Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '4 Strategic Tips To Get Massive
Amounts of Blog Traffic'
No matter whether you receive 100 visits to your site per day or 100K visits per
day, you still need more traffic, dont you? YES is the answer. So in this post I
am not going to give you the usual traffic generating tips. But I am going to
talk to you keeping the big picture in mind - the strategic approach to getting
more traffic. Lets dive in.
VISIT THE BLOG TO CONTINUE READING: http://basicblogtips.com
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/R0eKv-f_0E4/strategic-blog-traffic.html
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Build Backlinks Online
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Monday, 6 January 2014
[Build Backlinks Online] 6 Predictions for the Marketing World in 2014
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '6 Predictions for the Marketing
World in 2014'
Posted by randfish
It's time, once again, to continue my annual tradition of analyzing my
predictions from 2013, and if I score high enough, predicting what will happen
in 2014. I use this process because it keeps me honest, and keeps you informed
...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/kF7mScGX2Ws/6-predictions-for-the-marketing-world-in-2014
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posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
World in 2014'
Posted by randfish
It's time, once again, to continue my annual tradition of analyzing my
predictions from 2013, and if I score high enough, predicting what will happen
in 2014. I use this process because it keeps me honest, and keeps you informed
...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/kF7mScGX2Ws/6-predictions-for-the-marketing-world-in-2014
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Sunday, 5 January 2014
[Build Backlinks Online] 6 Skills You Need To Be A Social Media Professional
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '6 Skills You Need To Be A Social
Media Professional'
When Amber Naslund and I wrote The NOW Revolution in 2010, we created this
graphic to describe the characteristics of the ideal community manager/social
media practitioner. Since then, social media and the skills needed to succeed
in it has changed substantially. Certainly, some of the characteristics we
noted remain very much a requirement. []6 Skills You Need To Be A Social Media
Professional is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/community-management-2/6-skills-you-need-to-be-a-social-media-professional/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-skills-you-need-to-be-a-social-media-professional
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posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Media Professional'
When Amber Naslund and I wrote The NOW Revolution in 2010, we created this
graphic to describe the characteristics of the ideal community manager/social
media practitioner. Since then, social media and the skills needed to succeed
in it has changed substantially. Certainly, some of the characteristics we
noted remain very much a requirement. []6 Skills You Need To Be A Social Media
Professional is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/community-management-2/6-skills-you-need-to-be-a-social-media-professional/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-skills-you-need-to-be-a-social-media-professional
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posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Friday, 3 January 2014
[Build Backlinks Online] Don’t Buy Your Programmatic Audience, Build It
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Don't Buy Your Programmatic
Audience, Build It'
The funnel is dead. Dont be sad, it had a good, long life and now it will retire
to a nice farm where it will live with the CueCat, the three-martini lunch, and
other advertising ideas that are past their prime. But, chances are, if you were
a direct-response marketer, you probably shut your office []Dont Buy Your
Programmatic Audience, Build It is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social
Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-advertising-2/dont-buy-your-programmatic-audience-build-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dont-buy-your-programmatic-audience-build-it
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Audience, Build It'
The funnel is dead. Dont be sad, it had a good, long life and now it will retire
to a nice farm where it will live with the CueCat, the three-martini lunch, and
other advertising ideas that are past their prime. But, chances are, if you were
a direct-response marketer, you probably shut your office []Dont Buy Your
Programmatic Audience, Build It is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social
Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-advertising-2/dont-buy-your-programmatic-audience-build-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dont-buy-your-programmatic-audience-build-it
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] What Should I Put on the Homepage? - Whiteboard Friday
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'What Should I Put on the
Homepage? - Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by randfish
Homepages were once the ultra-authoritative one-stop shops of online brands.
As people and search engines have become better at understanding what users are
looking for, though, the purpose of homepages has become more targeted. In
today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details several of the changes we've seen, and
offers his advice for what to include on a truly effective homepage on the web
today.
What Should I Put on the Homepage? - Whiteboard Friday
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!
Video transcription
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to a new edition of Whiteboard Friday, the very
first one of 2014. Hope you all had a wonderful happy New Year and a great
holiday season, whatever you might celebrate.
This week, I think since January's the time when a lot of us revisit our core
web marketing and a lot of the times what we're doing on our websites, we should
talk about the starting pointâthe homepage. The homepage is a critically
important page for a lot of reasons. Oftentimes it's one of, if not the most,
trafficked web page that we have on our websites. It's also the starting point
for where people try and understand our brand and our company and what we do.
Substantively, its role has changed over the last few years with big shifts
like search engines being a little less focused around who gets links and how
that influences the keywords that you rank for, a little less about the homepage
being the only page that people land on, and whether they're coming just to the
homepage, or whether they go into separate sections of the site. What people
want and expect from homepages has changed over the years, what they expect to
find there, and, thus, what we as marketers need to do to deliver on those
expectations.
So I thought I'd start by talking about some of the old ways of doing things
with homepages and the new ways of doing them.
In the old way, we'd promote all of the major sections of the site on the
homepage. So you might have a homepage that's like, "Oh, check out our blog, and
here's our product, and here's this other thing that we're doing. Oh and this
new launch point." Each of these get featured, or they kind of scroll through
them. It's really the homepage very much competing for attention. You can think
of that Yahoo! homepage model being the discovery point for everything on the
site. If you don't get homepage real estate, well, you're not important.
This is totally wrong in 2014, because really we can make all of those major
sections easy to navigate to and find. We can focus very uniquely on just one
section, on just the most important things that the most important customers and
visitors are trying to get answers to and what they expect when they get to that
homepage.
We don't need to say like, "Hey, I have this great feature and this other
thing. Oh, we just launched this content. Let me promote everything, and I'll
just try and capture a small bit of everyone's attention." This focus is not
nearly as good as trying to be a little bit more of a, "Here's how to navigate
to these sections. Let me just promote the most important thing and make that
homepage more of a focused experience."
