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
-
Facebook won't show up in SERP
Hello! One of my clients' Facebook page isn't showing up on the SERP, even when you search "CLIENT NAME facebook" or an excerpt from a live post. Our social media team looked over all the settings in Meta, and everything looks correct, so we are stumped. Anyone encounter this before?
Social Media | | GoogleAlgoServant0 -
Twitter Analytics: Follower Count & Reporting Inconsistencies
Our number of followers on Twitter has suddenly dropped (yet not dropped) in a really weird way. Twitter Analytics shows follower counts in two places: Monthly increases in followers, and then also in the Audience Insights tab, where you can see three months of follower counts mapped in a chart. Month-to-month, the total number of followers continues to rise. What’s inconsistent, however, is the total number of aggregate followers shown in the cart. Twitter just dropped our to total count of followers by about 600. But it’s not like we just suddenly lost 600 followers last month (in fact we gained far more than that), but rather that Twitter seems to have adjusted the aggregate numbers across the board retroactively for all months. So while month-to-month continues to show gains, overall, we still went down. The only way we would have even noticed this, by the way, is because we have a record of the OLD total follower count that Twitter had previously displayed as recently as last month. So confusing. We’re trying to figure out what happened, and the only thing that seems to make sense is that Twitter may have done a huge spam account purge, and instead of making it look like we suddenly lost a lot of followers, they just updated the aggregate total # of followers across all time……? [For the record, we do not buy followers, but we don’t always do the best job at blocking spam followers when the do follow us either.] Any advice would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂
Social Media | | mirabile0 -
Facebook Outreach Tips - what to say
Hi, I've been shown how to do facebook outreach in my home town. I am a weight loss hypnotist. I was shown how to do outreach to possible home town clients using the facebook search feature. I go to the search and type in "Friends who like weight loss" And I get a couple of friends who have liked a major weight loss site After I've done that search, I look to the right in facebook. It has a bunch of dropdowns. I choose the same search parameters except I change it to "Live in Boise" (my town) and "Not my Friend". I get dozens of facebook users who live in Boise and are not my friends and are interested in weight loss. I can message these people (less than 30 a day) Here's the problem: I don't want to spam them. How do I get these people interested in my weight loss hypnosis program (I could really help them) by sparking up a conversation and not spamming. Everything I can think of saying seems manipulative. I don't know how to start a conversation and invite people to come in for a free sample session. My free sample session is 30 minutes and is free just to see if the client and I are a good fit. My website is bobweikel.com if that helps. How do I do this with the utmost integrity? Thank you.
Social Media | | BobGW0 -
Facebook Pages - Best to have one page or multiple pages when a company has multiple locations?
I'm working with a business that has multiple locations (13) in several different states. Is it best practice to have one central FB page for the company and/or separate location pages? It's for a self storage company that does not have one central phone number, so each location would have separate information listed on the page. They do have a central website with different pages for each location. I'd love to hear the communities thoughts on the best way to handle this.
Social Media | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Are links between a subdomain and a root domain internal or external?
We have a microsite on a subdomain that is kind of a community site that has articles posted to it several times per week. The articles are often relevant to topics covered on the root domain, so links are often included. My question is, are links between the subdomain and root domain considered internal or external? Also, how much of a difference does the location of the links make? For example, if we have a related links menu with links to the root domain is that good enough, or is it that much better to have the links embedded in the article text (toward the beginning of the article)?
Social Media | | unitedairlines0 -
How do I track my Facebook page rank?
Hey guys, Probably a newbie question, but I'm wondering if there's a way to track Facebook (or other offsite profiles that I own) pagerank along with my domain? I'm working on a project right now where I noticed we're not on the front page for our search term, but our Facebook page is. It would just be helpful to have that info for a more complete SEO picture. Thanks!
Social Media | | somacore
Mike0 -
Best option for Facebook Page/Usernames?
Hey guys My first post here! currently trialling seomoz and impressed so far 🙂 My question relates to a choice of Facebook page/username for a client whose preference is to refer to their online business name by the domain name, where this business name includes his two most important keywords. So as an example: firstsecondthird.co.uk Now in terms of seo that's fine as search engines factor in keywords in the domain name, and even referring to domain name in website copy does not seem to pose too many issues. However on Facebook I've noticed that if we go with page name of: FirstSecondThird (obsiously we can't add .co.uk - I've used camel case for readability) then when using the facebook search the page does NOT get listed for any of the keywords as it appears it only matches on whole strings. So I'm going to recommend that he changes Faceook page name to First Second Third (with spaces) even though client does not really like this option. Do you guys think that makes sense? Also if I do make that change should I also go with fixed Username of First-Second-Third i.e. with hyphens or stick with one long string i.e. FirstSecondThird, which matches the domain name? Any advice appreciated. PS hope this is under right topic- several others seemed applicable Thanks
Social Media | | redactuk0 -
Does buying thousands of Facebook Fans/Likes affect SEO?
To begin with, please pardon me if this question is ignorant. I'm completely new to this whole social media thing, and somewhat feel it is overhyped. I find it really difficult to believe that social media will actually help the majority of small business owners out there like me, and that most of them are probably being misled about the powers of social media to increase sales. Because it's mentioned so frequently, I've decided to delve into it a bit more to see how this could possibly help me business. Over the past few weeks, I've become familiar with a company that sells Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, as well as YouTube and SoundCloud plays. Since my official Twitter and FaceBook accounts really didn't have that many followers, I decided to buy a few thousand followers for each account. Initially, I bought them because I wondered what would happen if a customer that visited my online store happened to go to those Twitter and Facebook pages. If I personally see a Facebook page with few followers, I probably wouldn't give them my business. I would want to go with a company that seems to generate a bunch of traffic to their pages. Originally, I only had about 200 Facebook followers (now called Likes, it seems) and maybe 25 Twitter followers. I now have over 12,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook Likes. I may end up buying more since the service was pretty quick and affordable. I'd like to know if Google factors Likes and followers into it's formula for creating SERPS. Will my website rank higher if I have 10,000 likes, rather than only 200? If so, would it be a notable increase? FWIW, I found that more people organically started following my Facebook and Twitter accounts once I had more followers. I didn't change anything about how I maintained the page; I just had more people following them. One other thing of note: these companies are almost certainly using fake/hacked accounts to like various pages around Facebook/Twitter. You can tell because my Facebook page says some city in Croatia has the most amount of 'likes' of my page. Do you think this might come into play at all? Thanks for any and all help!
Social Media | | CHEATERS0