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.

Social signals have been influencing search engines since 2005, but SPYW has taken social search to a new level. Google’s introduction of SPYW has changed how SEO is executed.

Now, SEO and Google Plus should be applied in conjunction of each other. Search results are affected by the users own social experiences with results greatly influenced by their circles of friends.

Google +1’s, shares and comments by someone within your circles in Google+ will be highlighted in relevant search results. Products / brands that have been given the Google social treatment by someone in your circles will appear higher than those that haven’t.

SPYW has made Google+ possibly the most important SEO tool and one that we should all adopt. Fast.

SEO and Google Plus now has to be more conversational, that is – content has to be more social (Fresh, interesting, useful, shareable) - to be well represented in Google’s most recent algorithmic shifts.

So SPYW is forcing more fresh, interesting, useful and shareable content online. This is no bad thing.

Searchers can opt out of SPYW and the new set of social based results. Your personalised results can be disabled permanently or temporarily using a new toggle.

However, even if you are logged out of Google, Google+ recommendations will still show up in Google search results. (http://marketingland.com/faq-google-search-plus-your-world-3533)

Just in case you missed the point, Google Plus should now be at the forefront of your social strategy. SEO and Google Plus have become the new Batman and Robin, the ever dynamic duo.

One new aspect of SPYW is a new ‘People and Pages on Google’ search results box. This, for me, is key to using SPYW from an SEO standpoint. Being listed in this box within the search results should be a priority aim.

So, how do you get to feature in ‘People and Pages on Google’? Google have offered some advice on this http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/plus/relatedpeople.html and it is something every SEO and brand should read, understand and execute.

Any social media strategy should include points two and three, but with SPYW you should really treat Google+ as your number one social network for ‘social SEO’.

Still not sure? Well, you should be. Google+ will grow, you need to make sure your brand on Google+ page grows accordingly.

Just think of the power of facebook with its 800+ million users. I bet you have a facebook brand page. Why would you even think of ignoring Google, with its billions of daily searches?

For more help on this, Orbital Media have a step by step guide to creating a Google+ brand page.

And, Search Engine Land have a really useful, in depth article on SPYW.

When managed incorrectly, your facebook brand page could have a negative impact on your business; it could lead to a loss in confidence and / or sales. On any social media platform, when things go wrong it can be devastating.

Here is our facebook page management guide for businesses, so you can make sure your brand stands out.

1) Choose your admins wisely. Trusted, knowledgeable members of the team need to be in place. Essentially spokespersons for your brand, it is important you can rely on these team members. A good understanding of both the brand’s industry as well as social media and having the ability to use correct tone of voice are essentials.

2) Set a rhythm for your posts. This may vary from brand to brand, but there is a fine line between too many / too few. Too many updates may see your followers leave your page as they feel they are being ‘hounded’. Too few and these updates will get lost within their facebook feed. Measure how many impressions your post gets, hour on hour. By recording this over 2 – 3 weeks, you will have a good idea of when your last post stopped being effective. 1 – 2 posts every 24 hours should be your benchmark, you can increase or decrease as you see fit. Mashable have some more advice on this. 

3) Find the most effective time to post. This will vary depending on your brand. To determine, simply experiment – post before 08.00, post after 20.00 and lunchtime. Over a period of time, you will see which time gets the most engagement (likes / comments / shares).

4) Compose updates as a team. We have found best practise to be having one admin member originally compose updates and then pass them on for further ideas, proofreading, punctuation and to check they are factually correct (Important!).

5) Make your updates engaging. This is a social network, you need to try and keep things ‘social’. You wouldn’t go to a friend’s house and sell them a product. Try to apply the same on your facebook brand page, no hard sell. Making a topical statement relevant to your industry followed by a leading question works well. An image caption post can be popular on the right pages too. Relevant video links and jokes may also be a good area to pursue. Occasionally throw in new product news or links to your brand website, but do not go overboard on this.

6) Respond to all your posts comments. Good or (especially) bad, you have to participate in the conversation. Try to answer negative comments rather than just deleting, as this may further incite whoever posted originally. This is a sweeping statement, but in my experience, the majority of facebook users are a sensible bunch. However, you will always come across negativity in some way. It is how you deal with this that will make your facebook brand page stand out. Sometimes, just ‘Liking’ a comment will suffice.

7) Respond in a timely fashion. Point 1 stated ‘choose your admins wisely’, notice this was admins plural. Facebook is not 9 – 5, so it is important to have a number of staff who are willing and able to jump onto facebook whenever possible. If you can respond to a query / comment quickly, it demonstrates good customer service (see next point too).

