To be clear, I have always been, and (unless proven other wise) will continue to be a proponent of quality. Having said that, I did at one point make the argument that quantity is a force not to be ignored and increasing quantity does have some merit to it.

This is why it’s always important to re-examine this and keep up with the changes.

Specifically with regards to Penguin, I hypothesized that social did in fact have a positive affect on sites, and that sites engaged in social benefited, whereas sites with a low social presence suffered.

Do Tweets Help Sites Post Penguin?

In order to get the best data possible, I asked my friends at Brightedge for a little help pulling some data and here is what we found:

“For close to 300K keywords across more than 200 domains, there was a common characteristic. Many sites which had strong social sharing before the update stayed about the same or showed a rank improvement. However, when tweets reduced even slightly the average rank for that page decreased disproportionately.”

Not Impressed yet? Well, I agree. Aside from giving justification to what many of us believed already, I don’t think this data is necessarily all that insightful either.

But just hold on a second…

It’s the next piece of data, layered on top of this, which gets more into the heart of social sharing, and the importance of Social Media.

In a different study done by Brightedge in conjunction with Tiny Prints, Feeding America and Twitter, they determined through mapping keywords in the tweets, that by reaching out to users using targeted keywords in a tweet:

“Tiny Prints saw a 300% rise in user engagement which, in turn, improved the average rank across keywords for targeted pages by 47%. This was over a four week period. Feeding America’s users responded positively to the Tweets since the content of the Tweets ( keywords and pages) matched their interests. This resulted in a 2.5X improvement in traffic for the pages mentioned in the Tweets.”

Keywords In Tweets Do Have An Impact

With this new insight, that increasing the levels of tweets, while including specific keywords can affect rankings, traffic and over all user engagement, this points directly to the quality of the content. With this in mind, the obvious next question is, as marketers, what can we do to improve the message we want people to share?

I have found two approaches to go about this and ensure you are effectively conveying your message.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

The first is something that my friend AJ Kohn does really well (and I will credit him for making this idea popular). In almost every post AJ writes, he leaves a TL;DR - which stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read.

This is probably one of the most effective ways I have ever come across to summarize the main points you are trying to get across in a piece of content.

Customize & Maximize Your Tweet

Most Twitter buttons on a site default to the title of the page or even the title tag element. Both of these are usually much less than the allotted 140 characters on Twitter.

Woah, it's a post inside a post... Inception!

What this really means is that if your title is not very descriptive, or if its short, you are letting the user fill in the blank, which may or may not work to your benefit. And all this really depends on if they got the main point of the article.

So, Why Not Control What They Tweet?

This is a quick work around that I came up with and my friend Josh (my go-to developer) who helped me put it together.

Simply install this code in the place where you would place a Twitter share button:

<a href=”#” onclick=”tweetSelectedText()”><img src=”http://digitalhighrise.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/tweet_button.gif” border=”0″ /></a>

       <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.2.min.js”></script>

       <script type=”text/javascript”>

       $().ready(function(){$(‘.tweetThis’).hide();});

       function tweetSelectedText(){

               var twtTitle = $(‘.tweetThis’).text() || $(‘title’).text();

               var twtUrl = location.href;

               var maxLength = 140 – (twtUrl.length + 1);

               if (twtTitle.length > maxLength) {

                       twtTitle = twtTitle.substr(0, (maxLength – 3))+’…’;

               }

               var twtLink = ‘http://twitter.com/home?status=’+encodeURIComponent(twtTitle + ‘ ‘ + twtUrl);

               newwindow=window.open(twtLink,’name’,'height=500,width=500′);

               if (window.focus) {newwindow.focus()}

       }

       </script>

Then, in the code of your post (beginning or end, it doesn’t make a difference) add this tag:

<p class= “tweetThis”>THIS IS WHERE YOUR MESSAGE GOES</p>

In this tag, you can craft your own message, which is descriptive, contains the targeted keywords and utilizes the allotted space.

When the share button is clicked, it will automatically use the message that you put in the tweet tag.

