Why we Love Twitter
We Adore Twitter
Despite the fact that Twitter is famous for its bugs, glitches, and spam, Twitter is my favorite social media site. Why do I choose to express myself in 140 characters or less? I do it because twitter offers opportunities, options and ideas that other social media sites have trouble conveying in the same simplistic, yet effective format.
Facebook “Friends” vs Twitter Connections
Too Close for comfort
The first thing that a people minded person notices when he or she logs onto twitter, is how easy it is to make new friends and connect to people. These are individuals that you never otherwise would have had a chance to speak with. Twitter’s interface runs on followers, rather than friend requests, and the culture is very different from other social media sites.
Facebook invites users to offer up too much personal information, and due to this decision, people are less likely to be open to connecting with strangers. There is no “add as acquaintance” button, Facebook uses the word friend. You must actually know people to connect on Facebook because of the personal nature of the site.
Through twitter you can strike up conversations, discuss other people’s work, and in general share ideas without having to show complete strangers your family thanksgiving photos from 2009.
This translates well into marketing because you can build business connections with professionals in related fields in a way that Facebook simply doesn’t allow for. I have met countless interesting professionals who have provided me with referrals, insights and advice just because I was able to reach out to them. Twitter is the easiest way to gain cheap exposure through social media and can work wonders for your brand’s consumer engagement.
How We Use Twitter
Longevity Graphics
Something that we do at Longevity Graphics for our Vancouver Social Media, is we like to make sure that we talk to people who recently followed us or tweeted us, and find out what they specialize in from a business perspective. If we do this, we can find out if they are a potential client, someone who gives referrals, someone who we can help or even if they are an interesting person to tweet to. We specifically target out social media to Vancouver, and the tri-cities, so that we end up talking to people in the area. Twitter is amazing because of the ease in which a business person can make new connections.
The Simplicity Factor
How to attract Clients using Twitter
A feature that gives twitter an edge is the pure simplicity of it all. Facebook takes a while to learn how to use, especially if you are operating a corporate fan page and trying to use the paid ad structure. To be able to effectively market on Twitter, all you need to do is follow a few guidelines.
For a complete beginner in social media, whether or not based in Vancouver , the first thing to understand is the more people who see your tweets, the more likelihood they will have of buying from you. Often when you follow individuals on twitter, they will follow you back. With this in mind, you can follow accounts that are in your target market, and use the technique as a lead generation formula.
Another principle to bear in mind is the more times someone sees your company, the more likely they are to buy from you. This means that literally, the more often you can tweet the better. One doesn’t want to completely clog their follower’s news feeds, but tweeting over ten times a day is a great way to stay in the minds of your customers.
Changes, Updates, and New Ideas
Another reason I like twitter, is the radical updates and changes it implements without changing its current user friendly interface. Twitter, has been making alterations left, right and center- making additions to the user experience and implementing new rules of conduct on the site. These changes send all sorts of ripples through the internet, doing everything from informing users of emergencies to sending Twitter-based tools like Manage-Flitter scrambling to keep up with the updates.
Alerts:
One of the newest introductions to twitter is the introduction of emergency alerts. The way that twitter alerts work, is users must subscribe to the twitter alerts system. You can do this by visiting twitter.com/[username]/alerts.
When you visit a profile on twitter that is offering alerts, your will see a message characterized by a picture of an purple cross that will deliver information if there is a crisis.
This new feature is used for situations such as the recent hurricane in the Philippines, to raise awareness about current events and give warnings to people in the areas.
Magic Recs:
A new feature that Twitter has recently implemented is the account @MagicRecs. Magic Recs is a recommendation engine that sends suggested pages to individuals based on their current tastes.
If you choose to follow @MagicReqs you will be tweeted pages to follow that twitter has deemed you will enjoy. Feedback from this engine has been largely positive, and sentiment is that Twitter does a relatively good job of matching interests. For Vancouver Social Media, it can even target your recommendations locally.
Scheduled Tweets:
Another change that Twitter has implemented is that “Twitter ad users” can now schedule tweets using their twitter account. Previously sites like buffer were used to do this, but twitter has decided to give the option in house to paying customers. This addition is not available to the average user, rather it is only accessible to individuals who wish to target the posting of a promoted tweet.
