Layouts Changes for Facebook and SEO
Yes, Facebook layouts have more changes. Users are up in arms and companies wonder how it will affect the SEO benefits that Facebook provides. Is there any negative effect to SEO for businesses? To put it simply, well, no. Companies garner SEO benefits from Social Media sites like Facebook from links in post content and how frequently the page with that content is visited. These new Facebook layouts have no affect on that.
The new Facebook News Ticker and Feed changes are more for the benefit of users, helping them to maintain track of the most recent news they last saw when logged in to the site side by side with the newest posts from their friend-feed.
What are the details of these changes to Facebook layouts? Here’s a short overview:
Frequency Affects your View
How often you visit your Facebook profile will affect what news you see. Each time you log in, you’ll see all the top photos and statuses that were posted since your last log in, in lieu of all of them. To see less popular content, scroll down to read “Recent Stories”.
So, What Will You See in Top News?
Within the new Facebook layouts, the site selects “Top” stories for users based on the relationship with the poster, how much feedback and likes the post has received as well as other factors they have not released. Users can drop a selected “Top” news story down by hovering their curser over the top right corner of the story to mark it as spam or move it down the news list.
The News Ticker
When you log in to your profile, the most obvious change to Facebook layouts is the news ticker in the top right corner of the page. Showing all updates from all of your friends in real time, the ticker can be reduced in size by right clicking.
Frequent changes to Facebook layouts are not a new occurrence and as we have learned by experience, and will continue to happen. While adapting to the visual changes can be a little daunting, the SEO benefits from Facebook are not affected at all. Companies using the site to garner organic SEO benefits can rest assured that no matter what Facebook layouts change to in the future, as long as relevant, engaging content is posted to their pages for the benefit of their Friends and Fans, they will continue to see increases in their brand awareness on the site.