I’ve been using these tools that I think you should know about. A lot of the clients I talk to think that they need to be on social media ALL DAY to see any benefits. Well my friends, your answers to “how can I effectively manage social media” are here. In this single post.

(FREE) Social Media Management Tools

TweetDeck - My desktop application is pretty much open 24/7. When I have a few free moments, I will check my list and stream to see if there is anything worth reading or ReTweeting. You can also use TweetDeck to schedule posts, which is really helpful. Automation is tricky, but when I know I won’t be on Twitter for a while I will schedule some posts from the blogs I read every morning to post throughout a couple hours. I can monitor mentions, Direct Messages and more. TweetDeck isn’t only for Twitter. You can use it for you other social networks, too! (Hootsuite is another popular choice.)

Buffer – Buffer is an awesome little tool that can be used to update your social media profiles, too. You can use the dashboard (once you create an account) and download the Chrome extension. Once you have Buffer, you’ll see “Buffer” next to other social share buttons (I see mine in Google Reader). All you do is click & schedule. Buffer will strategically schedule your posts (you can edit the times, too) to get the best results. I like using Buffer if I have to schedule Facebook posts because it loads the link and looks like a real post instead of automated.

InboxQ – InboxQ delivers a realtime stream from Twitter of questions related to campaigns that you set up. This handy tool allows you to answer questions about your business, your products, your industy without constantly monitoring Twitter or Twitter advanced search. You can save questions in InboxQ to answer later and view an archive of your answers. Capitalize on the opportunity to answer questions and develop relationships all related to specific campaigns. Genius! Below, I set up a general “web design” campaign for you to see.

Ubersuggest.org – If I am thinking of an idea for a post or blog post, occasionally I will run it through various keyword research and search query tools to see if it sparks any other ideas. They take your search query and add all letters of the alphabet at the end. It’s pretty sweet – I ‘ubersuggest’ you to check it out. (Okay, that was bad.)

Followerwonk & Twellow - Both these tools are used for Twitter & using them for the basics is free. I use both tools for recommendations on who to follow on Twitter, based off keywords and phrases related to our niche/industry. Twellow is completely free and Followerwonk has more features you can use if you purchase credits.

Backtweets - Backtweets allows you to search for links on Twitter. Sometimes people don’t mention your handle in a post but still share your content. It’s nice to use this tool every now and then to see if a particular piece of content got shared, etc. I will warn you though, the results it gives isn’t consistent, in my opinion. Recently, I’ve gotten results from 2009 when there are many more recent ones to pull. So use this tool with other monitoring tools like social mention. But again, the results aren’t 100% accurate.

Google Analytics Social Tracking – Google has expanded social reporting in Google Analytics and the information they are providing is imperative for any website with social share buttons & social profiles. In order to get the most out of these reports- add the additional social share tracking code. You can tie in social data to sales and online transactions. You can also see links that are being shared, how visitors from each platform behave and more.

I use most of these tools weekly if not daily. Hope you will find them helpful for your social media campaigns and monitoring!

Have any tools that aren’t on the list? List them below!

What is Local SEO?

For a brick and mortar business, optimizing for local is an important marketing strategy to thrive online. For example, if you want your business to compete for “pizza in Minneapolis” or a similar structure of “[keyphrase] + location” – then you need to optimize for local search queries. Local SEO is becoming even more appropriate due to Google’s customized  Local SEO is a combination of both on page and off page SEO strategies.

Google says that they try to provide the most relevant results to your search, and location is one of the factors used to give the relevant results. While searching in Google, “location” is used to customize your results on the left side of the page. Location detection automatically sets a location for you but you can easily specify another location. IP address and/or the location feature in the Google Toolbar determines the location of your searches. You cannot turn off location customization, but you can set your location to a broader area (country vs. city, zip or address).

Since users are automatically set up to search local- optimizing for local is imperative for brick-and-mortar businesses.

Tips for Local SEO

1. Research. Use keyword research tools (like Google’s) to see what people are searching for. Think about key phrases your customers would be using…not industry jargon terms. Once you’ve done your keyword research, make sure to include those keywords throughout your website. If they are relevant, customer-terms, it shouldn’t be that hard to incorporate them. Aim to target 1-2 keywords per page. (Note: Keywords can still signal multiple key phrases.) Good tips on local keyword research in “One Dead Simple Tactic for Better Rankings in Google Local” by Rand.

2. Optimize all the on-page SEO elements. Each page on your website should have customized title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, image alt tags, etc. Optimization includes creating unique copy that includes a reasonable amount of key phrases. Make sure to include geographic cues in the content and tags. Check out this good list of local landing page best practices.

