SEO World

We’ve touted landing pages as one of the most crucial parts of your marketing (next to content creation, of course) for some time. But there’s something that comes after the landing page that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the marketing blogosphere … that moment after a lead converts, and you say “thank you.”

You do say thank you, right? Usually it comes in the form of a thank-you page that appears after a lead fills out your form, a thank-you email that goes into their inbox, or both. And there are plenty of opportunities to keep your prospect engaged with your website, content, and brand even after the conversion event. This post will break out those ways so both you and your prospect can keep reaping the benefits of your relationship!

8 Ways Your Thank-You Page and Emails Can Keep Prospects Engaged

1) Include Social Media Follow Modules

One of the simplest ways to keep the conversation going with your recently converted prospects is by encouraging them to follow your social media presence. This provides an opportunity not only to expand your social reach, but also to reconvert those leads in the future as they consume your status updates with links to your other lead generation content and offers. And remember, social media follow buttons can easily be included in both your thank-you emails, and your thank-you pages — that’s double the opportunity!

2) Let Leads Share Your Offer Socially, and Via Email

Your social media opportunities don’t end with follow buttons — you can include social sharing buttons, too. You know, those buttons you see to the left of this blog post that let you tweet, +1, LinkedIn share, Facebook like, and even sometimes pin our content.

In fact, Econsultancy reports that emails with social sharing options generate 30% higher click-through rates — and that click-through rate increases to 55% higher with 3 or more social sharing options. Just be careful with what exactly you are letting people share. When setting these buttons up (we have a handy guide to help you create social sharing buttons) you want to include a link to share the offer’s landing page, not the thank-you page … otherwise you won’t generate any leads from your prospects’ social shares!

3) Get New Blog Subscribers

Your business blog houses some of your best content, and it’s all form-free! Leverage that content warehouse by inviting your prospects to subscribe to the blog with a simple RSS button like you see on the right. You could even include a few sentences explaining what your blog talks about to make the case for the subscription, and include a link to a blog post relevant to the subject matter of the offer prospects just redeemed. For example, if your prospects just downloaded a unicorn beauty supplies buyer’s guide, perhaps they’d also be interested to read your blog post, “8 Creative Ways to Braid Your Unicorn’s Tail.” It behooves you to grow your blog subscriber list, because it generates repeat traffic to your blog that can continue to reconvert on the calls-to-action in each post — and you are putting calls-to-action in each blog post, right?

4) Bring Back Your Navigation

You know how we told you to remove the navigation on your landing page, because it distracts visitors from completing your form? That rule does not apply on your thank-you page! You want your visitor to continue exploring the content on your site! Just look at all the opportunities:

Think about it … this visitor just showed enough interest in you to redeem your offer. It’s kind of like buyer’s euphoria — capitalize on that feeling to direct them to case studies, information about your company, your product and pages, and the like.

The only exception to this rule, however, would be if you’re explicitly trying to use your thank-you page to reconvert your lead on another offer, which leads us to our next opportunity.

5) Reconvert Using a New Call-to-Action (CTA)

There are two opportunities to reconvert your leads on your thank-you page. First, hyperlink text within your thank-you page copy directing your lead to your offer, like you see here with the blue hyperlinked text, “See how you can track that in a free demo of the HubSpot software.”

Then, you can supplement your text-based CTA with a larger, more eye-catching CTA elsewhere on the page, like you see in our example here from our Pinterest ebook‘s thank-you page.

Again, your leads are pretty excited about your content and your company — they just filled out a form to redeem your offer! Use this opportunity to reconvert them on an offer that might be of interest to them based on the offer they just downloaded and their stage in the buying cycle. To continue our unicorn beauty supplies buyers guide example, one might infer that someone downloading a buyer’s guide is pretty far down the sales funnel. Your next conversion offer, then, might be a free sample of unicorn shampoo or a free consultation with a unicorn stylist!

6) Show Them a Video (With Calls-to-Action)

Your thank-you page affords an opportunity for you to highlight some of your most important content — ebooks, case studies, blog posts, and yes, videos. At HubSpot, for example, we want all of our leads to understand who we are and what we do — we are a company that sells inbound marketing software! Which is why we created this handy dandy video and put it on our thank-you pages … not-so-coincidentally, where all of our leads end up at some point.

