There’s not a lot of talk about this online anywhere. You can visit pages like https://www.facebook.com/CoverPhotoSize to see what the basic image dimensions should be, but you won’t find much about image file size in terms of kilobytes.

Why is this important? Because if your file is larger than 100K, Facebook will reinterpolate the image. I’m not actually sure if reinterpolate is a real word. Hwever, it seems like the perfect infuriatingly inaccurate term to describe the experience of uploading a gorgeous high-resolution file to Facebook, only to have it smushed into timeline mush because it’s too big.

I had a friend who recently searched for hours trying to figure out why his Facebook Timeline Image for the Dragon Wagon wasn’t working. It was the correct “size” in terms of dimensions, but it was way larger than 100 kilobytes. So every time he tried to upload it, it resulted in a blurry, messy image because it was just too large.

So now we know. Keep your Facebook Timeline Images under 100K so they load as clearly and cleanly as possible! There’s a lot more to the “size” of any image file than just the dimensions in pixels.

As someone who allowed himself to rely on the service, that news is a giant drag; however, it’s not entirely surprising. Google supports a ton of free products – you can’t sustain that indefinitely. But, of all the services very few people used, why is Google Reader on the chopping block, and what does that say for RSS in general?

Back in the day (which, in SEO terms, means 5 years ago, max) we used to recommend that anyone who created content on a regular basic via a blog, etc., enable RSS. It made no sense not to. Not only would that help increase your potential scope of publication, but there were possible search benefits as well. RSS was a no-brainer, and, in its limited fashion, one of the first steps toward social sharing. So what happened?

Twitter happened.

Do you need a service that instantly populates your inbox or aggregator with headlines and content you may want to read when you have another service that populates your feed with headlines for content that’s been cherry-picked by people you chose to follow?

Der.

So, does the death of Google Reader herald the death of RSS? Well, maybe, maybe not, but it’s definitely a statement supporting RSS’s immanent demise.

Another takeaway – don’t get too attached to anything Google gives you for free. But that’s another story.

Written by Christopher Carlson

Their About page is a fascinating scroll through what is presented as a new type of truly authentic social network. Instead of having to show your best face via a public persona under your own name, you can now show “every aspect of your life as it really is” via Pencourage.

Let’s muse upon that concept for a second:

1. Are you really showing every aspect of your life as it really is, if you aren’t disclosing your real identity on Pencourage?

Yes and no. The idea is with Pencourage is that by removing certain identifying factors, you will be more free to share the real you. How ironic is that? Very! But here’s the thing: when I found myself completing my profile, I started to write the truth. While my Facebook page (attempts to) present myself in the best light possible, the About statement on my Pencourage page is definitely the real me, the good and bad, the fab and the drab about my actual life.

None of this really hit home until I started to complete my Pencourage profile…. and damn if I didn’t start to write the truth. This is exactly what they hope to encourage. Look at your profile settings: you don’t have to disclose anything if you don’t want to!

Conversely, this means that you can also feel comfortable disclosing anything you really do want to in your Pencourage Journal. You’re “pencouraged” to write what you’re really feeling about in your heart, and going through in your life:

2. Similarly, when we do disclose our real identities on Facebook, do we really show every aspect of our life as it really is?

Same answer: Yes and no. Let’s face it: I’m friends with people on Facebook that I have business relationships with, but not personal ones. I can’t just let it all hang out. On the occasions when I do, I find myself encountering humor and encouragement, as well as backlash or ridicule.

Recently, I posted something about abortion on Facebook. It let to me having to actually block someone because they kept endlessly ranting on my page. Granted, that could also happen on Pencourage, but I can’t imagine it would be nearly as violating of an experience. Because no one would really know who I was, and the enraged, public diss that this person accorded me would no longer be as “public”.

I also have friends who post adorable photos of their children (ostensibly taken moments ago), when I happen to also know that the child in question was actually vomiting all over them an hour earlier. Sure, this is funny, but it’s also worth noting that we all are pretty much guilty of selectively crafting our Facebook personas. I certainly am as well, no doubt about it.

I posted this photo of myself once to Facebook. It’s gone now. Why? Because even though this shows part of the real me, and I can make a fantabulously horrrrible monster face, it ended up coming back to haunt me. I was afraid it made me look immature/unprofessional/crazy/ you name it. And that’s really too bad.

The people who really know me as I really am can appreciate this photo. My hugely elastic monster face has always been a source of hilarity, in particular for the many children that I used to babysit for growing up.

