Facebook Algorithms Change - What Everyone With a FB Page Need To Know

Although no one knows the exact formula for the Algorithm, it contains a number of factors including: post types, time decay, story bumping and last actor, hide post/scam reporting, relationship setting (affinity), weight (last action).

Most recently, as of 2015, Facebook actually made more changes to the algorithm, and started significantly decreasing organic reach for any Facebook content that is deemed as promotional in any way. 

In a recent user experience survey, Facebook found that users wanted to see more stories from friends and pages they care about, and less promotional content. This didn't mean ads, though. This meant "salesy" posts from the pages users already “Like.” So in response to this, in November, Facebook re-tweaked their algorithm to filter out any “overly promotional page posts.”

Facebook constantly makes updates to its algorithm, however this recent change is one of the most substantial updates they've made as it forces marketers who Facebook to promote their contests, new products and events, to spend money on ads, if they want these messages to be seen (even by their existing followers).

According to people surveyed by Facebook, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:

• Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
• Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
• Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Browser Extensions to boost your Site Traffic Organically

These Chrome and Firefox extensions are very handy when it comes to sharing your stuff with people outside the traditional channels.

WiseStamp is a Chrome extension that allows you to have a customizable email signature with social media and HTML integration. This is a great opportunity for branding your company and sharing your social profiles with anyone you correspond with via Gmail.

You can also include other cool things in your signature like your latest tweet, Google+ update, latest blog post, and more! This extension is also available for Firefox and Safari.

Blank Canvas Signatures for Gmail is a similar Firefox extension that lets you insert HTML signatures into Gmail. It supports up to four different signatures.

Rapportive is another extension that shows you everything that you need to know about your contacts, in the right sidebar of your inbox. You can connect your Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn accounts to gather information about your contacts. From there, every time you open a message from someone you may be able to see things like their picture, latest tweets, links to social profiles and more. You can even add your own personal, private notes to their profile for safe-keeping. It is also available for Firefox, Safari,Opera, and Mailplane.

Third Party Management Tools for Google+ Pages (Infographic)

Google+ has worked with several social media management companies to add Google+ functionality in their management tools. These companies provide brands and businesses more flexibility and power to run their Google+ pages. This includes tools to post and comment on Google+ pages, and create and manage circles. You can learn more about the companies here

How to create Google Plus +Post Ads for maximum engagement?

+Post ads amplify your brand’s content by easily turning Google+ posts into display ads that run across the web. The live, social ad format allows you to go beyond clicks to live conversations with your audience. People can join a Hangout On Air, add a comment, follow your brand or give a +1, right from an ad.

Starting May 2014 +Post ads are now available to all advertisers who meet the following 4 requirements:

1. Before you create a +Post ad, first make sure you meet the following requirements:
2. Your Google+ page must have at least 1,000 followers.
3. Your post should contain content that’s relevant to your audience.
4. You have opted in to shared endorsements for Google+ pages

Watch: Toyota +Post Ads Campaign

Promoting Hangouts on Air across the web:

You can now also promote your Hangout on Air with +Post ads that lets users take specific actions before, during, and after the broadcast. Users can RSVP prior to the Hangout, watch the broadcast live, and view a recording after the event.

Automatically promote your most recent post

At any given moment, there is someone interested in your brand, but it’s challenging to make sure you reach people at every moment that matters. Now you can automatically promote your most recent Google+ post, and pay only when people engage with your content, extending the reach of your social content across the web.

Lean more about +Post ads and Google+ by visiting the Google+ for brands site. 

Learn How to Create a +post ad 

Top 25 Review/Citation Sites to Submit Your Local Business

The top 25 review/citation sites to submit your business contact information to. Accuracy and consistency is vitally important.

1. Google+ Local
2. Yahoo Local 
3. Bing Local
4. YP.com
5. Yelp
6. Manta 
7. Show Me Local 
8. Merchant Circle 
9. SuperPages 
10. Mojo Pages 
11. EZ Local 
12. Angie’s List 
13. HotFrog 
14. Foursquare 
15. Chamber of Commerce 
16. yellowbot.com 
17. kudzu.com 
18. brownbook.com 
19. B2B Yellowpages 
20. Directory Central  
21. MapQuest 
22. Local.com 
23. Dexknows.com 
24. Citysearch,com uses Express Update 
25. nSphere 

Source: http://www.webmasterworld.com/local_search/4651479.htm

Main 4 Components of SEO: The SEO Fork

SEO is like a fork with 4 tines. It cannot work with less to be efficient.