Notice that orange callout in the top right corner of the video? Leads can share the video socially and via email, or if they click “More Info,” the second screen you see above will appear. That’s another call-to-action to subscribe to our YouTube channel. That’s two layers of opportunity to continue engaging with your prospects!

7) Conduct a Survey

You know how I mentioned we at HubSpot want to make sure all of our leads know we sell inbound marketing software? On some of our thank-you pages, we use the real estate for a survey to ask leads that very question … do you know what we sell?

The survey results help our product marketing team gauge the effectiveness of their messaging efforts. You can also use a survey to ask for feedback about your product or services, see how your leads like your content, ask for suggestions on new content to develop — the sky is the limit!

Show Off Your Customer Love

Case studies, testimonials, reviews, and other user-generated content are critical to convert prospects into paying customers — especially if your customer base is made up of Millennials.

Data from Bazaarvoice indicates that more than 8 in 10 say user-generated content from people they don’t know influences what they buy and indicates brand quality. So at the point someone becomes a lead for the first time or reconverts — you know, right after they fill out your landing page form — don’t you think it’s a great opportunity to remind them why people love you so they are more likely to become a customer? If you’re using your thank-you page or emails primarily to reconvert a prospect, this is a particularly valuable piece of content to include alongside your calls-to-action.

What other content do you like to include on thank-you pages to provide more opportunities for engagement with your prospects?

Image credit: Jon Ashcroft

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

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SEO Book.com

This post is short, simple and useful.

Check Traffic For The Page You’re On

A common situation I find myself in – you’re reviewing a site and you land on a page and you think to yourself “I wonder how much traffic this page gets and I wonder where it comes from?” so you have to open up Google Analytics, filter through the pages report and find the URL. This post lets you do that process in one click.

Step 1: Put your GA profile id into this box

Say what? Which ID? Log into the Google Analytics profile you want to use and then copy and paste the number in the URL. It should look a little like this:

Copy and paste that number into this box:

Step 2: Drag and drop this JS bookmarklet into your bookmarks

GA Page Lookup

Note: the above link includes your GA profile id and is automagically updated based on the number you put in the box. Jquery! Magic!

When you click the bookmarklet on a page you’ll instantly be taken to Google Analytics on a page like this:

Step 3: Confused? Check out this 46 second video

This video walks you through exactly how to use the JS bookmarklet!

Want more JS Bookmarklets? Try these.

• http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/js-bookmarklet-for-checking-if-a-page-is-blocked-by-robots-txt
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/some-nifty-seo-bookmarklets-to-make-you-more-efficient

PS – in case you want the link and the above jquery magic is broken for some reason the URL I’m opening is simply this:

https://www.google.com/analytics/web/#report/content-pages/[GA-profile-id]/%3F_r.drilldown%3Danalytics.pagePath[url-encoded-pagepath]%26explorer-table.secSegmentId%3Danalytics.source/

Tom Critchlow Tom Critchlow is VP Operations for the NYC office, living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. Fiercely curious about most things and passionate about everything.

Follow @tomcritchlow

Tom Critchlow

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distilled

Are you ready for the transition? Time is almost up! According to Facebook, by the end of today, all business pages on Facebook will convert to the new page design, embracing the Timeline look whether you like it or not.

Some businesses are scared of the change. But you, the reader of this post, shouldn’t be! The new Timeline design will require you to make some changes to your Facebook business page, but acting quickly and optimizing your page specifically for the new design will give you an edge on your lagging competition. To help make your transition easier, we’ve created a 6-step cheat sheet infographic to highlight the key features of the new page design. Feel free to pin it, share it, or embed it on your own website or blog.

And if you’re looking for a more detailed guide to using the new page design, you can always download our free Step-by-Step Guide to New Facebook Business Page Timelines, which walks you through the different ways Facebook’s new page features can support your marketing and strengthen your lead generation efforts.

Were you one of the earlier adopters of Facebook’s new business page design? What do you think of the new layout?

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Aaah, the elusive lead-capture form. Such a seemingly simple element of inbound marketing, yet also the subject of frequent debate, particularly when it comes to deciding just how many fields to include on that bad boy. How many is too many? How many just isn’t enough?