We've seen tons and tons of examples of folks A/B testing and testing
different versions of their homepage, and that focus, really, really critical to
driving people through.
Old way: focus on lots of keywords. A lot of homepages would focus on a lot
different keywords. The reason beingâit's not that hard to
understandâthe homepage, in the classic old, old Google, it would be your
highest PageRank page and, therefore, could rank the most things. Then, as
Google got more sophisticated and less about just PageRank, it was also the page
that earned the most links. Often, the anchor text was fairly diversified that
would link to that homepage, and so were all these other signals. So the
homepage could rank for a lot of stuff that other pages couldn't. So, "You know
what? Let's just smack all the keywords that we possibly can onto the homepage."
In the current model, we actually don't need to do that, because Google and
Bing have both become much more sophisticated about understanding, "Hey, this
site is about all of these things, not necessarily just this page. We're much
more considerate as engines of the site's authority in different areas and
around keyword terms and phrases. So, if that site has a page that specifically
focuses on these topics, you know what? We're going push that up there, even if
the page itself doesn't have all the signals that it needs to rank, because the
site does."
You inherit your site's strength and authority into your internal pages.
Because of that, I can now focus on a small subset of keywords on my homepage,
possibly only one or two, possibly not even any keywords. I can just think about
branded-centric keywords, not even unbranded keywords, and I can really have
landing pages specific to those unbranded keywords deeper down in the sections.
This also means that you don't have to make the focus of the homepage so all
over the place. You can get it much more refined and defined to focus on that
specific set of people who are coming directly there.
Because of this, too, the old style was to put lots of text to help the
homepage rank for all those pages. Now, we don't need that, but we really do
need to communicate quickly, because web users have become more and more
impatient. They're not going to read through paragraph and paragraph and
paragraph of text. Therefore, many, many websites have found it valuable to use
visual-centric homepages to help communicate and to quickly convey the primary
value proposition to those visitors. Sometimes that's a video. Sometimes it's
just an image or graphic that explains things really clearly. That can work out
great.
We also used to have to serve many types of visitors. This was both for SEO
reasons, but also because people would come for lots of different reasons and
then expect the homepage to guide them to whatever is interesting. Now, people
use search engines to find those different things around your brand and then
navigate directly to them. Social media is really about referring to specific
pieces of content, not just the homepage. Not like, "Hey, the Economist wrote a
great article. Go to TheEconomist.com" No, they're going to send you a link
right to the correct page. So you have a little bit more of that focus. You can
just work on the most critical visitors and their needs and the messaging that
you need to convey to them.
There also used to be this real concept of, "Keep it above the fold."
Thanks to things like tablets and phones, as well as wider screens and that
sort of stuff, now we do a lot more scrolling. We're used to a lot more
scrolling. So really people will scroll. I still urge folks to just make sure
you keep some page content at the scroll line or near the traditional scroll
lines, depending on your visitors' resolution. Keep that experience compelling
to draw the eye down. The thing you don't want to do -- I'll show you in my
sample homepage hereâthe thing I don't want to do is have the scroll line
or the fold line, one of the big traditional fold lines for my primary visitors,
be right here, so that it looks like I can get all the content I need above the
fold, but in fact there's all this above the fold. If the scroll line instead is
right here, and it bisects this secondary text section, perfect. Now I've drawn
the eye down. Now people certainly will scroll, and that stuff will have
visibility. You'll have that expectation.
So, speaking of this sample homepage, I'm going to talk about some things
that I, personally, would nudge folks and generally nudge folks to do on their
homepages. This is not to say that every single company should go with exactly
this type of homepage, but I think that these nudges can help to order your
thinking and to possibly give you some ideas about things you might be doing
right or wrong on your site, might want to test, might want to talk about as
you're kicking off 2014 with your homepage.
So first up, (A), right up top here, the logo and the nav. This is just
standard 101 stuff. My general bias is to keep this the same logo and nav as
other pages. However, the homepage is unique in that it's sometimes okay to be a
little different from other pages on the site. I would urge you to have
consistency across the rest of the site. If your homepage has to be a little bit
varied because of some things you want to do, that's okay. But I like that nav
staying consistent throughout the whole site. That's my general bias.
(B) Check out this image. I'm going to imagine that I'm Pocket, Pocket app,
which I have on my phone and I use on my desktop and laptop computers. It's a
great little app. The idea is that I've got an article that I want to read,
maybe on a plane, and I want to read it on my phone. But, of course, I don't
have a wi-fi signal on especially international flights, but even most of my US
flights. Or I want to read it just anytime. I'm sitting in the car on a long
drive down to Portland. Great. So I can click and save any article, any web page
I see on the Internet, I can save that to Pocket and go fetch it for later, and
it automatically caches. So I don't even need a web connection to be able to do
that. I love Pocket app. It's great.
But explaining it with a bunch of heavy text and having like "read things
later" and lots of different keywords stuff, that probably doesn't make sense.
What does make sense is, "Let me quickly and easily explain it to you." So
here's a guy, he's on his phone, and here's his thought bubble saying, "This is
cool, but I wish I could read it later." Oh. "Go to Pocket, and now you can.
Read anytime on any device without a web connection." Ah-ha! The value
proposition of Pocket app is instantly conveyed in a visual format, which, as we
all know, human beings are much better at taking visual cues and interpreting
information from visuals rather than text alone.
So that's (B). Visually explain, make it visual, to easily explain what the
product, company, service does. I want that visual. I would urge you to test a
visual to easily explain what that does. Show it to a bunch of people who have
no idea what you do. If they grasp it, great.
