Top Tips For Maximising Engagement On Twitter

Posted on 28/10/201519/02/2016 by Nicola Fairchild

Audience understanding

Who are they and what are they talking about?

When posting on Twitter, it is important to understand your audience, what they are talking about and how to best engage with them. Understanding this will help to create Twitter content that your followers will want to engage with.

Creating Lists

Twitter allows you to create lists of users. This is a useful tool that can be used to keep track of active commentators on your channel or to make a list of influential Tweeters within the industry.
By engaging with these key people in the industry it is possible to start building a relationship between them and your company.

Blocking Users

Users should only ever be blocked from commentating on your channel if they are spammers or trolls. This function should not be used to block people who are leaving negative comments or negative reviews. These should be responded to patiently and politely.

When to Post

Make a schedule

It’s advisable to create a posting schedule a month in advance to ensure that you always have content planned for your channel. When creating a schedule consider the best day, and the best time of day, for these posts to go live. There are tools available that let you see when there is the most traffic on your channel.

Posting regularity

Posting regularly lets followers know that you are active on the platform. Most Twitter activity takes place on the weekends but posts should be spread out over the week as this avoids clogging up follower’s feeds with your content. Having a posting schedule still allows you to make ad-hoc posts if something comes up that you would like to comment on, such as a recent event or release.

Hashtags

Finding the right conversations

Hashtags are used on Twitter for finding relevant posts and joining the right conversations. It can be useful to create your own brand/product related hashtag so people can find you and so you can see what people are talking about when they mention you.

Keeping it professional

Overdoing hashtags and including many irrelevant hashtags within one post is inadvisable as this does not look professional and followers find this kind of Tweet annoying. Hashtags should always fit within the context of a Tweet and be relevant to what you are writing about.

Trending hashtags

If a trending hashtag is related to your business, feel free to join the conversation. If it isn’t, don’t use it. Another relevant hashtag will come up that will allow you to contribute to the conversation.

Posting Tips

Tone of voice

When writing your Twitter posts, ensure that the tone of voice is consistent and reflects the business and its values. Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters, so keep Tweets short and sweet, and avoid using two or more Tweets to get your point across.

Pinning Tweets

Twitter as a platform is very fast paced and so a Tweet’s visibility is limited. Important Tweets that you want to keep visible for an extended period of time can be pinned to the top of your profile.

The 20/80 principle

Importantly, ensure that your Twitter content adheres to the 20/80 principle. This means that 20% of your content should be business and sales related while the remaining 80% should contain relevant community contributions. Your followers do not want to follow a sales channel, they are looking for quality content that is relevant to their life and interests.

Content: The 20%

Advertisements and promotions

The 20% of Tweets that are company and product related should include advertisements and promotions such as Q&A sessions, company updates, and behind the scene/employee content.
Giveaways, competitions and promotions are very popular amongst Twitter users, with many following a company only in order to look out for such opportunities. These posts receive a large amount of engagement from followers.

Feedback and input

By asking your followers for their opinions and suggestions about your products or services demonstrates that you value your follower’s input and that you’re listening to them. This also allows you to gather feedback about your products and services.

Help and advice

Many people use Twitter to ask for help and advice, and answering these questions or giving out helpful information and advice will create interesting content, as well as providing great customer service.

Content: The 80%

Industry related content

The rest of your content should focus on creating industry related content that your followers will find beneficial. This can include interacting with your followers, either by answering their questions, responding to their Tweets or re-tweeting relevant posts.

Linking to relevant news articles or re-tweeting them from news outlets or key players in the industry lets your followers know that you are up to date with what’s going on and that they can rely on you for important industry news and updates.

Visual content

Visual content is popular on Twitter, with “How-to” guides and infographics being valuable content that followers can share, save and refer to later. If it fits in with your company’s image then jokes and humorous posts are fine. Ensure that these kind of posts are not in bad taste and are not going to upset any of your followers.

Recent and events and news

Involving yourself in relevant conversations by talking about recent events and news, and using the right hashtags will ensure that you and your channel are up to date and look well informed. Tweets can also contain information relevant to the community in which the company works in, or is based in, such as important local news items or charity events.

