Facebook’s New Advice on Link Placement: Should You Put Links in the First Comment?

There’s a buzz on Facebook about a new recommendation that could affect how your posts perform—specifically, the advice to move links out of the post itself and place them in the first comment. Is this official advice from Facebook? Well, sort of.

Over the weekend, several users began noticing this suggestion in their Facebook Insights within the Professional Dashboard for their Pages. The message was shared by @cmcalgary on Threads, and soon, other users joined in, highlighting it as Facebook’s new official guidance. The suggestion: if you’re posting links on Facebook, consider putting them in the first comment rather than in the post body.

Curious to test this out, I checked some of SMT’s posts. As part of our strategy, we use links in posts to direct people to full content, not necessarily to drive Facebook engagement. Sure enough, the insights suggested the same thing. However, there was a twist.

Here’s what I do differently: I delete the URL from the post body after adding it. I let Facebook generate the link preview and then remove the actual URL text. Technically, there’s no link in the caption, but Facebook still recognizes the attached link because the preview is still there. Does this impact performance? Well, it doesn’t include a full photo, just the thumbnail preview from the link. This led me to wonder: maybe including links in the first comment and putting an image in the main post is the way forward.

This isn’t just a random hunch. It aligns with what some high-performing publishers are doing on Facebook right now. In fact, according to Meta’s “Widely Viewed Content Report,” a whopping 97.3% of post views in the U.S. go to posts that don’t include links to external sources. It seems that Meta may be shifting its strategy to promote more native content, favoring posts that keep users within the Facebook ecosystem.

Interestingly, Meta has been vocal about its shift towards “free expression” lately, which may explain this tweak in their advice. Meanwhile, Threads (Meta’s other platform) has been making strides to improve the reach of links, trying to attract more publishers and creators to post there.

So, while Meta’s broader goal may involve giving links more visibility across its platforms, the data still shows that posts with links underperform compared to those that keep users on Facebook. It’s worth noting that some of the most successful Facebook pages today are those that place links in the first comment while keeping their posts image-focused.

What’s the takeaway? Moving links to the first comment might just be the smart move—though it’s more work for social media managers since you can’t schedule the first comment. It’s also something worth experimenting with. I’ve reached out to Meta for confirmation and will update this post once I hear back.

In the meantime, you might want to consider testing this strategy in your own posts to see if it boosts performance.