If you’ve reached this page in the hope of finding my latest blog posts, then I have both good news and bad news. The bad news is that you won’t find my latest posts here. The good news is that you can find them on my latest wordpress blog (https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/). You can also subscribe to my feed to keep up to date on my latest posts and news.
Happy Reading.
GG
Last year, Google rolled out authorship markup which displays author information (including a thumbnail image) right in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It can be extremely powerful and can absolutely make your content stand out. For example, here’s what a search result looks like for my post about bounce rate and exit rate.
With author details in the SERPs, a thumbnail image shows up for the author, there’s a link to the author’s Google profile (or Google+ profile), and you can link to additional posts from that author right from the search listing. If you are logged into Google+, you can also circle that author right from the search results. This can all lead to higher levels of trust with users, which can lead to higher engagement and click-through. Think about it, if Google is highlighting the author by providing all of the information I listed above, it can bring a higher level of credibility when users are searching for solutions, answers, help, etc.
The Problem with Authorship Markup
Although authorship markup can yield powerful results, there are some problems associated with it. As many webmasters have found out the hard way, adding authorship markup to a website or blog can be confusing. Google lists several ways you can add authorship markup to a website, which is both good and bad. It’s great to have options, but it leaves too much room for error, especially for non-technical website owners.
Also, since you’re never given all the feedback you need to make sure authorship markup is working, it can lead to a flawed (or botched) implementation that goes untouched and unfixed for too long. Google does provide the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, but it doesn’t include detailed instructions for making changes (nor does it always provide clear information).
Since Google doesn’t guarantee it will show author details for all markup implementations, you basically have to wait it out and see how the new markup takes. If it takes, you’ll see the robust search listings I showed you earlier. If it doesn’t take, you’ll see the standard listings (all text).
Again, not every author is eligible for author details in the SERPs. That’s algorithmically determined. Therefore, you won’t know right away if it’s your setup that’s the problem, or if you just aren’t eligible. As you can guess, this can be very frustrating for webmasters.
Yes, It Gets More Complicated, Enter rel=publisher
With the rollout of Google+ business pages, Google added a way to connect your business page with your website (and vice versa). The benefit of doing this is that a company can share +1’s across its website content and business page on Google+. It also makes you eligible for Google+ Direct Connect.
The Google+ Developers Page About Connecting a Website to a Business Page:
In order to connect your Google+ page with your site, you need to add more code. Google recommends adding a snippet of code to the head of your webpages using rel=publisher. The problem, once again, is that webmasters were adding the code, but never knew if it was implemented correctly. In addition, people were confused whether rel=publisher would work with rel=author? Could the two pieces of code be located on the same page? How would Google handle that? And would it screw up authorship markup? These were all good questions, and again, it caused a lot of confusion for webmasters.
Fixing a Botched Implementation
So, based on what I listed above, there are definitely webmasters out there who have implemented authorship markup that aren’t reaping the benefits in the SERPs. I know how frustrating this can be for webmasters, since I just finished helping one site fix a botched implementation. The author was at her wit’s end. And she isn’t alone.
But don’t fear. I’m going to explain what went wrong so you don’t make the same mistakes. I also hope this post can help you troubleshoot implementations that aren’t yielding the desired results. For example, if the SERPs don’t display author information, thumbnail images, etc. Let’s learn more about what was happening.
Some Background Information About The Setup
The site in question had implemented rel=author by linking directly to the Google+ profile for that person (it was a single author blog). According to Google, you can implement authorship markup this way, as documented in their help section about authorship markup. Note: Google just added a new way to add authorship markup, but the original methods are still supported.
With regard to the company I was helping, linking directly to a Google profile from each piece of content is easy, but it’s not what I recommend. Instead, I recommend linking to a dedicated author page on your site using rel=author, which then links to a Google profile using rel=me. Then you would link back to your author page from your Google profile using rel=me to complete the process. This three way linkage seems to work best, based on my experience.
If you haven’t dealt with authorship markup yet, then I’m sure the last paragraph completely confused you. :) Stick with me, though. There’s a good lesson to learn. Back to the site I helped.
So, the site in question was linking directly to a Google profile from each piece of content on the site. Then the Google profile was linking back to the site using rel=me. Using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, the implementation of authorship markup looked correct. Also, for a short period of time, author information did show up in the SERPs (according to the company). All looked good from their end.