Twitter TV:
Twitter has announced that it recently joined forces with Comcast and NBC Universal and unveiled a partnership that will let users tune into TV shows directly from tweets. The program is called SeeIt and it is going to include features such as changing channel, watching shows from “On Demand” and setting recordings on their DVR. Twitter is hoping to extend SeeIt to other major networks as well, but new partnerships have yet to be announced.
Why we Love it
The people at Twitter are always working hard to expand, innovate and streamline the social media site.
The ability to connect to new people that Twitter offers is unparalleled, and it is a great tool to create engagement with potential business.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design is the newest online craze.
Nearly every new client of ours asks us if we can build them a responsive website, and we don’t blame them. With the sheer number of different media that can access the internet in today’s society, it is important to have a website that can be accessed by users on their computers, phones and iPad alike.
A large chunk of traffic is generated through hand held devices and if a business or website owner does not have a site that is compatible with all media, then they will be losing out on business.
What is responsive web design?
A website that has been built using responsive web design will be able to operate on any device that can access the internet, without losing its form and becoming unusable.
Previously, the only way to enable mobile access to a site was to create a specific mobile site; this technique has merit, but responsive web design is a visually appealing alternative.
Adaptable To the Device
Web designers are currently plagued by the constant invention of new mobile devices. Every year new technology is created that is no longer compatible with their previous work. Responsive web design solves this problem by creating a malleable page format that simply conforms to the screen size of any new device. This way designers don’t have to constantly go back and make changes to their mobile sites because responsive websites can do the adaptation themselves.
One feature of responsive web design is that it works across all platforms, while separate mobile sites need to be tweaked for different devices. A mobile site will not perform the same way in Google chrome as it will in Safari, and for novice developers this can be troublesome to deal with.
However, if you can create user friendly mobile sites, they will often be more aesthetically pleasing because they won’t be adapting their screen size.
So, How Does Responsive Web Design Work?
The way that responsive web design works, is the screen literally grows and shrinks depending on the screen it is being used on. This is fantastic technology because the website literally knows what it is being viewed on, and behaved accordingly.
The drawback to a responsive website is that sometimes a website might expand or shrink in a way that doesn’t line up with your vision for your website.
Who Needs Responsive Web Site Design?
When thinking about adding a responsive design to a site that currently doesn’t support mobile devices, or is using a mobile site that they want to switch over, it’s important to look at the individual’s business model:
- If you look at your analytics, do the figures show that the site is attracting mobile users?
- If the site is already working well on mobile with solid conversion rates, then maybe the client doesn’t need a responsive web site after all.
- Other factors to consider are how the site looks aesthetically when viewed on a mobile device. If the site completely loses shape and becomes either unpleasing to look at or difficult to read, one might consider having the site redone responsively.
Success Online Coaching- A Case Study
We built a responsive site for Success Online Coaching recently, and we are proud of the results.
It was important for Success Online Coaching to have a site that could be accessed through mobile because their business model relies almost entirely on online sales. They also have an app that provides access to their website, so it was important that they had an aesthetically pleasing site for customers to navigate.
What is conversion optimization?
When answering the question “What is conversion optimization”, a definition is an excellent place to start.
Conversion optimization is defined as the method of creating an experience for an individual visiting a website with the goal of increasing the percentage of page visitors that convert into buyers, customers, or leads. It is often referred to as CRO, short for conversion rate optimization.
Does your website take action?
Conversion optimization is the art of creating a website layout that leads visitors to take the action that you want them to take. The reason that one would implement these tactics, is if said person desired people to interact with the site in a specific way. An example of this would be to lead people to sign up for an email list.
It’s All About Testing
When considering the question “what is conversion optimization” one must realize that to optimize their conversion rate they must find out why individuals do not convert, and then fill in the gaps. CRO requires a structured systematic approach when attempting to improve the conversion rates on your site. One must use insights, user feedback and analytics to track what individuals do on the site; Google analytics is an example of one of these tools. Crazy Egg is another one of our favorite testing tools. Your CRO strategy needs to work around your company website’s own specific goals, and move the visitor in the direction you wish them to go.
