As social media outlets continue to compete in offering the most flexible solutions for immediate news distribution, Facebook has recently thrown their hat back in the ring. Similar to an existing Twitter option, Facebook now lets publishers use an embed feature that allows you to inject an individual Facebook post into your webpage. What does this have to do with SEO? Well, a lot. For example, it could encourage social interaction on your website. In turn, that could increase the amount of time people stay on your website. Longer on-page visits are seen as a positive to search engines. The theory is that the longer someone stays on your website versus your competitor that must be because your site is more relevant. Below are some screenshot examples from gigaom.com.
Here is an example of any post. The embed feature is shown as selectable in the top-right.
After selecting the embed option, a sample of Facebooks script is displayed.
Below is an example of how an embedded post is displayed in the external website.
Embed options have started to roll out on Instagram too. We suppose that’s not too surprising, since Facebook now owns Instagram as well.