Perfect The Tweet

One final thought. I would suggest paying attention to a few key points when crafting this message to ensure the perfect tweet is sent out:

• Characters should be kept to about 120 to account for a Retweet plus user handles.
• Make sure the keywords you target in the post are in the tweet.
• Do NOT keyword stuff! (sorry, I got really passionate about that last one). The point here is to improve the user experience and make your tweets more engaging. Making spammy messages will not help you with this.
• Change it up. The message you start with for the first day might be different than the second. Change the message a day or two later to give a new experience to people and maybe catch people’s attention who didn’t respond well to the message the first time.

I hope these tips are useful. As always, I would love to hear your feedback or hear how other people have benefited using this strategy.

Happy Tweeting!

Sure, Twitter is great for connecting with people, brands monitoring their competition and sharing information in spurts, but what about systematically layering information from Twitter with other data sets to better understand your audience and create useful information for them? Is that even possible?

What I hope to present and explain below is the beginning of an effective methodology, which I suspect is not a completely unique approach, but is certainly a powerful approach for how to use Twitter to help us prioritize the long tail of search and ensure that we are sharing timely and fresh content.

A Quick Recap Of The Long Tail In Search

The concept of the long tail analysis is a statistical concept that explains how within a population, the largest distribution will be found at the tail end.

This concept was made popular in search marketing by Chris Anderson of Wired  in an article he wrote titled “The Long Tail”. What Anderson comes to prove is how crucial it is for businesses, specifically online businesses, to put a large focus on their inventory at the tail end.

Amazing drawing skills thanks to the Drawsome phone app :)

This is something which has been written about in length in the SEO community, specifically relating to keyword themes and how marketers can capture large percentages of queries by optimizing for it.

The simple practical application of this is looking through your analytics to discover themes and trends on what information is directing people to your site, and creating new, fresh and relevant content for those searchers, which we know search engines love too.

Twitter Beating Site Analytics To The Punch

Site analytics are a great way to discover themes around what people have been searching on, creating the opportunity for you to develop new content. But social media is great for discovering topics your audience is searching for now, as well as giving you more insight into who they are, creating leads for link building initiatives.

If this is true, then this methodology is exactly the way to prioritize which long tail queries to begin optimizing and targeting.

How Do We Do This?

Step 1

For starters, begin by looking through your site analytics and uncover themes that you see evolving in the recesses of all this data.

For the purposes of this example, I uncovered that my site showed up a number of times for queries around email and Facebook.

Understanding what long tail queries are driving people to your site is the first step. This information alone is helpful for marketers.

While these queries are driving small amounts of users to my site, I understand that its because of a previous article I wrote. I may want to revisit this and write a follow up topic on this anyway. But for the purposes of these discussions, let’s keep an eye on these long tail queries that are already driving small amounts of traffic.

Step 2

Next, head over to a free tool like Topsy or Social Mention, and do a quick search to see if there is a lot of activity around those queries. You might not see any right away, and should run these searches every couple weeks to see if they start to pick up steam (don’t forget this is the long tail we are going after).

If you would prefer, you could use this handy spreadsheet in Google Docs (h/t to Mashable for posting these free Google doc Spreadsheets), where you can actually set the keywords up in the spreadsheet and start tracking them ongoing to see what starts to buzz.

Step 3

This is the best part. Once you see something start to trend, the work is basically done for you. You have not only successfully uncovered the next topic you should write and the keywords you will want to target, you also have discovered a list of Twitter users who are already discussing the topic that you can reach out to.

Now, Go Tweet The Long Tail

This method is not meant to “replace” the work you are already doing, its meant to support and prioritize it to help you maximize results for the time you put in.

The opportunities are limitless and the methodology can be expanded and used many different ways. I hope you use it and customize it for your needs and the needs of your clients. Feel free to leave comments. I would love to hear more about how you are using it and collaborating to make it work even better.

Looking forward to discussing this more at SMX Toronto.

This article is all about the lies we tell. I know everyone loves when a post starts this way, but SEO is not dead, or dying for that matter. At least I certainly hope that’s not the case, considering I and many others reading this make a livelihood working in it. But SEO is certainly changing, largely because of the lies we tell. And as it continues to evolve it will undoubtedly look very different than it does today.

In fact, if we think about the core goal of Search Engines, it has always been to give the best possible user experience. The search engines have done a fantastic job to date (more or less) to give us these results and deliver us relevant content. More information is being consumed today than ever before.

