Increasingly, social networks are tweaking their algorithms to favor content that remains on their site, rather than send users to an outside source. This spells trouble for those trying to drive traffic and visitors to external pages, but what's an SEO or content marketer to do? Do you swim with the current, putting all your efforts toward placating the social network algos, or do you go against it and continue to promote your own content? This edition of Whiteboard Friday goes into detail on the pros and cons of each approach, then gives Rand's recommendations on how to balance your efforts going forward.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about whether SEOs and content marketers, for that matter, should play to what the social networks are developing in their visibility and engagement algorithms, or whether we should say, "No. You know what? Forget about what you guys are doing. We're going to try and do things on social networks that benefit us." I'll show you what I'm talking about.
If you're using Facebook and you're posting content to it, Facebook generally tends to frown upon and lower the average visibility and ability of content to reach its audience on Facebook if it includes an external link. So, on average, posts that include an external link will fare more poorly in Facebooks' news feed algorithm than on-site content, exclusively content that lives on Facebook.
For example, if you see this video promoted on Facebook.com/Moz or Facebook.com/RandFishkin, it will do more poorly than if Moz and I had promoted a Facebook native video of Whiteboard Friday. But we don't want that. We want people to come visit our site and subscribe to Whiteboard Friday here and not stay on Facebook where we only reach 1 out of every 50 or 100 people who might subscribe to our page.
So it's clearly in our interest to do this, but Facebook wants to keep you on Facebook's website, because then they can do the most advertising and targeting to you and get the most time on site from you. That's their business, right?
The same thing is true of Twitter. So it tends to be the case that links off Twitter fare more poorly. Now, I am not 100% sure in Twitter's case whether this is algorithmic or user-driven. I suspect it's a little of both, that Twitter will promote or make most visible to you when you log in to Twitter the posts that have been made or the tweets that have been made that are self-contained. They live entirely on Twitter. They might contain a bunch of different stuff, a poll or images or be a thread. But links off Twitter will be dampened.
The same thing is true on Instagram. Well, on Instagram, they're kind of the worst. They don't allow links at all. The only thing you can do is a link in profile. More engaging content on Instagram, as of just a couple weeks ago, more engaging content equals higher placement in the feed. In fact, Instagram has now just come out and said that they will show you content posts from people you're not following but that they think will be engaging to you, which gives influential Instagram accounts that get lots of engagement an additional benefit, but kind of hurts everyone else that you're normally following on the network.
LinkedIn, LinkedIn's algorithm includes extra visibility in the feed for self-contained post content, which is why you see a lot of these posts of, "Oh, here's all the crazy amounts of work I did and what my experience was like building this or doing that." If it's a self-contained, sort of blog post-style content in LinkedIn that does not link out, it will do much better than posts that contain an external link, which LinkedIn sort of dampens in their visibility algorithm for their feed.
Play to the algos?
So all of these sites have these components of their algorithm that basically reward you if you are willing to play to their algos, meaning you keep all of the content on their sites and platform, their stuff, not yours. You essentially play to what they're trying to achieve, which is more time on site for them, more engagement for them, less people going away to other places. You refuse or you don't link out, so no external linking to other places. You maintain sort of what I call a high signal to noise ratio, so that rather than sharing all the things you might want to share, you only share posts that you can count on having relatively high engagement.
That track record is something that sticks with you on most of these networks. Facebook, for example, if I have posts that do well, many in a row, I will get more visibility for my next one. If my last couple of posts have performed poorly on Facebook, my next one will be dampened. You sort of get a string or get on a roll with these networks. Same thing is true on Twitter, by the way.
$#@! the algos, serve your own site?
Or you say, "Forget you" to the algorithms and serve your own site instead, which means you use the networks to tease content, like, "Here's this exciting, interesting thing. If you want the whole story or you want to watch full video or see all the graphs and charts or whatever it is, you need to come to our website where we host the full content." You link externally so that you're driving traffic back to the properties that you own and control, and you have to be willing to promote some potentially promotional content, in order to earn value from these social networks, even if that means slightly lower engagement or less of that get-on-a-roll reputation.
