SEO & Social Media Summary April 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on May 03 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

April 2012 has seen dramatic changes to Search, both for SEO and Social. This has been a month of Panda refreshes and Penguin (‘web spam’) updates from Google. For an increasing number of site owners, the underlying thought with these updates is ‘If only their search results would improve along with their guidelines’…..

SEO April 2012

Updates, updates, updates! Search Engine Land looks at the more important changes to search Google implemented in March. This is equally important reading.

Vertical Media discuss the potential of Google+ for SEO in this video (there is massive potential). We agree.

Chris Crum picks up on sites dropping in traffic over the Easter weekend, possibly due to the Panda refresh update.

Meanwhile Spam Free search engine Blekko sees a 400% rise in search according to Search Engine Land.

Search engine Journal ask if personalised search results are becoming too personal? Their infographic suggests it is.

Easter and April fools showed Google’s funny side. This prompted Portent to list Google’s 101 best pranks and tricks. If you have a little time to kill, you could do worse!

Web Pro News issue Rand Fishkin’s challenge to all-comers to take down SEOmoz site rankings with negative SEO. For the benefit of all, good work Mr Fishkin. If anyone is capable of reducing rankings to the ‘clean’ SEOmoz site, this will be reported to Google and addressed. 

Distinguished Google Engineer Matt Cutts (that’s his title now!) posted an article ‘Another step to reward high-quality sites’, regarding the anti webspam Penguin update. The text examples of sites that will be targeted should not impact on anyone that is implementing an online content strategy that offers unique value and relevant content to your industry and customers (We can help with that, by the way).

If you are worried about that troublesome Penguin update, web pro news has a good guide on what to do next.

The 50 Google changes in March listed links as ‘something Google would be looking at’. The SEO industry still regards anchor text links as the most important ranking factor, as detailed by Search Engine Watch.

Social Media April 2012

Battle of the newcomers! Do you adopt the SEO power of Google plus or the mass audience and growing interest of Pinterest? Or both? Hubspot details the Social Media’s newbies and why they are individually and equally important for brands.

Hubspot take this further with 35 stats regarding the two new high performing networks.

Top Rank Blog list three Pinterest tools that are worth looking at and why they are useful for brands.

Google+ and Pinterest may be growing rapidly, but what about those ‘active’ 20 million Foursquare users? Read Write Web look at how Foursquare is doing and what Foursquare is not doing that it probably should be, um, doing.

Hate facebook Timeline? Well don’t. Marketing Land comment on Timeline for brand pages gives 46% higher engagement per post. Who knew?!!

Still not happy with Timeline? Social Media Examiner highlight 5 brands getting it right, for your inspiration.

Marketing Land discuss the recent aesthetic changes to Google+ and its navigation. Timeline-esque?

Social Media Examiner does what it does best and gives us the lowdown on just how to track social media traffic in Google analytics. Recommended.

The Daily Mail report on the commercial power of a facebook Like. It may be time to get that tired old facebook page working for you company again.

Orbital Media continue to deliver successful SEO and Social Media campaigns for clients this year. If you want higher visibility in search or social, why not call us today? 0203 411 9111.

A guide to Pinterest for brands

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on April 13 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

Pinterest has soared this year, In the US Pinterest is now the 3rd most visited social network, beating G+ and Linkedin. People are clearly interested in Pinning. How can brands take advantage of Pinterest? Read our guide to Pinterest for brands.

A simple guide to Pinterest for brands

1. This is a simple one….request an invite. Go to Pinterest.com and enter your email. You will then have access to Pinterest via a return email, normally around 24 hours later. That’s it. For Pinterest, ease of use stays pretty much at this level.

2. When you receive your email invite, register as your company name. If you have divisions in other countries register accordingly, i.e. Orbital Media Network UK. This will form your Pinterest URL – http://www.pinterest.com/orbitalmedianetworkuk.

3. Add a ‘Pin It’ button to your brands website / blog. This is an easy process, just go to the Pinterest goodies section and select the buttons you need. Add Pinterest to your social sharing bar at the foot of each blog post, if you have this on your blog for other social networks. Pinterest supply the HTML code that needs to be inserted into your site.

4. Let followers on your other social networks know about your Pinterest page. If they like you enough, they may just follow you on Pinterest too.

