Facebook Community pages-geographic specific

Would it be better from a search engine perspective if Facebook Community pages included city and state? So instead of just "Homes of MFI" the page name would be "Homes of MFI Houston Tx".

Is there a trend growing on Facebook as far as search is concerned and could this help drive traffic to specific communities via a targeted Facebook page name?

Jonathan-

I do not have direct experience in FB titles, but I DO know that Google recently upgraded its algorithm to place much more emphasis on key words in the title instead of the META tags. If Facebook copies Google at all in this realm, then I would guess that a targeted FB name certainly could not hurt...and will most likely aid in your SEO.

Anyone else have any experience in FB SEO?

I would love to hear Mike Whaling's thoughts on this subject. (@30lines)

From my experience, FB pages do not get nearly the amount of love from Google than, let's say, Twitter does. Not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but I wonder if any of that has to do with the partnerships Google has...

It's a great question, Jonathan ... and as far as I can tell, the answer is: it depends. If you're claiming the property as a local business (which you should be), the location will automatically be in the URL until you claim a custom username.

When claiming a username, I think it's best to choose a short name that's easy to remember (and one that's consistent with your community's username on other sites). I'd rather make the site easy for people to remember and use other applications and inbound links to make the search engines aware of the specific location.

There's a second issue to consider here, which is that more people are using the search function on Facebook itself, and it's clear from their latest redesign that they will push this as much as they can. So far, it's largely unclear whether Facebook users are searching for the same types of things they typically search for on Google (e.g. apartments in Atlanta), but it stands to reason that more people might start using these types of searches as they spend more time on the site.

Here's the interesting part about this: Facebook is testing various ways to present "social search" results. Not only do they suggest results as you type, but they also add more weight to results from pages and groups that you and your friends are connected to on the site. So now you need to have a page that's relevant to the search engines, and you need to continuously develop your community to grow your audience and get your page in those "social search" results. Fun times, don't you think?

@Mike -absolutely its exciting. I have noticed the social search function which is very cool. The one thing about Facebook that is consistent, is that nothing has been consistent They keep updating their platform all of the time. I brought this subject up purely from what I was experimenting with regarding Facebook searches. Outside of the social circle, it still homes in on the title of the page relevant to the keywords you search for. The page title and name can only be so long. Perhaps there will be room for an open twitter discussion on #aptchat regarding how to attract traffic to FB pages from a geographical perspective.

Thanks for your thoughts on this subject.

@Brent.. I think this is part of what we are trying to discern in the long term.. the eternal question regarding the relationship between search engines

You make a great point about the name of the page, Jonathan. The title can be different from the URL, but it can't be changed, so you need to make sure you're happy with the name before your create your page.

I think the topic of local search in general would be a great discussion for #AptChat ... we'll add it to the list! Thanks for the suggestion!