The same is with SEO, it is the combination of 4 main branches:

1- Content (Unique, Informative, Fresh, Attractive, Specialized, Related)
2- Onsite actors (Meta Tags, UI, Speed, interlinking)
3- Social Engagement (Likes, Shares, Retweets, Pluses)
4- Backlinks (qualitative, relevant, diverse, natural, use anchor texts not KWs)

How Egypt and India are Threatening The Future of Facebook?

As you may know, Facebook exists and grows because of the ads they run on the right side bar. When people click on those ads, the advertisers pay Facebook per each click (or 'Like').

You might also heard of 'Click Farms', where some small companies or individuals charge a facebook page a small amount of money to send them 'Fake' visits and Likes.

How Click Farms Work?

Simply, how these Click Farms work is by hiring people in developing countries like Egypt, India, Indonesia, etc. to Like advertised pages with fake accounts.

What about Legitimate clicks on Facebook Ads?

Even legitimate clicks on Facebook Ads could also generate Fake likes from fake FB accounts because click farmers sometimes click "Randomly" on ads to avoid being suspicious and caught by Facebook Quality Assurance team.
That is what Veritasium, a famous YouTube Channel, tried to proof in a video last week. They ran a nice experiment to proof that even paid ads generate fake likes.

Although the experiment looks interesting, but I do not think it is accurate. I myself tried to run a Facebook Campaign before for a Saudi Arabian Social Activist page to get him many likes for his Facebook Statuses and shared articles but I could not get any clicks although the bidding was set to be too high and the impressions were in thousands. But No Clicks! because the ads were too serious and very restrictive. 

Plus, what makes me believe that the above experiment is not accurate is that how come a Targeted campaign limiting the ad view to the US and Canada get clicks from Egypt? It is technically impossible unless the Click Farmers are using proxies to click on ads targeting Canada, but do they? 

Why Would Such a problem threaten Facebook?

As I said before, Facebook's revenue is coming from Pay per Click Advertising. So, if Facebook is taking money for Fake clicks, and it was proven, Advertisers will stop advertising with the Facebook model provided that they won't sue the company for the thousands they previously paid in vain. 
The US State Department paid 650,000 dollars on Facebook Ads and got less than 2% engagement. 

Conclusion,

Although Click Farms are getting more and more popular and they sometimes click on Facebook Ads, I believe that a company as big as Facebook knows very well how to avoid such invalid clicks, because without Strict Quality Assurance, the will be history. 

Read More: 

How low-paid workers at 'click farms' create appearance of online popularity

Fake facebook twitter and youtube clicks are big business

The Guestographic Formula: Effective Way to Get Effective Backlinks

Have you heard of the term Guestographic before?
Guestographic is simply about creating this formula successfully:

Here are some important tips to make the Guestographic formula Working:

First: The On-Page Strategy 

1. The content has to be informative and valuable
2. The design has to be attractive and professional
3. Use Gifographics (animated infographics)
4. Make it sharable (add social media buttons and a Pin it button)
5. Make it embedable. For Wordpress sites use the embed code generator plugin or use generators like SEO gadget embed code generator or Siegemedia embed code generator. (sometimes if you have a JavaScript code to be embedded on a WordPress site you will need to use the 'Insert HTML snippet Plugin' 

Second: The off-Page Strategy 

1. Submit the infographic on Infographic submission sites (another list) or use a paid service to submit it for you
2. Find sites that write about your infographic’s topic and show them the infographic (you can also offer to write an introduction for it) 

How Social Signals Affect SEO - Gifographic (Animated Infographic)

The new Google Algorithm is now giving a high leverage to backlinks from Social Media (i.e. Social Signals). It could be likes, shares, comments, views, subscriptions, pins, retweets, etc.

Here is an exciting animated infographic (Gifographic) that shows how social signals impact SEO

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Top Free Essential SEO Tools For Mobiles

Top Free Essential SEO Tools For Mobiles 

by Mina Adly Younan 

The growth in mobile browsing has been incredible over the past year. With nearly half of UK smartphone owners using their mobiles to browse and research products and Mobile Search accounting for an impressive 12% of all UK search clicks in December 2011 (Marin Software, 2012). Morgan Stanley Corp. have also found in a recent study that Mobile traffic is expected to surpass desktop traffic by 2015 as shown in the graph below.  For a website to remain its high ranking on search engines (Google) should do all needed efforts to make their mobile versions as friendly and functional as possible.

In doing so, webmasters will need the following Top Free Essential SEO Tools for Mobiles:

1- Mobilize your Site () : see how your current site looks in mobile, and find resources for building your mobile site.