8) Be a resource. At the start of this guide, I stated your facebook brand page ‘can be the first port of call for your potential customer’. I also said your admins should be savvy to your brands products / services. If a request for information on your brand comes in and isn’t answered or responded to poorly, the chances are that person will not want anything more from you. One of our client’s pages had a recent query from someone who had relocated to Canada. The follower was lamenting that they now could not purchase our client’s product. A quick search on the internet revealed some local stores that did retail the item. We quickly responded with links to the stores.

9) Give something back. There’s nothing like a facebook competition or a freebie to get your fans attention! This is a great way to build your audience and stir up some excitement on your brand page. Make sure you comply with facebook’s strict guidelines on competitions and use a 3rd party app like Easypromos or NorthSocial. We have found that a value of £300 and upwards can attract in a huge response.

10) Measure your achievements. Social media is free. No it is not, your time will play a key factor to the success of the page. With this effort in mind, it is worth measuring how you are doing. Facebook insights can give you vital information to where you are going right and where you are going wrong. Socialable wrote a really useful guide to insights, which is recommended. . Marketing Land also offer advice on insights.

It needed something special and something inventive – here is what we did:

We targeted top athletes and asked them to get involved by providing testimonials and images with the Flex Loop. In order to get athletes interested we tweeted them with one of our exclusive invites to review the product.  These athletes were specifically chosen because of their strong twitter followings and a high level of social media activity.

The attempt to get top athletes on board has been a roaring success.

Trion:Z and Colantotte now have support from prominent Olympic athletes (Steven Burke), professional darts players (Jamie Caven) and well known charity fundraisers (such as John Hibbs).

So far, this is one of Orbital Media’s fastest and most successful social media promotions of a new product, as it has ensured that the Flex Loop is well and truly out in the Twittersphere.

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.

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”

To kick start the campaign will be giving away a Rangemaster cooker worth £1,999, on the brand’s Facebook page. Click here to have a look https://www.facebook.com/RangeMasterUK.

We will then promote the competition to the world utilising optimised social media techniques; through these techniques we aim to bring thousands of people to the Rangemaster Facebook page. This will be made possible by contacting our vast blogger database and encouraging them to feature the campaign, we will also contact influential press targets and conduct optimised tweeting. However, these are only a few of our methods for developing the brand’s presence.

In only 4 days the Facebook page “likes” increased by over 200% - and this number is always growing!

We will update you on the success of the campaign soon…

Just last month, it was reported that Pinterest hit 10m monthly uniques in US. That’s pretty awesome, but doesn’t exactly explain what is Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social network best described as a virtual pinboard, or even a visual bank. Pinterest has the equivelants of Facebook’s ‘Like’, Comment and Share functions (Like, Comment & RePin) and you can follow other user’s boards.

The image based platform is a simple idea (it’s always the simple ones that work best). Users create and name Boards and post relevant photos onto these Boards. These Boards are then categorised under one of the 32 general Pinterest categories.

Simple, effective and visually stunning.

What’s good about Pinterest?

• Easy functionality in Pinning images from the internet to one of your Boards.
• The Boards can look fab!
• The social side of Pinterest is very appealing. You can find friends from other social networks and follow them.
• You can follow just a Board of interest, rather than a person.

What’s not so good about Pinterest?

• Do we need another social network?*
• Time…Once you catch the Pinterest bug, prepare to give it a lot of your time.
• Results – Just what do you get from a collection of images?**

*Yes, we do, when it looks as good as Pinterest does. This is more about creating something visual that means something to you, which can then be shared with other people.
**Your collection of images could be your upcoming landmark Birthday present wishlist, which can be viewed by friends and family. Your collection of images (Board) could be research for your latest project / blog article. Your Board could even be something that provides you with inspiration.

(I guess this means Pinterest is a good thing)

Who is using Pinterest?

According to Mashable, Pinterest interest (I like that!) female users equate to 62%, but was originally 80%). Early adoption from the fairer sex is not surprising when you look at Pinterest possibilities and current popular themes – recipes, fashion, Weddings….

When I heard that Women used Pinterest more, I wanted to test that this stereotype was correct. On Pinterest, I searched for ‘Men’s Brown Boots’. The search returned just one solitary pin (image).

I then searched ‘Brown Boots’. I was met with Board after Board of brown boots, with 99% being Women’s brown boots. Latest figures do confirm that 80% of US users are female, whilst in the UK it’s 60/40%. The High Definite have an amusing infographic on who is using Pinterest:

Obviously a joke, but to limit Pinterest to Women would be short-sighted and a touch sexist. I did a search on ‘Rugby’ and found numerous Boards and Pins (as well as quite a lot of Ladies rugby shirts, but I have done that point).