In the introduction, we briefly defined CRO as the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website. Here’s an even simpler definition: conversion rate optimization is finding why visitors aren’t converting and fixing it.
Simple, right?
So, what is the conversion optimization testing process all about?
A few important concepts regarding conversion rate optimization are the use of techniques such as calls to action, a/b split testing and multivariate testing.
- call to action: a statement that invites the visitor to take an action. An example would be “Click here to buy now”.
- A/B split testing: the act of taking one page, measuring the conversion rate, and then comparing it to the analytics of how another page attempting to accomplish the same action is faring.
- Multivariate testing: the addition of more variables into your split test such as testing headings, images, and messaging.
If you are attempting to make the visitors to your site take some sort of action, then CRO is an important subject to look into.
What is conversion optimization? Longevity Graphics offers conversion optimization:
or Click here (this is one of those calls to action, did you notice?)
to contact us for your free consultation.
The SEO Project Details
The Last Door contracted Longevity Graphics 2 years ago to help with organic SEO, Paid Advertising optimization, and landing page creation/onsite conversion optimization.
The goal of the original contract was to increase traffic by 200%. We were able to blow that goal out of the water with a 500% increase. Needless to say, Last Door is very happy with the results, and we look forward to continuing working with them on their online presence and organic SEO results.
See below for the amazing SEO review provided by Last Door
About the Last Door
The Last Door is a non-profit organization that has been working with youth, families and adults for almost 30 years.
“The provision of the therapeutic environments where individuals and families experiencing addiction can gain support and guidance to restore themselves to mental, spiritual, physical and emotional health.”
Here is the SEO review:
“To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing a letter of reference for Longevity Graphics, they have managed Last Door Recovery Society’s SEO Optimization and Google Ad Words/Organics Account for two years for a website we had designed 5 years ago from a different web designer. Their services have been professional, efficient, productive and beneficial to the organization.
Since the website www.lastdoor.org was optimized for Google and Bing, the number of unique hits to the website rose 500%. Last Door is listed on page one for our target market in Google Organics, while our paid Google Ads are receiving maximum exposure with “call to action” per click.
Last Door intends on renewing its annual monthly maintenance contract with Longevity Graphics and has requested a quote from them to redesign our entire website due to their creative solutions for optimal web traffic. Last Door Recovery Society operates residential treatment programs for individuals with substance abuse issues for 30 years and relies on the internet for informing the public of our services to ensure our programs are utilized every day.
Giuseppe Ganci
Director of Community Development
Last Door Recovery Society”
Thanks again Guiseppe for your kind words!
We are excited to announce that we have a new team member. Ryan Jaeger, a third year student at Simon Fraser University, is Longevity’s first data analyst. Ryan specializes in working with information and creating quality back links for clients. We sat down with Ryan and asked him a few questions about himself. Here is the interview:
B: Hi Ryan, how are you doing today?
R: Hi Ben, I’m doing great. I am having a lot of fun during my first day at work.
Fantastic! The first question I have on my sheet is: what degree are you currently working towards?
R: Right now I am studying environmental sciences at Simon Fraser University. I am pretty passionate about the environment, and I am planning on helping restore ecosystems as a career.
B: What draws you to working in marketing and with data?
R: I have always been a very organized and focused person. Something that I have found I can do better than most people is just put my head down and work on a task, sometimes for twelve hours at a time. It’s kind of strange but I like getting immersed in a task, even if it is something monotonous like entering data.
B: What is your favorite part of marketing?
R: I find back linking relaxing, and I do a lot of it. Having quality back links for a site is paramount for any page that hopes to rank in Google search results.
B: Describe your personality
R: I’m not really sure what to say *laughs – I guess you could consider me fairly outgoing. I’m pretty playful and am usually having fun with whatever I do.
B: What are your hobbies
R: I like to be outside; hiking in North Vancouver is something I really enjoy. I also love skiing and will go whenever I get the chance.
B: Thanks a lot Ryan, I’ll let you get back to your work- Welcome to the team!