5. On your brands facebook page, you can add a handy app called Pinvolve, which automatically allows users to re pin your images from your facebook brand page to their Pinterest boards. You can find out a little more and install the app here.

6. On your brands Pinterest page, create boards by, for instance, product category / services offered and pin all the images from your website / blog into relevant boards. This makes it a lot easier for your images to be shared through Pinterest.

7. Be keyword savvy with your image descriptions. Good descriptive long tail key phrases are required here. This is really important (see next point), do not be tempted to pin an image called ‘image1’. These long tail key phrases will have a better chance of being found and re pinned.

8. Pinterest generates links! When someone pins something from your site, Pinterest takes in the image and more importantly, a link.  The possibility of that pin being re-pinned will soon see a healthy amount of backlinks and higher Edgerank. See Search Engine Land for more on this.

9. Follow, Re pin and Like others. Mix it up with the big influencers on Pinterest. Find the major pinners (and ones who have a lot of re pins from their boards) and re pin their images. Like every other social network, make friends and these Pinteresters (?) may follow you back.

So that’s a quick guide on how Brands should start with Pinterest. What next?

How can Brands get the very best out of Pinterest?

1. Price it up. If you retail product, this is really good. Add a ‘£’ (or ‘$’) to your Pin description and Pinterest will automatically create a price banner (see image) for your photo. In the Pin description also add a link back to where this can be purchased (along with that descriptive long tail key phrase!!!). Your board has just become a secondary store front.

2. Hold a Contest. We know social network success can come from competitions and Pinterest is no different. A ‘Pin it to win it’, a ‘best board’ or ‘most re pins’ have already become popular. This level of pinning should generate a good level of following. As with all competitions, make sure you are within the social network’s terms of use.

3. Showcase a follower. Many brands use ‘fan of the month’ on facebook and the same can be applied to Pinterest. If a follower re pins your images, use it to your advantage. Appeal to their ego, big them up – they will be telling all! Great for increasing your following, but also great for ‘giving something back’.

4. Ask questions. Are you re launching a brand or service? Why not ask your followers to comment on your designs. This image led network is ideal for featuring new designs and for obtaining feedback.

5. This same method could work for an individual client. You can add more contributors to your Pinterest boards -that could be other team members / customers. Present your ideas and have some fresh ones presented right back. This would work well for a personal stylist for instance. One board from the stylist, one from the customer of various chosen clothes, giving a clear understanding of how to proceed. This creative engagement could be applied to a multitude of industries – not just fashion.

SEO & Social Media Summary March 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on April 02 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

The independent list the top 10 most influential Twitter users in the UK – some unexpected names here.

The Next Web discusses Google’s plans for a comment box for G+ similar to facebook’s commenting system. What this does for Edgerank will be interesting to see. The Next Web also talks about G+ plans for vanity URL’s, which are ‘coming soon’.

Social Media Today showcases 3 small businesses that are making it big on G+ and more importantly, how. If your brand is floating around G+ in limbo, you must read this.

Social Media Examiner talks about Google analytics now with social reports
Charlie, Come and bite MY finger! The cute YouTube video is the second most watched video on YouTube. It has also made $500,000 in 5 years!
Yahoo makes good on its promise and sues facebook. Possibly perceived by some as a little desperate on Yahoo’s behalf, but regardless of this, Yahoo are suing facebook over a total of 10 patents….watch this one roll on.

Social Media Today also reveals the 3 attributes required for Pinterest brand success – Quality, passion, fun. Sounds basic, but next time you are uploading onto Pinterest ask yourself is this what you are giving your followers?

Want to know all about facebook Insights? Nan Dawkins at Marketing Land delivers 3 killer metrics from Insights. This needs to be read.

Sticking with facebook, Laila Strong of Search Engine Watch gives 4 ways a brand can get creative with the new Timeline.

Mashable ask ‘is facebook building a search engine?’ According to a Business week report, a team of more than 20 Facebook engineers are working on a vastly improved search engine within the site.

SEO Summary March 2012

Mashable comment on China’s firewall being temporarily down and the rush for Chinese population to get on G+ and FB.