My recommendation
The recommendation that I have for SEOs and content marketers is I think we need to balance this. But if I had to, I would tilt it in favor of your site. Social networks, I know it doesn't seem this way, but social networks come and go in popularity, and they change the way that they work. So investing very heavily in Facebook six or seven years ago might have made a ton of sense for a business. Today, a lot of those investments have been shown to have very little impact, because instead of reaching 20 or 30 out of 100 of your followers, you're reaching 1 or 2. So you've lost an order of magnitude of reach on there. The same thing has been true generally on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. So I really urge you to tilt slightly to your own site.
Owned channels are your website, your email, where you have the email addresses of the people there. I would rather have an email or a loyal visitor or an RSS subscriber than I would 100 times as many Twitter followers, because the engagement you can get and the value that you can get as a business or as an organization is just much higher.
Just don't ignore how these algorithms work. If you can, I would urge you to sometimes get on those rolls so that you can grow your awareness and reach by playing to these algorithms.
So, essentially, while I'm urging you to tilt slightly this way, I'm also suggesting that occasionally you should use what you know about how these algorithms work in order to grow and accelerate your growth of followers and reach on these networks so that you can then get more benefit of driving those people back to your site. You've got to play both sides, I think, today in order to have success with the social networks' current reach and visibility algorithms.
All right, everyone, look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
A very thoughtful post here, Rand!
Though social media has been a great platform to reach out to your target audience and build a reputation for your brand, its low organic reach in recent times surely has impacted the referral traffic for many websites.
But again, as you said, this is their business model and they want to keep people engaged on their networks so can earn more. And for the same reason, social networks want to serve people with the content of their interest by understanding the post's content in a better way.
Alt text has been a great tag that we have used for many years for search engines to make them understand what our image is all about. Working on a similar path, now Facebook allows its users to add an alt text with the image they upload so it can better understand the images. I think as marketers we should leverage this opportunity.
We can add alt text on FB images :
Hope this helps in some way!
Thanks
Great topic as usual Rand!
I've been measuring reach (specially on Facebook and Twitter) for quite a few years and I had to observe that despite a growing follower base reach is lower than it used to be (for branded content obviously).
Social media channels are being saturated and it's much more difficult to get in front of your audience + in my experience social media channels are full with branded content rather then personal. For example when I log in to my personal Facebook account I see less posts by my family & friends but a ton of different brand content. Also, the copy of the posts from similar industries is so similar nowadays that it's confusing to me to differentiate between them.
While I agree completely with you that it's more beneficial to have teaser-like posts linking back to your website, I would also urge to use wording which is different from your competitors to differentiate your company/brand and make it more unique.
I'm curious what you and the Moz community thinks of the changes on Facebook feed and how do you plan to change your posting strategy on Facebook.
Hi Rand,
Great post idea that bring back an age old debate within agencies.
Facebook last update of January 11 announcing a decrease in organic reach is a good example of social medias changes that can have a big negative impact on businesses. That's why we tend to write content in order to get social engagement, and hero content to get SEO.
I'm wondering about this strategy, and would like anyone's opinion on that:
"1. Write down an article within my website. 2. Wait a day so it can get indexed. 3. Post a big chunk of the article on Facebook (or any social site). 4. Post a link to the webpage in the comments."
I know it is going to bring less traffic to the site, but still, if the goal number 1 of the post is to get engagement...
Anyhow!
Thank you for the tip Rand,
It is helpful to get these kind of guidelines
Hey! I think that it would not bring a lot of traffic to the site, but it is a good strategy I guess.
Maybe I would write at the beggining or at the end of the post (Step 3) a call to action saying something like: "If you want to keep reading..." or "if tou want to read the entire article go to the link in the comments".
I feel like you release these videos at the perfect times that I need them. Thanks for the helpful info!
I think the recent changes YouTube has made to it's rules to be in their partner program is another example of why it's better to own your own destiny, than to live in these walled gardens and give your voice away to the gatekeeper.