If you offer lots of products, make sure to convey the value proposition of
what you do. If you're a clothing brand and you offer lots of different things,
"Well, which picture should we use?" Well, quickly convey what your unique value
proposition is. What it is about your clothing line that's so great, that's so
much better? Is it where it's made and that it's hand crafted? Is it the quality
of the material? Is it price? Is it something else? Make sure that you're
delivering that unique value proposition. So I've got this (C) section. Does it
work for XYZ? Like, "Well, can I use this on my Android? Can I use it on my
iPhone? Will it also work on desktop?" Ah-ha! Excellent. I'm going to be
empathetic and intuitive. Oftentimes this comes from experience. You know the
things that, as soon as someone hears about your product, they instantly have
these questions. So just answer them right there. I really like that section
existing on the homepage. Then you can go into more detail in product pages as
well.
(D) I like giving social proof. So lots of websites do this on their
homepageâshowing the logo of news outlets that have covered them or big
brands that use them that are very trustworthy or testimonials. I personally
have found a lot of value in testimonials. I like them quite a bit, especially
when they're people who your audience knows who that person is. So you see an
Avinash Kaushik or a Wil Reynolds or a Will Critchlow recommending Moz, you kind
of go, "Well, I know who those guys are. They're very impressive, well-known web
marketers from across the industry. Let me check that out. That must be good."
So that's social proof credibility signals.
And the last thing that I really like having on your homepage is a call to
action. Last, but certainly not least, a call to action. "How do I install
this?" "Well, you do this, you do this, or you do this." So, for Pocket app, it
might be, "If you have an Android, go to the Google Play Store. If you have
Apple, go to the iPhone store. Want to use it on your desktop? Install the
widget right here." Great. Cool, right? There's my call to action just sitting
there, ready for me to go and do something. I think guiding someone to that next
step is a key part of how successful a homepage operates. Then you can really
test the success of your homepage as well, based on whether people engage and go
there.
So I hope you've got some great ideas for your homepages in 2014. I look
forward to hearing from you all. Thanks so much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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Homepage? - Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by randfish
Homepages were once the ultra-authoritative one-stop shops of online brands.
As people and search engines have become better at understanding what users are
looking for, though, the purpose of homepages has become more targeted. In
today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details several of the changes we've seen, and
offers his advice for what to include on a truly effective homepage on the web
today.
What Should I Put on the Homepage? - Whiteboard Friday
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!
Video transcription
Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to a new edition of Whiteboard Friday, the very
first one of 2014. Hope you all had a wonderful happy New Year and a great
holiday season, whatever you might celebrate.
This week, I think since January's the time when a lot of us revisit our core
web marketing and a lot of the times what we're doing on our websites, we should
talk about the starting pointâthe homepage. The homepage is a critically
important page for a lot of reasons. Oftentimes it's one of, if not the most,
trafficked web page that we have on our websites. It's also the starting point
for where people try and understand our brand and our company and what we do.
Substantively, its role has changed over the last few years with big shifts
like search engines being a little less focused around who gets links and how
that influences the keywords that you rank for, a little less about the homepage
being the only page that people land on, and whether they're coming just to the
homepage, or whether they go into separate sections of the site. What people
want and expect from homepages has changed over the years, what they expect to
find there, and, thus, what we as marketers need to do to deliver on those
expectations.
So I thought I'd start by talking about some of the old ways of doing things
with homepages and the new ways of doing them.
In the old way, we'd promote all of the major sections of the site on the
homepage. So you might have a homepage that's like, "Oh, check out our blog, and
here's our product, and here's this other thing that we're doing. Oh and this
new launch point." Each of these get featured, or they kind of scroll through
them. It's really the homepage very much competing for attention. You can think
of that Yahoo! homepage model being the discovery point for everything on the
site. If you don't get homepage real estate, well, you're not important.
This is totally wrong in 2014, because really we can make all of those major
sections easy to navigate to and find. We can focus very uniquely on just one
section, on just the most important things that the most important customers and
visitors are trying to get answers to and what they expect when they get to that
homepage.
We don't need to say like, "Hey, I have this great feature and this other
thing. Oh, we just launched this content. Let me promote everything, and I'll
just try and capture a small bit of everyone's attention." This focus is not
nearly as good as trying to be a little bit more of a, "Here's how to navigate
to these sections. Let me just promote the most important thing and make that
homepage more of a focused experience."
We've seen tons and tons of examples of folks A/B testing and testing
different versions of their homepage, and that focus, really, really critical to
driving people through.
Old way: focus on lots of keywords. A lot of homepages would focus on a lot
different keywords. The reason beingâit's not that hard to
understandâthe homepage, in the classic old, old Google, it would be your
highest PageRank page and, therefore, could rank the most things. Then, as
Google got more sophisticated and less about just PageRank, it was also the page
that earned the most links. Often, the anchor text was fairly diversified that
would link to that homepage, and so were all these other signals. So the
homepage could rank for a lot of stuff that other pages couldn't. So, "You know
what? Let's just smack all the keywords that we possibly can onto the homepage."
In the current model, we actually don't need to do that, because Google and
Bing have both become much more sophisticated about understanding, "Hey, this
site is about all of these things, not necessarily just this page. We're much
more considerate as engines of the site's authority in different areas and
around keyword terms and phrases. So, if that site has a page that specifically
focuses on these topics, you know what? We're going push that up there, even if
the page itself doesn't have all the signals that it needs to rank, because the
site does."
You inherit your site's strength and authority into your internal pages.
Because of that, I can now focus on a small subset of keywords on my homepage,
possibly only one or two, possibly not even any keywords. I can just think about
branded-centric keywords, not even unbranded keywords, and I can really have
landing pages specific to those unbranded keywords deeper down in the sections.
This also means that you don't have to make the focus of the homepage so all
over the place. You can get it much more refined and defined to focus on that
specific set of people who are coming directly there.
