Want More Effective Facebook Ads? Fix Your SEO.

Whenever someone criticizes my grandmother’s cooking, she always says, “you can’t be good in every room of the house.” Grandma, this is not true on the internet.

On May 10th Facebook announced that they will be putting more effort into limiting ads that link out to low quality website experiences. As they described what characteristics they will be looking for in a webpage to determine the quality of the page, they all sounded pretty familiar. They sounded like SEO best practices.

SEO isn’t just about optimizing your website to be indexed by search engines. It’s also about creating a better user experience that keeps people more engaged with your site. This in turn indicates to search engines that the site is high quality, improving your rankings.

So, with the overall goal being high-quality user experiences, it’s no surprise they share some key considerations.

This is a reference to the “get you a man who can do both” meme. This is not how I write. My mom thought I should clarify that.

Coming off this Facebook announcement, here are some key ways you can improve your website to make your Facebook ads run more efficiently and boost your ranking on search engines:

DISCLAIMER: Facebook is always fairly vague about what goes on behind the curtain, particularly as it relates to their algorithm, so while some of these may be assumed, it’s indisputable that they’re best practice.

1. Decrease the number of ads

Facebook states that websites that have a disproportionate amount of ads for the amount of content will see a decline in ad delivery. This is 101 in terms of creating meaningful user experiences that help maintain strong search rankings. So, how many ads are too many? Google once had a limit of 3 ads per page, which they since lifted, but is still a good general rule of thumb.

Interstitials. Not annoying or disruptive at all…

2. Choose less disruptive ad formats

We’ve long known the disdain of pop-up ads, but interstitial ads (see left) are still fairly common. First and foremost, ditch them. Facebook explicitly mentioned that these will be detrimental, but Google also deems them to not be mobile-friendly.

3. Ensure your ads align to your content

Facebook has made their fight against click-bait widely known, battling against “publishers” whose content does not deliver on headlines. A disconnect between your ad and your content will continue to hurt your Facebook content, but is also a detriment to your SEO. This causes high bounce rates, which signals to search engines you have low quality content.

4. Avoid vulgarity and profanity

According to Facebook’s guidelines, photos of people eating bananas are too sexual for their platform

This one is highly controversial because it always brings up the discussion of censorship.

Google does not decrease rankings of websites with profanity, but these websites have a higher potential to get caught up in parental filters, and cause increased bounce rates. Yet, they do ding website for linking to adult content, as these are usually deemed to be lower quality links. Facebook has always restricted profanity from their ads, but has made it clear that sensationalized and adult content will continue to be restricted.

5. Create original content

Rule #1 in Facebook’s foundational Low Quality or Disruptive Content Policy states: “Link to landing pages that include significant and original content that is relevant to your ad.”

Google also values original content that positions your page as the authority on a given topic, and values those who do so with frequency even more so.

6. Continuously optimize for load time

The worst GIF ever

Both Facebook and Google take into account the bounce rate as a means of determining the quality of content. Your website’s load time will undoubtably impact your bounce rate––particularly on mobile. In turn, with this new change, quicker load times should drive better Facebook ad delivery. Your load time should be less than four seconds, and you can check to see if you meet that here.

7. Build it to be skimmed

The readability of a website is also key driver of bounce rate. The easy it is for users to quickly skim your site for the information they need, the lower your bounce rate. With that logic, the following design considerations should impact how well your Facebook ads perform and how your website ranks:

• Use of sub-headers at least every 2 paragraphs
• New paragraphs every 3 to 4 lines
• Font size of at least 14px and line height of 24px
• Use of bullet points and images
• Strong contrast between colors

8. Establish a clear user journey

Start by mapping out the consumers’ experience from the time they see your ad/search engine result to the final desired action. Ensuring that you’re guiding the consumer down the right path will help them avoid abandoning ship and increasing your bounce rate.

9. Use proper grammar

Duh.

10. Optimize for mobile

It’s 2017.

Facebook-specific optimizations

There are also some things that come along with this new update that are specific to Facebook, or haven’t been widely accepted as problematic for Google:

• Don’t ask people to engage with your content, give them a reason to
• Don’t just focus on clicks, drive engagements. Links with a disproportionate amount of clicks will be deemed spammy.
• Facebook seems like they’ll be paying more attention to the quality of the ads on your site than Google does. While there’s a correlation between low quality ads and search rankings, studies show low causation.

Happy optimizing, friends!