I like to see social networks as a tool to reach more potentially interested people and drive them towards the message I want share with them and own myself. For instance by creating shorter, 'snack-able' versions as a summary, with a proposal at the end that herds people to my own website (eg. with an in-picture short link at the end of a video) to get the fully fleshed out version of the story. This respects the people's intent while they are browsing a certain platform and allows them to get more value on their own terms. It's not perfect, but the people it drives to you are highly engaged with the story you want to tell.
I've also seen people using the 'Link in comments' approach, but I have yet to figure out whether that's a good tactic. It feels very unnatural to me.
PS. On a side-note, Instagram does allow you to drive people to content hosted somewhere else in their Stories thingie, by letting people 'swipe up'. Far from ideal, since you stay in the Insta app, but it at least gives you a little more control than the 'link in bio' option.
This comic from The Oatmeal sums it up quite nicely ;)
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people
What an awesome post Rand! I just finished a lunch with a fellow social media manager and "SEO-hater" (He thinks SEO is overrated and he never uses it for his clients. Well Daaaaaaa?!) and I showed him your article here. He watched the video and had to agree that we might spend to much time on social media... Plus I totally agree with your recommendation. Why not combining both of the worlds, but still focus on your links a bit more;-)
I'm only familiar with LinkedIn myself, which allows sponsored posts on either CPM or CPC. Would it be more cost-effective then to every now and then do a CPM sponsorship without a link? Does that mean with the algorithm that paid posts with no links will be pushed even farther up than if they had links?
We include a link to our ecomm site in every post on every platform otherwise whats the point? Yesterday a 9 sec gif of a Senegal Parrot pushing a toy baby carriage got 4.4K views more than 300 likes and 93 share on FB in 24 hours. How do i benefit from that data?
We know FB exaggerated video views by as much as 80% do we really think those skewed metrics are an isolated case?
Zuck handed anyone with an inkling of SEO a gift with his news feed announcement last Thursday
We've been mixing it up and posting stuff directly into the platforms and posting links to external stuff as well - you definitely get more traction within the platform than you do trying to drive people to your site, which is a little frustrating, but just seems to be part of the game. We're taking what we learn from these places and we're creating something of our own. I don't think the value of the signal boost within a social media platform is a bad thing to work on though - raising awareness of yourself is going to still make them want to find out more, hopefully.
Some really great insight here. I love social media but have also made a conscious decision to sometimes step out of the social media bubble and actively visit blogs and news sites the good old fashioned way. But I agree the level of reach on social media platforms does appear to be diminished if you don't play to their game so we have to keep email and RSS well and truly alive.
I agree. We have to play their game when posting but also have a great strategy to make them go to the web and engaging with great email marketing.
Great White Board Friday.
I used to be part owner of a company that listened in on social media. In essence we could tap into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media company social feeds. We then could turn around and sell this information based on users being able to search it. Great concept and for about 3 years the company grew. At some point the various social media companies started shutting off their feeds and as a result torpedoed our company's business model.
Net result was because we were tied to the social media companies for data, when they eventually changed how they wanted to do business it totally screwed our company. Of course we knew this was going to probably occur and were looking for other ways to adapt, but in the end we just didn't have enough time to react.
Biggest take away was never rely on someone else to dictate your future and I think with the way socials are going right now that is even more important.
From my experience Content is King and that will always help drive traffic regardless of whatever else is going on. The sites where I have consistently put out good content have always done well.
Where I do get a some traction on socials is in the Social Groups arena. Belonging to specific groups and posting there is usually a great way to target an audience that is pretty specific.
Great share. I ignored what I thought was not important but I was wrong. You said exactly what I needed to make sure the campaign was successful and I would apply it to my campaign in 2018. Thanks for sharing <3
Personally, we just use social marketing for the social signals and backlinks that come in naturally from social engagement. Nothing more. Top Google rankings are where it's at.
Thats great, the thing is that when someone is starting he doesn't have any "natural link" from social engagement.