3. Add location to your title tags and meta descriptions. If you run a pizza joint in Minneapolis, your title tag might want to show something similar to: “Chicago-Style Pizza in Minneapolis | [Business Name]“. Your meta description should also fit in your key phrase for the specific page and location. I know we touched on this in #2, but it was worth repeating just for the title tags & meta descriptions.

4. Add your business address and telephone number (preferably not an 800 number) to every page of your website – like in the header or footer.

5. Have customized landing pages for each location. If you have locations in three different cities, have three pages each targeting one specific location. Include the address for specific location, telephone number, images, videos, hours of operation, etc.

6. Add Google Maps to your website. Take it even further and have the map of  your location on the specific landing page.

7. Upload rich media to your website/customized landing pages. YouTube videos targeting “Chicago-Style Pizza in Minneapolis” will likely rank high (if not first page) for the title. Add alt tags to  your images with key phrases (if appropriate) and location.

8. Utilize rich snippets for local search.

9. Claim your local listings. There are many free local business listings which translates to many free link and promotional opportunities. Use getlisted.org to see which listings your business has and which ones you still need to claim. Add your business listing to sites like Yahoo, Google, Bing (all local), Ask City, Yelp, Angie’s List, HotFrog, etc. The local search ecosystem is also helpful.

10. Ask your customers to leave reviews. Reviews are powerful! They are a form of social proof that consumers seek out. Both good and bad reviews (bad reviews in moderation) will help your business. Too many good reviews could come across as spammy or  unrealistic so that’s why it’s important to have a balance. A little do’s and don’ts I felt compelled to include:

• Do not add your own reviews.
• Do not spam your own reviews.
• Do not pay people for leaving good reviews.
• Do not delete bad reviews.
• Do not threaten customers who leave bad reviews.
• Do contact customers if they’ve had a bad experience and see what went wrong and how you can help.
• Please, don’t be this guy.
• Great tips on handling the criticism with a smart strategy. Show them what you’re made of!

11. Utilize social media. Audience big or small, it doesn’t matter as long as your fans are engaged. Social media helps establish trust and authority. It helps build relationships with your target market and can also be a great place to handle customer service (if a plan is in place). Use it (but use it wisely), it’s free!

12. Because Google no longer supports the geo tag, have your XML sitemap reference a locations.kml file you’ve created and uploaded to the root of your site. Resources & more information, here.

13. Utilize the locations data in Google Analytics (Audience > Demographics > Location > City (or other primary dimension)). You can then apply secondary dimensions and advanced filters to determine what keywords are coming from what city. Some people in Minneapolis may search for a different search term than the folks in St. Paul. Incorporate the data, if appropriate, to your on-page SEO elements.

Have any questions? Ask away!

On March 12, 2012, Google announced that they rolled out significant enhancements to the Crawl errors feature in Google Webmaster Tools. You may have noticed that the amount of errors your website had has increased since that update. Google goes through each of the “error sections” they list in their reporting. Their post is a little techy, so I’ll try to break it down in simpler terms.

Crawl Error Types: Explained

Site Errors: Majority of websites won’t see any errors in this section. Site errors affect your whole site (if your site is down). DNS is what translates your IP address into the domain name, so if that’s failed than your website won’t work (unless you remember your IP address).

Server Errors: Server errors usually mean that there is an error with the code, because server errors should really return a soft 404 error if the page doesn’t exist. But the server thinks the page does exist, (most likely because the root and subdirectory exists) but cannot load the page so users get a server error. For example : www.yoursite.com/news/article.aspx?ID=52 doesn’t work (server error) but www.yoursite.com/news/article.aspx does exist and load correctly. So, the problem is with the ID number.

Soft 404 Errors: If a page is “not found” whether it was deleted, moved, or the user typed in an invalid URL, your server should return a 404 or 410 error- which suggests to search engines that this page tells both browsers and search engines that the page doesn’t exist. As a result, the content of the page won’t be crawled or indexed – which gives a better user experience to users and helps search engines. Soft 404 errors means that a 404 or 410 code wasn’t returned. This tells search engines that the page does exist and should be crawled. Google talks more about it, here.

Access Denied Errors: These errors occur because your server requires a login to access the page, or your website is blocking Googlebot from accessing the page (ie. robots.txt file). These are not really “errors” if you intended the pages listed in this section to be blocked by Googlebot.

Not Found Errors: Not found errors are true 404 errors. The URL’s listed in this section couldn’t be crawled by Googlebot because they don’t exist. A lot of 404 errors don’t harm your performance in the search results (says Google), but the fewer errors the better.