What is the hummingbird update?
So, what is the Hummingbird update? The Hummingbird update is Google’s newest attempt to streamline their search engine and create a more user friendly service. Hummingbird is designed to yield more precise search results, and give users a more “natural” search experience.
Google named the algorithm “Hummingbird” because it is “precise and fast. The Hummingbird update focuses on user intent rather than the previous system of matching keywords.
Danny Sullivan wrote on this change in his article: FAQ: All About the New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm: “Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in the query, ensuring that the whole query-the whole sentence or conversation or meaning-is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching a few words”
Google is clearly trying to create a more natural feeling to the search engine. In contrast with the mechanical keyword based style of the previous operating systems, Hummingbird attempts to truly understand what the user is searching for.
Hummingbird was only announced last week, but sources state that the update was put into effect in between late August and early September. It is being touted as the most significant change to Google’s search engine since 2001; It isn’t so much as update, as it is an entirely new algorithm that Google has chosen to implement.
From the same article Danny Sullivan explained the nature of the change using this analogy: “Think of a car built in the 1950’s. It might have a great engine, but it might also be an engine that lacks things like fuel injection or is unable to use unleaded fuel. When Google switched to Hummingbird, it’s as if it dropped the old engine out of the car and put in a new one. It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch”.
What does this mean for business owners?
David Amerland, author of “Google Semantic Search” says: “From a strategy point of view this opens the horizon for companies and webmasters considerably. From a practical perspective, they need to identify the USP of each business and become authoritative within it is now a key criteria for continued SEO success. The comparison element that has been integrated suggests that semantic mark-up may begin to confer an advantage now when it comes to helping index information in products and services.”
What this means is that quality rises to the top. To stay competitive In today’s online environment, business owners need to position themselves as people who have the answers to the questions being asked. Quality “likable”, “sharable” and “tweetable” content needs to be created and shared across networks.
What is the hummingbird update? It is Google’s new algorithm: “hummingbird” has made the leap from being a keyword oriented system, to turning google into a program that understands semantic language. Business owners will need to keep the new changes in mind when implementing SEO and building their brands online.
Longevity Graphics is excited to introduce Benjamin Weir. Ben started on September 24th, 2013 as the newest addition to the team. He is taking on the role of Marketing Assistant, and with experience launching marketing campaigns for well known brands such as Gold’s Gym, and devising social media campaigns for television shows, we are sure he will do great.
Currently he is studying Communications and Business at Simon Fraser University. Ben is passionate about his disciplines and mixes them into his own uniquely creative style of marketing. He is currently in his third year of University and plans on completing a five year degree.
Outside of school, Ben splits his time between advising the start up “Guitar Porn”, and working on his own marketing projects. He is currently working on creating information products on relationship advice and interpersonal skills.
Benjamin is extremely passionate about internet marketing, and hopes to use his abilities to make a name for himself as an internet entrepreneur in the coming years. He believes that Internet Marketing, whether it be SEO, Social Media or PPC are important tools for the arsenal of any business in the modern economic landscape.
Ben enjoys martial arts, meditation, going to the gym, and freestyle rap.
What is SEO?
Clients who have not done SEO before often have no idea what the term means or what the acronym even stands for. In this post, I will explain what SEO is and why it’s important for any business or organization online.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the optimization of your website with the goal of ranking higher in search engines such as Google and Bing. Your site’s placement in the search engine results is called its natural or organic rank and it is free. This is in contrast to PPC (SEM), which is a sponsored ad. There are two main methods of improving your site’s rank in search engine results: on-page optimization and off-page factors such as inbound links.
On-page optimization
When an SEO professional talks about on-page optimization, they mean that each page is easy for the search engines to crawl (meaning the site loads quickly and does not have an excess of needless code) and that each page is clearly indicating to the search engines what it is about and what terms it should rank for. On-page optimization involves doing extensive research to determine what phrases each page should attempt to rank for and then ensuring that every ranking factor within each page is optimized to support the chosen keyword phrases.
