Facebook Link Posts Not Looking Right? You May Need to Verify Your Domain

Why isn’t Facebook letting me choose a photo for my link posts?

If you post for your business on Facebook, you may have noticed a big change towards the end of last month. After Dec 18th, users were no longer allowed to upload custom link preview images for sites that were not their own. This lead to confusion for many business owners- Facebook did not do the greatest job at announcing this change. What was obvious though was that many links being shared on Facebook suddenly didn’t look that great- instead of appealing images drawing users in, some posts were using small thumbnails, irrelevant photos, or even just the company’s logo as a preview image*. Not a good look if you want users to actually pay attention to your posts!
*Note: This can and should be prevented entirely by using Open Graph Protocol, manually or through an SEO plugin such as Yoast, on your page itself to manually set the preview image you would like social media sites to use. But there may be times where you still want to use a different image, so for that, read on.

“But this IS my website, why can’t I upload my own photo?”

Well, Facebook doesn’t know that. In order to let Facebook know that your website does in fact belong to you, you will need to verify your domain through the Facebook Business Manager. They’ve created an easy guide describing the process:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification

And you’re done!

Both methods require a bit of technical know-how, but once your domain has been verified, you will be able to resume setting custom images whenever you are posting links from your website on your company’s Facebook page. For our clients, there is nothing for you to do- we have already completed this process for you!