Other Errors: Other errors occur because the serber didn’t understand the syntax of Googlebot’s request.

Crawl Errors in Google Webmaster Tools: How to Find the Errors

First, let’s make sure you’re signed into Google Webmaster Tools. Once logged in, you should see “Crawl Errors” as the first section on your dashboard in which you can click on the double errors to take you to that section.

Or, you can select “Health” from the side navigation bar and click “Crawl Errors.”

Perfect, now you’re in.

Click on each “box” of errors to see the errors within that section.

From there, you can click on the specific errors to view the error details, links from sitemaps or other pages, and view the URL/error.

Managing Errors: Tips

-For all errors, you have the ability to “Mark As Fixed.” This feature will take the error out of your list unless it isn’t resolved and will return again.

-Check where the error is coming from. Is Google finding this page from the sitemap you submitted or from a link from another page?

-Once you’ve fixed an error, “Fetch as Google” and submit it to be indexed.

-Don’t just delete pages. This will save you from managing errors in the future. Redirect them!

-Don’t submit error pages in your sitemap(s). Google doesn’t like this. If you see that a dead page was found via your sitemap- either take it out of your sitemap and resubmit your sitemap (once all errors were removed) or fix the error.

-Consider redirecting pages that are linked to from outside sources to the appropriate page.

-Don’t stress about a few errors. Some errors you can’t control, and some errors being picked up by Googlebot might not make sense. If you really want to know where/how/why Google is picking up certain errors on your website, contact your developer. Chances are, they can help you with an easy fix.

-Don’t stress about errors not clearing in GWT. Yes, it would be nice to see all the errors disappear as you fix them, but that won’t happen. Errors will disappear gradually over time, depending on crawl rate, priority, etc. I recommend marking it as fixed and leaving it alone. It will still show up in the total errors box at the top, but won’t be in your list.

-Know that Google lists the errors by priority. Errors at the top (no matter when detected) are, in Google’s opinion, highest priority.

-Check your GWT Error Report frequently! Managing your errors will help with a better user-experience for your users and help search engines.

January 2012

February 2012

March 2012

April Recap

New Additions & Announcements:

• We added the “We’re Hiring” call-out to our home page. Doesn’t it look pretty?
• Not website related, BUT! We’re expanding our office. We’ve taken over the office next door and will connecting the two. Exciting!

• Sammich Day Challenge. Food won.
• We’re still growing our Facebook page with our Facebook application. Slowly but surely, folks. Slowly but surely!

• Total Visits: increased by 63 views
• Bounce Rate: increased 11.63%
• Search Engine Traffic: 67.37%
• (not provided) accounts for: 54.19% of visits. We’ve officially reached over half. Yikes.
• Biggest Traffic Referral Source: Alltop, Facebook and Twitter… in that order.
• Weirdest Organic Search Queries: “design for gowns for party” + “I want to buy 200 Twitter followers” -> my advice on the last one: DON’T!
• Most Read Blog Post: SEO Redesign Tips
• Funniest Spam Comment: “I hardly comment, however i did a few searching and wound up here Domain Registration & URL Structure Tips – DKS Systems.
  And I do have a couple of questions for you if it’s allright. Is it simply me or does it look like a few of the comments come across like written by brain dead people?  And, if you are posting at other social sites, I’d like to follow anything new you have to post. Could you make a list of every one of your social pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?”

Spam comments are so tricky. They definitely know how to play up the flattery.

Have a great May!

No? Well let’s fix that.

Adding the rel=author tag gives you credibility and exposure. It helps your content stand out and I bet that people are more likely to click on a post with the author picture than one that doesn’t have the author’s picture. Jill Whalen has a great post about the 5 reasons you need to use rel=author on your content – check it out if I haven’t successfully convinced you, yet!

Some of the articles floating around the web are kind of techy in their directions on implementing this rich snippet, but it’s really simple.

How to add the rel=author snippet to your content

What You’ll Need:

• An author profile that displays on every post that’s published. See mine to the right.
• A Google Plus profile.
• Content, blog, articles, etc. Preferably frequently updated (but not necessary!)

In-Page Analytics.

The Details

In-Page Analytics allows you to see how visitors interact with the pages within your website. It visualizes where people click and what content your visitors are interested in. Similar to a heat map, this is a great free tool to take advantage of.

It’s important to note that if you have multiple links on the home page that lead to the same destination, then they will have the same percentages. For example, you can tell in the picture to the right that both our logo and “Home” button both have 69% of clicks; that’s the total for both combined.