Because of this, too, the old style was to put lots of text to help the
homepage rank for all those pages. Now, we don't need that, but we really do
need to communicate quickly, because web users have become more and more
impatient. They're not going to read through paragraph and paragraph and
paragraph of text. Therefore, many, many websites have found it valuable to use
visual-centric homepages to help communicate and to quickly convey the primary
value proposition to those visitors. Sometimes that's a video. Sometimes it's
just an image or graphic that explains things really clearly. That can work out
great.
We also used to have to serve many types of visitors. This was both for SEO
reasons, but also because people would come for lots of different reasons and
then expect the homepage to guide them to whatever is interesting. Now, people
use search engines to find those different things around your brand and then
navigate directly to them. Social media is really about referring to specific
pieces of content, not just the homepage. Not like, "Hey, the Economist wrote a
great article. Go to TheEconomist.com" No, they're going to send you a link
right to the correct page. So you have a little bit more of that focus. You can
just work on the most critical visitors and their needs and the messaging that
you need to convey to them.
There also used to be this real concept of, "Keep it above the fold."
Thanks to things like tablets and phones, as well as wider screens and that
sort of stuff, now we do a lot more scrolling. We're used to a lot more
scrolling. So really people will scroll. I still urge folks to just make sure
you keep some page content at the scroll line or near the traditional scroll
lines, depending on your visitors' resolution. Keep that experience compelling
to draw the eye down. The thing you don't want to do -- I'll show you in my
sample homepage hereâthe thing I don't want to do is have the scroll line
or the fold line, one of the big traditional fold lines for my primary visitors,
be right here, so that it looks like I can get all the content I need above the
fold, but in fact there's all this above the fold. If the scroll line instead is
right here, and it bisects this secondary text section, perfect. Now I've drawn
the eye down. Now people certainly will scroll, and that stuff will have
visibility. You'll have that expectation.
So, speaking of this sample homepage, I'm going to talk about some things
that I, personally, would nudge folks and generally nudge folks to do on their
homepages. This is not to say that every single company should go with exactly
this type of homepage, but I think that these nudges can help to order your
thinking and to possibly give you some ideas about things you might be doing
right or wrong on your site, might want to test, might want to talk about as
you're kicking off 2014 with your homepage.
So first up, (A), right up top here, the logo and the nav. This is just
standard 101 stuff. My general bias is to keep this the same logo and nav as
other pages. However, the homepage is unique in that it's sometimes okay to be a
little different from other pages on the site. I would urge you to have
consistency across the rest of the site. If your homepage has to be a little bit
varied because of some things you want to do, that's okay. But I like that nav
staying consistent throughout the whole site. That's my general bias.
(B) Check out this image. I'm going to imagine that I'm Pocket, Pocket app,
which I have on my phone and I use on my desktop and laptop computers. It's a
great little app. The idea is that I've got an article that I want to read,
maybe on a plane, and I want to read it on my phone. But, of course, I don't
have a wi-fi signal on especially international flights, but even most of my US
flights. Or I want to read it just anytime. I'm sitting in the car on a long
drive down to Portland. Great. So I can click and save any article, any web page
I see on the Internet, I can save that to Pocket and go fetch it for later, and
it automatically caches. So I don't even need a web connection to be able to do
that. I love Pocket app. It's great.
But explaining it with a bunch of heavy text and having like "read things
later" and lots of different keywords stuff, that probably doesn't make sense.
What does make sense is, "Let me quickly and easily explain it to you." So
here's a guy, he's on his phone, and here's his thought bubble saying, "This is
cool, but I wish I could read it later." Oh. "Go to Pocket, and now you can.
Read anytime on any device without a web connection." Ah-ha! The value
proposition of Pocket app is instantly conveyed in a visual format, which, as we
all know, human beings are much better at taking visual cues and interpreting
information from visuals rather than text alone.
So that's (B). Visually explain, make it visual, to easily explain what the
product, company, service does. I want that visual. I would urge you to test a
visual to easily explain what that does. Show it to a bunch of people who have
no idea what you do. If they grasp it, great.
If you offer lots of products, make sure to convey the value proposition of
what you do. If you're a clothing brand and you offer lots of different things,
"Well, which picture should we use?" Well, quickly convey what your unique value
proposition is. What it is about your clothing line that's so great, that's so
much better? Is it where it's made and that it's hand crafted? Is it the quality
of the material? Is it price? Is it something else? Make sure that you're
delivering that unique value proposition. So I've got this (C) section. Does it
work for XYZ? Like, "Well, can I use this on my Android? Can I use it on my
iPhone? Will it also work on desktop?" Ah-ha! Excellent. I'm going to be
empathetic and intuitive. Oftentimes this comes from experience. You know the
things that, as soon as someone hears about your product, they instantly have
these questions. So just answer them right there. I really like that section
existing on the homepage. Then you can go into more detail in product pages as
well.
(D) I like giving social proof. So lots of websites do this on their
homepageâshowing the logo of news outlets that have covered them or big
brands that use them that are very trustworthy or testimonials. I personally
have found a lot of value in testimonials. I like them quite a bit, especially
when they're people who your audience knows who that person is. So you see an
Avinash Kaushik or a Wil Reynolds or a Will Critchlow recommending Moz, you kind
of go, "Well, I know who those guys are. They're very impressive, well-known web
marketers from across the industry. Let me check that out. That must be good."
So that's social proof credibility signals.
And the last thing that I really like having on your homepage is a call to
action. Last, but certainly not least, a call to action. "How do I install
this?" "Well, you do this, you do this, or you do this." So, for Pocket app, it
might be, "If you have an Android, go to the Google Play Store. If you have
Apple, go to the iPhone store. Want to use it on your desktop? Install the
widget right here." Great. Cool, right? There's my call to action just sitting
there, ready for me to go and do something. I think guiding someone to that next
step is a key part of how successful a homepage operates. Then you can really
test the success of your homepage as well, based on whether people engage and go
there.
