One of the ways that you can improve the click through rate from the search engine results pages (SERPs) is to attract attention and stand out from other results. Eye catching Meta title and description tags are a good starting point, but you can take this even further by utilising rich snippets.

The rel=”author” attribute has recently been introduced by Google to generate rich snippet displays that are very inviting.  If implemented correctly, you may see that an image of the article author appears next to the description of the search result, as below:

So the question begs: How can I replicate this and make my search results stand out with a picture of a handsome blogger?

There are three ways in which you can implement the rel=”author” attribute to attempt to trigger the photo display in the SERPs.

Method #1: Single author site

This is the simplest way. All you have to do is place a link on your post, anywhere on the page and point it towards your own Google Profile, with a rel=”author” attribute attached.

After that, ensure that you also link back to your site, from your Google Profile (Go to About> Links section).

Method #2: Multi-author site with no bio pages

This is the simpler of the two methods for multi-author sites. What you can do on every post, is link from each page to the various authors’ Google Profiles. This can be done by creating a contextual link with the author’s name on the post.

Do not forget to have the authors link back to the site from their Google Profile.

Method #3: Multi-author site with bio pages

Some sites actually link from the author’s name in the post to a bio or an author profile on the site.

The technique to get this happening on such a site is to firstly add a rel=”author” attribute to the link pointing to the author bio on the website and then link from the bio, with a rel=”me” attribute, to the relevant Google Profile.

Again, do not forget to have the authors link back to the site from their Google Profile.

For those who are more visually inclined, I’ve created a diagram to show you how it all works:

I hope that you now have a clearer idea of how you can get a handsome photo of yourself (or your authors) into the search results. It is a new feature, so there is no guarantee that if the above methods are implemented that the images will appear in the SERPS.

To check what authorship data Google can extract, use the Rich Snippets Testing tool:

For more information on how to implement rel=author, you can also check out their YouTube video.

The post Triggering Rich Snippets from rel=”author” attributes. appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Welcome to another SEO Hot Tub session, bringing you the latest in SEO from around the world. Major topics include how to keep your product pages SEO friendly, a close look at the performance of Yahoo Search Direct, and a study into the ranking of videos in universal search.

10 Tips to Keep Your Product Pages SEO Friendly

Here are ten tips to keep your product pages ranking well in organic search.  Thanks to Arpana Tiwari at Become Inc for this post.

1.Check robots.txt on every sub-domain

Make sure that there are no disallows on your silos and key landing pages.

2. Check noindex rules across your site

Check if your noindex rules and guidelines are still consistent on the site

3. Don’t embed HTML in the code of your feed

Do not stuff promotional text into the product description as it could end up truncating oddly or even worse be removed from shopping engines.

4. Miscategorising listings in your feed

Shopping engines have algorithms to determine relevance and ranking based on the product type and category. Miscategorising products in hopes of attaining a lower CPC can result in low visibility and virtually no traffic.

5.Redirects

If you have recently re-launched a section of your site and redirected old pages to new ones, make sure the redirects are 301 (permanent redirects).

6.Duplicate Meta Titles

Google loves unique content, so try to make all your meta titles (also check your other meta tags while you’re on it) customised and relevant to the page and include keywords if possible.

7. Avoid duplicate product URLs in the feed

Having more than one feed for the same URL results in duplicate content.

8.Out-of-Stock products

Google strives to create a good search experience for their users. This includes product pages that may not be so relevant anymore.  Therefore, do not submit out of stock product listings.

9. Update product price, stock status, product description and best uses

With the increased focus on quality content and value add pages in the search index, it is important to keep content current and clean.

10. Encourage external links to product specific pages

Don’t rely only on external links to your homepage. Analyse the distribution of quality external links to your home page vs. deep links to product specific pages and prepare linking strategies accordingly.