As time has progressed, SEO has evolved. As more people create and optimize content, content is becoming more “SEO’ed” than it is organic. The goal to enhance the user experience and stay relevant has been put in jeopardy. The nature and goal of SEO hasn’t changed, but the practice has evolved.

Yesterday’s keyword stuffing is just stupid. But it was a threat at one point. Today, it can sometimes be a fine line where we “over SEO-ify” our content. Engines are aware of this too and according to Matt Cutts, it will become something that could harm sites in the future.

This brings us to the problem. Search engines now need to combat overly optimized content with something else of value.

Social Networking Adds To The Equation

I am unsure if anyone is still having conversations about whether or not Facebook alone will beat Google for overall Web dominance. Frankly, I don’t think they will and I know others agree with me.

That being said, a few things which do make Social so appealing however is the fundamental difference in behavior from users.

• Users are much more likely to be “real” when dealing in social since it is their reputations are on the line.
• Social is a more, dare I say, passive method of discovering content. There are no actions taken or searches performed and yet, it works.
• Open Graph, which I continue to stand on a soap box about. Optimizing your Open Graph tags is a huge opportunity for marketers.

All that being said, from a search engine standpoint we know social is important. Google has made it clear that they pay attention to Open Graph signals.

But this is nothing new.

Why SEO Needs To Evolve

So we have reached this point again where the search system needs to evolve. And honestly, it makes perfect sense to me. As AJ Kohn dubbed the “Dr House Effect”, everybody lies.

Not maliciously, but under the ruse of creating “SEO’ed” content. I beg you not to misunderstand my words, because I am not implying that I think SEO is a crock, because it’s not.

Just like anything, done properly, it can be super helpful. But in the wrong hands, can be dangerous and compromise the relevance of our search engines, which have always been under attack from spammers. Which is exactly the reason they need to keep evolving.

For Search Engines to become even more relevant, they need to find a way to understand what we tell them with on page factors, and how they relate to the signals we pass with our actions.

The fundamentals of SEO will still likely remain the same, at least for a while. I do believe that. But like I have said in the past, Entity Search is creeping up. Perhaps it will evolve into something else, but the stark difference between what Search is and what it will become has “action attribution” written all over it making it more real.

Facebook is clearly going after this model and attributing not just what we say we “like” to affect our social graph, but also our everyday actions. What we “do” is the new “like” and the evolution of frictionless sharing is the future of search engines.

Google vs. Facebook Race To The Finish

What most people don’t realize, (I know I didn’t, so again h/t to Aj Kohn for sharing this with me), is that Google is doing the same thing with Google+ and that they have created their own Action API.

I have said it before; Google+ was never about creating a rival social network to Facebook. For them, it’s about improving search results for each and every individual user. Google probably doesn’t even care if you come back to Google+. And knowing this, why should they?

What they do care about is your behavior and what you are doing across the Web. The actions you take on the Web will overtime dictate the new personalized and honest Web of our true actions. Once the engines can narrow this down, the opportunities are unlimited and results are much more relevant.

And The Winner Is…

Google owns the Web, and right now Facebook owns our actions. Considering Facebook’s partnership with Bing and Google+ layering all our activity on Google, I would say both are well positioned to make enormous advancements.

Who will be the winner in this battle for ultimate relevance?

I have my opinion. Find me at SMX Toronto and I might just tell you.

But until then, what is yours?

What fascinates me about Pinterest isn’t the platform. Really, it’s the new level of data that may emerge from it and the direction social search may be headed.

Entity Search Is The Future Of Search

First, let’s review an important breakout area of search called Entity Search. I suggest watching Dan Shure’s video about entity search for a good explanation.

Basically, in a nutshell, what Google is doing is creating a new database separate from their text index that consists of entities and attributes. The example that was given in Mashable was “Monet”.

Type that into Google and not only will you get the normal results that we are all used to, but there will be a new section at the bottom of attributes relating to Monet.

Here is another example about Seth Godin which returns book results as the attribute:

Another example is “when was Sergey Brin born?” Sergey Brin is the entity, and the result “August 21, 1973” is the attribute.

This method of searching by entities is undoubtedly the future of search marketing in order to deliver more relevant results. And, I believe Social Media will become the core of entity search.