And I am not saying Rugby is just for Men, that too would be sexist – just trying to demonstrate Men’s interests are covered on Pinterest!

How do I use Pinterest?

Pinterest is currently invite only. You can request an invite from Pinterest direct or from someone you know that is already using it. My invitation came 24 hours after my request from Pinterest.

Once you are a member, you can get Pinning. Pinterest start you off with a couple of Boards. You just need to name them and categorise.

You can take images from other Pins / Boards on Pinterest (RePinning), just hover over the image and the “Repin” option will appear. Or you can take images from any web page. You need to install the ‘Pin It’ button to
your bookmarks bar via the Pinterest Goodies page. This is a simple drag and drop operation. Anything you pin is automatically credited back to original source of image.

Some websites even have a ‘Pin It’ button at the bottom of each post and you can expect to see more sites adopting the Pin It button in the future.

By adding (unique) descriptions to your images, you are more likely to have your Pins / Boards found by other users, so it is worth writing a short piece for each image you Pin (even ‘Men’s Brown Boots’).

Now all you need is a touch of creativity. Make a board of your favourite chart topping bands if that takes your fancy. Make a board of images for your companies latest product, create a series of images that make up your ideal wardrobe.

However you decide to use Pinterest is up to you. This is your online scrapbook that you can share with your friends. I have a feeling Pinterests growth is not about to flat-line any time soon.

Oh look again! Lots of cross people saying they have had enough of facebook and are going to ditch the social network completely (and if you want, look again – they are still on facebook!)

What is it with change? Why the big issues? Why the negativity?! The facebook ticker was the last big aesthetic change. Personally, I didn’t like it, but I didn’t moan. That was then, now I think it is a valuable addition to the user experience.

I am all for the new Timeline feature, I think it works well and gives an excellent visual history of your life story. Starting with your birth, you can furnish your Timeline with major milestones in your life.

One of the big gripes surrounding Timeline is that of privacy. Yes, that old chestnut. If you want a decent level of privacy on facebook, you can get it – just change your settings.

Timeline does not make your private content public. Your settings remain the same. What Timeline does do, is reveal what you posted in 2007 a lot easier.

Now 5 years ago, I might not have been the perfectly level headed and thoroughly decent chap I am today…I wasn’t. And some of my postings back then might have been a little unsavoury…maybe? Fortunately, I have grown up. But Timeline has made it easier for these past updates to be found. Oh No!

But this is where people are getting it wrong. This is a good thing. Get your house in order. YOU can now go back through your timeline and clean up any regrettable updates that seemed to be previously buried by time.

Still not convinced? Still hate facebook Timeline?

How about a cool Timeline feature to sway you further on why you shouldn’t hate facebook Timeline?

Timeline movie maker allows you to make a movie of your life using your facebook updates, videos and images. Customize the soundtrack and edit the images. You can then share this with your facebook friends.

Hate facebook Timeline? Really?! What’s not to like?....

In mid-January, Orbital Media launched one of its best social media campaigns to date. What’s more, this campaign was the most charitable too - the Sudocrem and NSPCC “All Babies Count” campaign.

The campaign united Sudocrem’s effort to increase its social media presence, with the NSPCC’s desire to raise money for its “All Babies Count” campaign.

Orbital Media encouraged people to support the NSPCC’s “All Babies Count” campaign by “liking” the Sudocrem Facebook page or tweeting about the campaign using the hashtag #allbabiescount. For each new “like” of the page Sudocrem would donate 50p towards the campaign and for each tweet 25p.

The All Babies Count cause tackles cruelty to children across the UK - this very worthwhile cause sparked huge social media interest in the Sudocrem brand and was a roaring success.

As soon as the campaign began, it ignited a fanatical twitter following and the hashtag #allbabiescount spread like wildfire. Celebrities such as James Corden and Sinitta, also retweeted the campaign – reaching out to millions of followers.

Furthermore, Facebook users shared and commented on the “All Babies Count” cause in their thousands, therefore, pushing it up Facebook newsfeeds and increasing the campaigns EDGE ranking.

The results were absolutely phenomenal - tweets reached thousands and the Sudocrem Facebook page rose to almost 18,000 “likes” by the end of February.

The key results of one of the best social media campaigns we have managed were: a massive web interest in the Sudocrem brand and £25,000 raised for a truly brilliant cause.

For more information about All Babies Count click here.