The most important factor for optimizing a page is its content. Every page should have a good amount of unique, quality content that is relevant and useful to the visitors of your site. Everything else that is done for SEO in the back-end (coding) is intended to support the content by sending the search engines the right signals. Search engines ‘listen’ to certain bits of code for hints about the subject matter of a page and SEO is done to make it clearer that the content is talking about a certain topic.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization is usually much more difficult than on-page, but it is crucial for any site trying to rank in a competitive market. Incoming links from other sites are the focus of off-page optimization, as search engines see links from other sites as votes of confidence. Having links from credible and relevant sites to your own website can boost your site’s reputation and increase its ranking within the search engines.
Link building has become a potentially dangerous endeavour due to several recent updates from Google, however. It’s very important to be discriminating about which sites you seek links from. Quantity is not better than quality; in fact a large amount of poor-quality links can result in a penalty to your site’s ranking. The best way to build links is to provide high-quality content on your site that visitors will naturally want to share with others. There are strategies that go beyond this, but that’s for another blog post!
Why You Need SEO
The main advantage of SEO is that it has long-term results and your natural ranking in the search engines is free. If you have an existing website that is ranking but not as high as you would like, improving your SEO is the only way to get yourself on the first page of search results. If you have the time to devote to creating great content for your site, SEO can be relatively inexpensive for you.
Basic SEO is straight-forward and can probably be done by any moderately tech-savvy individual once they’ve been educated on the ranking factors. However, basic SEO is not going to help you compete with the companies on the first page of the search results that have hired professionals to do SEO for them. The more competitive your industry is, the more difficult it will be to outrank your competitors. If you want to compete, you will need to use advanced SEO strategies such as the ones we use to help our clients outrank their competition.
If you do not have the time to invest in learning SEO, keeping up to date, or doing the actual implementation on your website, we offer a variety of SEO packages for businesses of all sizes. We also offer SEO consulting to businesses that want to bring their SEO in-house but are inexperienced and do not know how to get the most from SEO.
Negative SEO! What’s that you ask? Well, thanks to our friends at Google and the constant updates to the algorithms, Penguin in particular, some unethical companies and slime balls are using tactics to hurt their competitors. Google rolled out the first Penguin update back in April 2012. The update was aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content, and other strategies. The guiding principle for the update was to PENALIZE WEBSITES using manipulative techniques to achieve high rankings.
Generally Google’s algorithms reward websites for doing a good job of providing relevant, useful content for the visitors, or so they say. As far as the SEO community knows, this was the first time that Google began to penalize sites for attempting to manipulate the search engines with shady tactics.
So the big question is, what is stopping people from implementing some of these manipulative tactics on your website? Not too much! Thus we have negative SEO. It’s becoming a reality in the online world, and it’s something that businesses should be aware of, particularly in regards to backlinks to your website.
Over 11 years in the industry, I have had the privilege to work with amazing business owners with high business standards and integrity. We haven’t had to worry too much about this as we have implemented SEO tactics based on Google’s recommendations, and have received some great results. Unfortunately, I recently met a new client that has fallen victim to some bad link backs.
Let’s see what Matt Cutt’s has to say about this here
So what can be done about this? I have done a ton of reading and consulting with other SEO professionals who have had success with overcoming negative SEO.
Here are the steps that we recommend:
- Use these three tools to complete your link mining. Webmaster Tools, Moz Open Site Explorer, and MajesticSEO. These tools will help you to determine which websites are linking to your website.
- Organize the link backs into a spreadsheet, removing duplicate entries.
- Things to look for: low page rank links (3 or less), low domain authority (30 or less), links that are not relevant to your product, service, or geographical region, and finally, spammy anchor text links.
- Contact all of the websites that you would like to have your link removed from. Yes, this seems daunting, but it is necessary. This tool helps to speed things up: Rmoov
- Then you wait. Wait. And wait some more. Give it about a month for website owners to respond. You should see a 5-10% response rate.
- After you have attempted to have the links removed on your own, you can then submit the remainder of your list to the Webmaster Tools disavow tool. Google requires that you attempt to have the links removed first before using this tool.
