If you’re engaging in any social media campaign, it’s likely that one of your primary objectives is to post your site’s links. Facebook campaigns are no different. After you’ve built your profile, it’s time to start looking at where you’re going to send out your links to get the best exposure on Facebook.
The status update feature on Facebook is one of the best areas to place a link. It has several advantages. The first is that your followers on Facebook will receive the status update. If your link is embedded in some interesting content, traffic is likely to follow.
The second advantage of the status update feature has to do with Facebook itself. Many features of Facebook operate like a search engine. It is thought that keywords, placement, density and other common search engine optimisation features play a big part in where your status updates feature on your followers’ news feeds. This can affect the popularity of your Facebook profile, and ultimately effect your social media campaign.
You have two options when you want to post links to your status updates. You can include the whole URL by simply typing it in as part of your status update, or you can use the ‘attach link’ feature from Facebook. Each way has its own ramifications.
Using Facebook to attach the link
The attach link feature of Facebook is very handy for creating aesthetically-pleasing links. The feature uses information from your profile to dress up the link. The link looks a lot cleaner than it would otherwise, as well, and you have the option of a thumbnail to really catch attention. Using this feature is good news for the internal Facebook SEO, as the feature automatically draws in keywords around the link.
When users click on these links they are sent to a Facebook URL that features your page within a frame, below a Facebook menu bar. This can have its good side, as users can use the Facebook menu to comment on your page and share it, but it does mean that they’re not landing on your pages.
Typing in the URL
This method gets around the problems with Facebook’s ‘attach link’ function, but creates at least one of its own. You have no control over the anchor text for your link, which means that if it’s a little clunky, the chances are users won’t click on it. On the plus side, any users who click through will be put directly through to your site, rather than Facebook’s framed page. If you have a clean-looking link, this may be the better option.
It’s important to note that Facebook has made all the outbound links you can post ‘nofollow.’ This means that they will not pass any link juice onto your site. This does limit their value to your SEO campaign, but it doesn’t mean that Facebook links are completely valueless. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about this quite complicated issue. Facebook campaigns remain popular because of the exposure they allow to a site’s target users.
