3 million users took their names last Friday in Facebook’s vanity url rush.

But even bigger than that is grabbing the vanity urls for your fan page(s), which opens up June 28th. If you have at least 1,000 fans by May 31st, then you can grab them now.  Likewise, if you’re a journalist or a name brand, you can request their team to do it for you.  We took that liberty for a few of our casual dining clients. It might even help us rank on pest control eventually.

For example, if you’re looking for Send Out Cards, you don’t have to go to some crazy url anymore.  And the Facebook team has smartly 301 redirected the old url to this new one.  The new url is only on the 3rd page of Google organic results, but will climb over time.

Want to SEO your Facebook fan page? I was chatting with one of the Facebook executives, who described how anything you do in traditional SEO applies towards SEO for your Facebook page.

• Get more friends to fan your page– the link juice will flow. Put up a ton of good content to attract links from inside Facebook and from external sites. Facebook will likely already rank for your name as well as your organization’s name– so link to it from other sites you control.
• Create a ton of content– Facebook has widgets for music, videos, WordPress blogging, twitter, and everything else imaginable. Tie all these social sites together– not just for SEO reasons, but so that users can connect with you via their favorite method. I don’t use FriendFeed and Plaxo, but there are enough friends that do that I automatically update status there anyway.

Even if you’re not interested in being a social media expert, at least you can have a placeholder to avoid reputation management problems such as that of North Dakota State University Admissions. And don’t just grab your Facebook url, tie it in with stuff like your FriendFeed for Dennis Yu.

I’d think a better measure of quality would include percentage of active fans multiplied by a spamminess index (governed by how many people unsubscribe and how many folks don’t contribute real comments). What has been your experience with Facebook’s Quality Score? Have you been able to beat Keith Wilcox’s 205.9? What’s the maximum score possible?

Today I received two “urgent” messages from a Facebook user named Brian Zisk. They are both similar in content and tone, so I’ll just post one of them below.   There is a game on Facebook called “Friends For Sale“.  You buy and sell friends, and in the process are able to give them nicknames, send them virtual gifts, and write on their walls.

For fun, I bought a number of folks and promoted the company that I work at.  I even promoted the affiliate marketing blog of a friend, who was promoted on TechCrunch.  Turns out, this Brian Zisk fellow carried out his threat.  My current status message in this game is now ”I’m the ShitzLocal.com Spammer. Boycott my company!“

For a proponent of the arts and self-expression, it’s surprising to see someone get his panties in a wad over a silly Facebook game.

  

Facebook

to Dennis

Reply

Brian sent you a message.

——————–
Subject: Please… Time sensitive…

Dear Dennis Yu,

Please change the message under my name on friends for sale  to something like it was before, or anything non-offensive, but please remove the reference to your company from my listing the next time you log in so I do not have to see the association, or I will buy you on friends for sale and you will most likely not be happy with the text I associate with your name and company.

I am sure this is but a misunderstanding, but do not find it amusing, and would appreciate you removing this irritation ASAP.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Brian Zisk