MajesticSEO Announces the New Freshness Index

MajesticSEO has announced that they now drop link data after 30 days. The Freshness Index is available to users subscribing to the Silver Plan or higher. However, Free and Bronze Plan users are able to get a glimpse of the new feature now.  This now means that they now update their index more frequently and users thus are able to view a more granular graph of backlinks.

The image below compares the old vs. new graph. The one below shows how the historic view (the old graph that users see). The top graph is the new Freshness Index graph. The little blip in the historic graph can now be viewed on a day by day basis in the Freshness Index.

Head-To-Head: Yahoo Search Direct Vs. Google Instant

Yahoo has released their rival to Google Instant: Yahoo Search Direct on the 23^rd March.

Some of the features of Yahoo Search Direct are:

•       Left hand column displays related keywords

•       Right hand column displays one of the following:

–      3 top websites for that query

–      a weather forecast

–      stock information

–      the profile of a celebrity

–      other unique data sets

Although a positive change, Yahoo Search Direct still does not stack up to the helpfulness of Google Instant. Check out some side by side comparisons below and let us know what your thoughts are:

Source: Google Instant

Source: Yahoo Search Direct

Source: Google Instant

Videos in Universal Results

Reeling from inspiration during SMX West in San Jose, ReelSEO carried out an interesting study on the factors affecting its chance to rank in universal search.

It appears that there are 3 main factors impacting a video’s chance a video’s chances of showing up in universal search:

1. What Platform is used i.e. YouTube videos were seen most commonly in the universal results, compared to DailyMotion, Metacafe, Google Video and videos hosted on other platforms.

2. Ranking Factors within the Platform: It was found that 100% of the videos returned in universal search also ranked #1 on their native platform.

3. Keyword Intent: The intent of the keyword also played a role in determining the likelihood of the video appearing in the universal results.

In light of the findings, the three recommendations from the video study are:

• Upload your videos
• Get videos to rank in the platform’s search results
• Target informational keywords and try to avoid transactional keywords

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more juicy SEO news from around the world, right here at the BCA Blog!

The post SEO Hot Tub – 25th March 2011 appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Channel settings recommendations

First up, take this chance to fill up all the details in your channel! Optimise your channel description and the “About me” section with relevant keywords. The channel description is like a quick overall statement about your website/business, while the “About me” section is more comprehensive and should list details such as the different categories that your business deals with. Also, good practice is to place links to other digital assets such as your Facebook/Twitter page, your main website and other relevant URLS.

You can change these details simply by logging into your YouTube account, going to your own channel page and click on the link “edit”.  Below are two examples of channel descriptions from two large companies; one is very informative regarding the brand, and one includes many URL links. I recommend a balance of both from an SEO perspective.

Video Title

The title strategy should consist of the primary keyword, determined as the most relevant keyword with the highest amount of searches plus a short sentence with the suffix “- [brand name]” for branding.

Video Description

Start off your description with the primary keyword and your website address. The reason for this is that we want to increase the importance of the primary keyword and also to increase the visibility of the website address above the fold. The description allows for one line of text to be displayed. Only when you click on the description will it expand to show the full description.

Showing the primary keyword and the website address first encourages greater click through to the website and may also increase the relevance of the video and thus appear higher in search results for the primary keyword. (A lot of people tend to not expand the description).

A good example is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j59T09UQ9uc

Video with the one-line description with website address URL and keywords

Video with the full description.

If the URL/keyword was places below the fold, viewers will never see it unless they expand the description, hence the strategy to place it on the first line.

For more information on video description, visit http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95342

Using Annotation

Annotations used throughout the video are helpful in two ways: It creates internal linking between your own videos and also provides a way to socialise and interact with the viewer. Use annotation throughout the video to help engage the user and then direct them to your channel, a video or even search results. They are fully customisable in terms of the shape of the speech bubbles, the colour and the timing. The image shown above is an example of multiple annotations that are embedded on the video.

For more information visit the following reference: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92710&topic=14354

Submission of Video Transcripts

Submitting video transcripts will increase the videos significance, as transcripts can be used for relevance by YouTube while also providing sub-titles for accessibility purposes. In contrast, automated transcripts are not used for relevance by YouTube.