An example of using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool to view authorship markup:
Adding Complexity – Connecting a Google+ Page with a Website
Then Google+ business pages rolled out and Google recommended that webmasters link their websites to their Google+ business pages using rel=publisher (as I covered earlier). So the site did just that, adding rel=publisher to each page of the site (using the code that Google provided), which was included in the Google help documentation.
When testing the pages using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool after rel=publisher went live revealed some strange results. The tool said authorship markup was correct, but the SERP preview showed the business page as the author. Needless to say, that’s not what the author wanted. After the site got crawled again, author details disappeared from the SERPs. Instead, just the typical SERP details were displayed. Note, rankings were unaffected (which you would hope would be the case), but author details, including the beautiful thumbnail image, were gone. Weeks went by and nothing changed in the SERPs.
The Fix
When I got involved, I immediately had a few recommendations:
1) I wanted to remove rel=publisher from each page of the site, other than the homepage. I believed that was confusing Google and could be screwing up author details in the SERPs.
2) I wanted to revamp the way authorship was installed on the site. Instead of linking directly to the Google profile from each page of the site using rel=author, I recommended adding links to a dedicated author page on the site using rel=author. Then, as I covered earlier, the website should link to the Google profile from the author page using rel=me. And last, they should add a link from the Google profile to the author page using rel=me. That’s the three part linkage I mentioned earlier.
The Results & Key Takeaways
After implementing the changes listed above, we needed to let the site get crawled again. This took about 5-6 six days. After which, I was excited to see that author details were back in the SERPs! For each piece of content ranking in Google, you can now see all the beautiful SERP details via authorship markup. And yes, it makes a huge difference for the site and author I helped. The listings just stand out.
So, if you have implemented authorship markup, while also connecting your site to your Google+ page, then beware of a botched setup. If you believe you should have author details showing up in the SERPs, but aren’t seeing them, don’t automatically assume you aren’t eligible. Some of you might be eligible… I recommend double-checking your setup, having someone familiar with SEO check it out, and then making changes, if necessary. Then it’s just a matter of waiting to get crawled again (which varies depending on your specific site).
So don’t hesitate, enhanced SERPs await. :)
GG
Last week Google announced that the +1 button now enables you to share content with your connections on Google+. This is the natural progression for the +1 button, which hit the scene before Google+ (the platform) did. Similar to the Like button for Facebook, it makes sense that the content you +1 can get pushed back Google+ for your connections to view, visit, share, etc. You can view a screenshot below of this in action.
When you choose to share content via the +1 button, you’ll notice that an image thumbnail sometimes shows up, along with a title and description. Google announced that they are giving site owners more control by letting them customize these elements, including the title, description, and image used for the thumbnail. This can definitely help publishers achieve “maximum sharability”. By adding some additional markup to your webpages, you can tailor the elements that show up when visitors share your content via the +1 button. I’ll cover those elements and how to add the markup below.
Maximum Sharability
I quickly mentioned this above, and wanted to explain what this means. I’m a firm believer that the image, title, and description can have a big impact on how your content gets shared, re-shared, +1’d, liked, etc. The reason is simple. Most people have hundreds of friends across various social networks (and some people have thousands of connections). The right “creative” can help your content stand out as your connections are scanning their circles in Google+. If you can catch their attention, you have a greater chance of having those people visit your content, +1 your update, and then share your post or update with their own connections. This can lead to a spike in traffic and exposure, which are both good for your business, blog, company, and digital efforts. Let’s take a look at how you can customize the snippet shared on Google+ when visitors click the +1 button.
Schema.org Attributes
In a previous post, I explained how you could customize your +1 button code to unlock exclusive content. You can check my post out in greater detail to learn more about adding the button to your site, editing the code, etc. For this post, I’m going to focus on how to add markup to your html content in order to tell Google which elements should be used for the thumbnail image, title, and description when shared. You can accomplish this by adding schema.org attributes to your content, which will tell Google which elements to use. In order to do this, you’ll need to use the Article item type when adding the code.
The three pieces of markup that you’ll need to add to your webpage include:
1. itemprop=”name”
2. itemprop=”description”
3. itemprop=”image”
In addition, you will need add an element and attribute to your opening body tag in your document, which is the itemscope element and itemtype attribute. See below.
The “name” attribute will provide the title you want to use when visitors share your content, and the “description” and “image” attributes are self-explanatory. The great part about adding this markup is that you choose which elements to use for the image, title, and description versus leaving Google in charge of doing so. For example, if you have a killer visual that you want to make sure is used, or if you want to include a great title that’s not the title tag of the page, then you should use this markup to make sure your suggestions are used. Remember “maximum sharability” that I mentioned earlier? Controlling these elements can help.