As marketers everywhere struggle to strike the right balance between requiring too much and too little information, many are left thinking, what’s the magical form field sweet spot? Most experts will tell you to ask only for the information you need to effectively contact and qualify a lead, but surely it’s not that simple. Let’s dive into how you should make the decision about what is the right form length for your business.

Form Length Isn’t the Only Factor

First things first. While form length is definitely a factor, marketers must realize that a person’s willingness to complete a form isn’t only dependent on the length of the form. There are a number of factors contributing to your landing page’s conversion rate, and form length is only one of them. It’s important to recognize this, because you shouldn’t just assume that adjusting the length of your form will always have a major influence on your page’s conversion rate or the types of leads it generates. Note some of these other major factors that contribute to whether a landing page visitor will complete the form:

• The value of the offer to be redeemed. (Is it valuable enough to the visitor to be worth the form completion?)
• The types of information requested on the form. (Does the form ask for too-sensitive information that dissuades visitors from completing the form?)
• Website credibility and visitors’ perceived sense of privacy/security. (Does the visitor trust the website enough to feel secure in providing their personal information?)

Marketers must understand that all of the factors above — not just form length — can contribute to landing page friction and, thus, impact conversion. Now that we’ve gotten that understanding out of the way, let’s hone in on form length and how to decide what length is best for you.

Do You Need More New Leads, or More High Quality Leads?

This is the single most important question you need to ask yourself when deciding on form length. In a nutshell, the length of your form inevitably leads to a tradeoff between the quantity and quality of the leads you generate. A shorter form usually means more people will be willing to fill it out, so you’ll generate more leads. But the quality of the leads will be higher when visitors are willing to complete more forms fields and provide you with more information about themselves and what they’re looking for.

Therefore, shorter forms usually result in more overall leads, while longer forms will result in fewer, but higher quality leads. So when deciding on the length of your forms, make sure to involve your sales team in the discussion. Your decision on form length should hinge on whether you need more leads, or whether you need better leads, and input from your sales organization should be critical to that decision-making process. Let’s examine each scenario in more detail.

Scenario 1: You Need More Leads

If your sales team is suffering from an overall deficiency in leads and could benefit from more leads to work in general, this is an indication that your forms should be short and simple to eliminate as much friction as possible. The key here is to ask for enough information that allows you to contact your leads (i.e. name, email address, phone number), but to limit unnecessary form fields that only help to qualify leads and, thus, increase the likelihood potential leads will abandon your landing page without converting.

You may want to ask for more than just your leads’ contact information to give your sales team more background on leads upfront, but remember, you can always ask for more information later in the sales process. Too often, companies request all kinds of contact information, neglecting to realize that their 15-field forms are significantly lowering conversion rates.

Scenario 2: You Need Higher Quality Leads

If raw, overall number of net new leads isn’t a problem for your sales team, but rather they’re wasting time trying to sift through lots of leads to separate the bad ones from the quality ones, this means you’d probably benefit from using your forms to better qualify your leads and help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

To help achieve this, longer forms will do the trick. They’ll deter people who aren’t legitimately interested in your business from completing multiple fields, but they’ll capture people who are interested enough to complete the longer form. Additionally, longer forms will collect more information that helps sales people learn more about and further qualify leads before deciding whether to pursue them. Longer forms will save salespeople the trouble of contacting leads who they know aren’t typically a good fit for the products/services your business offers.

So if lead quality, not quantity, is a bigger issue for your business, what types of form fields should you be adding to your forms? In short, any field that would collect information to allow you to determine whether a lead is high quality or not. Obviously, this will vary from business to business, and it will greatly depend on the buyer personas you’ve identified as your ideal target customers. If you have a clear understanding of the details that make up your buyer personas, you can start to understand which types of information you should ask for on your form to decide whether or not your new leads fit those personas and how strong those leads are — in other words, how likely they are to become a customer. The questions on your form could reveal background information such as demographics, location, industry, company name/website, role, etc. For example, if you’re a local plumber serving only home or building owners in a specific geographic location, you might ask prospective leads to include their location. Doing so would allow you to weed out any bad leads who are outside of the locations you service.

You might also want to add in a question or two that would allow you to gauge their need for your product, their likelihood to purchase your service, or their fit with your company. For example, HubSpot sells marketing software, and all of the forms on our landing pages include an optional field that asks the visitor to describe their biggest marketing challenge. We use this information to learn more about and qualify our leads before putting them into our sales funnel.

