Tuesday 26 January 2016

Social Meta Tags

Knowing exactly which social meta tags to include can be confusing even to experienced webmasters. This post by Micheal King is a huge help, and Wordpress publishers who use Yoast's SEO plugin are well ahead of the game. For the rest of us, consider the different structures supported by the major social platforms:
  • Twitter Cards: Summaries, Images, Galleries, Apps, Video, Audio, and Products
  • Pinterest Rich Pins: Products, Recipes, Movies, and Articles
  • Google+: Articles, Blog, Book, Event, Local Business, Organization, Person, Product, and Reviews
  • Facebook: Articles, Photos, Audio, Video, and more
To help ease this problem, I created four social media tag templates that you can fill out, customize for your own use, and share with your team and others.

How to use these templates

Simply copy and paste the template into the text editor of your choice. Make sure to replace any orange or green text with your own data, and customize, eliminate or add any tags you find necessary.
The first three of these templates are optimized using a typical "article" markup and data, ideal for blog posts and most written content. The final template contains markup for product pages.For other post types, such as book or recipes, refer to documentation linked at the end of this post for reference on what to customize.
When you are done, don't forget to test and apply for approval.

1. The Minimal Template

This slimmed back version runs lean and fast. It contains a bare minimum of data for optimized sharing across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.
Title tags and meta descriptions are included even though they aren't technically social media meta tags. This is because they can be used by Google+ and other social media platforms, and it is best practice to include them on every page you publish.

Minimum Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!-- Place this data between the <head> tags of your website -->
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Page description. No longer than 155 characters." />
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" value="summary">
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" />

2: The Standard Template

The standard template represents a more robust implementation of social tags and is meant to work across all platforms. In addition to all of the features of the mimimal template above, the standard template includes the following:
  • The basic Twitter Summary card
  • Twitter thumbnail image
  • Facebook Page Insights

Standard Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!-- Place this data between the <head> tags of your website -->
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Page description. No longer than 155 characters." />
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@publisher_handle">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200 characters">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author_handle">
<-- Twitter Summary card images must be at least 120x120px -->
<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg">
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name, i.e. Moz" />
<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook numeric ID" />

3: The Full Monty

This is the monster! In addition to all the data contained in the standard template, the full template contains:
  • Google Authorship and Publisher Markup. Although this data doesn't change your content appearance in Google+, it potentially add links to your Google+ pages in search results.
  • Schema.org article markup
  • Twitter Summary card with large image
  • Expanded Open Graph article data

Full Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!-- Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. -->
<html itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
<!-- Place this data between the <head> tags of your website -->
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Page description. No longer than 155 characters." />
<!-- Schema.org markup for Google+ -->
<meta itemprop="name" content="The Name or Title Here">
<meta itemprop="description" content="This is the page description">
<meta itemprop="image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg">
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@publisher_handle">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200 characters">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author_handle">
<!-- Twitter summary card with large image must be at least 280x150px -->
<meta name="twitter:image:src" content="http://www.example.com/image.html">
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name, i.e. Moz" />
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2013-09-17T05:59:00+01:00" />
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2013-09-16T19:08:47+01:00" />
<meta property="article:section" content="Article Section" />
<meta property="article:tag" content="Article Tag" />
<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook numberic ID" />

Bonus: The Product Template

For merchants, product markup is very popular, and usually easy for developers to implement in their shopping cart software. The product template differs from article markup in only a few ways:
  • Modified <html> tag to reflect schema.org product data
  • Twitter Product Card includes required data labels
  • Open Graph data includes price and currency data

Product Social Media Tag Template

<!-- Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. -->
<html itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<!-- Place this data between the <head> tags of your website -->
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Page description. No longer than 155 characters." />
<!-- Schema.org markup for Google+ -->
<meta itemprop="name" content="The Name or Title Here">
<meta itemprop="description" content="This is the page description">
<meta itemprop="image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg">
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="product">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@publisher_handle">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200 characters">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author_handle">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.html">
<meta name="twitter:data1" content="$3">
<meta name="twitter:label1" content="Price">
<meta name="twitter:data2" content="Black">
<meta name="twitter:label2" content="Color">
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name, i.e. Moz" />
<meta property="og:price:amount" content="15.00" />
<meta property="og:price:currency" content="USD" />

Tips and best practices

Optimizing for images

The image you link to in your social data does not actually have to be on the page, but it should represent your content well. The image allows you to controll what people see when they share your content, so it's important to use quality images.
Every social platform has different standards for sizing. Typically, it's easier to keep it simple and choose one image size that will work for all services.
  • Twitter thumbnail: 120x120px
  • Twitter large image: 280x150px
  • Facebook: Standards vary, but an image at least 200x200px works best. Facebook recommends large images up to 1200x630px wide.
In short, larger images offer you the most flexibility. When in doubt, test each page using the appropriate tool below to see exactly how your images will appear in snippits.