Note, if you want to understand the order of precedence that Google will employ when choosing the elements for the snippet, check out the help page about the +snippet attributes. You’ll see that Google recommends using the schema.org attributes over other methods.
+Snippet Example:
Let’s walk through a quick example. I’ve added the necessary markup to this blog post in order to show you how it works. You can walk through the following steps to add the markup to your own webpage.
1. Add ItemScope Element
The first thing you want to do is to add the itemscope element and itemtype attribute to the opening body tag. It looks like this:
2. Add The Title For Your +Snippet
Next, let’s use the title tag as the title of the snippet. To do this, you need to add the itemprop=”name” attribute to the title tag.
3. Add The Description For Your +Snippet:
Now let’s focus on the description for the snippet. You can choose which text to use and then add the itemprop =”description” attribute to the html element containing the description. For example, imagine the desired text was contained in a paragraph tag:
{your description goes here}
4. Add The Image That Should Be Used For The Thumbnail:
Last, let’s choose the image thumbnail that gets displayed by default. Find the image that you want to use and add the itemprop =”image” attribute to the img tag. Note, you can use any image that’s on the page in question.
That’s it! You have successfully added the necessary markup for controlling the +snippet. If you want, you can test it out this page now by clicking the +1 button above. You should see the elements that I chose for the +snippet when you share this on Google+.
The Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool
Google provides a way to test the markup on your webpages to see if your code is set up properly. It’s called the rich snippets testing tool and you can use it to test your +snippet. Simply visit the tool and then add the URL to the form. Click “Preview” and you should see the structured data that Google extracted from your webpage. You should see each attribute listed, along with the elements you chose to use in the +snippet.
Control the +Snippet
Google+ is growing rapidly, and members will be sharing more and more information there. As I covered in this post, Google is now enabling webmasters to control the snippet that gets shared, which can definitely help with exposure, +1’s, shares, etc. Using some basic markup, you can easily control the elements that gets used for your +snippet. So, in a digital world where you often can’t control how content gets shared, you can have some control here. Therefore, I recommend you add this markup. Again, think about “maximum sharability”.
GG
Last Wednesday, I presented at Trenton Small Business Week on behalf of the Princeton Chamber of Commerce. The topic of my presentation was, “Understanding the True Return on Investment (ROI) of Social Media Marketing”. It’s one of my favorite subjects since it combines two topics that I’m extremely passionate about, Social Media and Analytics. Actually, it combines much more than just those two subjects, which comes across as I take people through the 53 slide presentation.
Although Social has gotten a lot of coverage in digital marketing, it’s clear that business owners are still wondering what the return will be. As I explain during the presentation, there unfortunately isn’t an easy formula for calculating ROI when it comes to Social Media. One of the core reasons ROI is tough to calculate is because Social Media impacts so many other channels and efforts, that it would be hard to run a straight formula. In addition, I’ve found that most companies completely underestimate the time and resources needed to effectively drive a Social strategy. And time and resources can quickly be seen in your costs. So, the combination of not understanding the ways Social is helping your company mixed with easily seeing the costs involved makes for a lethal combination from an executive viewpoint.
The Digital Ecosystem and Tracking
During my presentation, I first want to make sure the audience has a solid understanding of the digital ecosystem, including how all the various parts can work together (and often do). After that, I try and explain the various ways that Social Media can impact the bottom line. That includes impacting both revenue and costs. And weaved throughout the presentation is an extreme focus on tracking and analytics, with the core point being that if you’re not tracking your digital marketing efforts on a granular basis, you’re essentially flying blind. And if you need to make a case for your Social Media efforts to your boss or executive team, then flying blind won’t turn out very well for you. If you are only armed with opinion, you might be kissing your budget goodbye. In my experience, you can debate opinion until the cows come home, while data is hard to ignore. Always come armed with data.
You’re On in 5 Minutes. And Don’t Waste My Time Mr. Social Media Hot Shot
After I go through numerous examples of how Social can impact a business, the presentation culminates with one slide that hits home for many marketers. It hits home because it puts the audience in the role of having to present to an executive team that wants to know how the company’s Social efforts are impacting the business. The slide presents a long list of possible answers to that question (based on the tracking you will hopefully have in place). So, I’ve decided to provide that list here in this blog post. It is by no means complete, but I think it gives you a quick understanding of the types of data that can be presented to make your case.