So I hope you've got some great ideas for your homepages in 2014. I look
forward to hearing from you all. Thanks so much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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Thursday, 2 January 2014
[Build Backlinks Online] 9 Best Social Media and Content Marketing Tips From Buffer
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '9 Best Social Media and Content
Marketing Tips From Buffer'
Weve experimented with lots of different content marketing methods at Buffer, so
I wanted to share with you 9 of the best ways weve found to increase engagement
and improve your content strategy. Especially after launching Buffer for
Business recently, a lot of business approached us, asking which practical tips
we had for them to []9 Best Social Media and Content Marketing Tips From Buffer
is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content
Marketing...Read the whole entry...
You may view the latest post at
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/53458249/0/convinceandconvert~Best-Social-Media-and-Content-Marketing-Tips-From-Buffer/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Marketing Tips From Buffer'
Weve experimented with lots of different content marketing methods at Buffer, so
I wanted to share with you 9 of the best ways weve found to increase engagement
and improve your content strategy. Especially after launching Buffer for
Business recently, a lot of business approached us, asking which practical tips
we had for them to []9 Best Social Media and Content Marketing Tips From Buffer
is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content
Marketing...Read the whole entry...
You may view the latest post at
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/53458249/0/convinceandconvert~Best-Social-Media-and-Content-Marketing-Tips-From-Buffer/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] How to Use the Information Inside Google's Ved Parameter
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How to Use the Information Inside
Google's Ved Parameter'
Posted by deedpollofficeThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to
the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
It's been two years now since Google announced that they'd be gradually
withholding the search terms from referer headers, as secure (SSL) search was
rolled out. This has meant that the keyword report in Analytics shows (not
provided) for most visitors.
In our own Analytics reports, (not provided) keywords now make up 82% of all
organic visitors.
For paid traffic (coming through AdWords) the keywords are still "provided,"
which is very helpful, but also very expensive.
And of course there's also the Search Queries report in Webmaster Tools. This
is also useful, but it's still a disappointing loss of information compared to
what we used to have (even if I personally think Google was probably right to go
ahead with it).
The ved parameter to the rescue
Back in May, Tim Resnik wrote about patterns he'd spotted in Google's ved
parameter. It turns out that ved codes contain rather useful information about
the link that was clicked on in the search engine results page. And as Tim
pointed out, this goes some way in replacing what was lost (or rather, killed
off) by Google taking away the keyword data.
Three months later, Benjamin Schulz worked out that ved codes are actually
encoded in Protocol Buffers (or "Protobuf"). So, as they're not actually
encrypted, it's not too hard to unencode them (plus we don't have to feel too
guilty about it!).
Google has even released open-source compilers (in several different
languages), which you can use to decode ved codes yourself. However these
compilers are probably a bit over-the-top for what online marketers need (and
probably a bit hard to put into practice).
We've written up a guide to decoding and interpreting ved codesâas well
as filling in some of the unanswered questions (such as what parameter 1 means).
And we've also written a JavaScript function for decoding veds, whichâas I
want to explainâis essential if you want to incorporate this information
into your own Analytics reports.
This article is an actionable guide to getting information out of these ved
codes, and incorporating it into Analytics.
What is a ved code anyway?
I don't want to repeat too much what has already been written about in other
posts, but it's a good idea to summarise what veds are, what's inside them, and
how you can access them.
When you click on any of the links in Google's search results, the URL
(address) of the link contains a "ved" parameter.
This "ved" code contains information about the link that you clicked on, and
when a user comes to your website through Google's search results, the ved code
is (usually) passed to you in the referer HTTP header.
What's inside a ved code?
A ved code contains up to five separate parameters, which each tell you
something about the link that was clicked on:
Link index (parameter 1)
All the links on the SERP have a numerical index, which gets passed in the ved
code.
It only gives you a very rough idea of where the link was in the page (without
knowing more about what was on the page), so it's the least useful of the five
parameters inside the ved.
However, it is rather useful when it's for a ved code coming from an adword,
simply because there's no other information about the position.
Although the link index only gives a rough idea of the position of the adword,
there are two concrete things you can take from it:
If it's about 45â65 or less (shopping results could go up to 85), then it
means the adword was in the main column above the organic results
If it's about 170 or over, then it means the adword was in the right-hand
column or at the bottom of the page
Link type (parameter 2)
This parameter is a number which corresponds to the type of link that was
clicked on.
The most common value is 22, which corresponds to a normal (universal) search
result.
Other common values (and their meanings) are:
Type of link
Value
normal (universal) search result
22
sitelink
2060
one-line sitelink
338
image result (thumbnail) in universal search
245
news result
297
adword (i.e. sponsored search result)
1617
See the complete list, for other (less common) values.
We've actually found well over a hundred distinct values, so this is a small
fraction of them! Most of them, though, are very unlikely to appear in referer
URLs (bear in mind that these are Google's parameters; they weren't really meant
for us).
You'll no doubt have noticed that there are lots of gaps in the values. I
don't really know if this is because a lot have been retired, or if Google has
left space for future link types (probably a bit of both, but more of the
latter). For example, our reports show the link type 703, but we haven't worked
out what it means yet. It seems like it's some sort of universal search result
just for mobile devices. If you see 703 or other codes in your reports, and you
have an idea what they meanâwrite a comment below, or submit a pull
request.
Start result position (parameter 7)
This parameter is the cumulative result position of the first result on the
page. On page 2 it will be 10, on page 3 it will be 20, and so on.
It's better to think of this as the page number of results (after subtracting
1, and multiplying by 10)âbecause it's quite a long time ago now that
there were always 10 results on every page. Anyhow, you'll need to interpret it
in conjunction with parameter 6.
Result position (parameter 6)
This is very similar to the cd parameter, but there are a few important
differences:
cd is counted from 1 (and upwards), whereas the ved result position is counted
from 0.
On page 2 of the results, cd keeps on counting (i.e. 11, 12, 13â), but
the ved result position is reset to 0.
