SEO Insider Information
There has been a lot of talk lately about all the changes – both with Facebook and Google.
I wanted to break it all down for you in a way that is easy to understand, but first and foremost, if you or anyone you know was impacted by the recent earthquake in Japan or the resulting tsunamis my heart and thoughts go out to you.
Back to business…
My husband makes fun of me all the time for stating the obvious but I always tell him, it’s important to just put things out there, even if they are obvious. You never know what it is that someone will respond to and if I can say something that finally makes things click for someone, I am going to!
So, here it is…without social media and SEO, you are missing out on traffic, exposure and sales. It’s that simple.
Getting top rankings and social media exposure isn’t that simple though. And that’s where you might need a little help.
So let me help you out by breaking down the recent changes and what they mean to you. There are three trending topics that are getting a lot of attention recently.
1. The Facebook changes – keep reading for a little info on this.
2. The Google Farmer/Panda update. I know, there are a zillion posts out there about this but I am going to add one more to the mix. Based on questions I am getting and bizarre advice I see floating around out there – I think it does need more coverage.
3. Large companies being busted for poor SEO practices. This one is pretty easy: Black hat, nefarious SEO practices don’t work long term! You will eventually get caught and doing it right the first time, (even if it takes longer) is the best way to go for two reasons – you’ll be able to sustain long term success and it’s better for your site visitors (when you are providing real content of value and obtaining links that are legit and linking to content that is worthy of a link)
WARNING: This is going to be a LONG post. Print it if it makes it easier for you. You need to read every word and then take action!
OK onto the specifics…
Facebook:
The new Fan/Business Pages went live as of Friday March 11, 2011 (Yay! It was weird seeing some old and some new, I preview the navigation on the old pages but like the rest of the features on the new version)
So anyone that didn’t upgrade their page prior to Friday had it happen automatically. So now we are all on the same page (ha ha ha, no pun intended!)
If you are creating a new custom tab going forward, you will need to use iFrames and not the Static FBML app now. (Don’t worry, if you have a current page with the Static FBML tab they are still supporting it and it will display just fine – you just can’t add new ones anymore.)
The really cool thing about the iFrames is that you can have your designer create a tab that looks and feels like your current website or Blog theme and then they just place it on your page (don’t forget it needs to be 520 pixels wide). Fun!
While it’s true you definitely need some coding knowledge to be able to create a killer tab for your Fan Page, it’s not really that different than when we were using the Static FBML app, you needed coding knowledge for that as well.
Stay tuned as things evolve and more cool apps start popping up!
Need a Fan Page for your business?
OK, let’s tackle Google now….
For those that don’t know – Google made a change that impacted about 12% of search results.
The goal of the recent update? To remove poor quality sites from the top of Google’s results pages. An excellent goal, I think.
As always, we can count on Googler Matt Cutts to give us the scoop:
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
Why such a big change? It was necessary! If searchers aren’t finding quality sites in response to their queries, they are likely to leave and start searching on another engine (like perhaps Bing – which is now officially the second place engine according to recent stats!).
Let’s face it, love or hate Google, they got to where they are by delivering high quality results that people could count on.
If you aren’t OK with this change, it is most likely because your site was impacted by it.
If you were impacted and it was well deserved (read as: your site sucks and you were lucky you got away the rankings for as long as you did) – there is something you can do: improve your site and your content. Stay tuned for more details on how.
If you were impacted and don’t feel you should have been, let Google know: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en Of course there is no guarantees anything will be done about it, but you may as well let Google hear your side.
OK, so what do you do if you were impacted OR what can you learn from this to make sure you are in good shape going forward even if you escaped with rankings in tact on this one.
Through information that Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal have shared, we can surmise the following:
Sites that have a high percentage of duplicate content are going to be considered low quality.
Your action item: develop new, unique content and grow your site.
Let’s look at this scenario: If you have a page here and there that has duplicate content but the rest of the site has unique content, those pages with the dupe content may not fare well but your site as a whole should still do OK.
But when going page by page, if the engines are hard pressed to find quality, unique content then it will end up impacting your site as a whole. Google’s official take on this: “low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole.” So be careful!
For those that repost content and then add a line or two with their opinion on the content, and feel that is enough unique content to satisfy the engines. That is going to be problematic going forward! If lots of pages have only a small percentage of the page’s content being unique, those pages won’t fare well either.