Before you view the list, here are a few important notes:
1. Every point in the following list will not tie to your own business. I’m simply providing possible answers to questions about Social Media ROI based on what I have seen first-hand. Also, I have been on both sides of the presentation. I have led presentations like this, but I have also helped executives understand the ROI of their social efforts (as a consultant).
2. In order to provide answers like what’s listed below, you must fully understand the various ways that your specific business can be impacted from a cost and revenue standpoint. Every business is unique. Don’t jump in without fully understanding the specific nuances of your own business.
3. You must have a solid strategy in place for Social Media Marketing. That’s not simply setting up a Twitter account and creating your Facebook Page. If you blindly jump in, I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that you will fail. And many companies are failing when it comes to Social Media Marketing. My presentation covers the core reasons why this is the case (but that’s for another blog post).
4. You must have tracking in place. As mentioned earlier, do not fly blind. Map out an analytics strategy in order to track both on-site and off-site metrics. Track as many KPI’s that make sense for your business and have a mechanism in place for tracking and trending that data. Note, you should track both quantitative and qualitative data. Remember, we are talking about “Social”, so some of your data will include actual correspondence (emails, tweets, messages, comments, etc.)
Setting The Stage – Welcome to the Jungle
As you step into the boardroom, you notice that the room goes silent. The CEO gives you a minute to hook up your laptop and then says, “OK, I gave you a budget last year to launch our Social Media efforts. We want to know today how that’s doing. So, what’s the ROI of Social Media FOR US?
{So, if you’ve mapped out a solid strategy, executed at a very high level, have tracking in place, and understand all the ways that Social can impact your business, your answer might look like the following.}
Well, I can’t give you a hard ROI number today. {3 members of the executive team gasp while the CFO snickers.}
But, I do have a number of data points to present.
{Remember, data is good, opinion is bad.}
Since we started our Social Media Marketing efforts 12 months ago…
Overall site traffic levels have increased by x%.
Traffic from Social Media sites has increased by y% (as you show trending graphs for each).
Overall revenue has gone up by x% since we launched our Social efforts…
And revenue directly from Social Media sites has increased by y%, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. More on that shortly. {BTW, to show revenue from Social, you set up an advanced segment to only show data from all Social sites.}
Overall support costs went down by x% as we were able to handle y# of customer issues via Twitter and Facebook.
Further, based on using Social Media to nip support problems in the bud, we saved x # of customers that were ready to leave us. Our typical response time was y minutes from the time of the first sign of a problem (via monitoring real-time updates.)
Here is a document containing all customer and prospective customer correspondence via Social Media for the past year. {Document is so long is rolls out onto the floor.}
Since we know how much it costs to acquire a customer and how long it takes for a customer to become profitable, our Social efforts have saved the company $x in cost (by decreasing the Quit Rate of customers and not having to make up for those lost customers).
Our Social efforts also drove y # of new customer sign-ups, with the strongest number of sign-ups coming from blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Trending shows an increase in new customer sign-ups 4 months after our Social efforts launched, while maintaining higher levels of sign-ups throughout the year. (The black hole of Social Media was 4 months for our company.)
We increased our in-house email list by x number of subscribers…
With a majority of new sign-ups coming from organic search, blog posts, and referrals from both Twitter and Facebook. More on how Social impacts SEO soon.
And our in-house email list drives y% of revenue for the site (our second largest driver of revenue for the site.) Each subscriber accounts for $z per year.
We now have x Twitter followers and y FB fans.
These two assets enable us to engage our customers on a regular basis…
Which leads to powerful insights regarding our company and products, like… (add qualitative data here…) As a specific example, we launched the new version of Product X in March, only to find out via Twitter that many customers were experiencing problems with Y feature. We worked quickly and resolved the issue and formed even a stronger bond with many of those customers. Some of those customers ended up backing us up when other unhappy customers started attacking our company. The resulting positive word of mouth marketing about how we handled the situation resulted in x number of articles written about our company, which led to y number of new visitors to the site, which resulted in x number of new blog subscribers, y number of email subscribers, and z number of FB fans.
Trending shows spikes in traffic, orders, and revenue each time we share special offers, discounts, and exclusive deals via Twitter and Facebook. Here are the spikes I am referring to (showing trending graph with revenue overlaid).
Our blog now has x subscribers…
And our blog has helped us boost our website’s SEO power, which has led to an increase in natural search rankings…
And SEO accounts for x% of revenue on the site. It is currently the top driver of revenue.