Why are we so scared to be our monster-face selves on Facebook? Well, it’s not just about Facebook, it’s about being authentic about our lives in general. It’s about self-acceptance.

However, it’s also about your network. Being friends with a larger network of people, I also have to keep some things private. It needs to be appropriate. I can’t really let my boss or my mother-in-law find out how insane I am, for example. The people that I went to high school with also must continually be in awe of how jaw-droppingly awesome I am now compared to what a nerd I was in high school. Google+ has attempted to solve some of this overlap with with their circles of people, but adoption has been slow. Very slow.

While there is endless potential for crafting selective or even false personas on social networks, I do however think that Pencourage has, as their name implies, done a good job in encouraging HONESTY. Pencourage has demonstrated that honesty can exist independently of transparency. There’s not much incentive to create a Pencourage profile that makes you “look” good (who cares? no one actually knows who you are), as to create one that will facilitate honest, meaningful, and heartfelt interaction.

I could debate this endlessly. I don’t know what the answer is. In fact, I think I may have even lost the thread of this blog post. I’m off on a tangent. But you know what I like about it? I’m being honest and candid instead of Ms. Buttoned-Up SEO Professional, and maybe, just maybe, showing you a little bit more real. I don’t think I’d be worth my salt as a social media marketer if I couldn’t do that.

Photo on 3-13-13 at 3.03 PM. Taken While Writing This Blog Post.

These aren’t ground-breaking insights, but the list below are things I try to do – both with my personal accounts and with clients I work with – to get the most out of social communication.

1. Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Are you sharing someone else’s photo on Facebook or Instagram? Posting a link to a blog post on Twitter or Google+? Tag the author or the account that originally shared it in your post. Seems simple right? Well, I continue to see people sharing content without attributing it to the person or organization who created it. Aside from being a simple courtesy, recognizing the effort that goes into creating quality content gives the person you tagged a reason to check out what you’re doing. Who knows, they might even return the favor by sharing your content sometime in the future, introducing you or your brand to a new audience.

2. Keep Things Fresh

How long has it been since you changed the cover photo on your brand’s Facebook page? Is your Twitter background over a year old? While I do think it’s good establish one profile image to maintain a consistent presence for your brand in the Twitter stream or Facebook newsfeed, changing out the cover/header images on your social profiles regularly presents a fresh look to those who may visit often and allows you to highlight different segments of your business to new visitors.

3. Engage the People and Brands You Follow

I know… I know… 2009 called and they want their word back. “Engagement” can be defined in many ways, but the bottom line is to participate as actively as you can in the social community you’ve worked hard to build. I read an interesting post from Mark W. Schaefer earlier this week suggesting that engagement is not a social media strategy. Mark makes a good point for putting social engagement in the proper context for the resources you have available, but interacting with your followers and reaching out to those you follow is what makes social media “social.”

Start out by keeping it simple. Set aside a few minutes a couple of times each day to scroll through your twitter feed. When you see a tweet you agree with or a link you’re interested in, hit “reply.” Complement the author, ask a question, add value with additional information, or simply share an opinion. You might be surprised at the conversations that result – and the relationships that develop – because you took the initiative to send a single tweet.

4. Stop Using Auto-DMs

Yes, I’ve been over this before, but if you’re still using an automated direct message to thank new followers on Twitter, the start of a new year is a great time to make a change. If you want to recognize a new follower, send them a quick reply. It just takes a second, and guess what? You’ll come off as a real person who appreciates those who are interested in what you have to say.

5. Run a Promotion

No, I’m not suggesting you run yet another “WIN A FREE iPAD” giveaway (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but creating a mechanism for your social community to get involved and contribute to your content is a win-win for everyone. Do you work for a hospitality or lifestyle brand? Invite users to capture a photo and share their experience. Offer a prize and/or feature the winning entry on your social profiles. There are a number of turn-key Facebook apps that enable easy uploading and user voting for photo contests that comply with Facebook’s Page guidelines.

Get creative. Do a simple giveaway that asks users to tag their entry with a hashtag on Twitter or Instagram. If your Web content features images, build a promotion on Pinterest around a specific product to grow visibility. Give the members of of your social community another reason to connect with your brand while sharing what you do with their own online audience.

7. Write More

This is one resolution that I’m adding to my personal list for the coming year. Start that personal blog you’ve been thinking/talking about. Write a guest post for a blog that focuses on your industry. Create an editorial calendar for your company blog and invite contributors to write guest posts. Focus on content that answers a question, solves a problem, or demonstrates how your products and services can make your customers/clients lives easier. Having trouble finding an article addressing a specific topic? Write it yourself and create a resource that could eventually be found in others’ searches. My colleague Sarah did this just last week with her post about creating a secret, private event on Facebook.