You can add transcripts by selecting Edit>Captions and Subtitles under any video.

For more information visit http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100077

Internal linking through playlists

YouTube playlists can be used to group similar videos together. Grouping videos into Playlists can have two benefits.

• Playlists tend to appear very high in the search results, which allow video owners to provide more results and take up more space on the page.
• Videos that are within a playlist will automatically link to each other as a ‘Next in <playlist title>’, which increases the chances of views, and click throughs.

To create a solid playlist structure, create a playlist that is parallel with the categories of your website, if possible.

Reference: http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57792

Video Tagging Strategy

Keyword tags for each video should be created to categorise each individual video topic and help YouTube distinguish the relevance between the videos. This will improve the visibility of videos, especially if the viewer searches for a keyword which you have a tag for.

Hence, the strategy here is to submit a modest number of tags for your video. We don’t want to go overboard and “spam” the videos, as an excess of words do not sit pretty on the site. Instead, create about 5-10 tags per video.

The three types of tags each video should have are:

1. Channel tag: Create a tag that is specifically used across all your videos on the channel. Using the brand name is common. If your company is XYZ Australia, then create a simple tag like “xyzaustralia”. More about this later…
2. Category tags: Next, create a tag that is related to a certain type of video. If your XYZ Australia website is selling desktop computers and laptops, two separate areas, you should create tags to distinguish videos about each topic. A desktop-related video could have the tag “xyzdesktop”. The laptop could have the tag “xyzlaptop”. Try to mirror the types of video according to the themes on your website
3. Keyword tags: These are normal keywords tags that you want the video to rank for. They can be the actual search terms, but also related terms to the keywords i.e. “how to fix a flat tyre”, a possible related term that I could think of is “vehicle repair”, “tyres” or “roadside assistance”.

Now for the reason why to have channel and category tags: YouTube uses tags to determine the relevance of the video to the keywords in the tag. If you have an over-arching channel tag across all videos, it may indicate to YouTube that all these videos relate to the brand XYZ Australia in some way. When you have the category tags, this indicates that the video is part of XYZ but it is focusing on desktop computers, instead of laptop computers. It really is all about relevance.

YouTube paid brand channel option

If you have a big enough budget, you can consider getting a paid brand channel as a luxury add-on to your YouTube media vehicle. YouTube offer advertisers various solutions for building their brand presence on YouTube. The YouTube Paid Brand Channel is much more customisable and engaging, allowing the advertiser to add new features such as the ones listed below:

• highlighting video in a mosaic format e.g. http://www.youtube.com/hpyourstory
• creating a video slider on top of the channel e.g. http://www.youtube.com/abc
• creating a video gadget as desired by the advertiser e.g. http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii
• a custom top navigation e.g. http://www.youtube.com/toyotausa

The brand gadget channels also allow 3rd party tracking and IP/ locale GEO redirect, to redirect a user to a localised version. Check out the full experience at Reference: http://www.youtube.com/user/advertise

In summary, a minimum media spend required of $60,000 on YouTube over 3 months. The one great thing I would like to mention with a paid brand channel is that you can actually have links in your video going out to your external sites instead of just within YouTube!

All the best for your YouTube success! Stay tuned for more social media optimisation posts.

The post Youtube Optimisation appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

There are more blog posts teaching us how to conduct keyword research than we can poke a chopstick at. While the majority may be helpful to a degree, many involve the use of tools that we have to fork out money for.

To be honest, effective keyword research can easily be carried out using a variety of free methods. In fact, some of the best tools out there cost nothing at all and come from the exact search engine we are trying to rank for: Google!

This blog post will outline how to use various Google products to their full extent in your next keyword research project.  This will be taking into account recent changes made to the products, especially the Google Keyword Tool.