2- Our Mobile Planet ():  View data about mobile users that Google has gathered. Select your key demographic and other potential customers, and view key differences.

3- Mobile Meter () gives an overview of how your site looks and performs on a mobile.

4- Google Adwords for Mobiles:  It is the same Adwords tool used for desktop searches. It gives a guideline on the monthly volume in searches. The tool can also show data for searches on mobile devices.  To do so, select ‘advanced options’ > ‘show ideas and statistics for’ > and select ‘mobile’.

Local search trends can be added to see seasonal fluctuations or if keyword searches are increasing in volume. Select columns and ‘local search trends’. This will show a simple bar graph, but if you download the data it will give some figures over time.

5-PageSpeed Insights (): test speed from both a desktop and mobile perspective. Very useful to see where the easiest performance improvements can be gained in terms of download speed. As site speed is considered part of Google’s algorithm, fixing issues could result in a real impact on mobile search positions.

6- Google Webmaster Tools for Mobiles:  It is the same Google Webmaster tool as it can also check mobile sites setup and investigate any performance issues or poor search results. Additionally, if you redirect mobile users to specific mobile versions of your URLs, then Mobile Sitemaps can be added in Google Webmaster Tools.

7- Mobilize your Business with Google Sites (): Build a test or mock up and see how it performs. The tool have different templates for several types of landing pages.

8- Google Mobile Ads (http://www.google.com/ads/mobile/): Although it is a PPC tool, it can be used to find a lot of potential methods to look at that can drive traffic to your mobile landing pages using mobile ads like:

·         Phone numbers in ads using ‘click-to-call’,
·         click-to-download
·         Mobile Ad Sitelinks
·         Seller Ratings
·         Location Extensions (Multiple Addresses too!)
·         Location Targeting

9- Speeking of PPC, there is of course there the AdMob that is now owned by Google 

10- Google Analytics for Mobiles (): The same Google Analytics for Desktop could be used for mobile browsers so that you can easily find out which mobile devices are working well, and which need optimization by asking the right questions like: Is some content getting a lot of mobile traffic but performing relatively badly? Can a page be optimized to generate more phone call leads? Which content drives more local mobile users? It is even possible to hook Analytics up to track downloads of mobile apps.

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Women VS Men in Social Media Infographic

When it comes to Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube, and even LinkedIn), Men and Women are not alike. Here is an exciting infographic I found on the battle between sexes in the Social Media World. Enjoy!

Top Free and Paid Live Chat Support Providers for SEO and User Experience!!

By now you must be sure that SEO is mainly about the user experience. And what is a UX without actual human interactions? AKA: LIVE CHAT SUPPORT?!

If you want a cutting edge website with an unbeatable user experience, you might think of including a live chat support to your pages. If you have a busy and active website with many clients and visitors with inquiries, you may think of hiring someone to provide your clients with a decent customer support and boost your sails and retain your customers. And if you have a small business and you do not want to spend money on hiring someone, why do not you setup the live chat support snippet on your site and have it minimized on your computer and whenever a new visitor pops you up with a question, you can simply take it if you are available. You can also set specific times and days to provide such service.

You can leave a message like that: "NOTE : We are available online from 11 AM to 5 PM. If you have any sort of question regarding our services, you are most welcome to inquire your quarries with us. But if icon says we are offline, then please do not leave a message offline or use this icon to send us message. If you want to send us any sort of message use “contact us” icon listed on top menu of site or click here to leave a message. "

It is easy, professional, and will definitely add a lot to your site's SEO and UX

List of Top Free Live Chat Support Providers:

• Chatango
• CBox
• Mibew
• AjaxChat
• phpFreeChat

List of Paid  Live Chat Support Providers:

• SnapEngage
• Olark
• LiveChatInc
• ZenDesk

The List from Woorank Blog 

Let your users log in with their existing social account from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and over 20 more!

LoginRadius is a simple Social media tool with plugins for almost every type of CMS.
It enables social login on a website letting users log in through their existing IDs such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and over 15 more!

This plugin not only eliminates the long registration process of filling up form and verifying email ID but also saves the user from remembering another set of username and password. So, the users are just one click away from logging in to your website. Along with Social Login, LoginRadius plugin also provide features like Social Sharing, User Profile Data and Social Analytics.