8. Measure Performance and Use the Data

I had a boss several years ago who was a Harvard MBA. One of his favorite sayings was, “Anything worth doing is worth measuring.” While it’s a pretty general statement, it does apply to your social media strategy. Whether you’re using Facebook insights to measure community growth and user engagement, or whether you’re tracking detailed metrics across all of your social channels with a more advanced platform, measuring the performance of your social content helps you to understand what works best and enables you to adjust your strategy to maximize results. Are videos getting more views in the evening? Are Instagram photos generating more likes and comments over the weekend? Are status updates reaching more users than photos on Facebook? Do photos get more retweets than links? Use the answers to questions like these to reach the appropriate audience with the right content at the right time.

New Year, New Ideas

These are just a few of the things I try to keep in mind while planning each day, week, and month in my annual content calendar. I’d love to hear ideas you’ve used to get the most out of the social Web. What are your social media New Year’s resolutions? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!

I still don’t have the answer!

In the meantime, however, that post continues to be of the most-viewed articles on our entire site. It attracts visits from people asking questions like:

- How to block someone from seeing an event on facebook
- How to make a surprise party event on facebook
- How to make a facebook event secret
- Surprise party facebook event
- And more…

Even though the post attracted a ton of traffic, it also had a fairly high bounce rate and low amount of time on the page. This caused myself to ask: What can I do to improve this page?

Well, by looking at the average searches that lead users to this page, it was obvious: my post doesn’t answer questions about creating a basic private event. Most people are looking for a simple way to just create a private Facebook event or surprise party; the issue of blocking only one person is less of a concern.

So without further ado, here are screenshot instructions for how to create a Private Facebook Event, whether it’s a surprise party or otherwise. Um, and sorry it took me two years to do this:

1. Go to your Facebook Homepage. Click “Home” on the upper right-hand corner of the screen:

2. Click on your “Events” from the left-hand column:

3. Click “Create Event” from the top right-hand side of the screen:

4. Choose “Invite Only” for the Event Privacy. The next screen is where you can add the event name, time, location, details, and privacy settings. If you want the event to be totally secret and private to only those who you invite, select “Invite Only”:

4. Decide whether you want guests to invite friends or not. If the party truly needs to be as secure and private as possible, you’ll probably want to leave this unchecked.

5. Customize your event with photos, invite friends, message guests and more. See the upper right-hand corner of the screen for full controls over your event. And by the way Facebook – how come we can’t use larger featured images for events?!

5. That’s it! Hope this additional information helps you create your top-secret, invite-only Facebook event.

Written by Sarah Mackenzie.

This year while pondering the question, I realized that I had a few things on my “wish list” that come from the world of social media. No, I don’t want to give Mark Zuckerberg a lump of coal. Just a few simple additions and/or updates to various social platforms that would make great social media stocking stuffers.

The Ability to Edit a Facebook Status

You’ve  probably done it. You share your well-thought-out status from your personal profile, or that clever message sure to dazzle the followers of your brand or business page. Then you see it. A comma is missing. Auto-correct put “your” in the place of “you’re.” You see one little letter out of place. Too bad. You can’t go back and fix it. Meantime, you get 14 likes and maybe a comment or two before you can delete and repost it.

Please, Facebook. You finally gave us sharing functionality for mobile users (a long-time wish list item). How about you let us edit our statuses? We can edit photo captions with a couple of quick clicks. Let’s apply this to all posts, shall we? Thanks in advance.

Oh, and one more thing, Facebook. Do we really need a dedicated third-party app for “Birthdays?” I already receive a weekly email (which I don’t mind) and see daily notifications of my friends birthdays. I’ve received three invitations to the Birthdays app while writing this post today (true story). Not a biggie, but we can probably do without this one.

Happiness in Instagram Land – Oh, and Sharing Functionality

Well, well… The Instagram honeymoon appears to be over. After taking a while to warm up to the use of filters with photography, I started using the photo sharing app last spring and eventually found it to be a powerful tool with an active community. I used it for personal photos and recommended it to social media clients. I even wrote a post about how brands can use Instagram.