Sometimes the cd parameter is not passed (e.g. for image thumbnails). In these
cases, though, the ved result position does seem to get passed.
The ved result position is the more reliable of the two. If, for example, the
cd parameter is 11âyou wouldn't know if this is the 11th result on page 1,
or the first result on page 2. With the ved result position, you can distinguish
the two.
Sub-result position (parameter 5)
This parameter is like the result position (parameter 6), except it tells you
the position in a list of sub-results, such as breadcrumbs, or one-page
sitelinks.
How to decode ved codes and pull the information into Analytics
To import the ved into Analytics, you'll need to include some Javascript to
decode it (and send it to the Analytics servers).
To do this, you can modify your Analytics JavaScript "snippet" as follows:
1. Include the ved-decode and base64 libraries
You need to include these libraries in your HTML, somewhere before your
Analytics snippet.
The ved-decode library is needed to decode the ved and extract the information
we want.
The base64 library is needed for Internet Explorer users, because they won't
have a native Base64 decoder available in their browser.
Each of the two libraries is licensed under a permissive open-source licence
(MIT / Apache v2.0)âwhich lets you use it in any kind of project.
<!-- Include both these scripts or copy them into your main JavaScript file
-->
<!--[if lt IE 10]>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://veddecode.opensource.dpo.org.uk/js/base64-1.0.min.js"/script>
<![endif]-->
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://veddecode.opensource.dpo.org.uk/js/ved_analytics-1.0.min.js"/script>
2. Send the ved data to Analytics
How you do this depends on whether you're using the old Analytics (ga.js)
code, or the new Universal Analytics (analytics.js) code:
If you're using Analytics (ga.js)
Add this JavaScript code just before the call to
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview'])â
// The custom variable code needs to go *before* you record the pageview
// (i.e. the call to _trackPageview)
(function(w) {
var customVars = [
{ slot: 1, name: 'Google link index', v: 'linkIndex' },
{ slot: 2, name: 'Google link type', v: 'linkType' },
{ slot: 3, name: 'Google result position', v: 'resultPosition' },
{ slot: 4, name: 'Google sub-result position', v: 'subResultPosition' },
{ slot: 5, name: 'Google page', v: 'page' }
];
if (w._gaq && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
for (var i = 0, val; i < customVars.length; ++i) {
val = w.VedDecode[customVars[i].v];
w._gaq.push([
'_setCustomVar',
customVars[i].slot,
customVars[i].name,
val ? val + '' : '(not set)',
2 // session scope
]);
}
}
})(window);
If you're using Universal Analytics (analytics.js)
For Universal Analytics you need to set up custom dimensions corresponding to
the five parameters:
Custom dimension name
Scope
Google link index
Session
Google link type
Session
Google result position
Session
Google sub-result position
Session
Google page
Session
(These are suggested names, of courseâyou can call them whatever you
like.)
Then add this JavaScript code just before the call to ga('send', 'pageview'):
// The custom variable code needs to go *before* recording the pageview
(function(w) {
if (w.ga && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
// Send pageview with custom dimension data
ga('set', {
dimension1: getVedValue('linkIndex'),
dimension2: getVedValue('linkType'),
dimension3: getVedValue('resultPosition'),
dimension4: getVedValue('subResultPosition'),
dimension5: getVedValue('page')
});
}
function getVedValue(key) {
var ret = w.VedDecode[key];
return ret ? ret + '' : '(not set)';
}
})(window);
Make sure that the index generated for each dimension in your control panel
corresponds to the dimension number in the JavaScript code.
For example, if the generated index for the Google link index dimension is 7,
then you need to refer to it as dimension7 in the code.
Using the data
After a short while, the ved data should show up in your reports!
How you then use the data is up to you.
Clearly, though, it's going to be useful for optimizing different routes to
your site, and looking at how different routes affect your conversion rates.
Personally, I think it's very interestingâfor AdWords customersâto
see how adword position (i.e. link index) affects conversion rates. It's very
frustrating only having daily averages to work with, because you can't see (in
the standard reports) how much your adword position varies during the day.
Please let us know what you do with the data in the comments below.
But what if no referer header gets passed?
This is important, because if there's no referer header, then there's no ved
parameter.
The referer won't get passed in some cases:
If your site isn't secured by HTTPS
If your site uses HTTP, or it uses HTTP for some pages (in particular, any
landing pages), then the referer header may not get passed. Sometimesâeven
if a user is using secure (HTTPS) searchâGoogle redirects them through a
(non-secure) intermediate HTTP click-tracking page. When this happens, you'll
get the referer (and the ved parameter).
However, if Google passes them through a secure (HTTPS) click-tracking page,
then you won't get the referer (or the ved parameter) unless your site is also
using HTTPS.
In conclusionâif you want to be sure of getting the ved parameter for as
many users as possibleâuse HTTPS for your site. (Of course this isn't the
only reason to use HTTPS!)
If the user is on a mobile device
For mobile devices, Google has started to use hyperlink auditingâwhich
should have been called "click tracking", and is better known as the "ping"
attributeâinstead of redirects through a click-tracking page. Hyperlink
auditing isn't as reliable as a redirect, though, which is why:
Google only use it for mobile devices
all paid results (e.g. adwords) still go through traditional redirects
According to Google, the main motivation for using the ping attribute (only)
on mobile devices, is to improve speedâand I'm inclined to believe them.
But it probably also helps that:
mobile users are probably less likely to turn hyperlink auditing off (or know
how, or know what it is)
mobile devices run modern browsers, which support hyperlink auditing
Howeverâyou might askâif mobile devices don't go through a
redirect, and my site is using HTTPS, shouldn't I get the referer anyway?
Yes, that's right, you should get the referer!
But sadly, Google has specifically disabled it.
