebook and any other social media platform, use short and witty updates that generate engagement and converting click-throughs. As a rule of thumb, keep your Facebook updates to one sentence with less than 140 characters.
Keep in mind that the majority of your Facebook followers could be accessing the platform through mobile devices. Therefore, consider them by making your updates short, clear, and with an intriguing title. The short update should give your followers a good idea of what the blog article is about.
How to increase website traffic from Facebook: Bottom Line
Facebook is an amazing social media platform that can be used to share blog articles and generate website traffic. Apart from the tips mentioned above, you can take advantage of Facebook Ads, embed a short blog video, host Facebook contests on your website, and share selectively on individual profiles.
As you employ these strategies to use Facebook to generate website traffic, ensure that your website is up to date. You can drive good traffic into your website only for it to be turned away by the appearance of your website. Invest in an attractive, modern design, and ensure it is functioning well to encourage your visitors to stay.