Social networks are now starting to tweak their algorithms in favor of content remaining on their site instead of sending their users to outside sources. It means trouble for people and businesses trying to drive visitors and traffic to external pages. What can content or SEO marketer do, then? Are you going to swim with content and put all your efforts to placating the algos of social networks, or will you fight it off and continue promoting your own content?
Will You Play to the Algorithms?
All of the social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have those components of their algos which will basically reward you when you are willing to play to their algorithms. This means that you will be keeping all the content on their platform and sites, their stuff only, and not your stuff. Simply put, you will be playing to what they would like to achieve, and this is more time on website for them, more engagement only for them, and lesser people who will go away to other places. You don’t link out or you refuse so there will be no external linking to different place. You are going to maintain sort of what you call high signal to the noise ratio so that instead of sharing everything you like to share, you will only be sharing posts that you could count on to have relatively higher engagement.
This track record is something which will stick with you on majority of these social networks. For instance, in Facebook, when you have post which do well, several in a row, you will be getting better visibility for your next one. When your last several posts performed poorly, your next ones will also be dampened. With these social networks, you sort of get on a roll or get a string. The same thing applies to Twitter as well.
Can You Just Forget the Algorithms and Serve Your Own Website?
Will you just ditch the algorithms and choose to serve your own website that means you will be using the networks for teasing content. You will be linking externally so that you are driving more traffic back to those properties that you control and own, and you also have to have the willingness to promote some possibly promotional content so that you will be able to earn value from all of these social networking websites, even if this means a relatively reduced engagement or less of the get on a roll form of reputation.
Site algorithms can be very funny and a serious obstacle for SEO experts to deal and work with. They might want to come up with content or link content. However, if this content is going outside the self-contained world of social media, these platforms will end up frowning on it. They usually slow this down or move this down their algorithms to the point of suppressing it. Make sure you look into your own metrics and check how this will affect you in the long run. If things are bad, proceed with optimizing, but if not, there’s no need to worry.
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