Thanks Rand for this.
Please, do social media signals (back links from social networks) remain valuable to SEO despite this low engagement?
Great video Rand. I've known about this now for the past 2 years. I started seeing such a different amount in reach when adding a photo or video opposed to adding a link to my blog post or another external link.
I always keep that in mind when curating content. What you said makes alot of sense. Facebook is a business and they want to keep business on their site. Thanks for sharing!
Although Instagram does not allow post links...
I've compared my Facebook and Instagram posts with similar reach and noticed a similar CTR for Facebook posts w/ link vs. Instagram posts with a "Link in Bio" CTA in the description. This is the standard CTA for promotional content on Instagram and most IG users understand this. The link limitation keeps the platform from becoming too spammy/promotional like how Facebook for business has become. Instagram story posts tend to have a lower reach (about 30-40% of normal feed posts), but high CTR with their "swipe up to see more" CTA pointing to your website content.
One quick hack to play the Facebook algorithm:
The CTR for the link in the comment section will be much lower than a post promoting a link to your site, but you will maintain your normal organic reach and drive more shares/engagement by posting Facebook-friendly content.
I think if you play the game properly you can use the algo's to our advantage.
Well, in 5-7 years Facebook alone has swallowed half of the Internet including money for marketing that pay our paychecks too. I think we should abolish Facebook and block their bots/scrappers and do everything to suffocate them without our content... but there is always luck of consensus and those that will rush to fill the vacuum.
Yes, excellent. I think the same. For me it is better to have only one new person who loves my own website than 1000 new followers who do not care so much about it.
But seeing this I realised that I was doing something pretty stupid that I am going to stop haha. I was uploading videos to my Facebook Page and posting in the description the link of the same video in Youtube... So people didn't go to Youtube because they could watch the full video in Facebook already. And Facebook decreases a lot the visibility of my posts because they had the Youtube external link.
Brilliant whiteboard. Confirms what we've been seeing. I think if you play the game properly you can use the algo's to our advantage.
Concerned about the killer 'stash trim though...
Excellent way of explaining "The recommendation that I have for SEOs and content marketers is I think we need to balance this. But if I had to, I would tilt it in favor of your site"
I think we should tilt in favor of our own websites as the ultimate aim of all online marketing is to attract visitors to our website and see that they convert - otherwise the whole process will not be worthwhile.
We know that building a helpful and engaging website is what SEO is all about and that it requires longer term thinking. I think this is no different....social media is a tactic and the tactics change as platforms evolve but the real investment is in what you own (your website). This is where you can really build the trust and brand. If social media sites are attempting to keep users on their platform for no other reason than to sell advertising then that makes me sad....the world is a better place for diverse options and alternatives. I for one dont want to use a single platform for my internet experience.
One of the problems we face as an agency is that simple metrics like number of followers on twitter/facebook are easy metric to understand for our clients but the real value is your brand (less understandable!!). Your website is your real voice so defintiely dont ignore it in favour of social media.....I agree that you should always tilt in favour of your website.
p.s. how do you manage to make a Badger Beard look cool?....my wife thinks I look odd!!
What about using paid advertising (basically remarketing) to take that audience off the site? I know this add in a cost but could it help preserve reach while allowing you to get some traffic
Yes it is something to try. I will be doing remarketing next month to see the results it could give.
Couldn't agree more that the tilt needs to be towards your own site. I'd argue that it should be quite heavily.
As you point out, social media sites can come and go. With the size of Facebook etc it might seem they'll be around forever. But equally, their ubiquitous nature on the digital landscape could also ring alarm bells.
You're only ever a tenant on social media platforms. You have to work on their terms and they can change them at any time. You're guaranteed to be paying more and more to get any sort of reach on social platforms over the coming years in my opinion. Whether local, national or global. So do you keep on playing it their way, putting money in their pockets or do you concentrate your efforts on what you truly control? It's an easy one for me.