Apple to launch new search engine! Yes that headline got my attention too! Search Engine Land report on Apple’s acquisition of Chomp. It is a search engine, but Google, Bing and all can relax – this is just for apps.

Guess what? SEO is dead…again! Matt Cutts buzzwords this month have been “level the playing ground a little bit”, “over optimization” and “overly doing their SEO”. SEO is not dead (again), but these changes could / will shake things up. Search Engine Land has this in full.

Reported in Web Pro News, the Wall Street Journal has revealed Google’s plans to improve their own search – which in turn may decrease traffic to 3rd party sites. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land also discusses at the new semantic search in great length. Is this a big deal? Consider this quote from “one person briefed on Google’s plans” as saying the changes could directly impact 10% to 20% of all search queries or “tens of billions per month”….Ouch.

Google’s too much SEO issue is again picked up by Search Engine Land again and discusses whether this is just a fight against spam or SEO. When you look at Google’s own SEO PDF, it seems strange that Google would be penalising genuine white hat SEO tactics.

Shelley Kramer from V3 offers some good advice to counter the above along with V3’s take on Google’s new semantic search.
 
So how about ‘Un-SEOing’? Ted Ives of Coconut Headphones delivers a compelling article on when to un-optimise your copy and how. Sounds madness, yes. Read it though and it becomes an interesting method of optimisation of your copy.

Social Search advice came in the form of 8 strategies to follow (right now) from Search Engine Land. Danny Sullivan also reports that Google is now highlighting the latest posts from Google+ pages and profiles in its search results, at Search Engine Land.

Eric Siu from PR Web sums up what we all should have taken from Google’s Panda update. I totally agree here, follow this one question and you are getting close to some Google love. Simply put, when publishing online can we all, from now on ask ‘Am I adding value?’

The Link issue rages on (should we / shouldn’t we?), Web Pro News deliver a great article on Blog paid networks and the resulting links, stating it is time to stop obsessing over links. An interesting Matt Cutts video also reveals Google do not count most links. W P N summarise exactly what you should be doing to appeal to Google’s ever changing algorithm and is sensible, sound advice;

“Search visibility these days is much more about who’s sharing/discussing your content (especially on Google+), who you are as an author, how fresh your content is, and how in-depth it is compared to your competition”

SEO & Social Media Summary February 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on March 01 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing

The first part of February was relatively quiet by the standards of this industry, however towards the end of the month things get a lot more interesting – especially the news of Google’s latest algorithm update, with no less than 40 changes listed, and news of Facebook timeline for brands….

Here’s what happened in February 2012 in the world of Social Media and SEO.

SEO
• Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Watch details just how much Google loves Wikipedia. In a recent test by Intelligent Positioning, Wikipedia is placed on page 1 of Google for 99% of 1,000 unique one-word searches. When you consider the quality of content on some Wiki entries, maybe this percentage is a little too high perhaps?

• Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz highlights a ‘glitch’ in using Google’s Adwords for finding keywords. If you regularly run keyword researches, you need to read this. You could be missing out on some valuable keywords.

• Staying with Keyword Research, Jenny Halasz at Search Engine Land has written a great guide on how to find keywords relative to client, some great advice on Keyword ‘seeds’…and how to make them grow. 

Now for that interesting stuff I mentioned that happened at the back end of February.

• SEO Generation list the 40 changes Google have announced to maintain search quality. These include Improvements to freshness and fresher images. For bloggers, this is great news. Get that fresh, original content out there! Importance of local search is also key here.

• Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee highlights possibly the most important change, the fact that Google are looking at how they evaluate links. What this exactly means at present, is unclear, but perhaps cause for concern.

• Finally, State Of Search has an excellent infographic on how to optimise your website. ‘What would Googlebot do?’ is amusing and factually correct – worth a look!

Social Media

• Josh Constine at Techcrunch discusses the growth of Pinterest, the latest social media platform that is receiving huge interest (hitting 10m monthly uniques in US). What is Pinterest? How to use Pinterest for Business? Both questions will be covered in detail on the Orbital Media Blog next week.

• Fresh from its Social Network battle with Facebook, Google now seems to want a piece of Foursquare action too. Mashable detail Leaderboard, which works with Google Latitude where you earn points for check ins. Sound familiar?

