While SEO and custom website content are both effective tools to drive traffic to your website, Facebook is a great way to drive website traffic.
Why Facebook when there are so many other social networks?
It all comes down to user numbers.
Facebook’s Reach Rules
Though old and new social networks continue to angle for a slice of the Facebook pie, they’re not even close to the table.
According to Feb. 2nd, 2021 data by Statista, Facebook tops the list of most popular social networks worldwide with 2.8 billion users. (That’s roughly a third of the world’s population.)
- Instagram clocked in with roughly half the number of users.
- Twitter user numbers have so steadily dropped over the past few years, Forbes likened Twitter to “a television set without shows to watch.”
So, Facebook pages currently have a greater potential to drive traffic to your website because Facebook’s reach rules.
The trick is to use Facebook to your best advantage.
To help you do that, here are seven ways to drive traffic to your website from Facebook:
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Make Your Website Link Easy to Find
People can’t click through to your website if they can’t find the link. So, put your website link everywhere that makes sense. A few examples:
- Your About tab
- Event pages
- Every post that invites people to call or visit
You should also consider adding a call-to-action (CTA) button to your profile.
Facebook CTA buttons appear at the top of your page and are easily linked to your website. So, CTA buttons make it simple for people to visit your website.
You can also choose CTA buttons to help customers reach you through:
- Messenger
- Phone
To easily add a CTA button to your Facebook page, watch Facebook’s short how-to video.
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Consistently post fresh blog content on your website
Posting links to funny pet videos on YouTube or other external content is certainly a simple way to engage and entertain your page followers. However, posting links to someone else’s website naturally drives traffic to their website and not yours.
When you write and post fresh blog content to your website and link that content to your Facebook posts, you attract traffic from social to your website.
Posting fresh content on your website also helps improve search engine ranking. Google favors websites that post content on a frequent basis and is happy to penalize sites that don’t bring anything fresh to the table.
To make regular posting of fresh content easier for veterinary practices, subscribers to WebDVM Plus and Pro custom veterinary websites receive exclusive access to WebDVM Social. A content aggregator that provides clients with curated content for pet owners on a weekly basis, WebDVM Social empowers veterinary teams to create, find, and post content on social media and through newsletters from a single quick and efficient location.
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Make Sure You’ve Enabled Public Sharing for Posts
Double check to make sure your page is set to allow public sharing for posts—especially if you’re a new page administrator. Allowing anyone to share one of your posts with friends on Facebook naturally means more exposure for that post and more potential traffic to your website. To check whether public sharing for posts is enabled:
- Go to your Facebook page.
- Click on Settings (on the left-hand side of the screen).
- Click Edit to the right of Post and Story Sharing.
- Make sure both boxes below Allow Sharing to Stories are checked.
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Use Properly Sized Images
Posts with photos get more engagement (Likes, shares, clicks, etc.) than posts with text alone.
The current optimal image size recommended for Facebook posts and timeline photos is 1200 X 630 pixels. You can also use images at the standard YouTube aspect ration of 16:9 (1920 X 1080 pixels). Facebook will compress the image for display, but nothing will be lost from the image. It will display fine and look crisp and clean.
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Write Text That Compels People to Click
To drive traffic to your website from Facebook, posts written with intrigue and curiosity are strong motivators for people to click through because they effectively represent unanswered questions, and people have a strong psychological desire for closure. (That’s why people watch mysteries.)
So, don’t give away the whole story in a post. Provide people with enough information to whet their appetites, then let people know they can get the rest of the story from your website.
Some best practices:
- Make sure there’s congruence between your social content and blog. Clickbait headline writers routinely draw people to web pages that have little to do with whatever headline drew people in, meaning people hate clickbait. Once you break someone’s trust, you may not get it back. Moreover, if someone quickly abandons your website (or “bounces”), both your Facebook reach and your Google ranking may suffer.
- Avoid writing in ALL CAPS (which represents shouting). The odd use of ALL CAPS is fine for occasional emphasis but too much may cost you followers. (No one enjoys being shouted at).
- Write in a casual, friendly manner, and don’t be afraid to use humor where appropriate. Facebook is a social medium, meaning a conversation, and people aren’t always looking for serious conversations.
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Turn Likes into Followers
Someone may like your posts, but that doesn’t mean they’re following your page. That means, they may miss posts—and you miss website traffic opportunities. To remedy this, ask people to follow your page.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to the bottom of any post.
- Hover over where the reactions to a post are listed and you’ll see a pop-up list of names of everyone who’s reacted to a post.
- Click on the names.
- Anyone who doesn’t already follow your page will have an Invite button next to their name.
- Click on any Invite button to invite a person to follow your page.
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Update Your Website
Attracting traffic from Facebook to your website is all well and good but what people find when they land on your website can make all the difference in turning a visitor into a client.
Websites that look out of date can drive a visitor away, never to return. Attractive, modern-looking websites with optimal functionality like WebDVM custom veterinary websites compel visitors to remain on your website and explore further, which increases your chances of converting visitors into clients.
With a suite of industry leading pet health content and online resources, WebDVM positions your website as the go-to source of trusted information for pet owners, which strengthens client engagement, improves compliance, and drives repeat business.
Custom designed by experts to tell your practice story and realize your unique business goals, WebDVM features veterinary-approved pet health content and online resources to educate pet owners, improve compliance, and save practices time. Vetted by LifeLearn’s on-staff DVMs to ensure practices and pet owners have the most current and credible information, WebDVM’s pet health content is backed by LifeLearn’s 25+ years in the animal health industry.
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The post has been updated from a previous blog to be even more timely and relevant.