Sell Twitter for Local Business - Sales Material infographic

Some inspiring and compelling Twitter Headers for Local Business 

Source: 

10 Compelling Local Business Twitter Headers

Community Managers Bible (Another Infographic)

How about one infographic (colorful illustration) with all the basic Rules you need to know as a Social Media Marketer or Community Manager.

Social Media Cheat Sheet - Infographic

Source: marketingtechblog.com via Alexandra on Pinterest

Reddit Secret Plan for World Domination - Presentation

It's amazing to see how the Ugly looking Social Media Cat "reddit" is getting 5 Billion Visitors in 2013. Being the fastest growing social space in America, it's also one of the most influential.

Enjoy! this SlideShare Presentation

Today I Learned: How to add Google+ Comments to My Blog

Google+ Comments is an alternative to the default commenting system on Blogger, available to blog authors who have upgraded their Blogger profile to Google+. Google+ Comments lets you bring the following conversations together in one place, right under your blog post:

• Comments made on your Blogger blog post
• Comments on the blog post that you’ve shared to Google+
• Shared content on Google+ that links to your blog post
• Readers will need a Google+ page or profile to comment on your blog.

Features of Google+ Comments

Google+ Comments look similar to traditional Blogger comments, but have some important differences. For example:

• When you leave a comment on a blog, you'll see the option, checked by default, to also share that comment to Google+.
• Google+ posts that link to blog posts will show up as a comment underneath those blog posts
• If original comment is shared to Google+, replies to the comment on the blog will show up in Google+ and vice versa, but only to the people that the original comment was shared with
• If a comment is not shared with the blog author, the blog author will not be able to see the comment in either location
• As the author of a post, you’ll receive Google+ notifications when readers comment on or share your blog post.

Here is How to add your Google Plus Comments to Your Blog

1. Sign in to Blogger
2. Click on the “Google+” tab in your blog’s Dashboard
3. Upgrade to Google+ if you haven’t already done so
4. Enable Google+ Comments. Comments already made on your posts will keep working in the new widget.

How to Associate your blog with your Google+ profile?

If you blog under your common name (eg. “Jane Smith’s blog”), you’ll find that associating your blog with your personal Google+ profile may increase your blog’s discoverability and make it easier to form communities with other bloggers and readers.

When you link your blog to your Google+ profile, you can share posts directly from Blogger to your personal stream.

You can change your blog’s association with your Google+ profile to an association with a Google+ page via the Google+ tab on Blogger.

Associating your blog with your +Page

If your blog is a brand (eg. “The Coffee Bar”), you can link your blog to a Google+ page. By creating a page for your blog you’ll find that linking your blog to your Google+ page may increase its discoverability and make it easier to form communities with other bloggers and readers.

When you link your blog to your Google+ page, you can share posts directly from Blogger to your page. If you associate your blog with a Google+ page, any Blogger gadgets that originally pointed to your Google+ profile will then point to your Google+ page. The same is true if you switch from a page to a profile.

If your blog is currently associated with a page, and you would like to link it to your Google+ profile or another page you own, you can do so via the Google+ tab on Blogger.

Blogging under your Blogger display name

If you don’t want to connect your blog to Google+, you can still continue to blog under your Blogger display name. Remember that you can have a Google+ profile or page even if you choose to have a Blogger display name -- the difference is that the two won’t be linked externally.

Advanced SEO techniques for e-Stores (infographic)

SEO techniques and Best practices for e-commerce and online Stores

1. Use the semantic mark-up (rich snippets) to identify the specific content of the leaf and immediately give the user, since the SERP, information about the content of the ad, therefore maximizes the chances of clicks useful.
2. If an item is no longer available instead of sending the user to a page completely useless, create a special that gives an indication of the possibilities offered him, maybe similar products or other alternatives. 
3. Feedback: the ratings are low and you do not even produce them, will be the users will do it for you. Certainly will not be optimized, but since people are talking about naturally, most of passage.
4. Use the filters and the pages tag: optimizes only the first page-level tags and filters, so as to avoid duplication
5. Fill in the title: use generic keywords monetization. A good title can be: price / review / sale / Economic + product name.
6. Geolocation allows not only to succeed in the SERPs, but also with users. If I live in Italy, even if I buy online, I will hardly offered in America. This speech is even more important when it comes to a store that sells both online and live. The watchword today, thanks to the development of the mobile is geolocation.
7. Recent additions to the homepage post a direct link to the new arrivals. A user who frequently visit your site or search the news would appreciate because they do not have to dig into milel categories and filters to find new products.

Also, Do not forget:

1. Pagenation
2. Using USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) 

Source: 7 advanced seo tips for-e commerce sites infographic