Facebook’s Website Clamp Down

Big changes are coming to how Facebook favours websites. A Facebook blog was recently published, explaining of the upcoming changes to the rankings of sites, based on page speed.

There’s no doubt that clickbait is the real target here; we’ve all been drawn in by a sensational headline and image to be presented with an horrifically slow and clunky site, hampered by ads and unnecessary pop ups encouraging you to login/register. Well, content publishers will be having to rethink this strategy, as the post reveals that these sites are going to be penalised in favour of faster loading sites.

The post states that “during the coming months we’re making an update to the news feed to show people more stories that will load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that might take longer to load.” Put simply, content will be favoured based on the speed at which it loads.

From Facebook’s point of view, this is totally understandable. The average user accessing sites through their mobile devices will associate slow speeds and the frustration that comes with them to the app itself, which in turn means the user is at risk of becoming disengaged with Facebook.

So what can you do to give your website a fighting chance?

To begin with, analyse your site performance and be willing to be critical. If your website is reliant on ads for example, perhaps consider running less ads on mobile.

Tools

• Check your page load times: Monitis pageload
• Check to see if your page is mobile ready: Google Mobile Friendly

If your site isn’t mobile-ready, it’s likely you’re already missing out on a huge potential audience – now is the time to  ensure that when they make it to your website, that the content is optimised and adjusts accordingly for the device it’s being accessed on.