Further, our blog accounts for most of our website’s inbound links (the valuable links anyway). These inbound links have a direct correlation to the trending you are seeing in this graph. {showing trending again} We’ve seen an increase in rankings, organic search traffic, and revenue from organic search. And there is no advertising spend for organic search traffic (while showing budgets for paid efforts).
Our increased natural search rankings led to a decrease in paid search spend, which we then reallocated to our Social efforts (to drive more of what I am presenting here).
Our blog also led to guest posts on highly influential blogs and sites. Those posts helped us gain incredible exposure in our industry…
Which led to x # of visitors back to our blog.
Which led to an increase in email subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook fans. As presented above, these three assets led to $x in combined revenue.
{Your CEO cuts in: Can you start over? I want to take notes.
The CFO is already through his second pencil, he’s been writing so fast.
Your CMO: {on phone with executive assistant to set up personal Twitter account.}
And after all of this planning, tracking, execution, and presenting, you might just have a new seat in the boardroom (see below). :)
Can You Make A Case Like This?
As you can see, data can be your best friend. You might not be able to easily show the hard ROI from Social Media, but you sure can have a lot of data backing your efforts. In closing, have a strategy in place, understand the black hole of Social Media, track everything you can, trend changes over time, and document both quantitative and qualitative data. This is the type of information that your boss will love (and his boss too). Become obsessed with data. You won’t regret it.
GG
I’m proud to announce the release of my new ebook titled Taking Control of Your Online Marketing: Small Business Edition. The online marketing ebook is a 98 page tactical guide for small to medium sized businesses and covers Local Search, SEO, Web Analytics, Website Structure, and The Long Tail of SEO.
I wrote the book in priority order, so each lesson builds upon previous lessons. You’ll find that the book provides a hands-on, take-action approach. I wanted readers to be able to complete each chapter, implement important changes, and then move on to the next lesson. If you’re a small business just starting out, or one that’s not seeing results from your current online marketing efforts, then this book is perfect for you.
Why I Wrote The ebook
When I launched the Search a Small Business Holiday Giveaway last year, I explained how small businesses often end up getting a raw deal when it comes to online marketing. They want to launch campaigns, utilize the latest online marketing tactics, and gain new business, but simply don’t have the budget or resources to do so effectively. I always thought this was wrong. Once the contest was over, I decided to document the approach I’ve used numerous times when helping small businesses. The result was my ebook. It is based on a core aspect of online marketing that I’ve seen time and time again (over the past 15 years):
Businesses (both large and small) needed a solid foundation in online marketing in order to succeed. Without that solid foundation in place, companies had a much harder time gaining traction, acquiring new customers, and increasing sales.
My goal was to make sure readers could build a solid online marketing foundation that they can build upon in the future. I always want my clients and readers to get up and running quickly. The book is structured so that’s possible.
What’s Covered in the Book
The core sections of book cover the following online marketing topics:
1. Website Structure
I’ve come across so many small businesses that are handcuffed when it comes to adding, editing, and optimizing content on their websites. In today’s digital marketing environment, if you cannot easily add new content and tailor your site optimization, then you’re dead in the water. In the book, I explain the technology and process you can utilize to get your site in order.
2. Local Search Strategy
If you’re a local business, then it’s critically important to make sure you have a shot at ranking for searches that are deemed local in nature by the search engines. I’ll show you what to do and where to make changes to achieve strong results.
3. Web Analytics
It’s critically important to track your online marketing efforts at a granular level. I provide instructions for setting up Google Analytics, as well as how to track conversion properly on your site. Unfortunately, without a smart analytics strategy in place, you’ll be flying blind. And flying blind is a dangerous thing to do in online marketing.
4. SEO
Organic Search is one of the most powerful online marketing channels and should not be ignored. The book covers what you need to do in order optimize your site and content for organic search. SEO is a massive topic and I cover numerous aspects of organic search within the chapter.
5. The Long Tail of SEO
When I first start helping new clients with SEO, they often approach me about ranking for a handful of competitive keywords. That’s fine, but in reality, they should be targeting the thousands of keywords that stem off of those initial keywords. In the book, I cover the long tail in detail, including what it is, how powerful it can be for your business, and how to effectively target the tail.
Buy the Book Now
I’ve worked hard on making sure the book is extremely actionable. I want every reader to make changes quickly so they can improve their online marketing efforts. Again, the book is a 98 page tactical guide covering the core things that you need to do in order form a solid online marketing foundation. So, head over to the ebook section of my site to learn more. You can explore the chapters in greater detail, read the forewords, and of course, buy the book! :)
I look forward to helping you.
GG