Also, there are only stats for links. Click information for images and content without a separate URL (ie: if it’s in a fancy box) aren’t tracked. For that insight, use event tracking.

You can use this feature for many different reasons, and often brings about some interesting findings! First, I’ll tell you how to find it.

How to Get There

1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Choose the correct profile.
3. Click on the “Content” tab in the sidebar.
4. Select “In-Page Analytics.”
5. Viola! You can now see the in-page analytics for your home page.

Interesting Findings

I really like browsing our website in the In-Page Analytics section, because you find some interesting things that may confirm or derail your current visitor conceptions. We found a couple of interesting things we thought we would share:

• Our “related posts” plug-in on the blog is kind of hidden. Those links don’t get a lot of traffic, so we need to try a new way to display related posts to see if that makes a difference.
• Some projects on the Our Work page are viewed a lot more than others. And it’s interesting to see which ones people want to look at!
• The featured products (under each service we offer) get some love, too!
• Don’t underestimate the power of internal links. Visitors love them.

5 Easy Ways to Get a Bigger Email Marketing List

1. Offer something of value. Create a guide or offer and only give it to people who give you something in return; their email address.
2. Put the newsletter subscription box on every page of your website. Test what spot gets the most conversions and keep it there.
3. Include the newsletter subscription box on any submission page (ie. receipt pages, form submission thank-you pages, etc.).
4. During the check-out process for ecommerce websites, by the “coupon” area, include a link to sign up for deals. Here’s one done right.
5. Utilize social media. Create an app with an offer on Facebook that’s fan-gated by a “Like” and email submission form. You’re killing two birds with one stone, here. You get a new follower and an email address! Don’t forget to promote the offer/app on your other networks.

I told you they were easy, didn’t I? Derek Halpern has an awesome article for high-converting places to add your email sign-up forms to build your list. I highly suggest you check it out!

How do you get more email subscribers? 

Short & sweet! Have a great Wednesday, friends.

Your website needs the same attention. Those mundane tasks you’ve been putting off until you’re less busy? Yeah, now’s the time. Give your website a little Spring cleaning lovin’ because it’s important!

Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Website

-CONTENT-

1. Add any updates to your products and services. Chances are, since you last wrote the content on those pages your products/services have changed a little bit. Let your customers know and get that information updated.

2. How’s your call to action? Is it clear? Do you have a consistent call to action on EVERY page? For example, if your goal is capturing emails, why not have that email subscription form on every page? Time to step it up this Spring.

3. Update your contact information. Maybe consumers can now find you on Facebook and  Twitter and Google+. Add those icons to your website! Maybe your phone number has changed or your address. Update that information.

4. Browser test. I’ve seen many websites render differently depending on what browser I’m using. Make sure your website looks the same on all browsers and there are no crazy distortions (I’ve seen it!).

5. Freshen up your images. Those product photos from the 90′s? …Yeah. We’re talking about those.

-ANALYTICS-

6. Dig through your analytics and look at your pages with the highest bounce rate. Rewrite that content and/or play with your design and layout to decrease bounces.

7. Filter your data with these 5 filters you should be using. Zone in on different visitor and visitor types to get in-depth information.

8. Use In-Page Analytics (in Google Analytics) to see where people are clicking. If they aren’t clicking where you want them to be, time for a little layout change!

9. Make sure your goals are current.

10. Add social tracking. By adding this tracking code,  you can tie social interactions and engagement with transactions. A must-have, especially for ecommerce websites!

-SOCIAL-

11. Look at your social campaign, strategies and goals and make sure they are current. Maybe engagement has been lacking? Spice things up with questions, discounts or an offer for those loyal fans.

12. Update the information in your social profiles. Just like you should keep the information on your website current, your social profiles need updates too!

13. Step out of your usual routine and try something different. Try making new connections, a new banner image, a new contest, etc. Change is refreshing!

14. Delete old apps and create new ones. If you have a “Promotions” app visible on your Timeline that isn’t current, either update it or delete it. You can bring it back when you have current information to add. Create a new “Welcome” application and link to it from the social icons on your website. (Facebook specific)

15. Try a new social network that would benefit your business. If you have Facebook down pat, and are seeing great results, why not try something new? Pinterest can be great if you have visuals to show Pinterest  users. Obviously this will only work if you have the time and dedication to expand your social presence. I don’t suggest spreading yourself too thin!

-SEO-

16. Re-visit your keywords. Keep your keywords current with search queries. Depending on your industry, search queries might have changed or evolved. Make sure your website is optimized.