Google also seems to be looking for pages that have a high volume of ads that aren’t relevant to the content of the page (especially if the ads are higher up on the page). These pages will not fare well in today’s Google.
Your action item: Be sure to review your site and get rid of ads that are irrelevant. Also be sure your site isn’t too cluttered with ads.
If your site happened to rank well for a phrase but the phrase is not really present in the Title tag or the body content, the page isn’t going to continue to do well going forward.
Your action item: Review your site and make sure each page has unique Title Tags that use keywords that are also present in the body content.
Keywords being repeated over and over and over and over will trigger the new algorithm to devalue the page. Keywords should be used appropriately.
Your action item: Review your content, tone down your keyword density of you need to. Be sure it reads well. One test many copywriters share is reading your content out loud, your brain processed it differently when it hears the text out loud and you’ll know if there are too many keywords stuffed in there.
The next one is something a lot of people struggle with:
High bounce rates and low time spent on the site can impact rankings. This will force people to really look at the quality on their site and improve things so they entice visitors to not bounce and to stay longer. It means strong marketing principals and good copy are going to be more important than ever.
Your action item: Get a professional marketing review of your site (or do it yourself if you feel you have the knowledge and experience to honestly assess it). Improve headlines, calls to action and general usability of the site. Email me at jennifer@ecombuffet.com if you want details on a marketing review of your site.
CTR (clickthrough rate) from the SERPs (search engine results pages) will also impact rankings. If your site comes up a lot but no one is clicking, you can be sure it’ll impact things.
Your action item: Review your Title tags:
Pay attention to the length of your Title tags and be sure your descriptions on the SERPs aren’t being truncated before you reveal the most important info. This is key! People need to be able to see what you offer and how it’s relevant to their query. So also get your keyword in there early. In other words, look at where Google is pulling the data from that they display in the SERPs (usually your Title tag is what they use to create the main headline for the listing) and make sure that area of text is compelling, and that is explains exactly what the page has to offer, it’s also helpful if it includes a keyword phrase.
Ex: A Must Have Comprehensive Guide: Learn How To Care For Your Pet Turtle – not so good – the keyword phrase is pushed to the back of the phrase and will likely get truncated.
Ex: How To Care For Your Pet Turtle – Must Have, Comprehensive Guide – much better – they keyword phrase is at the start but you also still got the descriptive compelling content in there.
If you need your company name in your Title tag, put it at the end.
Think of your Title tag like an ad – be descriptive of what the page is about but be compelling so people want to click through. Promise a benefit (as long as your content delivers on what you promise)
OK now back to more lessons from Google’s recent update:
They don’t want to see boilerplate content (content that is the same and repeated on every page)
Your action item: Review your site and look for blocks of content that you are reusing on multiple pages. Tweak it, so it’s unique.
Sites that have a lot of low quality inbound links aren’t going to do well.
Your action item: Work on building links!
Sites that aren’t getting some social exposure (mentions and links from social media sites) won’t do well.
Your action item: Yep we keep saying it, and it’s true – you need to be on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Need some help with that? See my special offer above for Facebook or email me with questions!
OK, so that’s the summary. It’s a lot! So what now? You need to take this list and add them all up and see how your site fares. Get making changes now if you aren’t doing so well in some areas.
Even if you weren’t hit in the big update, if your site has many issues in the areas outlined above you can and will lose rankings over time. Sites that excel in what Google is looking for will dominate.
Now is actually a GREAT time to optimize your site. You can jump in there and show Google that your site is worthy of rankings.
So let’s wrap it all up. Some advice from Google…
“If you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.”
Some advice from me:
Review your web stats and see what pages have taken a hit lately – you can work on improving those pages first (but a site wide review is never a bad idea, as mentioned above). See if you can identify the difference between the pages that are still faring well and those that have been slammed.
If you really want to fix things, take an in-depth analytical approach and note which of the factors noted above are present on each page and strive to eliminate all the problem areas.’
Focus on improving your content and the user experience and you should be just fine.
You have 4 options right now…
1. Do nothing! Although this is only an option for those willing to accept poor rankings and lots traffic.
2. Order an SEO Audit and see how your site fares, according to our SEO experts
3. Request a proposal or consultation to see what it would cost for us to help you get your optimization cleaned up and get you some great rankings.
4. Get to work on your own – work hard and fast and get your site in shape to get top rankings.
Yesterday Facebook made some much anticipated changes to their Fan Pages.