Information gathered in these fields could also serve as helpful data for more advanced lead scoring and lead management processes if that’s something your business would benefit from.

Test to Determine Your Form Field Sweet Spot

Once you’ve fit yourself into one of the two scenarios above — or if you think you might fall somewhere in the middle — the best thing to do to determine your ideal form length is to do some A/B testing. If you’re a HubSpot customer using HubSpot Enterprise, our Advanced Landing Pages tool makes it very easy to A/B test your landing pages, and you could specifically use it to test form lengths to determine your form field sweet spot. Here’s how to test for each scenario discussed above:

Scenario A (You Need More Leads): Test a landing page using a longer form against the same landing page using a shorter form (or test multiple form length variations). When analyzing your A/B test, you should be looking to see how the various forms affect conversion rates. The hypothesis is that you will be able to gather more leads from your shorter forms, but if not, another landing page factor may having a bigger impact on your landing page’s conversion rate (remember — form length isn’t the only factor). If this is the case, spend some time optimizing other elements of your landing page such as copy, layout, and offer, and see if those changes positively impact your page’s conversion rate.

Scenario B (You Need Higher Quality Leads): Run an A/B test on a landing page that tests longer forms but puts more of a focus on the different types of fields you include. When analyzing your A/B test, you should be looking for indicators of lead quality. The hypothesis is that your conversion rate will likely go down, but that you’ll notice leads that are higher in quality and easier to qualify right off the bat. You’ll likely need to consult with your sales team about their perception of the quality of the leads you produced from specific landing page variations to help you settle on the right number — and types — of form fields.

For more detailed information about A/B testing, download our free Introduction to Using A/B Testing for Marketing Optimization ebook.

How many form fields do you include on your lead-capture forms? Have you conducted A/B testing to determine your form field sweet spot?

Image Credit: Victor1558

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Although none of us really like to admit it, let’s be honest: first impressions matter. So if you’re trying to build a remarkable social media presence, you can bet that the look and feel of your brand pages in social media will make an impression on new visitors who know nothing or little about you. It’s no secret that people will judge a book by its cover. And if that’s the case, wouldn’t you want to make sure the first impression of your brand page is one that captures visitors’ attention, making them inclined to stick around and learn more about you?

Take Twitter brand pages for example. The background of the page literally provides businesses with a blank canvas to decorate, so to overlook the marketing potential of this valuable Twitter real estate would be a disadvantage to marketers. Smart marketers are using this space to visually and creatively capture visitors’ attention, emphasize their value proposition, promote offers and campaigns, and provide more information than the character limit in their bios allow. Are you?

If you could use some inspiration, here are some great examples of how real brands are painting their Twitter landscapes. And to get started designing your own Twitter background, check out our handy guide (with a video tutorial) on how to create a custom Twitter background.

1) Etica Wines

The Etica Wines Twitter page is a perfect blend of interesting design, branding, and links for visitors to learn more about the company, a wine guide and resource, as well as connect with them on Facebook or via email.

2) Spotify

The Twitter background design for Spotify, a music discovery and sharing application for all genres, effectively demonstrates Spotify’s value proposition, both in its imagery as well as its minimalistic copy.

3) IdeaPaint

IdeaPaint’s Twitter background cleverly features the brand’s signature product — paint that transforms walls into whiteboards — in action. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!

4) Dropbox

The Twitter background design for Dropbox, a file and folder sharing service, features a cute and clever cartoon that embodies its brand/product. Your first impression? Dropbox is such a likable brand!

5) Adrants

Adrants, a quirky marketing and advertising publication, uses its Twitter background to mimic that of its website, simply and consistently extending brand recognition.

6) The Sales Lion

Similarly, The Sales Lion’s Twitter background perpetuates the branding elements of its website’s masthead while also providing visitors with a quick snippet of information about what The Sales Lion is and what it offers.

7) Snapple

Snapple uses its Twitter background as a call-to-action to promote its latest Twitter campaign, which encourages Twitter users to tweet at the brand using either the hashtag #lemonade or #tea (depending on Twitter users’ preference for which part of the popular Half & Half flavor is their favorite) for a chance to win ‘Snapply’ prizes.*

Modcloth

Online retailer Modcloth uses its Twitter background to feature one of its retro-inspired swimsuits in a way that is fun, feminine, friendly, and very on brand, at the same time promoting its other Twitter accounts to direct Twitter users to the most appropriate Twitter contacts for their particular inquiries.