The importance of Open Graph data

If you could choose only one type of meta data to include, your best bet is Open Graph. That's because all the platforms can use it as a fallback, including Twitter to a large degree.

Facebook page insights

The meta property "fb:admins" requires that you enter your numeric Facebook id number, and gives you access to analytics about how your website content is shared on Facebook. Read more about Page Insights, including how to set it up and discover your numeric id.
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Tuesday 5 January 2016

GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE VS. GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATES

GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE OVERVIEW:

According to Google’s official blog post when Panda launched,
This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
Basically, Panda updates are designed to target pages that aren’t necessarily spam but aren’t great quality. This was the first ever penalty that went after “thin content,” and the sites that were hit hardest by the first Panda update were content farms (hence why it was originally called the Farmer update), where users could publish dozens of low-quality, keyword stuffed articles that offered little to no real value for the reader. Many publishers would submit the same article to a bunch of these content farms just to get extra links.
Panda is a site wide penalty, which means that if “enough” (no specific number) pages of your site were flagged for having thin content, your entire site could be penalized. Panda was also intended to stop scrappers (sites that would republish other company’s content) from outranking the original author’s content.
Here is a breakdown of all the Panda updates and their release dates. If your site’s traffic took a major hit around one of these times there is a good chance it was flagged by Panda
1. Panda 1.0 (aka the Farmer Update) on February 24th 2011
2. Panda 2.0 on April 11th 2011. (Panda impacts all English speaking countries)
3. Panda 2.1 on May 9th 2011 or so
4. Panda 2.2 on June 18th 2011 or so.
5. Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd 2011.
6. Panda 2.4 in August 2011(Panda goes international)
7. Panda 2.5 on September 28th 2011
8. Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th 2011
9. Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th 201110. Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th 2011
11. Panda 3.1 on November 18th 201112. Panda 3.2 on about January 15th 2012
13. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th 2012
14. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012
15. Panda 3.5 on April 19th 2012
16. Panda 3.6 on April 27th 2012
17. Panda 3.7 on June 8th 2012
18. Panda 3.8 on June 25th 2012
19. Panda 3.9 on July 24th 2012
20. Panda 3.9.1 on August 20th 2012
21. Panda 3.9.2 on September 18th 2012
22. Panda Update #20 on September 27 2012 (overlapped the EMD Update)
23. Panda #21 on November 5th 2012
24. Panda #22 on December 4th 2012
25. Panda #23 on December 21st 2012
26. Panda #24 on Jan. 22nd 2013
27. Panda #25 on March 25th 2013
28. Panda #26, July 18, 2013
29. Panda 4.0 on May 20th 2014
30. Panda 4.1 on September 25th 2014
31. Panda 4.2 on July 18th 2015
Search Engine Land created this great Google Panda update infographic to help walk site owners through the many versions of the Google Panda updates.
Many site owners complained that even after they made changes to their sites in order to be more “Panda friendly,” their sites didn’t automatically recover. Panda updates do not happen at regular intervals, and Google doesn’t re-index every site each time, so some site owners were forced to deal with low traffic for several months until Google got around to re-crawling their website and taking note of any positive changes.
Matt Cutt told SMX West 2013 attendees that  they are unlikely to confirm future Panda updates since Panda will be incorporated into their indexing processes.

GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE OVERVIEW:

The Google Penguin Update launched on April 24. According to the Google blog, Penguin is an “important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.” Google mentions that typical black hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing (long considered webspam) would get a site in trouble, but less obvious tactics (link incorporating irrelevant outgoing links into a page of content) would also cause Penguin to flag your site. Says Google,
Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.
Site owners should be sure to check their Google Webmaster accounts for any messages from Google warning about your past spam activity and a potential penalty. Google says that Penguin has impacted about 3.1% of queries (compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%). If you saw major traffic losses between April 24th and April 25th, chances are Penguin is the culprit, even though Panda 3.5 came out around the same time.
Unfortunately, Google has yet to outline exactly what signals Penguin is picking up on, so many site owners that were negatively impacted are in the dark as to where they want wrong with their onsite SEO. Many in the SEO community have speculated that some contributing factors to Penguin might be things like:
1. Aggressive exact-match anchor text
2. Overuse of exact-match domains
3. Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
4. Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
It’s important to remember that Panda is an algorithm update, not a manual penalty. A reconsideration request to Google won’t make much a difference–you’ll have to repair your site and wait for a refresh before your site will recover.  As always do not panic if you are seeing a down turn in traffic, in the past when there is a major Google update like this things often rebound.  If you do think you have some sort of SEO penalty as a result of either the Google Panda or Google Penguin updates, please contact your SEO service provider to help or start trouble shooting.
Google has so far rolled out the following Penguin updates:
1. Initial Penguin Update, April 24th 2012
2. Penguin 1.1, May 25th 2012
3. Penguin #3, October 9th 2012
4. Penguin #4 (aka Penguin 2.0), May 22nd, 2013
5. Penguin #4 (aka Penguin 2.1), October 4th, 2013
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