For a good part of yesterday, confusion reigned supreme. There was a glitch that caused the pages to be truncated and there was a lot of speculation that the width of the tabs was being changed. That is not the case, it was just a glitch and from everything I am seeing and hearing, that has been fixed.
There are a few other changes that you should know about.
The navigation (links to other tabs) is now on the left side. Facebook did this because they feel that is where people expect the nav to be, since that is where it is on personal profiles. Lots of people aren’t crazy about this change, it makes the tabs less prominent and obvious. It’ll be really important that you set the tab you want people to land on because if users aren’t seeing the nav and clicking on other tabs that may be all they see on your page.
Another new change is pictures across the top of the page (like on the personal profiles). This makes pictures much more important than they were before. My Fan Page just doesn’t have a lot of pictures, so my photo area is looking a little sad and I’ll need to get some photos loaded in there. There are lots of cool tricks you do to play with the photos and how they appear. I’ll have fun, as soon as I find the time! Make sure you check out your page and see how your photos look and get some added if you need to.
You will be able to receive notifications for your Page, view a News Feed for your Page, and “Like” and post on other Pages as your Page. That means when I am logged in and comment on someone’s post or photo or whatever, I will have the choice to have the post be from “Jennifer Henry Horowitz” (my personal profile name) or “EcomBuffet SEO” (the name of my Fan Page). That creates another way to get exposure for your page when you are commenting on other pages. You can flip back and forth between the 2 – so don’t worry you don’t commit to one or the other permanently.
You can now change the Category you list your page as. This is great. Lots of people don’t really understand the category and the impact when they set up the page. You can now go back and change it. (you go to Edit Page, then Basic Information and it’s right there on top)
You can choose to receive email notifications when someone comments/posts on your page’s Wall. (Go to Edit Page, then Your Settings, the second option is Email Notifications)
There are now two publicly visible Wall filters: “Posts by Page” and “Everyone.” So people can choose to only see the posts done by the page admin or posts done by anyone visiting the page.
Page admins will be able to view additional filters, like “Most Recent” and “Hidden Posts.”
When people visit your Page, they will be able to view their friends who also like your Page. They will also see other pages that both they and you like. This feature reinforces mutual connections. I like this one!
The text in the little box under your profile pic now appears on the Info Tab (not crazy about this one, I liked having a little blurb there to introduce the page and welcome people)
Although there was no change to sizing of the tabs, there is new sizing for your profile pic on your Page. They have been adjusted from 200×600 to 180×540.
Static HTML is going away (sort of). Here is the scoop:
From the Facebook Developer Blog:
“With our recent launch of Requests and the support for iframe on Pages Tabs, we are now ready to move forward with our previously announced plans to deprecate FBML and FBJS as a primary technology for building apps on Facebook. On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible.”
This means that if you already have the Static FBML application added to your Page before March 11, 2011, it will work and your custom tabs will work. Phew!
This change will make it a little harder for amateur coders to create the custom tabs themselves. They will need to be familiar with uploading HTML and CSS files to their server and they will definitely need to know how to set up iframes. That’s where we can help! 
You can feature other Pages that your Page likes, or you can show the admins of your Page. You’ll see this in the new “Likes” and “Page Owners” sections on the left side of your Page.
Facebook has announced that effective August 23, there are new sizing requirements for Fan Pages (and they are removing the Boxes tab – to which I say yay!!).
The new width for custom pages is 520 pixels wide.
Facebook is offering a preview now so you can see what your page will look like (go to your Fan Page while logged into the account that “owns” the page and you will see the preview).
You have until August 23 to resize your pages. The resizing of the pages will happen automatically during the week of August 23 and if you don’t make the changes in advance – your page will truncate.
Here is a screenshot of what my page is going to look like after it truncates (I circled the truncated areas to better show you where it cuts off):
My truncated Fan Page
Another screenshot that shows the truncation
Obviously that won’t do!
Many people are not going to be happy about this change because it will mean extra work or incurring extra costs to have the pages redesigned.
Facebook says the changes are a result of feedback from developers.
I can’t imagine people will ditch their custom tabs (and they shouldn’t!!), so I imagine a lot of people are going to be scrambling to get their page redesigned.
It’ll be interesting to see the reaction. Most Facebook changes are met with initial grumbling and complaints.