How to Use Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic and Build Web Authority

Over 2 billion people now use Facebook and 1.5 billion of those check-in every day. So, if you’re looking for a big pool of potential customers, this global, social media powerhouse has what you need to drive traffic via Facebook Ads.

Not only is Facebook one of the top online sales channels, but businesses know social media success equals website success.

A solid Facebook presence drives traffic to your website and increases your online authority, which, according to industry experts, is one of the most important search engine ranking factors.

Authority is basically the internet’s version of ‘word-of-mouth’. So, the more people are talking about you, interacting with you, and sharing what you have to say, the more ‘authority search engines assume you have. It’s as simple as that!

When you know what you’re doing, Facebook’s well-defined advert structure can be an easy win for building authority. But if you get it wrong, it could be an expensive mistake. Here are some expert tips to avoid catastrophe and get it right.

So Many Facebook Ads

If you want to take advantage of Facebook’s advertising power, you need to understand what options are available. Facebook offers a truly dizzying array of ad types, so here are the ones that are most applicable to building domain authority. These adverts work because of:

Send traffic to your website
Encourage people to share your content
Get your content seen by industry influencers
Encourage page likes and follows

Link Click Ads

These simple ads promote your external website, driving traffic to your chosen landing pages. The more traffic your site has, the higher your web authority.

Video Ads & Multi-Product Ads

Video ads and image carousels (multi-product) take advantage of people’s strong preference for multi-media content. You can add links to landing pages and your webshop to encourage sales and web traffic, or back to your Facebook page to bring in those likes.

Page Post Boosts

You can choose to boost any post you place on your Facebook page. Boosting promotes your post to a specific audience (which you can choose down to minute details like a person’s job title). Facebook ads ‘sponsored’ to the post when it appears on a target’s wall. These ads are best at encouraging page likes and sharing.

Dynamic Product Ads

Facebook places these ads based on people’s past engagements with our website or page. They’re great at directing people from your Facebook page to your website.

Page Like Ads

A page like ads is pretty self-explanatory. If you want to increase your number of page likes, use these to target the audience you think would be most likely to ‘like’ you.

Work Out Your Audience

Using the ‘custom’ function in Facebook’s Audience Insights tool, you can work out what kind of people are most likely to interact with your adverts and your page.

The simplest way to do this is to search for people who ‘like’ one of your main competitors and view a summary of their statistics. For example, are they mostly female, ages 25-34 and follow a lot of pages about famous internet cats? Or are they generally 55-70-year-old retired campervan owners?

You can find out what devices these people use, what countries they are in, and how often they look at Facebook.

Once you know who to target, you can set your ads to appear only to them, drastically increasing your chances of success.

Target Influencers

One of the best ways to build your online authority is through gaining backlinks to your site from influencers in your industry. In the eyes of a search engine, if the big guns are talking about your work, you must know what you’re doing.

If you want influencers to link to your content, you’re going to need to get seen by them first. To get yourself noticed:

Find out who they are
Use their information to create an ‘audience profile’ for your adverts
Produce some killer content they will want to share when they see it
Advertise it to the audience they fit in

To go the extra mile, mention and link to the influencers you want to target within the post you’re advertising. The best way to target an influencer is to quote them and include their content in your piece, alongside their bio and headshot.

Don’t Leave Your Content to Chance

For your Facebook ads to be successful, they need to be based on great content. There’s no point paying to advertise something half-baked.

As well as being interesting to read/watch/engage with, your ads need to be regular. People are more likely to take action on advertisements after they’ve seen them several times. So don’t expect to pay once and instantly reap the rewards. Building domain authority is an ongoing investment.

One of the best ways to ensure you’re keeping up with demands is to create a content and ad calendar. You can get plugins suitable for most website builders to help with this.

Half of all daily Facebook users check in multiple times per day. So, being consistent and shaking up your content regularly is going to help you build an interested audience and steady flow traffic from your adverts.

Boost Your Popular Posts

Facebook ads ‘boost post’ is the best way to build your following. Aim to get your most popular posts seen by a wider audience by using Facebook’s Page Insights function to find out which are the most popular already and give them a boost.

If people in your circle enjoy a piece of content, it’s likely to also resonate with a wider target audience.

When boosting a post, make sure that:

That it is helpful (how-to’s, lists of resources, tutorial videos, etc.)
Add links to pages across your website within the article (internal links build your SEO)
Make sure all content has visible sharing buttons (number of shares boosts your SEO)
Add calls-to-action to all of your posts telling the reader what you would like them to do next

Much to the disappointment of many small business owners, there is no quick fix for successful advertising. Similarly, there’s no hard and fast cheat for building your presence on the web. But luckily, you can kill two birds with one stone by getting your business noticed with Facebook ads. By following these simple steps, you’ll start to boost your following and bolster your online authority in no time.