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://outdoorsrank.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.
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 -
Facebook Page - About/Description/General About/Mission - Questions
Hi, Im just setting up a FB fan page for a client How terrible is it to use clients websites home page descriptive copy as the Facebook page long description ? Language is in Turkish which i don't speak so i'm not able to edit a new version of it just for FB and no budget to hire Turkish speaker to come up with something. So was going to copy & paste but that would be duplicate with HP obviously. How important is it to fill in 'Mission Statement' & 'General About' ? Especially if long description likely to already include that info ? I think long descrip is important for FB pages on seo etc etc but a good one eliminates importance of 'Mission' & 'General About', or is it still advisable to fill these in or are they just extra boxes for flexibility ? I take it when it comes to securing a vanity url (once we hit 25+ fans) for a foreign language version FB page it should ideally be brand name (which includes a keyword) in the local/target language ? The page name is already the brand name in English but since contains keyword is it best to rename into local target language similarly to the url for consistency and local targeting or better to keep one in Turkish and one in English ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How can I change the Facebook Page shown in the SERP
Hi everyone, got a quick question in regard to our Facebook page and its appearance on the Google SERP. We have individual Facebook pages for every country and language. Unfornately the UK site is ranking in the German SERP rather then our Germany Facebook Site. The UK site is way older and has much more likes which most likely explains why this page is (still) outranking our, fairly new site (couple of months). Is there a way, to push my German Facebook Site in front of the UK Site in Germany? Any advice or tipp is much appreciated. Thanks
Social Media | | ennovators0 -
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 -
Facebook doesn't "read" pages: 206 responsecode: Could not retrieve data from URL
Hello, Since shortly, every page of our website ecoheating.be doesn't get "read" by Google. So when you paste a page in Facebook, he doesn't get the title, description, image... FB Debugger says there's a 206 Error code (check attachment). A lot of changes are done the last weeks on this site so perhaps something is misconfigured. But what could this be? I've already check the htaccess and nothing there... Thanks, 0cphxGt
Social Media | | conversal0 -
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