These days it seems like algorithms control everything! The two big ones that keep marketers up at night are the Facebook newsfeed algorithm and the Google search algorithm. No matter how amazing your content is, if it doesn’t jump through the hoops of the algorithm, there is a very small chance that it will be seen by one it is intended for.
Facebook’s algorithm looks at certain aspects of your post to determine its worthiness to appear before the eyes of its users. These factors include:
- Engagement rate: does it get a lot of likes, comments, or shares organically?
- Content: is it a video, image, or text? Does the image have people’s faces in it? Does it have outbound links? Is the video hosted on Facebook or a competitor like YouTube? Native videos that get a lot of engagement do really well. Text-only posts that have outbound links and no engagement will do very poorly.
- Age: was it posted last week or very recently? The more recent a post is the better chance that it will show up in someone’s newsfeed.
Google’s algorithm is a little more complicated. It has to determine what the best results are for someone when they search for a particular key phrase. Factors that determine your site’s Google ranking include:
- Page load speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Proper content structure
- Links to the site/page
- Reviews of the site’s business or products
- Presence of search phrase in the content of the page