• Google + and the Plus 1 button are also enjoying impressive growth according to Greg Finn of Marketing Land. A timely reminder that we cannot ignore Google Plus. If you haven’t managed to do so yet, here is a useful guide to create your Google Plus brand page.

• On the other side of the G+ fence sits Gabriella Sannino, whose negative appraisal of Google’s social network and social search function may actually get you to question the facts and numbers that are being thrown at us on a regular basis. Interesting reading.

• And Mashable’s Todd Wasserman has some numbers of his own. He very recently claimed G+ users spent 3.3 minutes on Google+ in January. In comparison, Facebook user spent 7.5 HOURS,according to a new comScore report. Ouch.

• LinkedIn is to introduce a ‘Follow Company’ button. Social Media Today ran with this and included a quote from a LinkedIn rep - “This marks the first phase of LinkedIn’s follower ecosystem strategy that will unfold over the coming weeks”. With a similar function to a Facebook ‘Like’, this surely is a good time to polish up your LinkedIn Company profile.

• Facebook Timeline for Facebook Brand pages will be available at the end of February, according to Gina Dietrich from SpinSucks (She was right!). Orbital media cover the importance of Facebook Timeline design for brands.

• Chris Crum at Web Pro News backed up the release date for Facebook Timeline for brands, and discusses possibilities of cross-brand promotions and app usage for Brand’s Timelines.

• Chris Crum also reports on Facebook’s ‘sponsored stories’ and raises the question, is this the way for Brands to succeed on Facebook.

• Social Media Examiner look at Twitter ads for small businesses in their weekly Social Media update, some interesting reading here.

• The ‘New Yahoo’ came out fighting…and this could pave the way for a very big scrap between all social networks. Yahoo claims it holds patents for ‘various internet technologies’ used by Facebook and it wants them to start paying for the privelidge. The message to the NY times was clear – comply or there will be consequences (“We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”) One to watch….

Facebook Timeline Design for Brand Pages

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on February 29 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Social Media Marketing

From today (29/2/12) Facebook Timeline is now available to Brand pages and will be compulsory from 30 March 2012. But how can you use Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages successfully?

Most of us are now familiar with Timeline for our own personal profile. Now Brand Pages get the redesign and it’s time for you to take full advantage of what could be visual excellence.

The image led redesign allows you to upload a banner cover photo. At 852 pixels wide by 315 pixels high, this image needs to be carefully selected to tie in with your brand and its identity / customers.

Facebook’s own advice on the cover photo is as follows; ‘Pick a unique photo to feature at the top of your Page timeline. Note: This space is not meant for promotions, coupons, or advertisements. Your cover photo should not be primarily text-based or infringe on anyone else’s copyright’

What we believe you need to consider for your page is a strong lifestyle shot relating to your brand, ideally something with the brand in it of course. The image, if correct, should help users automatically understand exactly what the brand represents.

Timeline Brand pages should be aesthetically pleasing; the redesign has the capabilities of changing your old brand page into something quite impressive.

Just as important as the imagery is the fact that you can now tell the Brand’s story (this is called Timeline for a reason), from the date it was formed to present day, highlighting key developments within the brand in a chronological order.

Brands with history will be able to utilise Timeline to great effect. Manchester United’s facebook Timeline starts (obviously) when the club was founded in 1878. 

This Brand page has adopted the Timeline with huge success.

The page shows us clearly what we can achieve with Timeline for Brand pages. It also changes the way we may view facebook and what we might expect from facebook Brand pages in the future.

Manchester United’s facebook presence shows us all how it could / should be done. No longer a Brand page, more a visual feast through the history of the club.

If you want to see how a brand can get the most out of Timeline, Manchester United’s page as well as the other brands listed below should provide the inspiration you need.

Coca Cola
Starbucks

Burberry
Ford

Timeline is exactly that. It can showcase your Brand to a heightened level and tell the story you want to tell in a visual format that has never been so easy to implement.

There are a few more reasons as to why Timeline will work for Brands, for example, admins of the Brand page have the ability to make selected updates ‘sticky’ for seven days.

Facebook have created a page to help Brands convert to Timeline. But if you still need some help with your Brand’s Timeline, why not get the UK’s leading social media agency, Orbital Media, involved?