The image-sharing romance lost a tiny bit of luster last week when Instagram disabled Twitter integration in an effort to drive more traffic to web-based versions of user images. Then this week, the Valencia filter hit the fan when Instagram released a new intellectual property policy, leading to a major uproar across the social media world, with users and brands alike announcing a boycott of Instagram. Co-founder Kevin Systrom responded to the criticism shortly thereafter, assuring users that Instagram “does not claim any ownership rights over your photos.”

I haven’t deleted my accounts nor suggested that clients do so, but I’ll certainly keep an eye on the language in the updated updated policy when it’s released. Meantime, aside from a sensible policy for the usage of user photos, I have another item on my holiday wish list for Instagram: Add sharing of images within the app.

The ‘social’ part of social media is the sharing of content. When we see something we like, or that we think our communities will find useful or entertaining, we share it. This capability has been conspicuously absent from the Instagram app. As a brand, if a user tags you in an Instagram photo and you wish to share it with your community, you have to jump through numerous hoops of screenshots, cropping, and re-sharing, while manually crediting the original user. I’d love to see the ability to click “share” and re-post the photo (along with a comment if I wanted) directly in the Instagram app with the original username still attached to the image. This would essentially function like Twitter’s retweet button.

The Ability to Edit Retweets

Speaking of retweets…

In the early days of Twitter, a retweet was done by copying the original tweet, clicking ‘reply,’ pasting the original text behind the original tweeter’s username, and adding “RT” – and perhaps a comment – to the beginning of the new tweet. Third-party Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Hootsuite eventually added this functionality to their respective platforms, saving us the trouble of the copy-and-paste routine.

Twitter re-defined the retweet in 2009 when it rolled out the retweet button on twitter.com, eventually adding the same functionality to its mobile app as well. A retweet in the ‘new’ format simply re-shares the original tweet, including the original user’s avatar, from the retweeter’s profile. This format works well for a number of scenarios, and the Twitter community has more-or-less embraced it. One thing is missing, however: the ability to edit and/or add a comment.

The Twitter app for iOS has a “Quote Tweet” option, but I still end up deleting the quotes and formatting the tweet in the ‘old’ retweet format. Ironically, TweetDeck – which is owned by Twitter – allows for the old ‘RT’ format for retweets with a simple click of the “Edit/RT” button. I use it quite a bit, and I know a large number of other users do, too. Please Twitter, can we just have this basic functionality across all of your platforms? I promise to retweet photos of fruitcake and eggnog with messages of thanks.

Unique URLs for All Google+ Pages

Looking for your favorite brand on Facebook? Type in facebook.com/brandname and you’ll likely land on the page you’re looking for. Want to ask a brand or business a question via Twitter? Go to twitter.com/brandname and more often then not, you’ll find their Twitter profile.

Google+ doesn’t make this nearly as easy. Not only does the lack of unique usernames/URLs on Google+ take away from the user experience, it’s just ugly. We often advise clients on best practices for URL structure and presentation, and a 50-character URL filled with numbers isn’t on the list. Here’s the URL for the FINE Google+ page:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/109425275259206923754/109425275259206923754/posts

How about http://plus.google.com/+FINE? Looks much better, doesn’t it? Here’s the frustrating part: Google announced the rollout of vanity URLs months ago. At the time, invites went to major brands and certain ‘verified users.’ Unless I’ve missed something, I haven’t received an invite for my personal profile or for any of the pages I manage. I did a quick check, and brands like Nike, Pepsi, and McDonald’s aren’t using unique URLs for their pages, so has the rollout stopped? One Google+ user recommended filling out a verification request with Google and applying for a unique URL. I suppose that’s an option, but so is opening up this feature to all users. How about it Google?

Making a List, Checking It Twice

Santa may know whether I’ve been bad or good, but either way, I think these simple gifts would make our social communication that much better. I know I’ve left a bunch of things out, so let me know what’s on your social media wish list. What did I miss? And if I don’t talk to you beforehand – in person or online – have a very happy holiday season!

Depends on the client, doesn’t it? Complicating this supposition is the fact that many clients simply don’t know what to look for regarding an SEO campaign’s progress. As we’ve stated before, education is a huge element of SEO. One should take whatever means necessary to keep your clients out of the dark. Much of this type of discussion occurs prior to the start of the project: what are you (the client) looking for in terms of success? If it’s the number one position on a trophy term, well, we’d need to have addressed the folly of that approach already. Having established a clear idea of the goals of the campaign, we should be clear regarding what we’ll report once our work is implemented and we start gaining traction. You should also consider who’s ultimately getting the reports: are they going directly to your contact in the marketing department, or are they being sent to the C-level execs or business owners who are only interested in the bottom line? Be aware of your audience.