The Google products covered in this post are:

• Google Search Engine
• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Trends
• Google Insights
• YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool

Google Search Engine

Even by just looking at what a search engine brings up when a search term is typed in, can be enormously beneficial for building up a list of relevant keywords.

The two areas where you can draw valuable keywords from are ‘suggested searches’ and ‘related searches’. When going through these keywords, select the ones that are relevant to your situation as not all will be applicable (e.g. location based keywords).

Suggested keywords

To see suggested searches, hop on to the Google search engine you are targeting. In this case, it will be Google Australia. The search engine will bring up the suggested keywords automatically in a drop down box without actually bringing up the search results. Take a screenshot and then record all relevant keywords down.

Related searches

To find the related search terms for a keyword bring up the search results for your search term (our term is ‘car gps’). Scroll to the bottom and you can see a list of searches related to ‘car gps’. Record all relevant keywords.

The Google Keyword Tool (under Google Adwords)

If any, the Keyword Tool from Google is the product that all real SEO practitioners should be aware of.  This is based on the newly revamped keyword tool, an improvement over the previous versions of 2010.

Some of the key benefits of the updated keyword tool include:

• Flexible search options: Search any combination of keywords, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results.
• Easy Keyword Refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type.
• Negative keywords: Easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop-down menu to select and save your negative keyword.
• Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, global search, ad share, and more.

Reasons to use the Keyword Tool

As this product uses Google’s own database, the results returned are quite accurate. This tool can assist in expanding your current keyword list.  It is also very useful in ensuring that the selected are the most appropriate, especially for key landing pages.

In my personal experience, there have been several occasions when I selected a keyword for a key landing page and the keyword I thought was the most suitable turned out to be a dud, as there was another keyword which is just as relevant but with much more search volume! However, the data is easily exportable to Excel which makes the information actionable.

The following section provides an explanation of the functionality of the Keyword Tool.

Search terms to use

Use core keywords that define the website and plug them individually into the Keyword Tool to expand your keyword list.

Advanced options

The Advanced options, which can be configured by clicking on the ‘Advanced options’ link circled in red, can assist in making the search results relevant. Why select the country of Canada if the target market was Australia? Remember to set the correct location and language that you are targeting.

In this example, the target country/language is Australia/English.

Another helpful feature within the Advanced options is the Filter keywords section, where there is an option to filter out keywords based on:

• Local Monthly Searches
• Global Monthly Searches
• Competition
• Estimated Avg. CPC
• Search share

This is particularly helpful if you have criteria in mind for the keywords you want to gather i.e. only looking for high volume keywords for a key landing page.

Configuring Keyword results using the sidebar

The sidebar is useful for filtering the search results. The three sections shown here are used to filter the keywords by category or type of keyword, but the important setting is the Match Types. Make sure to set the correct match type before starting to key in search terms and exporting the search results. Otherwise, you may suddenly get confused as to why the search volume returned is so high; when in fact the match type was set on broad match (Broad match is the default match type).

As good as it seems, there are limitations on the Keyword Tool. Here is a summary list of limitations:

• You can only pull up to 100 keywords if you are not logged into Google Adwords; 800 keywords if you are logged in
• You may only enter a maximum of 100 search terms at any one time
• Search volume is derived only from searches conducted on Google search engines (Google.com.au, Google.co.uk and so on)

Inaccuracies with the Google Keyword Tool

There have been talks that the Google Keyword Tool may not be accurate for search terms that do not hold any commercial value in Google’s eyes. Back in the SMX East 2010, during a presentation by Baris Gultekin, there were many questions posed to the Google panel around the features and limitations of the tool in that aspect. One major highlight that was confirmed by the Google panel was that searches that do not have commercial viability may not appear in the Google Keyword Tool, as the tool was designed in mind for Google Adwords users. This case in point was also raised in the 20^th October SEM Synergy Radio show hosted by Bruce Clay.

One example that was pointed out back then was that a search term for “Facebook” yielded no search volume.

