#1087 – OG:URL in Social SEO

Hi

Unfortunately, it is generating the og:url in a protocol dependent format

That's the only way tags can be generated, and it's normal to use the current live site for that. https://example.com and http://example.com are two entirely different web sites, hence the need to redirect one from the other to avoid duplicate content issues in search engines.

What you want is force the og:url, but that's not possible currently - and I don't think it'll be in the future.

I'll think about making an option specifically for the protocol, but there is a big downside to doing that: future shares will also be attached to the non-https version of the site, the old one. It means all the social work you do to promote your pages are going to be attached to the old version.

When Google will start to use social shares as ranking signal, all your seo "juice" will be attached to the old site and you will loose on them. Is it worth the trouble? or better hide social shares counter for now, and display them back when the numbers have increased again on the new site?

Rgds

Hi

Well, it's not that bad actually. First, social shares don't provide any organic boost per se. Google just reiterated that this week (and they also said that thay may in the future, hence my comment).

Howewer, social sharing may get you links, and those links are not lost at all. Assuming you have put 301 redirects in place, the links are still going to be useful, even if the 301 redirects create a little loss.
This is why I encourage sharing with the new URL, so that new shares go directly to the current URL (https), not the old one (http)

So the real question is about having articles with large number of shares, and whether this entice visitors to share. If the number is large, but not too much, it's generally considered good, but I believe it's only valid for relatively recent articles. Something you published 2 years ago won't be shared more now because it has 500 shares vs 3 shares. It just won't be shared much nowadays.

Personally, I don't show shares count on weeblr.com, just the buttons.

All that said, give me a bit of time, I may come up with a simple thing that can help get those shares back, at least in a limited form. But please keep in mind that this won't impact your organic search.

Rgds

Hi

Yes, those are 301, so you should be good.

yes, agreed in terms of search counts, but what I'm trying to do is this. Getting something shared etc, then pitch that article for link building. The idea is that if people are sharing it, it's more likely to be seen as a good resource to link to.

That's exactly the problem: you're spending lots of effort to promote and have people share, but you are telling them to share the wrong thing.

You're talking about "...pitch that article for link building...", but from a search engines standpoint, "an article" doesn't exist. What exists is a page, identified by a URL. And https://xxxx is not the same URL as http://xxxx.

So by asking people to share and link to http://xxxx, you are actually doing all these efforts to build links on a page that doesn't exist!

Yes, you have a redirect, but a redirect will loose some authority and ranking each time. What you want to do is link on the actual, real URL. That's way more important - to get organic ranking - than any social share counter you can display.

Of course, that's your call, but just having a small counter displayed to increase confidence is most likely not worth it, especially if you consider that you're talking about old articles, articles which have been published and shared in the past, and that are unlikely to be shared again.

Rgds

Hi

So the consensus would be then:

- need to share new content with the new URL
- maybe better to share old content with the old URL

I can do something with that ;)

Cheers

Well the old URL is just the http version, right?

To be honest, I've been doing some tests, but the more I work on it, the more it doesn't make sense. Trying to share and promote a wrong URL is just counter productive.

Rgds

Hi

buffer seems to keep ALL of the shares

Keep all the shares for which URL?

No shares are lost in a way. Facebook and Twitter still have all the shares for you http URL, and maybe already some new ones for the https. It's just that those are 2 entirely different pages (because they don't have the same URL).

You can use the following link, replacing https://weeblr.com with your own pages, to see what data Facebook have for instance :

https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=https://weeblr.com&format=json

The problem again is not to make the share count display. You can do that by faking the URL (not done it, but that's what I found also by googling). The problem is about making a promotional effort on a non-existing page.

Rgds