That said, our job is to parse the huge glut of data and create something that makes sense to our clients, who often have neither the time nor the inclination to dig into analytics on their own. Here are some elements to potentially include in monthly SEO reports:

• Increases in Organic Search Traffic – This one’s obvious. This is what the SEO campaign is all about. If you’ve done due diligence in keyword research and your ensuing optimization, your client will see increases in both key term and related longtail traffic. Keep an eye, though, on yearly trends. You may not see a consistent month over month increase, but that could be affected by seasonality and other variables. What you want to see is steady growth as compared to previous years.
• Increases in Non-Branded Organic Search Traffic – Trickier, thanks to Google’s seemingly ever growing percentage of encrypted searches. In a perfect world, increased traffic on non-branded searches would be the holy grail for your SEO campaign. In Google’s world, well, it’s unreliable. Encrypted search results kicked off in October 2011, so one would think you could rely on year over year data. Nope, because the percentage, which was initially relatively small, has grown considerably. Thanks, Google. Regardless, whether you report this or not, it’s still data you should be looking at.
• Increases in the Number of Non-Branded Search Terms Being Used – This one can be a bit difficult for clients to grasp, but it’s quite important. Your work will typically be based on a list of important key terms, but due to the engines’ increasing ability to contextualize you should see an increase in visibility and traffic on related long-tail terms. Educate your clients as to why this is a solid performance indicator. Again, though, where Google traffic is concerned, part of this data is unavailable. You have to work with what you get.
• SERP Positions – Seems obvious, but it’s not. Some SEOs don’t report positions at all. Some, unfortunately, only report positions. The former have a more solid argument, to my mind. Because what do positions really tell you? Sure, maybe the work you’ve done has landed your client in the top five results for every term you’ve chosen. So what? What if the terms you chose were fish in a barrel? Now your client has top positions for terms nobody’s searching for. No increased traffic, no increased conversions, no increased sales, but look – they’re DOMINATING the SERPs. We don’t typically rule positions out while reporting, but we emphasize that they’re just part of the overall picture.
• Time Spent on Site/Pageviews/Bounce Rate – If your SEO campaign includes content development, and it should in at least some capacity, you’ll be looking at these data. That said, you need to understand and communicate what you’re seeing. If it’s a blog and your client publishes regularly, you may see a relatively high bounce rate, but that’s because loyal readers are coming in to read the new post, then leaving. That makes sense. If the site has recently undergone a redesign that made it much easier for a user to navigate to conversion points, you may well experience a decrease in “stickiness” or time spent on site – if conversions are going up, that’s a good thing. Again, don’t just take and report the data at face value. Dig a bit, and educate yourself and your clients.
• Conversions/Sales/Events/Goals – This is the bottom line we’ve been talking about. Whatever the ultimate intent of your client’s site is, that’s what you want to see more of. The traffic coming into the site should be better targeted and more likely to convert (buy something, download something, contact somebody, etc.). If you’re getting a lot more traffic but conversions aren’t increasing, something’s wrong.

That’s an admittedly extremely top-level list of the data that helps your clients understand the success of your SEO campaign. Again, each client is different, and as such will have different goals. Whatever those goals are, your job is to help the client see that the work you’re doing is helping them get there. I’m interested: what do you include in your reports? If you’re working with an SEO vendor, what do you like to see?

Written by Christopher Carlson

]]> http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/monthly-seo-reports-that-make-sense/feed/ 0 http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/seo-best-practices-for-self-hosted-videos/ http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/seo-best-practices-for-self-hosted-videos/#comments Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:23:53 +0000 Sarah http://www.bigdaylight.com/?p=4505 It’s kind of ironic that I’m the one writing the post about video SEO. I wear hearing aids. So videos, they’ve always been a little hard for me to hear.

Well guess what? Search engines can’t hear videos either! How can you make your videos easier to understand, for both search engines and users alike?

1. Choose your hosting solution
In the long run, you do have to make a decision on whether you want your own website to rank for videos and get search engine traffic, or your YouTube / 3rd-party channel.

