How to change your Facebook URL

Its been nearly a year now, but one of my favorite Facebook features remains the customizable URL. I’m always stumped at why more people don’t take advantage of it. Is it because they want their Facebook presence to be as hard to find as possible? Perhaps they’re particularly attached the randomly generated characters?

Whatever the reason, altering a Facebook URL couldn’t be easier. You’ll spend more time trying to think of a clever name that you will trying to change it in Facebook. It all goes down here:

www.facebook.com/username

Facebook’s own easy-to-remember URL allows users to change (one time only) the URL of their own personal profile, as well as any fan page they administer. There’s only one small catch — you’ll need to have at least 25 “fans” of your page before you can alter its URL. If you can’t find 25 people to become fans of your brand, you may have bigger issues than needing to shorten a URL.

The benefit of doing so is easy to see:

In addition to making your Facebook page easier to find, a shorter URL will also up a page’s rank on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!. True, these sites don’t admit a URL’s role in search engine rankings, but more search engine optimization “experts” will tell you it’s a great way to help a site out.

The trick is to find a URL that is easy to remember, descriptive, and memorable. And while your initial reaction may be to list the shorthand name of your business/department/organization, be careful. Here’s a few things to remember:

• Facebook really only gives you one shot at this. If you spell your organization’s name wrong, there is no delete and restart button. Once a name is entered, it is there for good.
• Users outside your sphere of influence may have no clue that IBIE stands for International Business Internship Exchange instead of the Iced Beer Is Excellent club. Use a name that makes sense. Better yet, use a name that describes who you are or the products/services you offer.

Related posts:

1. A year of change in Facebook and higher education
2. Facebook profile change is one we can live with
3. Take control of your Facebook profile picture
4. Five ways to build engagement on a Facebook wall
5. Why I ‘like’ Facebook check-in deals