SEO Strikes Back

For almost a decade, Facebook has dominated the social media strategies of virtually every brand. But is the powerful platform’s reign coming to an end?

The New York Times Magazine thinks so. “For several years beginning around 2011, Facebook’s News Feed served as a firehose of traffic, where one widely shared link could result in astronomical attention,” writes Brian Feldman. “Many websites tried to turn Facebook optimization into a science and chased those clicks for longer than they maybe should have, drastically pivoting (to things like video) in the hopes of appeasing the Facebook gods.”

Now, it appears that Facebook simply doesn’t care about generating clicks for publishers – countless sites have seen drastic reduction in referral traffic over the past year or so.

“We are not interested in talking to you about your traffic and referrals anymore,” Facebook’s head of news partnerships Campbell Brown said last week. “That is the old world and there is no going back.”

So is this the end of the online world as we know it? Far from it. “That old world absolutely sucked and made the internet ecosystem a discernibly worse place,” writes Feldman.

A New World of Content

The new world of content is … maybe not so new? We’re going back to good old-fashioned Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Not that SEO had completely gone away, but the focus is going back to more straightforward content that provides relevant, useful information to readers, rather than the clickbait that propelled much of the Facebook-era publishing strategy. Put simply, when developing SEO content, publishers will have to consider what their audiences are searching for, as opposed to the emotionally driven grabs for attention of the past.

SEO Tips

That means keyword research is, well, key. the Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a completely free tool for keyword research – you just need a Google account. However, keyword stuffing is still a bad approach. Experts generally agree that using a keyword 2-4 times per post will suffice. You can also optimize your images using the “alternative text” function in Wordpress. Many internet users use the Google Image Search function.

Finally, backlinking is essential as well. You can’t force other sites to link back to your site, of course. However, you can work out partnerships with like-minded outlets, or even contribute original content to other sites.