Picture referenced from http://www.aimclearblog.com/2010/10/07/r-i-p-google-keyword-tool-long-live-seo/

Naturally, we did some searching on the same term just a few days and this is what we noticed:

The Keyword Tool appears to display 1.12 billion searches for the term ‘Facebook’ across all countries and on broad match. To be even more thorough, we conducted searches on words that have absolutely no commercial significance, such as “sphere” and “square” and the words do seem to show the significant search volume. This is different to what has reported on other blogs and sites. In conclusion, it’s best to just know that the tool may not be 100% accurate and use it with a grain of salt.

Traffic Estimator Function (For Estimating Seed Keyword Search Volume)

Google Keyword Tool may be great at helping expand your keyword list, but have you ever wanted to just find the search volume for a particular set of keywords and not have Google return up to 800 other suggested keywords?

As the Keyword Tool has an issue with returning search volume for a set list of keywords we recommend that you use the rarely mentioned Traffic Estimator feature. This featured can be accessed by just selecting the Traffic Estimator link at the top left hand corner highlighted in the red circle.

It works just like the Keyword Tool but the ‘Advanced options’ is much more limited, only allowing you to edit the location and languages.

We’ve also compared the search volume returned by Traffic Estimator to the data from the Keyword Tool and as suspected they are exactly the same.

The limitations with the Traffic Estimator tool are:

• You can pull search volume for up to 2,500 keywords at one time
• The exported data does not provide you trending global monthly search volume

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is great for aiding in keyword research. Pull out relevant keywords that are driving traffic to your site, paid or organic. Use the filter functions to remove all brand term keywords as they will skew your research (as you are more likely to rank for brand terms). Also filter any keywords that were mispelt.

Export the top 100, top 500, or however many keywords you desire, and then add them to your keyword list.  Apart from the addition to the keyword list, keywords gathered from Google Analytics can indicate whether the keywords you are currently ranking for on your site are the most effective for the market (e.g. should you rank for laptop or notebook?).

Google Webmaster Tools

Search Queries Section

The Search Queries section is the most important section in Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) for keyword research. Login to your GWT account (or register for one if you don’t have one yet), go to the Search Queries section and then you can download all the search queries along with relevant metrics such as impressions and click. This information is similar to the keywords given by Google Analytics in that it provides users with keywords that are already ranked for.

Keywords Section

The Keywords section brings up the most commonly used words on the site. While this may be helpful, some of the words will not be useful so keep in mind to filter many of the keywords before adding to your keyword list.

Google Trends

Google Trends can provide you with valuable information on keywords that are searched for based on a website. Go to the Google Trends homepage, scroll to the bottom and select Trends for websites.  Enter your own website and any relevant websites (e.g. competitors) and it will give you a list of keywords that visitors have also searched for. Filter out the irrelevant keywords and add them to your list.

Google Insight

Google Insight is a product that can be used for both keyword research and for identifying trending keyword topics.

Why should I use Google Insight?

Google Insight can be used to effectively determine the trending keywords for the seed keyword that is entered. There are many ways to use Insight, so the following guideline is only a general recommendation focused on conducting keyword research; adjust the way you use Insight based on your own circumstances.

General Filter Settings

• Select Web Search (which is the default setting) in the first filter. We aren’t looking for images, news or products; we want actual searches in Google.
• Configure the geographical setting based on your target market (Australia). Do not worry too much about sub-regions unless you are targeting a particular area
• Set the historical data range to ‘Last 12 months’. You probably don’t want to go much further back as it you may start to pick up older trending topics which may not be that important.

What you can do now is enter search terms that are relevant to your SEO project and you will able to see the Top Searches and Rising Searches.  A good suggestion could be to record all Top and Rising search terms and add them to a keyword list.

YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool

Another hidden gem that is a great source for keyword ideas, especially if you are optimising for a YouTube channel is the YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool was included in this post as YouTube is owned by Google.