17. Clean out the errors. Google Webmaster Tools has more advanced crawl error reports and you should be using them to your advantage! Run though all of your errors and fix the ones you can. Redirect pages that are no longer active, etc. If there are errors you can’t fix yourself, ask your developer for help. It’s important your visitors and consumers have a great user-experience.

18. Update your local listing profiles. Local listings like Google Places should be updated just like your website. You wouldn’t want a visitor to go to the wrong address, or keep old, outdated photos of your products or office. Freshen it up a bit, users will appreciate the currency.

19. How does your back link profile look? Are all your links the ones you sought after and begged asked for? Hopefully you will notice that people are linking to your content organically. If not, time to make a better effort for natural link building. Maybe time for a… blog!

20. Audit your site. Conduct a basic SEO analysis, or go more in-depth if you need to. Make sure you have all your on-page SEO elements in place and active. You should also check your website for these common SEO errors.

Some of these ‘tips’ turned into ideas. I hope you don’t mind. Spring always feels like a fresh start, especially with Spring cleaning and cutting out the necessary clutter. Hopefully these tips will give you the motivation to clean things up and try something new!

Have any Spring cleaning tips? Comment them below and I’ll add them to the list!

(Image Source)

What’s Happens When You’re Warned

Google’s been sending out messages in Google Webmaster Tools (more than ever before), alerting webmasters of any found practices that do not abide by their terms. Some sites that receive these messages are immediately penalized, while others are not. But that’s not to say that if they don’t make the efforts to make changes in order to meet Google’s quality guidelines, they will be penalized. Websites that have been penalized, or that receive this message must submit the website for reconsideration to appear in search results. I don’t know about you, but ignoring the quality guidelines imposes too great of risk to be taken lightly.

If you browse the search forums, you’ll find real notices to webmasters from Google.

These warnings to webmasters have probably stemmed from Google’s update to their algorithm to feature more high-quality sites in search. On the Webmaster Central Blog, they explicitly tell webmasters to reference the quality guidelines if their website has been affected by the “high-quality sites algorithm.”

On SEOmoz, one user gave first-hand advice and solicited a warning to webmasters. On Search Engine Land, you can find an example of the warnings being posted to webmasters.

Not only is Google warning webmasters of disobedient practices, but they’re also on a mission to stop hijacking to maintain the high-quality sites in search.

It’s real folks. And quite scary to business owners who let others have complete control of their website and SEO. Do you know what “side” your SEO company falls on? Are you at risk for being penalized?

Interesting Quote From Google

I thought it was interesting that Google said: “Since then we’ve gotten a lot of positive responses about the change: searchers are finding better results, and many great publishers are getting more traffic.” This further proves my point that content is the secret to successful SEO. It’s one common denominator for sites that are rocking it in the SERPs.

Thoughts?

What are Filters?

Filters are used in Google Analytics to filter and segment data. Filters allow you to better control your data and determine what you want to see in you analytics.

5 Google Analytics Filters You Need

IP Address: You should filter your IP Address, and any other IP Addresses that you don’t wish to track. For example, I’ll block our (DKS) IP Address from clients websites, along with their IP Address too. I’m not interested in the site usage metrics from either myself or the client.

Blog Sub-directory: Blog metrics are often very different than the full website. Blogs typically have a higher bounce rate, different referral traffic, time on site, etc. Instead of letting your blog usage metrics get buried in with your site usage metrics, set  up a filter including only blog visitors.

Location: If you’re interested in seeing data from specific countries, regions or cities- create a custom, location filter by either visitor country, region, or city.

SEO Rankings: Because search varies depending on location and personalized search, it’s nice to see rankings in your data. André Scholten wrote a good guide on Yoast’s blog. Or you could use this method that I mentioned in our Website Recap for March. It’s a filter and an advanced segment. Apply the filters to a new profile and then when you look at the data, simply apply the advanced segment. Someone in the comment section graciously shared these tactics for all to use. All you have to do is apply the filters. Can’t get any easier than that!

Mobile: I don’t know about you or yours, but our mobile visitors increase each month. It’s nice to filter out those visits and see mobile visitor data. A brief explanation on how to do that, here.

Before You Get Started

I recommend keeping one profile orginial, including all your data. Create an identical, new profile and apply any filters. That way, you’ll always have (1) data to compare to (2) original, untouched analytics and (3) correct data (because if a filter isn’t set up correctly, it could mess with your data).

Other Links That Might Be Of Interest

• How to create a duplicate profile in Google Analytics
• How to create a filter in Google Analytics