Let me explain.

Social Demographics Yesterday

Personally, I have always felt limited as to the audiences you can target on Social Platforms. I am not even bringing Twitter into this conversation since the conversations are absolutely all over the place. We will keep this simple and talk about the two most mainstream platforms.

It’s true; Facebook and Google+ both have limitations similar to Twitter.

What I mean is this: we go through the process of building up a fan base, but how much of that fan base is really interested in everything we post?

Chances are, like most brands, most of what we post is pretty diverse and does not follow any one theme. Our content is still related to our brand (or should be), but each post likely will appeal to different personas.

Truth be told, marketers really have limited information about who is digesting their content on Social Media. The big metric is the level of engagement, but persona level demographics are limited.

Specific to Facebook, which is much larger than Google+ at this time, the ramifications here are the potential effect this can have on a brands Edgerank.

How so? Once a fan hides your post because it’s not relevant to them, the entire page, over time, may show up less and less in their stream.

More Targeted Interest Level Demographic Today

One impressive outcome of Pinterest to date has been the ability for users to get the content they are looking for based on their interests.

On Facebook or Google+, users become a fan and the page administrator can put them in a circle or group they think will be most relevant, which may or may not be true. This is the best that these platforms can do. The problem is, users have little to no control of what they see.

But on Pinterest, just because a user follows a brand, doesn’t mean they have to see everything the brand posts. Users are in control and can choose what content to follow based on the different boards they choose to subscribe to.

What this means is that users define what they like and what they want to see, as opposed to what marketers force into their streams.

See the difference?

Rather than guessing what users will be interested in, by allowing them the opportunity to place themselves in a bucket (or board), they are telling marketers that this content interests them. Think of the potential to build out rich user data and use it to better understand what audiences are looking for.

This is Interest level demographics. Incredible!

The Future Of Entity Search Is Interest-Based Demographics

Now let’s connect the two. Using this same logic of entity search, what if each person becomes an entity and their interests become attributes?

The outcome is significantly more relevant search results. Think personalized search times 1000.

The engines are already collecting all this interest level data based on what we tell them we are interested in (using  +1’s and Like’s). If entity search were to be driven by social data, search engines could better deliver attributes to everyone based on their interests.

Some could argue that Facebook is already doing this with the Open Graph. And I don’t deny that they are “trying” to better understand their users and deliver the most relevant information.

But honestly, who really does searches inside Facebook? And even if you do, is it really effective?

The method of finding information in Google couldn’t be more different than the way we come across information on Facebook. Google is an active search; Facebook is a passive stream (generally).

Social Search Without Social Media Limitations

The limitations we have discussed, which exist within Social Media, will no longer exist. This means better targeting what we know our users are looking for and the ability to deliver more valuable information to users based on their interests.

The outcome of this is real social search results. Not just showing up in a Facebook or Google+ stream; active searches in the largest search engine and seeing results based on confirmed interests.

Time To Get On Social

Not necessarily tomorrow, but in the very near future (although I would argue that we are starting to see the need to be involved in social media already), we will start to find that social media more a necessity for brand visibility in the search engines.

Google Plus has demonstrated this to us. And in the future, for brands not involved in social media, this would mean their audience has not included them in their personal “interest graph”. This lack of connection with their audience may cost brand visibility in their target audiences’ results.

Are you prepared? Will you be included in your audiences’ Interest Graph?

Will Google+ ever be that “Facebook killer” that everyone keeps speculating? That has yet to be demonstrated. My hunch is that it won’t. Not because it can’t, but because I am not convinced that was ever the goal of Google+.

Recent algorithm changes, namely Google + your world, support what I am speculating. We are seeing a cross between Search and Social like never before.

Not A Facebook Killer

This leads me to believe that Google may be building a network simply to enhance our search results, not necessarily to kill Facebook.

The concept of a social graph, which was brought to life by Facebook, may be what Google is really creating. But not for the Social network; for relevance in the search results.

Enhanced Relevant Results From Google

Google has always been about relevance, and if information I tell Google enhances that relevance, then the search engine provides a better user experience .

As an offshoot, there is a network for people to congregate on. Over time, I see this getting baked further into the search engine results as well (think social notations alongside listings).

