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Facebook is constantly making tweaks and updates to its News Feed Algorithm. These changes can cause significant fluctuations in data and confusion for marketers who aren’t up to date. For those who might need a quick refresher, the Facebook News Feed Algorithm is comprised of over 100,000 various factors and dictates which users see what content. Without the News Feed Algorithm, the incredible amount of content being created by Facebook Users would fly by at an unreadable pace. The Algorithm helps serve the most relevant content to the right users to ensure that they spend more time on Facebook. A recent update now considers the quality of a website that a Facebook Post links to as a ranking factor.

According to Facebook, they receive a lot of feedback from people who are disappointed when they click a link in the News Feed that leads to a website with little content, too many ads or shocking material. Users want their experience interacting with content in the News Feed to be straight forward and not misleading. To combat this, Facebook is now reducing the reach of posts that have links to low-quality websites. This update was announced in May, however is now rolling out to more pages.

Here are some things to avoid according to Facebook:

• A Lack of Substantive Content – The web page that you link to should have fresh and valuable content that users will spend time reading.
• An Abundance of Ads - Facebook is cracking down on sites that are hoping to push traffic to web pages that are riddled with annoying, malicious or shocking ads.
• Disruptive Ads – Avoid pop-up ads or anything that can disrupt user experience.
• Sensational, Deceptive or Disturbing Content – The content on the website you link to should not be hyperbole or meant to shock users.
• Inconsistent Content – The content on the website you are linking to should match what a person would think they're going to see when they click the link.

If you are sending traffic to properly optimized webpages and websites that feature high quality content, you shouldn’t be overly impacted by this Algorithm change. As always, following SEO and Social Media Marketing best practices will ensure that you aren’t hurt by updates to the News Feed Algorithm. If you see your data declining, let’s talk!