As you say, they don't want to send people away from their platform, so it should only ever be a string to your bow. From my experience searchers will find your business and often go looking for your presence on other platforms to confirm how credible you are - so long as you have a presence on social sites, your number one priority needs to be your own website.
Couldn't agree more that the tilt needs to be towards your own site. I'd argue that it should be quite heavily.
As you point out, social media sites can come and go. With the size of Facebook etc it might seem they'll be around forever. But equally, their ubiquitous nature on the digital landscape could also ring alarm bells.
You're only ever a tenant on social media platforms. You have to work on their terms and they can change them at any time. You're guaranteed to be paying more and more to get any sort of reach on social platforms over the coming years in my opinion. Whether local, national or global. So do you keep on playing it their way, putting money in their pockets or do you concentrate your efforts on what you truly control? It's an easy one for me.
As you say, they don't want to send people away from their platform, so it should only ever be a string to your bow. From my experience searchers will find your business and often go looking for your presence on other platforms to confirm how credible you are - so long as you have a presence on social sites, your number one priority needs to be your own website.
"Forget you" to the algorithms!
Thank you so much for this great read! You have hit the nail on the head with social media, especially with Facebook and Twitter. Although i have great content on my site (The trendiest fashion Clothing) i am embarrassed to say i only have 67 followers on Twitter although i have almost 1000 on Face book but not much engagement. If people do go to my site from Facebook or Twitter they don't purchase anything. They are (I want to say Window Shopping). The most engagement i get is from Pintrest. Pintrest viewers love my products and actually engage. i always read about how social media is a great way to go but if you truly want engagement (and not just have window shoppers) you have to do other things besides social media. The only good thing about Facebook and Twitter is that when people do click to my site from there its another click on my website and that aspect is good for the search engines as those clicks count. So i will be sticking with Facebook and Twitter just for that. Look forward to another great read from you! : },
Jody,
[Link removed by editor.]
We've found that social is good for top of funnel and brand awareness. They can stay on the platform. Create good engagement there, and when you do post a link to your site it may have less reach but it does reach people who engage with your brand. Having the right expectations really does drive good strategy.
good post Rand !! I draw the conclusion that we must "play" with social networks to get more visibility without receiving the visits to our website that these generate. they make it difficult but we can maintain the level by publishing more w interspersing external links.
The more time I spend looking at Search and Social, the more I feel they are opposite strategies. Our clients do best by getting traffic to the site and converting - the audience is unknown. But marketing firms do better through social networking their expertise to precise audiences - often sliced by industry, or job role. Search is Horizontal and Social is Vertical.
Ironically, what is good for our customers is not good for us... or is it the other way around.
I have the same question that others have alluded to: does posting content with "link in comments" affect/beat the algorithm? Will the post get treated by the algorithms like a post with no link?
Great video Rand! feel like you are always covering the right topics at the right moment!
I really like your post.It’s really informative and interesting.I really appreciate that.Thank you for sharing valuable information. Nice post. I enjoyed reading this post. The whole blog is very nice found some good stuff and good information here Thanks.
Regards,
darshak.
If we do not insert links to our website in social posts, we lose potential traffic.
If we insert links to our website, we lose reach or exposure.
So the situation actually puts us between the devil and the deep blue sea!
As Rand said:
Have a chat with Deadly Devil for some time and leave for a Deathly Dip in the sea.
Rinse and Repeat!
Great post Rand..Nowadays so many updates are made by Facebook and other social medias in their algorithms.They want their audience to be rely on their own site.
As always well taught to balance between the two strategies!
Great topic covered Rand!
You are right on how these external sharing in post affects impression to each platform, I in person has seen these changes in impression when it comes to using an external link and a post without link + #tags.
I have two little question
Have a great weekend!
Thank you so much Randi for once again posting such a nice and informative blog. There were few confusions regarding social media marketing being an SEO expert.
Nice post Rand! Sometimes we spend too much time on social networks, wasting valuable time that can be more profitable in our own site. Thanks for help us to keep the focus and remind us which is the most important part of our projects ;-)