9) Salesforce

Salesforce uses its Twitter background real estate to emphasize its cloud branding and also show the faces behind the brand’s tweets. (Note: Using ^ followed by a person’s initials is a way for brands to show who authors individual tweets when Twitter is managed by multiple contributors).*

10) Target

While we usually find patterned backgrounds to be a little bit on the distracting/annoying/headache-inducing side, Target strikes a healthy balance between pattern and white space on its Twitter background, while also providing ways for Twitter users to connect with the brand on other social networks.

11) Zendesk

There’s nothing wrong with a simple, clean design, and Zendesk’s background definitely demonstrates that, along with an unobtrusive call-to-action to follow the brand — and what you’ll get if you do.

12) Livestrong

Livestrong’s fierce Twitter background also inspires, empowering visitors to connect with the foundation in a number of ways to appeal to each of the brand’s different personas.

13) MLT Creative

MLT Creative, a B2B marketing agency, uses its page to feature its mission, to “make ideas work,” and emphasize its agency’s creativity. Clean, professional-looking, and intriguing!

14) Zipcar

Zipcar’s background creatively showcases its happy users, putting customers at the forefront of its Twitter marketing strategy. The page also includes a call-to-action to learn more and sign up for Zipcar on its website.

15) IMPACT Branding

Inbound marketing agency IMPACT Branding’s Twitter page proves that looking professional and appealing doesn’t have to mean complicated designwork. With its sleek design, the page highlights IMPACT’s value prop and where Twitter users can find more information.

16) McDonald’s

Like Snapple, McDonald’s uses its Twitter background to reflect its current marketing promotion, Dollar Menu University, an interactive game that it also promotes using its banner image and the pinned tweet at the top of its page.*

17) HubSpot

While we didn’t find many examples of businesses using their Twitter backgrounds to feature calls-to-action for particular promotions, offers, or events, we’re currently using HubSpot’s very own Twitter background to promote our upcoming marketing conference, Inbound 2012. Don’t be afraid to use your Twitter background to highlight your campaigns and drive Twitter users to action. Remember: you can update your background as often as you’d like!

(*Note: Use of features such as page banners/pinned tweets you see on pages like Snapple, Salesforce, McDonald’s, and HubSpot is available only to businesses with Enhanced Brand Pages, currently only available to select brands.)

What other creative business uses of Twitter backgrounds have you come across? Feel free to share them in the comments below!

Connect with HubSpot:

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HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Online Marketing Web Page Copywriting

Of course if you have the funds, there are great firms that can assist you with online marketing web page copywriting, however most small businesses aren’t really in the position to outsource this kind of work, so we wanted to provide you with some tips that can assist you with this process.  You see it really doesn’t matter how top-notch your product is or what kinds of sales and specials you may have if you don’t have great online marketing (marketing online) web page copywriting.  This is what moves people to action and word choice needs to be carefully assessed.

Online Marketing Web Page Copywriting | Copywriting Studies

Many online marketing (marketing online) web page copywriting studies have shown that web surfers spend about 10 seconds before deciding whether or not they want to explore more or simply hit the back button.  So where do their eyes peer first?  The folks over at SEOChat have the answer in their article on online marketing web page copywriting:

Eye tracking studies performed by Jakob Neilsen showed that people pay attention to the left hand-top side of the web page first, and then read the headline, subheading and finally scan the text.This means that the most important part of your web page is your headline and content directly under your headline. This is where you must make your most crucial points.

Another eye opener to the world of web marketing is the fact that people do not read websites. People SCAN WEBSITES.

 Now that you’re aware of these facts, you’re probably looking for tips to help your website become more persuasive and engaging, wait no further.

