The last month’s SEOmoz round-up continues to cover social media developments a plenty. We take a look at some Facebook marketing tactics you might not currently be using and investigate ‘Contests’ on Facebook and Twitter. Other topics include a new approach to link building, plus an easy way to conduct your site audit. Don’t consider your content to be newsworthy? Think again, with a fresh look at indexing for Google News. Google has also been busy upgrading their analytics package to include metrics for page load speed, a development which has stirred up great excitement in the online community. Finally, this month we even see SEOmoz go public with their analytics figures. Intrigued?
How SEOmoz gained 1000s of visits from Google News (You can too)
Until a month ago, SEOmoz didn’t even pursue traffic from Google News not considering themselves to be a “news” organisation and not looking to generate revenue through advertising. Nevertheless, this all changed when an April article ‘White Hat Seo’ generated an incredible response and 8000 visits were recorded from Google News in the first 2 days alone. The team were left to puzzle over the inclusion of this particular article even though the traffic stats had been extremely strong. After some delving the common factor linking the appearance of the posts in Google’s News Index was identified; they all included a number in the URL.
So what content is newsworthy? Many people don’t fully appreciate the true scope of the Google News Universe. Your content could receive an unexpected traffic boost by indexing for Google News providing it is timely, it offers commentary and discusses current events.
Head Smacking Tip 20: Don’t Ask Sites for Links Find people and Connect
Most seo’s will be familiar with the classical approach to link building:-
Step 1. Find relevant sites from which to get a link.
Step 2. Source contact information (phone or email)
Step 3. Make contact and negotiate an agreement to get a link (promote your content, do a deal etc).
In the past, many slogged away using these methods despite the low conversion rates and high time per link. Well the good news is that now there’s a better way. It’s all about building relationships and promoting authenticity in the online community.
4 Facebook Marketing Tactics You Might Not Know About
Most marketers are aware of Facebook Insights for their Fan pages, however many do not realise that you can also get Insights for your website. This is a really useful tool to access information about the pages that people are sharing from your site, user demographics, likes etc so you can better tailor your content. A further plus is that is extremely straightforward to set up:-
Go to http://www.facebook.com/insights/ and click the green “Insights for your Website” button which you will find in the upper right hand corner. A pop up box will then appear, like the one below:-
Next you simply add the meta tag inside the <head> tag of your site. Once this has been set up, the next time you visit the insights page, you’ll see both your fan page and website as options.
Facebook Comments – What’s the hype?
Facebook comments has been approached with scepticism by some and advocated by many. So what gives it an advantage over conventional commenting systems?
1.Your comments are read by many more people – If you make a comment on a specialist blog, it will be seen only by other readers and subscribers. If the comment is made on Facebook however, your friends will be able to see your comment and reply right then and there. The blog will receive more posts than with an alternative commenting system as a result so it’s win-win!
2. Spam becomes less of a problem – Facebook does all the hard work to establish whether real people are commenting or not and can then take action against bogus users. There is also no anonymous posting as users have to be logged in to their Facebook account. Although not everyone will have an account; providing alternative ways to comment ensures that no one is excluded from the conversation.
3. Straightforward content moderation – Facebook makes moderation duties extremely simple. You can easily edit, ban users or subscribe yourself to certain feeds.
Raising the Bar on Data Sharing: Introducing Open Analytics
Most online marketers read well-written, informative blog posts from time to time and wonder how much traffic they individually generate, whether to benchmark their own offerings or deepen their understanding of online behaviour. SEOmoz have taken a step towards satisfying reader curiosity with the unprecedented move of publishing their analytics figures. The release of Open Analytics, a new feature that allows users to view the stats for individual blog posts, is a step to help promote the use of inbound marketing and educate the SEOmoz readership. It makes intriguing reading!
Google Analytics now tracks page load speed
Without doubt, site speed is crucially important and improving it is going to be a key objective for many businesses. So the news that Google Analytics have released a new feature that enables you to track your page load times within their interface is certainly a significant industry development. It is also a real win for Google in their quest to encourage the creation of faster websites.So what does this actually enable you to do in practice? Most significantly, Google Analytics users will now be able to examine how their conversion rates are affected by load speed and optimize accordingly. They will also be able to measure load speed by page type, browser type, and geographical region or by user type (e.g registered and non-registered users). In an area of website management where a mixture of self-testing and educated guesswork has predominantly been used to date, calculated optimization efforts will now be possible.
Technical Site Audit Checklist
SEOmoz takes us through a quick and easy methodology for conducting your technical site audit.
Want to start a Facebook and Twitter contest? Arnaud Joakim talks us through his first foray into the territory.