Twitter remains very interesting to website publishers from a content optimization perspective. It’s not widely known that Twitter has a search crawler. Like traditional meta tags, web publishers can now place Twitter Meta Tags on their websites. Once you have loaded the tags onto your website, you can validate them at https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/validation/validator
At a basic level, website optimization is about including keywords across meta tags, body copy and links on a website to rank highly in search engine results pages. Yet social media doesn’t work this way, rather the more ‘shared’ or ‘liked’ a piece of content, video or image becomes, the greater the effect of social media optimization.
I love this image below from Upworthy.com which shows their new metric called “attention minutes”. Their study found users with 25% of the average attention minutes on an article actually shared it more than those who spent 100% of the average attention minutes on the article.
The point is that people share an article more if they engage with it less. They read headlines, think it’s going to make them popular and then repost, retweet, like and share it – without even reading the entire information. Are you one of those people?
The winds of change are blowing through Silicon Valley. Clients are compelled to understand how to integrate Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+/Google Authorship and extend Search Engine Optimization by harnessing Social Media Optimization. It’s pretty simple. You have to a) set up accounts for your corporate digital assets at Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and b) inter-link content, pictures, tweet, posts between each social media property and c) add new content and links atleast weekly.
Like any assets, the running costs of maintaining social media optimized websites is largely the variable cost of content production. Most clients find it hard to create original content faster for social media than a corporate website. So the economics are not only monetary but intellectual – that is, can you or your content contributor think of a good idea for an article, post, pin, tweet, picture, etc. That is one of the reasons clients work with us as SearchForecast provides ideas around new keyword discovery and help clients with a word analytics solution to measure word appearances, frequency and rank of words on websites.
I had the pleasure of being invited to The Chief Digital Officer Global Forum at the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park last week to hear Adam Bain, Chief Revenue Officer of Twitter. It was a fantastic presentation and really showed how Twitter is moving the needle for television broadcasters and advertisers.
Adam explained how a piece of content like a TV show has greater impact when coupled with Tweets from users watching the show and simultaneously using Twitter. Put simply, Twitter is borrowing from Newton law of Force where Mass = Force X Acceleration.
It makes a ton of sense too as the further the time goes out from a piece of content (TV show) the less impact of the Force as the mass of tweets and the Acceleration decreases as less people share it. Yet, the impact of Tweets on Mass (thinking branding awareness and recall impact) is unquestionable and advertisers should be very excited and embrance Twitter for television campaigns.
On Monday, September 23rd, Google made secure search the universal default. The Hummingbird algorithm update means that 100% of Google searches are now secure and Google Analytics will no longer provide user search query data to correlate keywords with site visits, revenue, and conversions.
SearchForecast has created content roadmaps and added tens of thousands of content pages on client websites. Our client benefit from Word Analytics.
SearchForecast advises clients on how to optimize images across their site. Our SKUmatic solution helps clients optimize product images on Facebook for social media optimization. We have been helping clients understand Google+ and how to leverage Google’s social network for optimization of blogs and verified content via Google Authorship.
In a recent study, published on the Cornell University Library on what makes images go virual on Google Plus, there’s some insights I wanted to share:
1. Posts with fewer than 75 plusoners are more likely to contain images whereas posts with more than 75 plusoners are more likely to be text only.
2. Vertical images tend to be more viral and horizontal ones as they are more likely to contain a portrait of a celebrity than horizontal images.
3. Animated images are more likely to be re-shared while static images are more likely to be replied to or plusoned.
With every smart phone a camera for humans to express themselves and converse more in images, the importance of image optimazition is increasing.
After many years of keeping our SEO tools behind locked doors, we will be launching our Keyword Density and Content Optimization Solution shortly.
Over the past 10 years, our methodologies, software development and proprietary logic in website content optimization has empowered hundreds of organizations globally to rank higher in search engines.
SearchForecast exists to streamline keyword discovery for website marketers and empower content contributors with editing tools to create keyword rich online content. Traditional content management systems have limited capabilities for keyword harvesting, selection, on page management – all vital in the process of search engine optimization.
Stay tuned as we’ll be launching this platform soon…. a sneak peek below.
The bottomline is not really. Less than 5% of visitors to websites come from Facebook. The “referral traffic” we see in most of our clients Google Analytics accounts is less than 3%. Website owners and online marketers need to be aware that Facebook is not Google. It is a conversation/sharing platform. Google drives qualified intent based visitors to your website who are searching for a specific product or service.
As travel is a fantastic proxy for general Internet trends, the below inforgraphic shows that on average 4% of visitors to travel websites come from a social network like Facebook.
My new book “Inside the Valley: How deals get done” is now released.
The book chronicles my insights from living and working in Silicon Valley over the past 10 years and provides entrepreneurs with advice on how to construct a start-up investment pitch deck using real examples of pitch decks, how venture capitalists think, some war stories and how to pitch your business idea here in Silicon Valley to raise money.
The hardest part for entrepreneurs is to put together an investment presentation in the format that Silicon Valley venture capitalists expect it to be in. I’ve taken actual screens shots from investment decks and explained both entrepreneurs should construct their presentation.
Order online in eBook or HardCopy from:
Amazon I Apple iTunes I KoboBooks I WH Smith (UK) I Booktopia Australia
When Ray Norwood (our esteemed VP of Business Development) was photographed in the New York Daily News yesterday, it wasn’t because of his Jerry Maquire-esque looks and access to A list players like Derek Jeter – mega star of the New York Yankees.
The untold story is how Ray and the power of Facebook helped Mr Bernando LaPallo, the oldest Yankees fan in the world, meet Derek Jeter. Ray’s midas touch and knowledge of Facebook marketing ensured the New York Yankees president knew Bernardo was in the ballpark and he graciously invited Bernard to meet Derek and others Yankee team members.
Way to go Ray, we’re all real proud of you!