You can search using the three different methods: by words, phrases, a particular video ID or by demographic. The first option, using words or phrases, is the more popular feature but you may find that gathering keywords by video or demographic is more useful.

You may find that compared to the Keyword Tool it is quite difficult to find quality keywords from YouTube because of the way people search on the YouTube site is quite different to how a user searches on a normal search engine.

That wraps up the spill on how to use Google products for keyword research. If you are using any other Google product for keyword research or are using the products listed in this blog a different, we would love to hear your experiences with utilising Google products for keyword research.

The post Keyword Research using Google Products appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Overview of Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Social media has been growing at an amazing pace and Bruce Clay has been looking into how we can get greater traction with our social media assets by attempting to increase the search engine visibility of our social media pages as well as increasing user engagement through Social Media Optimisation (SMO).

Facebook Page optimisation has been of particular interest, due to the increasing popularity of Facebook.

Facebook Pages are excellent tools which can be used to increase brand visibility and engage followers through the use of some simple strategies and techniques

So what exactly is Social Media Optimisation and how can it be applied to Facebook?

For those still baffled between social media optimisation (hence Facebook Page optimisation) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) here is a well cited quote from Rohit Bhargava, the Vice President for Interactive Marketing with Ogilvy Public Relations described the concept of social media optimisation as a technique in which to

“  ..implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs. “

What this means is that compared to SMM, which includes paid Facebook Ads and other methods that externally market your social media sites, SMO is about improving the components that lies internally within your social media accounts.

By optimising the components such as your profile ‘Info’ fields,  your wall status updates, the notes you create, the custom tabs you can develop with FBML (more information on that further on) you can easily optimise your Facebook Pages..

Facebook page optimisation has generally two main objectives:

1. To optimise for search engines

Optimising for the search engines specifically involves improving all facets of a Facebook Page, so that it will have a better rankings in search engines those indexes and displays search results on Facebook pages.  Examples include optimising keywords for the Facebook Profile Tab and wall status updates.

2. To optimise for user engagement

There is a saying that ‘No man is an island’. This is perfectly apt for a Facebook Page. We don’t only want people to find your Facebook Page, but also to share content with you and spread the word about your wonderful page.  Instead of actively marketing the Facebook Page externally, ensure that your Facebook Page is optimal for encouraging traffic to your main website and other social media assets such as Twitter, YouTube and your blog.

Tips on how to optimise a Facebook Page for search engines

Before we go into how to optimise for a Facebook Page for search engines, we must ask ourselves “Which parts of a Facebook Page exactly does a search engine index and display on their search results?”

An analysis was conducted by Bruce Clay using Google Search as it is the dominant search engine in Australia, and in many other countries. After a bit more digging by our team we found that using a simple Google search query to discover what content from Facebook Page were displayed in the search engine results pages. However, we have empirical evidence to suggest that the following sections of the Facebook Page is being indexed and displayed.  This is interesting knowing the body of the Facebook pages are empty with Javascript disabled.

The findings were that a majority of Facebook pages are not indexable by Google due to privacy restrictions, but all public pages are getting crawled and indexed like any other pages on the web. The different tabs are also getting indexed with their relevant URLs, (even though these don’t look very sexy). Note that even user comments get indexed.

We received a report from the genius team over at Searchengineland.com earlier this year which indicated that Google real-time search is now including Facebook Pages as part of its search results.

Examples of different parts of a Facebook Page Google can display

Google indexes and displays the title of a notes page created in the Notes application

Google indexes and displays wall status update

Google indexes and displays a link that is posted on the wall

Google indexes and displays comments made on wall post updates

Google indexes and displays Facebook video titles in the universal search

Google indexes and displays the title and also the description of the video

Summary of how to optimise for a Facebook Page

• Always add unique content to your websites, whether it is a wall status update, or a
• When sending out wall status updates, be sure to include primary keywords relevant to the update
• Ensure you update your profile description and information, including the short blurb, with keyword rich, while at the same time maintaining relevance and appropriateness
• When creating notes with the Note application, make sure you optimise the title of the note page with primary keywords.
• Encourage users to post comments as they can capture greater exposure for your Facebook Page on Google search results.
• Optimise your titles and descriptions for your videos and photos
• In general, always think of keywords when you are adding content to any pages!