What Google do, if they use hyperlink auditing, is to set the meta referrer
element to origin:
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
This instructs the user's browser to include the document's origin in the
referer header rather than the full URL of the document. So the referer will
just state (something like) <a
href="https://www.google.co.uk/">https://www.google.co.uk/</a>.
Before you think, "How evil!"âthere's a good reason for this. If they
didn't do this, then the search terms would also appear in the referer, and
Google has committed to turning this off for privacy reasons.
So, mobile devices are another kettle of fish, and ved code analysis won't
work most of the time. But for most sites, mobile devices will still be in the
minority, and things change quickly anyway. (For example, if there was a new
anti-privacy law requiring hyperlink auditing to be off by default, that would
certainly be the death of it.)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/JV-FbkRcWcA/inside-googles-ved-parameter
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Google's Ved Parameter'
Posted by deedpollofficeThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to
the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
It's been two years now since Google announced that they'd be gradually
withholding the search terms from referer headers, as secure (SSL) search was
rolled out. This has meant that the keyword report in Analytics shows (not
provided) for most visitors.
In our own Analytics reports, (not provided) keywords now make up 82% of all
organic visitors.
For paid traffic (coming through AdWords) the keywords are still "provided,"
which is very helpful, but also very expensive.
And of course there's also the Search Queries report in Webmaster Tools. This
is also useful, but it's still a disappointing loss of information compared to
what we used to have (even if I personally think Google was probably right to go
ahead with it).
The ved parameter to the rescue
Back in May, Tim Resnik wrote about patterns he'd spotted in Google's ved
parameter. It turns out that ved codes contain rather useful information about
the link that was clicked on in the search engine results page. And as Tim
pointed out, this goes some way in replacing what was lost (or rather, killed
off) by Google taking away the keyword data.
Three months later, Benjamin Schulz worked out that ved codes are actually
encoded in Protocol Buffers (or "Protobuf"). So, as they're not actually
encrypted, it's not too hard to unencode them (plus we don't have to feel too
guilty about it!).
Google has even released open-source compilers (in several different
languages), which you can use to decode ved codes yourself. However these
compilers are probably a bit over-the-top for what online marketers need (and
probably a bit hard to put into practice).
We've written up a guide to decoding and interpreting ved codesâas well
as filling in some of the unanswered questions (such as what parameter 1 means).
And we've also written a JavaScript function for decoding veds, whichâas I
want to explainâis essential if you want to incorporate this information
into your own Analytics reports.
This article is an actionable guide to getting information out of these ved
codes, and incorporating it into Analytics.
What is a ved code anyway?
I don't want to repeat too much what has already been written about in other
posts, but it's a good idea to summarise what veds are, what's inside them, and
how you can access them.
When you click on any of the links in Google's search results, the URL
(address) of the link contains a "ved" parameter.
This "ved" code contains information about the link that you clicked on, and
when a user comes to your website through Google's search results, the ved code
is (usually) passed to you in the referer HTTP header.
What's inside a ved code?
A ved code contains up to five separate parameters, which each tell you
something about the link that was clicked on:
Link index (parameter 1)
All the links on the SERP have a numerical index, which gets passed in the ved
code.
It only gives you a very rough idea of where the link was in the page (without
knowing more about what was on the page), so it's the least useful of the five
parameters inside the ved.
However, it is rather useful when it's for a ved code coming from an adword,
simply because there's no other information about the position.
Although the link index only gives a rough idea of the position of the adword,
there are two concrete things you can take from it:
If it's about 45â65 or less (shopping results could go up to 85), then it
means the adword was in the main column above the organic results
If it's about 170 or over, then it means the adword was in the right-hand
column or at the bottom of the page
Link type (parameter 2)
This parameter is a number which corresponds to the type of link that was
clicked on.
The most common value is 22, which corresponds to a normal (universal) search
result.
Other common values (and their meanings) are:
Type of link
Value
normal (universal) search result
22
sitelink
2060
one-line sitelink
338
image result (thumbnail) in universal search
245
news result
297
adword (i.e. sponsored search result)
1617
See the complete list, for other (less common) values.
We've actually found well over a hundred distinct values, so this is a small
fraction of them! Most of them, though, are very unlikely to appear in referer
URLs (bear in mind that these are Google's parameters; they weren't really meant
for us).
You'll no doubt have noticed that there are lots of gaps in the values. I
don't really know if this is because a lot have been retired, or if Google has
left space for future link types (probably a bit of both, but more of the
latter). For example, our reports show the link type 703, but we haven't worked
out what it means yet. It seems like it's some sort of universal search result
just for mobile devices. If you see 703 or other codes in your reports, and you
have an idea what they meanâwrite a comment below, or submit a pull
request.
Start result position (parameter 7)
This parameter is the cumulative result position of the first result on the
page. On page 2 it will be 10, on page 3 it will be 20, and so on.
It's better to think of this as the page number of results (after subtracting
1, and multiplying by 10)âbecause it's quite a long time ago now that
there were always 10 results on every page. Anyhow, you'll need to interpret it
in conjunction with parameter 6.
Result position (parameter 6)
This is very similar to the cd parameter, but there are a few important
differences:
cd is counted from 1 (and upwards), whereas the ved result position is counted
from 0.
On page 2 of the results, cd keeps on counting (i.e. 11, 12, 13â), but
the ved result position is reset to 0.
Sometimes the cd parameter is not passed (e.g. for image thumbnails). In these
cases, though, the ved result position does seem to get passed.
The ved result position is the more reliable of the two. If, for example, the
cd parameter is 11âyou wouldn't know if this is the 11th result on page 1,
or the first result on page 2. With the ved result position, you can distinguish
the two.
Sub-result position (parameter 5)
This parameter is like the result position (parameter 6), except it tells you
the position in a list of sub-results, such as breadcrumbs, or one-page
sitelinks.
How to decode ved codes and pull the information into Analytics
To import the ved into Analytics, you'll need to include some Javascript to
decode it (and send it to the Analytics servers).