Online Marketing Web Page Copywriting | Implementation

Websurfers scan websites just as they scan newspapers.  Thats why its important to include many headers with main points, also including bulleted lists is a surefire way to grab a scanner’s attention.  As a matter of fact here’s a bulleted list on online marketing web page copywriting tips provided by Site-Booster.com:

• Print out the best stuff you’ve collected and type it up over and over again. Nothing will get great copywriting into your head faster than typing it yourself. Spend five hours typing various pieces of great copy into your computer and by the end of the five hours, you’ll be on your way to website copywriting greatness.
• Another great place to find examples of “killer” headlines is in the checkout line at your local grocer. You know those magazines in the racks you stare at because there’s nothing else to do? Those people have professional copywriters who do nothing all day but dream up headlines that will grab you in seconds and seduce you into grabbing their magazine off the shelf.
• When you’re engaged in website copywriting, don’t sound like an attorney. This is one of the biggest mistakes I find on business websites. Everyone thinks they have to sound like a corporation. I call it “corps peak”.

Online Marketing Web Page Copywriting | Conclusion

So now that you have all of your online marketing (marketing online) web page copywriting guns loaded and ready why not go ahead and give it a shot.  Try assigning this to someone in your small business that is somewhat of a wordsmith.  Don’t have anybody that can do your online marketing (marketing online) web page copywriting tasks, then you might benefit from checking out Social Media in 7 Minutes.

Image attribution: http://www.onlinemarketinginsingapore.com/online-marketing-web-page-copywriting/

If you enjoyed reading “Online Marketing Web Page Copywriting Cheat Sheet” then read more tips right here at BlackBoxSocialMedia.

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Social Media Marketing And SEO For Business

Here are 6 Useful Page Speed Optimization Tips

Page speed on your website is no longer something that can be overlooked. It is now a premium feature that every user is looking for; after all, a low ‘Page speed’ demands too much of “Patience”

And it’s not just that! The Page download speed is important for various reasons:

• Your sales can be affected if you don’t display your products in time
• Online transactions can suffer through low page speed
• Higher operational costs are incurred because of the large number of requests to the web servers.
• You have greater bandwidth usage
• You need more CPU memory and power supply
• And many other reasons!

This is WHY Page speed optimization is almost inevitable. If you are now influenced to take corrective measures, then here’s what you can do:

Page Speed Optimization Tips |1. Enable asynchronous updating

By doing this, you are allowing the user to update parts of web pages so that the whole page does not have to reload. This saves time and doesn’t negatively affect speed. For instance, image files can turn out to be really heavy. The best deal here is to display thumbnails, which can be enlarged on user request.

Page Speed Optimization Tips |2. Cache your site

Enabling a caching system makes it possible for the site to function without regular re-loading. Certainly, file refreshing and updating of the cache takes place in regular intervals; only that, in this case, your user doesn’t suffer time for reviewing the same content in some intervals of time

Page Speed Optimization Tips |3. No Text Images

Yes, you have seen it on banner ads as well as hoardings – images which have text. But, No! They don’t work for your website and at the same time, they are useless for SEO.

Imagine, putting out important information in the form of an image and facing problems like low page speed along with the fact that search engines like Google can’t find it for keywords!

Page Speed Optimization Tips |4. Write better codes

This is what the IT guy really needs to do. The web understands simple language. So why use detailed, elaborate coding when it affects loading time? Page speed optimization can be attained to a great extent by writing efficient codes for CSS and HTML files.

Page Speed Optimization Tips |5. Put the Java script in the end

Java scripts take longer to load, slowing down the entire process of website downloads. So, if you put the java scripts in the end, your user already has content to view and while he skims through that, your page can complete the remaining task.

Page Speed Optimization Tips |6. Get onto a Content Delivery Network

Now, it’s up to you to strategically connect to networks across the globe so that you are closer to your user. In simple words, if your server is really far, your website packet data has to travel a great deal before it can load. So, being present on a content delivery network or CDN, means providing periodic cache of your website to the network closest to your user’s location – making this a faster, superior experience.
Reports show that you can double your conversions simply by page speed optimization. Almost a 4.3% drop in sales is reported to be because of slow page speed and its’ noted that almost 57% of users don’t wait more than 3seconds before jumping to your competitor site – It’s only smart to start ‘speeding’ up now!

The article by Avid blogger and SEO enthusiast Divya. Divya works for SEO Company with offers variety of services including Content Writing Service, social media marketing and more.

If you liked ‘Importance Page Speed Optimization – 6 Tips for Your Website’, then you may also enjoy other articles about search engine optimization (posicionamiento en buscadores) available at Black Box Social Media.