Yes this is a tedious task. And yes it is necessary if you have been hit with a some negative SEO. Hopefully in the future, Google will release an update that prevents negative SEO from happening. Our recommendation is to run your business with ethical business standards and hopefully this won’t happen to you. If you are one of the unlucky business owners who is affected by negative SEO, then consult an SEO professional to help you. Trying to clean it up yourself and abusing the disavow tool could potentially hurt your site more.
On May 22nd, 2013, Google rolled out the Penguin 2.0 update to their search engine algorithm. Like Penguin 1.0, the update focuses on penalizing unnatural linking strategies. One difference with Penguin 2.0, however, is that it analyzes the backlinks of the internal pages as well as the home page, whereas Penguin 1.0 only analyzed the backlinks to the home page. This detail was only recently revealed by Matt Cutts when he spoke about the update on his blog. It is, effectively, a more in-depth version of Penguin 1.0, and it can cause the same problems for sites that have had black-hat or grey-hat link-building done in the past.
Penguin 2.0 basically looks for unnatural links from low-quality sites and devalues your site based on what it determines to be a black-hat link profile. It makes the assumption that you or someone working on your behalf participated in unnatural link-building strategies, such as paying for links or ‘advertorials’ (paid editorials that link back to your site). Maybe you didn’t do this unnatural link-building yourself, but a competitor has built poor-quality links to your site with the intention of getting your site penalized. This is negative SEO, and it has the same repercussions.
For more information about the Penguin 2.0 updates, check out this link.
Identifying it
So how do you know if this update has affected your website? Check your analytics data (from Google Analytics or any similar service that tracks your traffic) and look for a drop in your site traffic in late May. If you see a sudden and dramatic drop in traffic that can’t be explained by a usual seasonal trend or other logical coincidence, you’ve probably been hit by Penguin 2.0.
It’s also a good idea to examine the backlinks of your site using a site exploring tool such as those offered by SEO Moz or Majestic SEO. Using these tools, you can view the domains that link to your site, the page rank and domain rank of those domains, and the anchor text used in the links. With this information you can figure out if your link profile has the signs of an unnatural, spammy link-building strategy – backlinks from paid directories, links with exact match anchor text (keyword stuffed anchors), and high link accrual velocity (gaining backlinks in large chunks very quickly).
This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, especially for those unfamiliar with SEO and the tools that are used to analyze websites. If you don’t have the time or you find it too confusing, Longevity Graphics can help you figure out if your site has been hit by Penguin 2.0.
What to do
If it’s clear that you have a large amount of crummy backlinks, how do you proceed? The solution is straight-forward, but not necessarily easy or quick. Working from the list of your backlinks, you will need to identify the links that are hurting your rankings and deal with each accordingly. In cases where you have control over the link, like on a directory that provided you with a login to update your business profile, you should be able to delete the link altogether or alter the anchor text if that is the issue. When you do not have direct control over the link, you will have to reach out to the webmaster of the site on which your link appears and request to have your link removed.
There are sites and tools available to help you with categorizing and sorting through your backlinks. Some will even have template letters to help you with sending out link removal requests. https://www.rmoov.com/index.php https://www.removeem.com/.
Not all webmasters will be cooperative and some will even try to exploit you by asking you to pay them to remove your link. In these cases, you can consider using Google’s link disavow tool as a last resort. The tool allows you to suggest that certain links not be counted toward your site’s ranking. Matt Cutts has warned that the Disavow Tool should not be used by most sites and should only be used to clean up a “small fraction” of links after you have made multiple link removal requests on your own. He seems to be suggesting that abusing the tool could result in an additional penalty of some kind to your site.
Hopefully you will have been successful in removing the offending backlinks from your link profile. Either way, you should move forward by focusing on creating new links that follow Google’s quality guidelines and avoid unnatural link-building practices. See here for a useful link explaining what one should not do when doing link-building. Google recommends that you seek out natural links by providing useful content such as infographics or guest posts on relevant, high-quality sites.
If your livelihood has been threatened because this recent update has diminished your site’s traffic, we can help you get back on track. Recovery from Penguin 2.0 is a big job, but we are professional SEOs with a variety of experience that can help to boost your site’s rankings and recover from penalties.