Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does a link in facebook count as a backlink?
-
Q: Does a link in a facebook post count as a backlink?
Q: is it a 'do follow' or 'no follow' link?
Q: twitter uses short links, so when someone links to me, do i get the points/juice from the backlink?
-
Yeah i read the same.
Backlinks from social platforms doesn't per see do much favor.
Here is a some links too about link building for newbees too: [https://support.shorturl.gg/business-marketing-and-seo-forums/discussions/seo-talks/link-building-seo/](link url) and the one where they talk about that Google might consider link building as spam is very interesting I'd think in my opinion.In theory it might hurt you as they could consider non organic link building as a break of Google's TOS. Not sure how true it is but still its a bit interesting as it seems that they prefer that links are built only the organcic way and not through SEO practices.
-
A) Generally yes, but hard to say for certain. There are correlations suggesting that maybe some of them do pass influence in some way.
B) Probably, but again, likely based on engagement, i.e. if a social link gets very little engagement, it probably won't do much to influence search rankings, but if it gets a lot, it often seems to have at least some positive impact.
-
am I correct to assume that:
- a) Social, "nofollow"-links have no tangible value in terms of directly affecting rankings
- b) All social links indirectly affects rankings (time on page, increase in traffic, more direct traffic, and so forth ...)
-
It depends on the definition and intent of the word. In this case, I believe KevinBP wants to know whether those links will impact rankings in the same way that normal, followed links from other websites will/do. I believe we'd all agree that social media links with nofollow attributes do not contribute in those ways.
I'd also say, more broadly, that while many types of links will show up in Google's Webmaster Tools, this criteria alone does not indicate rank-boosting ability from those links or that Google is even counting them.
-
To shock all of you YES facebook links count as a backlink.... If you have not checked your webmaster tools lately you will notice that comment links on facebook post now show up in your back-links profile. However this may not be the best quality links they are similar to forum comment posting a very low level/quality of link building.
If they are showing up in your webmaster tools then they are do follow links and are considered back-links.
I would love to hear what everyone think of this logic?
-
Nope, they don't.
Good article here explaining it in more detail: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2325343/matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-social-signals-not-part-of-google-search-ranking-algorithms but basically any link from Facebook or twitter does not help your rankings.
Would be way to easy to manipulate to get rankings.
If your new to link building, then this is a great beginners guide to it: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
Thanks
Andy
-
Links via social media are traditionally "no follow". Facebook and Twitter follow this convention.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best way to link from press releases
I'm wondering what people recommend for linking from press releases; specifically, what kind of tracking parameters people add to their links, if any. My first thought is to add UTM tracking parameters for Google Analytics, but I have a few concerns: bloggers that copy our link from the release include the tracking parameters in the links from their site, which would only identify the traffic as coming from the release and not the specific sites UTM parameters in the link may make it look less natural to Google Also, I've considered using shortened URL's without parameters in the release that get 301 redirected to the relevant pages, which I thought might have a few benefits: the links look more natural (no tracking parameters) UTM parameters could be added as part of the redirect after the fact if the release attracted links from spammy sources for some reason I could kill the redirect, which I'm hoping would effectively kill the link My company doesn't rely on press releases for link building, which we understand to have been ineffective for a long time, but we do send them out occasionally and want the most effective links for tracking and SEO. I'd love to hear if anyone has thoughts on these assumptions, or if anyone has different linking strategies that they have found strike the right balance of SEO and tracking considerations. Thanks!
Social Media | | Kyle_M2 -
Way to reset Facebook page Reach sending patterns
I have a client that posts a bunch of really poorly formatted and nonengaging content on her a Facebook business page. This has caused her reach to be very low, despite having 9000 real followers. Due to a history of poor content and therefore low engagement Facebook just does not send her stuff out anymore. Is there a way to change that? I heard you could reset that notion by staying off the page for a couple of weeks and then beginning to post once more with better stuff. Is that remotely true?
Social Media | | Atomicx0 -
Videos perform poorly on facebook...why?
I have a facebook page with 42,000 Real fans. Images, screenshots, links, questions, etc all perform well. But videos get 0 interaction. If I get 5 likes that is saying something. Why would facebook not send out my videos to people? Is there a way to increase them? It is very frustrating to post our youtube videos to get no response. My fans are most 13-30 yr old gamers, so videos should be right up their alley.
Social Media | | Atomicx0 -
Where do the Facebook star ratings come from?
I have a client whose FB page has a 5 star rating (apparently from 5 reviews) but I have no clue from where they are aggregated? I tried Google-ing for answers with no luck! Any idea? This is the page I am referring to... https://www.facebook.com/pages/Partners-in-Womens-Health-of-Jupiter-LLC/310303442400699?bookmark_t=page
Social Media | | RickyShockley0 -
Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics
Hello, One of my clients has a Facebook page for his company, and his social media manager posts some promotional and educational posts on daily basis. the social media manager uses affiliate ID's in the destination URL to track traffic and leads that come from the social media and to make it look nicer he uses shortcut links service - bitly. Now I have a few questions about this: I don't see traffic comes from bit.ly or bitly.com in Google Analytics, my question: is using 301 redirect makes Google Analytics understand that the last website which sent the traffic to my website is not the actual Referral website? Is using shortcut links in the social media damages the links value (even though they are <nofollow>links - but still considered as signals from social media</nofollow> Thanks. LorS1nd.jpg
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Why isn't my Facebook page showing up in search results?
When I search directly for imageworks creative facebook page on Google, I get many results - some of which are not mine and some of which are listings from other citation sites like Manta. I did a site: search and I do see that the page is indexed by Google, but it's pretty important that we get a better ranking than we currently have! This is the Facebook url: https://www.facebook.com/ImageWorksCreative As part of our rebranding, we did have the URL changed from /imageworksstudio, but that was well over a month ago. I feel as though Google should have caught up by now. Any thoughts on how we can get our FB profile onto the front page?
Social Media | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Blog posts copied to Facebook or Linked? Any Duplicate Content Issues?
I wasnt able to find any good answers on this. I have two separate ecommerce websites, one with a top level blog. (www.xyz.com/blog) and different website with a subdomain blog (blog.xyz.com)***note on the subdomain blog, although it links to our website. You cannot directly shop from it. Until i can make some sort of scraper, its what I have to work with. For quite some time now I have been copying the blog posts and re-creating them on facebook as a Note. Using the same anchor text/links on facebook as my blog post. Part of the issue is that I want the facebook pages to have some content and not just links. Both get 2-3 updates per week, 1 of those being a blog re-post. Does anyone know if google or bing considers this duplicate content? Should I simply link directly to the blog everytime, as a best practice? Any insight on this would be great. Thanks!
Social Media | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Changing Facebook Username
HI Does anyone know of any negative consequences of changing Facebook username ? For example i take it all your fans are transferred/you dont lose them 🙂 ? Its just a url change (so links on website etc need to be updated) but thats the only thing that changes ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0