SEOs can endlessly debate the merits of hosting on external websites such as YouTube versus hosting the video yourself. There are pros and cons to each, and I could honestly write an entire separate article about this subject. This article on SEOMoz has a good overview: An SEO’s Guide to Video Hosting & Embedding

Personally, I prefer to see a website build links and authority versus YouTube, but it can really depend on what you’re trying to personally accomplish with your videos. Debra Mastaler makes superb points about why you shouldn’t use YouTube for building links, arguing that “YouTube results bump web pages down in the general search results and web pages make sales, videos don’t.” Conversely, other experts will immediately recommend YouTube as a first step, offering ways to optimize your YouTube videos as well as your entire YouTube channel. At any rate: this is why I’m a big fan of the SEOMoz article above – it outlines different options based on your business goals.

Note: The remainder of this article focuses on tactics to optimize your own website (versus your YouTube channel).

2. Create a unique page for each video
A lot of websites contain video libraries that smush all of their videos onto a single page. While this seems to make sense in terms of time and convenience, it doesn’t do much for search engine visibility. For starters, it makes posting a transcript of the video difficult – it’s not like you can show a zillion transcripts on the page as well. It also means that you can’t assign a unique Title Tag, Description Tag, or even a unique URL to your videos.

This doesn’t mean you need to stop showing all videos on one page – just be sure to create an additional page for each video, to help it differentiate its own unique content online.

3. Filenames & URLs
These are both ranking factors! Be sure to give the video a descriptive filename that uses words and not a bunch of alphanumberic gibberish. Similarly, the URL that the video is featured on should also be given an intuitive name that helps both users and search engines glean the subject matter.

4. Post a transcript
Seriously. PLEASE. It’s not just that I might have trouble hearing your video. It’s also that I’m way too impatient to listen to the entire thing. It would be so much nicer to just quickly scan the transcript and glean the main idea.

Posting a transcript is also a no-brainer from a search engine standpoint. It’s absurd to go to all the trouble to create a video but not post an online transcript – yet sadly, people do it all the time. Think of all of that beautiful, unique, content that you have the opportunity to put on your website. Don’t miss out on this easy and simple method of increasing your search engine relevance. Post. A. Transcript!

5. Optimize Metadata
Assuming you have provided each video with its own URL, give the page a descriptive Title Tag and Meta Description Tag. Both of these allow you to control how your pages look in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). The Title Tag in particular has *huge* influence on positions – carefully inserting keywords into a well-written Title Tag can really help it increase relevance for your target terms.

6. Create a Video Sitemap
Don’t take it for granted that just because you upload a video to your website, search engines will immediately know about it. Be sure to create a video XML sitemap that tells them all about the location of your videos.

Check out Google’s helpful Webinar about creating video sitemaps: Sending Video Sitemaps Q&A Holiday Cheer

7. Utilize Video Rich Snippets / Schema.org Markup
Google supports and recommends using the schema.org on-page markup for videos. There are a ton of must-read guidelines from Google on this about how you can markup your videos and also test them to ensure the coding is working properly. You can specify the following attributes about each video:

- Name
- Description
- Thumbnail URL
- Duration
- Content URL
- Embed URL
- Upload Date
- Expires

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We hope these guidelines and resources help on your quest to gain website traffic and visibility through video!

Written by Sarah Mackenzie

]]> http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/seo-best-practices-for-self-hosted-videos/feed/ 2 http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/linkbuilding-is-dead-long-live-linkbuilding/ http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/linkbuilding-is-dead-long-live-linkbuilding/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:03:10 +0000 Christopher http://www.bigdaylight.com/?p=4477 We’ve had a number of discussions in our office regarding what’s become of linkbuilding, and how that aspect of SEO has radically changed over the past year. Before we go much further, a brief history.

Within the past year or so, Google has launched two significant algorithm updates: Panda and Penguin. While Google’s Panda update and its multiple iterations mainly focused on content issues (scraper sites, duplicate content, “over optimized” or spammy content, sites with high bounce rates, etc.), Google’s Penguin update, first released in April 2012, specifically targeted inbound links. While Google had taken steps in the past to limit the rewards of questionable linkbuilding, it seemed that most sites still managed to prosper using shady techniques. Penguin has proven to be a different story altogether, and unlike its rather endearing namesake, this update has teeth.

(An aside – penguins do not have teeth. They have sharp barbs on their tongues and in their throats that allow them to catch and hold fish. Not being an ornithologist, I looked it up.)

Webmasters/SEOs who’d used grey or black hat linkbuilding techniques saw Google traffic plummet. Forums were (and still are) filled with rants about how Google hates webmasters, hates organic search, is trying to bankrupt anyone who doesn’t participate in paid search, is evil, needs to be stopped, needs to be destroyed by Bing, and so forth.

But what really changed? What is a link supposed to be, supposed to do? What’s Google up to with this?