Tips on how to optimise a Facebook Page for user engagement

Update the ‘Info>Detailed Info’ fields to include links to your websites and other social media assets, similar to what Sony does below. They included links to not only their social media sites but to also other Sony websites.  This will encourage cross-reference traffic between all your websites.

Use Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to create custom tabs on which users can land on. The custom landing tab can be used to promote your Facebook Page, your website, other social media sites you own or just bring to attention a particular piece of information to the visitor. You can place any type of content on a custom tab, be it a link to your homepage, a YouTube video, or a quick survey for your visitors.  An example below is the Sony custom tab called ‘make.believe’.

Facebook has announced that on the 23^rd of August 2010, custom tabs for Facebook Pages will be limited to a width of 520 pixels. You will be able to preview your custom tabs before publishing it, so please remember to modify your custom tabs for a greater user experience.

References

Facebook: Profile and Page Roadmap Update: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/399

Technical discussion on FBML: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FBML

Static FBML Application Facebook Page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fbml/

You can create custom FBML boxes on the sidewall to promote your Facebook Page or any of your other websites.

The profile pictures can be more than just the logo of your brand! Maximise the use of your Facebook profile image size and include a call to action or a promotional feature in addition to your logo. The largest official size is 180×540 pixels; however there has been an instance where it was actually 200 x 200.

Both examples are displayed in the following banners taken from some of the largest global brands in the world.

Wrap-up of the post

We’ve gone through a quick definition of what social media optimisation is and covered some tips on how to optimise your Facebook Page for search engines (Using Google as the main example) and then delved into optimising for user engagement.

We hope that this post has helped you become a better social media optimiser. We believe that social media optimisation is complimentary to any search engine optimisation work and should be considered as part of your Internet marketing strategy. Any comments, success or failures, feel free to comment down below. We promise to be nice.

The post Facebook Marketing – Facebook Page Optimisation appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

When optimising for video, the following are perhaps a few steps that might have been looked over or missed, that can lead to greater video search domination. Note that these are general video search optimisation techniques and may or may not fit your current overall SEO strategy.

Video mark-up
To improve the probability of the Big G and other search engines indexing and including your video landing pages in the organic search results, remember to optimize the video mark up formats. The two main formats are Facebook share and Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa. More information can be found here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162163

The following images are what the code for the Facebook markup and Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa would look like:

Facebook Share video markup format:

Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa markup format:

Submit video sitemap
Once you have added the video markups, it’s time to submit the video site map to the search engines so they know the video landing pages exist. Hopefully, the spiders will then crawl, index and rank your video pages.

Above the fold
A lot of web sites still fail to realise (or realised but haven’t implemented) that including video above the fold is a double edged miracle worker; in terms of usability so that the customer does not have to scroll down to the video, and in terms of optimisation where you are placing more important content closer to the top of the page.

Promote and promote and promote your videos
You must take an active role in promoting and marketing the videos you have on your site, increase the number of views to the videos, encourage more people to comment on the video and allow visitors to rate the videos that they have seen. Once a visitor has finished watching a video, you can then prompt them with a list of other videos that they can also watch.

We human beings are a curious bunch. In addition to searching for and watching interesting and entertaining videos, we love to share a lot of the videos we enjoy. Therefore, if you do not have it, make sure you make it a priority that your videos can be shared throughout the web. This builds up brand presence and can draw free, natural and quality backlinks to your page.

Some examples of video sites you can share videos on are:

This summarises a few points marketers can take away and implement to existing videos. This list is not exhaustive, so do not forget to perform other very important tasks in video optimisation such as keyword,competitor research and so on.

Till next time fellow readers!

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