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Social Media Marketing And SEO For Business

When you “share” a page on Facebook, you will – in most cases – have the range of various image thumbnails to choose from. More often than not, these thumbnails will be random, to say at least: banners from the sidebar, commenter’s Gravatar photos, etc. Obviously, you can always choose the best image, but will your readers do the same?

What is more, when a reader “likes” your article (which most users are more likely to do as that’s just so much easier), there will be no option to choose the thumbnail and your post will be placed on that user’s Facebook stream with an absolutely random and (in most cases) irrelevant image.

How much more interest could you great article result in if it *always* had a great and relevant thumbnail to go with the update?

Unlike Google Plus (which is much smarter at marking up the page and grabbing the most relevant information from the page), Facebook should be clearly “pointed” to what should make it to the update. Like it or not, it benefits you (in the first place) if you spend an effort to explain your page in a language Facebook understands.

For the lucky WordPress bloggers, there are a few plugins that will help you point Facebook to the best image to go in your Facebook “likers’” updates:

First Things First: Clear Facebook Cache!

If you try experimenting with different images as a thumbnail, you will instantly face a problem: Facebook page caching. Facebook would cache your page as soon as you (or anyone else) like it and will show you the same thumbnail each time (no matter which image you have in the meta tag).

Use this tool that clears Facebook cache of the page and creates a new one.

You can also use that tool to preview how Facebook “sees” your page before you even try to “like” it:

1. Custom Image SRC: the Simplest Option

Custom Image SRC is a handy plugin that lets you specify the image you want to be in the page preview on Facebook when anyone “likes” your post. The plugin works on the “Edit post” level:

Basically, the plugin adds the following code in the individual page <head> section:

<link rel=”image_src” href=”preview-image-here.jpg” />

With this code in the header, the random preview image is overridden by the image that you specify.

Let’s see if it works!

Here’s what the page we are “liking” on Facebook looks like:

Before activating the plugin:

(Absolutely random image from the sidebar is grabbed as the page thumbnail after someone likes your page)

After:

(The image *you* want is grabbed as the page preview):

2. Facebook: Open Graph Plugin

There’s another way to control your page Facebook “snippets”: WP Facebook Open Graph protocol which adds Facebook Meta information to your blog pages (the plugin requires your a Facebook User ID or App ID for it to work).

When it comes to generating the image preview, the plugin will:

• Try to use the page “featured” image;
• If you don’t have a “featured” image, it will pull the first image in the post/page content;
• If there are no images in the post, it will default to using the image you put into the plugin settings in the admin panel.

Besides, controlling the post thumbnails on Facebook, the plugin will also handle the proper title / description within the snippet on Facebook user’s wall:

Here’s the info the plugin has added to my post:

3. Also:

• It’s rather a speculation (but one I myself have seen evidence of), but Facebook seems to prefer .JPG images
• In order for the plugins above to work properly, make sure your image is self-hosted
• The image must be at least 50px by 50px and have a maximum aspect ratio of 3:1. Facebook will make it square if you don’t.

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by joannapoe

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SEO Consulting Blog – Seo Smarty

I’m a big fan of JS bookmarklets for hacking productivity and automating routine tasks that I do over and over again. In this post I want to share with you a new one that I found and have been using a lot…

If you don’t know what a JS bookmarklet is or how to use them I strongly suggest you click here to get the basics.

Check if a page is blocked by robots.txt

This all came about because of a Google+ post I made:

While doing site audits I regularly find myself diagnosing indexation issues for a particular page and I find it very handy to be able to click a button and see if it’s blocked by the site’s robots.txt file as that’s a common issue.

Thankfully the lovely Jeff Bail came to my rescue and coded me up a little bookmarklet to do this analysis.

Click here to grab the JS bookmarklet

If you add this to your bookmarks, browse to a page that’s blocked by robots.txt and then use the bookmarklet you should see something like this:

Since Jeff sent this over to me last week I’ve been using this like crazy so massive thanks to Jeff. If you want to show him some love tweet him!

I know this is a short post but I wanted to get this out there, thank Jeff and let you guys have a play with this. It might still have a few kinks to iron out so let me or Jeff know if you spot anything not working.

Tom Critchlow Tom Critchlow is VP Operations for the NYC office, living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. Fiercely curious about most things and passionate about everything.

Follow @tomcritchlow

Tom Critchlow

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