7 Ways to Drive Traffic From Facebook to Your Vet Website

While SEO, custom website content, and digital advertising are all effective tools for improving traffic to your practice website, Facebook is a great way to improve traffic. In fact, research by Shareaholic found that Facebook drives more website traffic than any other social platform, including Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn. 

More traffic to your practice website doesn’t just mean more opportunities to convert visitors into clients for improved practice profitability. More traffic helps boost your practice website’s ranking in search engines, which improves your online discoverability by pet owners and the potential to attract and convert even more clients. At the same time, increased discoverability in search engines leads people to check out your Facebook page, which supports an outwardly expanding cycle for practice growth. 

7 Facebook’s Reach Rules for veterinary clinics

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 of Facebook’s reach rules.

To help you do that, here are seven ways to drive traffic to your website from Facebook:

1. 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
• Email
• Phone

To easily add a CTA button to your Facebook page, watch Facebook’s short how-to video.

2. Consistently post fresh blog content on your website 

Posting links to funny cat videos on YouTube or someone else’s pet health articles is a great way to engage and entertain followers. Yet posting links to someone else’s website obviously drives traffic to their website and not yours. 

By consistently writing and posting fresh blog content on your website and posting links to that content in Facebook posts about pets, you steadily provide your followers with something fresh and interesting, which keeps them coming back for more. Moreover, Google favors websites that frequently post new content, meaning that fresh content helps improve your website’s ranking in search engines. 

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Craft compelling text

The text you include with your link could win—or lose—the click. You want to describe the content in enough detail to give readers a reason to leave Facebook and click through to your website without sounding spammy. Some best practices: 

• Remember that people hate clickbait. They may click through to your content, but if they quickly leave your website (or “bounce from your site), that’s bad for both your Facebook reach and your website’s search ranking. 
• Avoid writing in all-caps (which is the equivalent of shouting). The odd use of all-caps is fine where warranted but having all-caps text in every teaser post is a turnoff and may cost you followers 
• Use a friendly, conversational tone, and don’t be afraid to use humor. Remember, you’re at a barbecue. Write your Facebook posts the way you’d chat with people at a social gathering. After all, Facebook is a social channel. 
• Write blog titles that compel people to click through from Facebook. The blog title shows up in the link preview, meaning it becomes part of your post. So, an irresistible title goes a long way to getting the click. 

6. Turn Likers Into Followers 

Just because someone Likes your posts doesn’t mean they’re following your page, which means they may miss posts, and you may miss traffic-building opportunities in the process. To remedy this, simply ask people to follow your page. If they like your posts, there’s little reason why they wouldn’t enjoy an invitation to follow your page. Here’s how to find the information you need: 

• 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 and you’ll see a list of everyone who’s reacted to a post. 

• 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. 

That’s it! You’ve just invited more people to your barbecue! 

7. Update Your Website

Driving more traffic from Facebook to your website is all well and good, but what they discover when they arrive 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 compel visitors to remain on your website and explore further, which increases your chances of new business. 

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