There is a gut feeling most marketers have, but I have yet to come across any research indicating which is better: the amount of followers any one person has, or if  they have fewer followers, but more relevant and authoritative in quality.

In a recent adage article, Bob Knorpp from The BeanCast discusses how creating a user base built off likes, re-tweets, shares, +1s etc. is very similar to the traditional media method of creating and building an audience. He goes on to say these connections don’t measure the quality of the relationship, but there is basis to growing that user base.

Personally, I have always been a strong believer that the amount of followers you have on any given network is irrelevant if the interaction is not there.

But with these changes happening, and Google’s unique approach to social connections, I have come to think that there is basis for marketers to grow their user base, even if interactions are limited.

The Catch

I don’t mean to imply at all that the amount of followers should be the end all be all metric. However, we now see added integration means heightened brand visibility in the SERP. This is added visibility is due to the connections you have made.

Sadly, there is no magic spell or “chia pet” solution to grow your network.

Typically, the only way to grow your audience is through hard work, creative content and engaging users. Most of us don’t have the luxury or global brand recognition to create an account and instantly gain a following.

As marketers,we still need to “actively” grow our audiences. For global brands like +starbucks, people will connect simply because of who they are; they have this luxury.

But for the rest of us, you need to give them a reason to ‘want’ and add you. This of course, is the argument for adding in solid content.

Do’s & Don’ts For Success

While growing your audience is important, pluses and likes for the sake of pluses and likes may have short term benefits, but they aren’t productive. To successfully build the network, there needs to be meaningful interactive engagements.

The spam market has picked up on these benefits and the social media spam market has emerged to reap the benefits. A guy even legally changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg to try and capture audiences.

There is no precise formula for success, there are tips to help lead you in the right direction as well as rules that if you violate will be a sure fire way to hinder performance.

Follow these simple rules and you are sure to grow your audience while pleasing the search engine.

In order to increase visibility in the SERP, there should be a big push to grow your audience base. Search engines will have to evolve to determine what the nature and strength of the relationship. Search engines will also have to evolve to understand the quality of a like rather than just a like in and of itself.

For now, do what you can to grow this user base as large as you possibly can. But, do not be useless to your audience.

Do you have anything to add to the list?

I suggested that a simple solution would be to have your open graph tags reference your title tags and descriptions, and you will be broadcasting a message which you have (hopefully) hand crafted, which aligns with your business message.

Optimizing The Open Graph

To further support just how important controlling your message utilizing the open graph tags is, a recent study which was done by AddThis and ClearSpring concluded that Facebook is responsible for 52.1% of sharing on the web. That number is remarkable.

This means, as marketers, if we are ignoring Facebook, we are making a huge mistake. Something that is responsible for that kind of sharing should be harnessed.

But it occurred to me that in many situations, the message you hope to display in a search engine might be very different than the message you want to share in Facebook. This is simply because information is found differently on a social network than it is on a search engine.

Information Discovery: Engagement vs. Searching

The method of information discovery on a social network is very different in nature from that of search engine. In a search engine, we optimize around keywords and themes. The results our users see are based on a need for information based on their search criteria.

But this is not the case on Facebook. On Facebook, our users see whatever shows up in their stream.

There is certainly an element of interest involved in it based on edge rank, but there is very little control as to where and sometimes when a link will show up in a user’s Facebook stream. It’s a constant flow of information.

The Facebook Opportunity

Given all that I mentioned above; that Facebook accounts of over 50% of all sharing across the web, and that the content discovery method is different, it would seem that there is a tremendous opportunity for content which appears on Facebook and better target audiences using the social graph.

Further Optimizing Facebook Sharing Experience 

Here are a couple tips that I have come up for marketers to take advantage of and better optimize for Facebook:

Character Lengths

I have been working with BrightEdge, using their Social Site Audit solution to analyze open graph tags and Facebook posts. We discovered that in a sample of 300 webpages liked or shared on Facebook, the titles began to truncate at around 95 characters and the descriptions at around 297 characters.

This is a huge opportunity for marketers, giving more real estate to better articulate the content in the link, include more relevant information as well as customize their message to a different type of audience.