To do this, you can modify your Analytics JavaScript "snippet" as follows:
1. Include the ved-decode and base64 libraries
You need to include these libraries in your HTML, somewhere before your
Analytics snippet.
The ved-decode library is needed to decode the ved and extract the information
we want.
The base64 library is needed for Internet Explorer users, because they won't
have a native Base64 decoder available in their browser.
Each of the two libraries is licensed under a permissive open-source licence
(MIT / Apache v2.0)âwhich lets you use it in any kind of project.
<!-- Include both these scripts or copy them into your main JavaScript file
-->
<!--[if lt IE 10]>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://veddecode.opensource.dpo.org.uk/js/base64-1.0.min.js"/script>
<![endif]-->
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://veddecode.opensource.dpo.org.uk/js/ved_analytics-1.0.min.js"/script>
2. Send the ved data to Analytics
How you do this depends on whether you're using the old Analytics (ga.js)
code, or the new Universal Analytics (analytics.js) code:
If you're using Analytics (ga.js)
Add this JavaScript code just before the call to
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview'])â
// The custom variable code needs to go *before* you record the pageview
// (i.e. the call to _trackPageview)
(function(w) {
var customVars = [
{ slot: 1, name: 'Google link index', v: 'linkIndex' },
{ slot: 2, name: 'Google link type', v: 'linkType' },
{ slot: 3, name: 'Google result position', v: 'resultPosition' },
{ slot: 4, name: 'Google sub-result position', v: 'subResultPosition' },
{ slot: 5, name: 'Google page', v: 'page' }
];
if (w._gaq && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
for (var i = 0, val; i < customVars.length; ++i) {
val = w.VedDecode[customVars[i].v];
w._gaq.push([
'_setCustomVar',
customVars[i].slot,
customVars[i].name,
val ? val + '' : '(not set)',
2 // session scope
]);
}
}
})(window);
If you're using Universal Analytics (analytics.js)
For Universal Analytics you need to set up custom dimensions corresponding to
the five parameters:
Custom dimension name
Scope
Google link index
Session
Google link type
Session
Google result position
Session
Google sub-result position
Session
Google page
Session
(These are suggested names, of courseâyou can call them whatever you
like.)
Then add this JavaScript code just before the call to ga('send', 'pageview'):
// The custom variable code needs to go *before* recording the pageview
(function(w) {
if (w.ga && w.VedDecode && w.VedDecode.ved) {
// Send pageview with custom dimension data
ga('set', {
dimension1: getVedValue('linkIndex'),
dimension2: getVedValue('linkType'),
dimension3: getVedValue('resultPosition'),
dimension4: getVedValue('subResultPosition'),
dimension5: getVedValue('page')
});
}
function getVedValue(key) {
var ret = w.VedDecode[key];
return ret ? ret + '' : '(not set)';
}
})(window);
Make sure that the index generated for each dimension in your control panel
corresponds to the dimension number in the JavaScript code.
For example, if the generated index for the Google link index dimension is 7,
then you need to refer to it as dimension7 in the code.
Using the data
After a short while, the ved data should show up in your reports!
How you then use the data is up to you.
Clearly, though, it's going to be useful for optimizing different routes to
your site, and looking at how different routes affect your conversion rates.
Personally, I think it's very interestingâfor AdWords customersâto
see how adword position (i.e. link index) affects conversion rates. It's very
frustrating only having daily averages to work with, because you can't see (in
the standard reports) how much your adword position varies during the day.
Please let us know what you do with the data in the comments below.
But what if no referer header gets passed?
This is important, because if there's no referer header, then there's no ved
parameter.
The referer won't get passed in some cases:
If your site isn't secured by HTTPS
If your site uses HTTP, or it uses HTTP for some pages (in particular, any
landing pages), then the referer header may not get passed. Sometimesâeven
if a user is using secure (HTTPS) searchâGoogle redirects them through a
(non-secure) intermediate HTTP click-tracking page. When this happens, you'll
get the referer (and the ved parameter).
However, if Google passes them through a secure (HTTPS) click-tracking page,
then you won't get the referer (or the ved parameter) unless your site is also
using HTTPS.
In conclusionâif you want to be sure of getting the ved parameter for as
many users as possibleâuse HTTPS for your site. (Of course this isn't the
only reason to use HTTPS!)
If the user is on a mobile device
For mobile devices, Google has started to use hyperlink auditingâwhich
should have been called "click tracking", and is better known as the "ping"
attributeâinstead of redirects through a click-tracking page. Hyperlink
auditing isn't as reliable as a redirect, though, which is why:
Google only use it for mobile devices
all paid results (e.g. adwords) still go through traditional redirects
According to Google, the main motivation for using the ping attribute (only)
on mobile devices, is to improve speedâand I'm inclined to believe them.
But it probably also helps that:
mobile users are probably less likely to turn hyperlink auditing off (or know
how, or know what it is)
mobile devices run modern browsers, which support hyperlink auditing
Howeverâyou might askâif mobile devices don't go through a
redirect, and my site is using HTTPS, shouldn't I get the referer anyway?
Yes, that's right, you should get the referer!
But sadly, Google has specifically disabled it.
What Google do, if they use hyperlink auditing, is to set the meta referrer
element to origin:
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
This instructs the user's browser to include the document's origin in the
referer header rather than the full URL of the document. So the referer will
just state (something like) <a
href="https://www.google.co.uk/">https://www.google.co.uk/</a>.
Before you think, "How evil!"âthere's a good reason for this. If they
didn't do this, then the search terms would also appear in the referer, and
Google has committed to turning this off for privacy reasons.
So, mobile devices are another kettle of fish, and ved code analysis won't
work most of the time. But for most sites, mobile devices will still be in the
minority, and things change quickly anyway. (For example, if there was a new
anti-privacy law requiring hyperlink auditing to be off by default, that would
certainly be the death of it.)
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