On the surface, it’s pretty simple. Google has always, I repeat, in caps, ALWAYS said that links should occur naturally as a result of people liking what’s going on on your site. If someone, especially someone who also has a site that many other people like, visits your site and finds it to be an excellent resource, they’ll link to you. Google takes a look at this and says “hey, if a highly-regarded site is linking to this site, they must be a good resource, one that we should serve up when people are searching for this topic.” The more links your site has from quality sites, the more equity your site builds, and the better chance that you’ll show up higher in the search results. That’s it.

Easier said than done, though. Let’s say you’ve just launched a site – do you expect those influencers to find it on their own? How are they going to do that? You’ve just engaged in the web equivalent of opening a store in the middle of nowhere with zero advertising. Good luck.

Prior to Penguin, people could artificially build a great deal of link equity by methods such as buying links from highly regarded sites (which, increasingly, are no longer highly regarded because they sell links), getting a million links posted in directories that were only there for the purpose of increasing rankings, and setting up their own link networks and posting links on multiple sites that, topically, had little to no relation to one another. One could argue that this is a valid form of promotion, but really, when’s the last time you actually used a general web directory? Should a company site that sells home flooring link to a fantasy football site? Of what benefit is that to visitors? Links should help complete a story – if you visit a site that sells home flooring supplies, you may be interested in another site that provides DYI home flooring instruction. You may also be interested in fantasy football, but that’s pretty random, and wouldn’t fit Google logic. Finally, the question you should always ask yourself is whether you’re doing what you’re doing because it makes sense, or because it’s “good for SEO.” If it’s both, good for you! If it’s the latter, don’t do it.

So, what now? Does “linkbuilding,” as a discipline within SEO, even exist anymore?

Kind of. While the road to quick results is always tempting, it’s obviously not sustainable. It shouldn’t be; SEO is a long-haul proposition. What was linkbuilding, then, has evolved into relationship building. It’s not easy, but nothing lasting is. Here are some tips:

• Be a good resource – Seems pretty elementary, but you’d be surprised how many people have a site simply because they’re supposed to have a site, then don’t put any work into it. You aren’t going to get people to link to you if you have nothing to offer. Create solid, compelling content – not only text but whatever else is appropriate (videos, images, etc.) – about your products or services, your place in the industry, what makes you different: why are you doing what you’re doing? Why should people listen to you/buy your products/hire you?
• Research your industry online, and start building connections – I can’t imagine there’s any industry out there that, by now, doesn’t have a solid online community populated with thought leaders. Do your research (via Google searches using relevant industry terms) and find out who’s prominent and has built a following online. Start reading and commenting on blogs (not to get a link in the comment – that’ll out you as a spammer pretty quickly – but to get your name known as someone who knows what they’re talking about), participate in forums, provide advice, help folks out. Once people start seeing you as someone they can turn to, they’ll start looking at your site, and likely linking to it. Also, once you establish yourself as a community member, the chances of writing a guest post increase significantly. More exposure. In addition, when you do reach out, how you reach out is important:
• Be a person – It’s weird how few people do this, which may be why it’s so powerful. When you do make contact, be yourself. Be honest. You’re writing to another person – tell them who you are, why you’re writing, why you like their blog (e.g.), what you like about their blog, and why you think it would make sense to submit a guest post, if they’re interested. No cut and paste form emails. Think of how many impersonal emails you get every day, and how well those work. They don’t, at all. You’re making a personal connection – that’s not going to happen if you don’t make it personal. Take the time to do this right.
• Be generous in your own blog – If you know of a great resource, don’t be afraid to link to it. If it’s a blog post, comment and say “great post! I linked to it from my blog.” Let them know you can provide a link if they’d like to take a look. If not, no big whoop – while outgoing links don’t necessarily help you, they do show the engines that you’re an active participant in a community. Not a bad idea.
• Industry-specific directories – This one of the few cases in which getting links from directories makes sense. If there’s a directory specific to your industry, and that’s useful to people looking for services/products in your industry, and you don’t have to pay for the link, I’d recommend you go for it. Use your best judgement though – if it looks spammy, it probably is.
• Use social media appropriately – It’s not a secret that social media can play a huge role in making connections and getting people to visit your site, but use it wisely. Keep on topic. Follow other people who are relevant to your industry. Pay attention to your mentions, and be gracious. And stay involved – once you’ve started the conversation, don’t just stop posting/tweeting because it’s time consuming. On the other hand, don’t deluge the network with fifty posts a day. It’s a fine line. Also, for the love of everything holy, keep your professional and personal presences separate. There have been several pretty high profile screw-ups lately (here’s a slideshow of some pretty severe missteps for your edification): don’t be that person.
• Think local – This tip obviously only applies to those who are local entities, i.e., have a brick and mortar location or localized services. Local directories are the second situation in which I’d recommend exploring opportunities. Again, use your best judgement. Also, take part in your community. Remember – this is all about relationship building. Attend local meet and greets, then reach out on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Sponsor local events or sports teams – often these entities will have websites and will link to sponsors, and this will help you show up in local search.