Images

Catching user’s attention anywhere has always been why marketers exist. One great thing about Facebook is that the shared links have an associated image with them (if it is available) making it easier to stand out. This is different than in a search result where we currently do not have that luxury.

Including a captivating image can make a big difference in reaching your audience and locking them in. Remember, audiences are “stumbling” across your information, not searching for it and seeking information. The content has to entice them to click.

Reach Audiences In A Whole New Way

As a boiler plate solution, sure, you can have your Open Graph tags default to the title tags and descriptions you are currently using and let the post image appear. But as a marketer, beware of the missed opportunity.

My suggestion, if it seems tedious, start small and only implement customized open graph tags for content that you feel your audience will have a positive response around. But even this seems short-sighted.

I would anticipate a significantly higher click through rate if this content is better optimized for a social human being rather than an algorithm.

Yes, I know Google says to optimize for users, but let’s be honest, there is still an element in there of hitting the right terms, and given the restricted space, we all keep the search engine in mind.

This roadblock doesn’t exist in the same way on Facebook. At the very least, we can include additional information like brand name, better calls to action or more contexts behind the article.

It might be a challenge, but the payoff can be a game changer.

I am with everyone else. The launch of Google+ Pages was and will continue to be really exciting because of the potential that they have for brands and the impact they could have to help marketers gain more visibility in the SERP. In fact, it may turn out to be exactly the integration that the search engines are looking for and set the stage for how our search engines will look in the future.

While there is no question that down the road Google+ Pages may do wonderful things for brands, the freshness update is something that marketers should be concerned with right now because it has the potential to affect what your audience is looking for today.

This update mainly affects one of their ranking factors known as “QDF” or “Query Deserves Freshness”, which impacts queries that are timelier in nature.

It is still unclear as to who will be impacted the greatest, but for now, we know it’s affecting queries around recent events, hot topics, frequently updated information, and release dates (like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which I am “patiently” waiting for).

For example, here is what I saw earlier in the day while writing this post…

But then later on…

Oh well. I suppose it was too good to be true. At least I know.

But, the best part about this update is that it won’t compromise sites that provide valuable content. Freshness wasn’t created to hurt marketers. It is meant to help. And any good SEO will tell you that you should have had a strong content outreach strategy all along.

This update is in sync with the direction search engines have been going. In many ways, this algorithm update creates a significantly stronger need for every single marketer to have a social presence.

Google Just Wants Fresh Content, Right?

Wrong. Freshness is more than fresh content.

Basically, what Google is telling marketers and webmasters alike is, “users want to see updated content, more often and this is the content which we want to show first in our search engine because it is more relevant to your users.” In other words, go create a blog and start writing.

But with an update like ”freshness”, a big Google+ push and all the integration that continues to happen with search and social, having new and fresh content isn’t the only thing that is going to cause your site to rank higher. Having new and fresh content that people want to read and share is ultimately what will cause it to rank higher.

Truthfully, most of what Freshness comes down to is really what we as marketers should have been doing all along. The point of this update is not to make our lives more difficult, but rather to make our brands more relevant to our customers.

4 Tips To Be Socially Fresh

If there was ever a time to create a social presence, that time is now. Fresh content is good, but lots of content with no sharing is greatly inhibited. The key to rankings isn’t just the content; it’s what happens with the content.

Here are some tips to keep in mind, not only as far as fresh content goes, but also to ensure you have the right tools in place to promote your fresh content with social media.

1. Ensure content is current and up to date. Create a full blown content strategy and try using some free tools, like Social Mention or Google Alerts to stay on top of your industry. There is always something new to write about. Use your company’s blog to share ideas and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry. There is no better way to do this than with social media. Social Media is the medium that will spread this information. Which brings me to my second point.
2. Don’t just write it, Share it. It is equally important to set aside time, not to just write the posts, but to market them too. One easy way to do this is to help your readers promote your article by making it easy for them. Add Social Share buttons for quick sharing.
3. Join Social Networks. Another effective way to market your content . While Google still does not have access to the Twitter “fire hose”, at some point I am sure they will (and either way, Twitter is great for gathering information about trending topics. Even if they don’t get access to Twitter, Google + and the +1 button seem to be taking a bigger share of the pie and given their strong impact on the SERP’s, marketers would be remise to ignore them.
4. Don’t just share it, REALLY Share it. One thing that seems to be a big indicator of fresh content is the time stamp. Take an active role in promoting your content to Google and tell them about new content using XML sitemaps and RSS feeds (I first saw this from my buddy Mike King on White Board Friday).

