Have you noticed that Facebook is now displaying author information on links shared on Facebook? Recently one of our users saw our Facebook status and asked us how they can add the Facebook author tag on their site. Considering the massive user base of Facebook, this is crucial to any site’s social media strategy. In this article, we will show you how add the Facebook author meta tag in WordPress.
How Does Facebook Author Tag Work?
Once you add the Facebook author tag on your site, it will display your name with a link back to your profile any time your article is shared.
This is great for both single author blogs and multi-author blogs because it bring more exposure to your personal brand.
There are several ways to add the Facebook Author tag on your site. We will show you both the plugin method as well as the code method to add Facebook Author meta tag on your WordPress site.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
Add Facebook Author Tag Using Yost WordPress SEO Plugin
If you are using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, then you are in luck because it has Facebook open graph meta data support.
You just need to visit SEO » Social page in your WordPress admin and make sure that the box next to ‘Add Open Graph meta data’ option is checked.
The next step is to add your Facebook ID in your WordPress account. Simply visit Users » Your Profile page and enter your Facebook profile URL and click on the save changes button to store your settings.
That’s all, WordPress SEO will now automatically insert Facebook author tag or published by tag when you publish an article. WordPress SEO also allows you to easily add a page title and description for Facebook, and you can even explicitly set Facebook thumbnail for your posts.
Add Facebook Author Tag in WordPress using Code
Since we already use Yoast SEO plugin on our site, it made sense for us to use the above method. However if you want to add Facebook author meta tag on your site without a plugin, then simply add the following code in your site’s <head> section.
<meta property="article:publisher" content="http://facebook.com/yourpagelink" /> <meta property="article:author" content="http://facebook.com/yourprofilelink" />
Make sure to replace the links above with your site’s Facebook page link and your personal profile link.
If you don’t want to edit your theme files, then you can use our Insert Headers and Footers plugin to add this code in your site.
We hope this article helped you add Facebook author tag in your WordPress site. You may also want to see our beginner’s guide on how to add Twitter cards in WordPress.
Having an issue with the incorrect image showing in Facebook? Here’s how to fix Facebook incorrect thumbnail issue in WordPress.
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This feature is no deprecated and no longer working.
Why the Author link is not working for previously published posts ? And in Mobile also it is not showing ..Any solution for this ?
Thanks for this tutorial, but how can i do it like this to add my page and the like button as you see on screenshot.
Screnshot:
Thank you.
When linking to profile Facebook URL it didn’t work for me – but linking to a Facebook Page instantly showed up. So there is either a Setting or something else that prevents showing up the Author as link.
Thank you!
Thank you for this article. I also love your website.
I used the second method but when using Facebook debugger – it gives a warning ‘Extraneous Property
Objects of this type do not allow properties named ‘article:author’.’ The true is that it worked and so I will keep using it:) But I don’t know if this warning is serious or not.
Nice article i was using SEO YOAST from long time but never used social tab
Thanks
Hi. I own a collaborative blog and use the guest-author custom field you provided. How can I add individual authors to each blog post?
the code didn’t appear.
I have the meta name=”author” tag and the article:publisher and article:author filled in.
I have followed the steps through Yoast plugin. However, the author is still not being linked to his profile on our link posts on Facebook.
where can i paste thiz like pls reply me
Hey, I am using Insert headers and footers plugin to include my name (author’s name) in the FB share, but it’s not happening.
I have copy pasted the same code that you have written between and of the head body section in Headers and footers plugin. I have included the links to my page and my fb profile
Can you help?
I have a website where it is showing the wrong author (I changed the author after author tags came out). All the pages that were previously shared still show the old author when sharing now. Is there a way to clear that (tried Facebook’s debug tool already). Thanks!
Are you sure your pages have the new author in open graph meta tags? Just to be sure check your site’s source code. Another reason for this could be your SEO tool or your WordPress theme adding author meta tag. Like this
<META NAME=’AUTHOR’ CONTENT=’John Doe’>
Another possible reason could be conflicting plugins both adding open graph meta tags.
Thanks….!
I will try without plugin.
Can I add Facebook page URL instead of Facebook profile URL?
Yes you can as long as it’s the author’s page.