Those are just a few ways to begin building relationships (and the resultant link equity) online post-Penguin. I’m sure there are more, and I definitely welcome feedback. The game has definitely changed, but we would argue it’s for the better. SEO has never been easy – that’s why we exist.

Written by Christopher Carlson

]]> http://www.bigdaylight.com/seo/linkbuilding-is-dead-long-live-linkbuilding/feed/ 2 http://www.bigdaylight.com/analytics/google-tag-manager-analytics-tracking/ http://www.bigdaylight.com/analytics/google-tag-manager-analytics-tracking/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:33:01 +0000 Sarah http://www.bigdaylight.com/?p=4414 We just enabled our website, www.bigdaylight.com, to work together with Google’s (fantastic) new Tag Manager tool. I’m a big fan of screenshots and step-by-step How Tos, so here’s how we worked through the initial process. This first tutorial is focused on SIMPLE BASICS – just getting Tag Manager integrated with Google Analytics tracking.

1. Pick Your Google Account/Email Address
Be sure to choose a Google Account/ Email Address that YOU control to use as the primary account user. If you’re an agency, don’t set up an account on behalf of your client inside your own account. Instead, help the client create their own account, to which they can then add your email as a user. Google’s official documentation about Users and Permissions, and Setup and Containers, has more information.

In our case, we went ahead and used the same email address for Google Tag Manager that we use to manage our own Google Analytics account for Big Daylight and FINE Design Group.

2. Create an Account

Click “Sign Up Now” from the Tag Manager home page, and you should come this screen. Enter in the name of your company. Don’t worry – you can always change this later, but we recommend naming this something to reflect the main owner/parent company.

Our account, FINE Design Group, can then contain containers for our own websites (www.finedesigngroup.com, www.bigdaylight.com, and others).



3. Create a Container
We’re first creating a container for Big Daylight (www.bigdaylight.com). After initial setup, we can also add additional container for FINE Design Group.



3. Copy and paste your code


Next, just copy and paste the code and forward to your webdev to load to the site. Don’t forget, this goes right after the opening <body> tag, and needs to be on every single page of your site.



4. Complete Account Setup
Once basic setup is complete, your homepage should look something like this. When additional FINE clients start to use tag manager and add us as users, we will also see them under our list of accounts.



5. Review Your Containers
We already created a container for www.bigdaylight.com, but now we should also create one for www.finedesigngroup.com.



Because FINE also has a blog on the subdomain, you can see we are adding two domains to the container. Each container contains all the relevant tags for either a single domain, or multiple domains that utilize sub or cross-domain tracking between them.



6. Set up a Google Analytics Tag

Go in to the correct container you’d like to edit, and click create a new tag:



Here’s where we’ll set up the Google Analytics Tag:



- We named it “Big Daylight Google Analytics”
- Tag type is “Google Analytics
- We entered in our UA # (UA-########) under the Web Property ID
- The tracking type is Page View

7. Set up a Rule for the Google Analytics Tag
Now we have to set up a rule to make sure that the tag fires on every page:



In this case, all you need to do is just check the box so the tag does exactly that! Obviously, we want all pages to record visits in Google Analytics.



8. Testing 123
Google Tag manager has a Previewing and Debugging tool to help you make sure everything is working correctly before you publish. You have to go into Versions to check this out. Essentially what we want to do is Save and PREVIEW (not publish) this version:



Go ahead and click on the domain name to view a preview of your site:



And voila. IS THIS COOL OR WHAT? You can preview pages to make sure that the tags are correctly firing. And for bigdaylight.com, it looks like everything is working just fine:



After you have successfully previewed and debugged, go ahead and publish the latest version of your tags. We’ll also need to inform our developers to remove the old Google Tracking code, since we don’t want code loading two times on our website. That’s it! Stay tuned for additional posts and how-tos about other aspects of this tool.

Written by Sarah Mackenzie

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