Consider Social Freshness & Everyone is Happy, Except The Competition

Am I telling you that with this algorithm change, you need to change what you are doing?  Not yet. But I am telling you that this is something you should have been doing all along.

While Google has said that this is only affecting 6-10% of search results (35% of queries), I suspect this is only the beginning. Over time, searcher behavior will change and QDF will impact different types of searches. As marketers, we need to keep a better eye on our radars and jump at the opportunities to create fresh content which can give us the upper hand.

If we consider these tips, everyone is happy. Our audience is happy because they get the timeliest content. The search engine is happy because they are able to provide the most relevant content possible. And we as marketers are happy because our content is the one that gets found.

The only one not happy is the competition because we have successfully out performed them. Wouldn’t you hate to be on the other side?

Site Audit: Search For Social

Before I begin optimizing a website, I always do a thorough technical dive to understand the root of the problem. For example, I would never start optimizing a client’s title tags before I determined if they even had a place for them within their code, right?

Granted, the above example is a bit of a no brainer. Title tags are integral to any site optimization. The reason is simple. First of all, it’s one of the most important signals an engine looks at when determining what a page is about. And secondly, (and perhaps more of a practical reason), you can either let your users guess what each page is about, or you can put in a small 70 character description and tell them.

Social Media is no different and optimizing it seems to be constantly overlooked, which is a mistake. In a study done by ShareThis, they pointed out that Facebook accounts for 37 percent of traffic from shares using their social share buttons.

I suspect that most people don’t really pay much attention to optimizing their social media campaigns let alone ensure their sites are set up correctly to integrate with their social assets. This likely has a lot to do with a lack of understanding of exactly what parts of social ‘can’ and ‘should’ be optimized.

Let’s explore two easy social optimization tactics that can have a profound impact on your site: Social Sharing and The Open Graph.

Social Sharing

If you have your Social assets in place, there is no reason you shouldn’t be leveraging them on your site as well. Besides the fact that social shares provide an easy way for users to share your information with others, they also serve as a signal for the search engines as to the authority of your content.

The more shares you have, the higher your authority and credibility, and the more visibility you will have in the SERP.

Adding these to your site is usually as simple as downloading a plugin on your CMS or dropping in a line of code.

Social Graph & Social Sharing As One

This leads me to the Open Graph, because adding social share buttons also has a deep connection with the Open Graph. How you ask? If you have social sharing capabilities on your site, but do not have Open Graph tags, sharing will be hindered.

Let’s explore this

A question to start: Do you understand the open graph?

If not, I would start by reading about the Facebook Open Graph Protocol.

Essentially, the Facebook Open Graph gives full control to any webpage and lets the webmaster decide what information users will share across Facebook from their site. Rather than ‘Liking’ a page and leaving it to Facebook to decide what information to display, the open graph gives you the power to control how your content is shared by your users.

In this example, I liked the 2003 Movie Peter Pan on IMDB.

Each part of the snippet posted to Facebook, correlates with the Open Graph tags on IMDB’s site. Facebook is displaying exactly what IMDB tells them to display.

When pages are not tagged properly, Facebook algorithmically has to determine from other meta information on the page what to display, which can lead to a poor display of the information and lower overall engagement.

Does that sound familiar?

It should, because that is precisely what happens with search engines in organic results. If you don’t give them the signals they need, they choose them for you, which can also lead to a poor user experience and lower engagement.

It seems ridiculous to take that risk when you can fully control what is being shown.

The Need To Optimize For Social

Having the Open Graph tags on your site shouldn’t be treated as “nice to haves”. These tags are integral with how posts are displayed in your users feed.

Recently, optimizing around the social graph has become an integral part of how we (Resolution Media) approach content outreach. Ensuring these tags are in place gives you more control of what is shared and how it is displayed within Facebook.

Why leave your message to chance when you can control exactly what you want it to be?

Start implementing the Open Graph and social sharing on your site and take control!