Facebook Introduces New Video Features and Updates

Posted on 28/10/201519/02/2016 by Nicola Fairchild

Facebook has seen a surge in videos being published, shared and viewed by advertisers, publishers and users. As a response to this growing interest in viewing videos on the site, Facebook has announced plans to improve and expand current video functions as well as introducing new ones. One upgrade in particular is an updated video function which will allow users of the Facebook mobile app to multitask; it will be possible to carry out other Facebook functions such as checking the News Feed and commenting while a minimized version of the video is still playing.

Additionally, they are making improvements to the way publishers can use Facebook videos as adverts by aiming to create a complete video management system. Updates have already been made to Page Insights, an improved video uploading system and the introduction of a new Video Library. With these updates it is now possible to create secret videos viewable only to those whom you choose, make videos viewable only to certain demographics and to restrict the embedding of your videos on third party sites.

360 Video

These changes to video functionality come in addition to the announcement of Facebook’s 360 Video which uses special cameras to record all 360 degree of a scene, thus allowing users to choose which angle they view a video from. Although the feature is still being developed, publishers such as Star Wars and Disney are already planning immersive video content which allows fans to venture even further into their desired universe. 360 Videos should be hitting News Feeds on the web version of Facebook and Android soon, with iOS to follow after.

Unauthorised Content

Publishers and advertisers can rest assured that their content will not be used without their permission. Facebook videos are put through Audible Magic, an automatic content recognition system, meaning that unauthorized videos cannot be uploaded to the site. Should a video find its way onto the site, Facebook has reporting tools in place allowing the owner of the video to request its removal.

These new features are due to be rolled out in the following months.

Fusion SEO Market Updates: October 2015

Posted on 25/10/201508/03/2016 by Joshua Carter

Google introduces new artificial intelligence

Brain

Google has added a new signal to it’s search algorithm in order to help process and understand search queries.

Officially named RankBrain, the signal is a machine learning artificial intelligence which Google says it has been using to process “a very large fraction” of search queries. As around 15% of daily searches made through Google have never been searched before, the RankBrain system is designed to help Google identify, understand, and categorise these alongside similar queries.

It’s thought that RankBrain is instead the newest addition to Hummingbird, Google’s Search algorithm. Greg Corrade, a senior research scientist at Google, semi-confirmed this; “RankBrain is one of the “hundreds” of signals that go into an algorithm that determines what results appear on a Google search page and where they are ranked”.
Alongside this, Corrado also stated that in few months RankBrain has been operating, it has become the third most important signal that contributes to search results. Whilst it isn’t currently known exactly how the system will affect SEO, you can read a more in depth post on RankBrain here.

Penguin 4.0 expected to roll out during 2015

After months of hinting, Google have confirmed that the new Penguin 4.0 algorithm update is expected to roll out before the end of 2015.

As with the previous months’ Panda updates, Penguin 4.0 – which targets links that Google identifies as “spammy” or unnatural – is set to be implemented in real time.

This means that rather than updating sporadically, Penguin will be constantly working to detect unnatural linking practices, with penalties given out to affected sites on a real time basis. Vice-versa, if a site is hit by Penguin and makes steps to rectify unnatural behaviour, then in theory penalty recovery should take place equally quickly.

As always, Google seem unwilling to let slip the exact date that the update is set to take place; either that, or they don’t actually know, which seems fairly unlikely. However, so long as sites are following Google’s best practice guidelines on link building, then the update shouldn’t be anything to be too concerned about.

New report reveals important ranking factors for mobile

New research carried out by Searchmetrics has provided an insight into the importance of a range of mobile ranking factors. The research looks at the top ranked pages for mobile search results in 2015 and 2014 and desktop results in 2015, identifying trends across these.

Content factors featured heavily within the research, largely comparing the requirements for mobile content when compared to desktop. For example, it was found that the top 10 ranked pages for mobile in 2015 had an average of 868 words compared to 1285 for desktop. Mobile pages also had a lower average keyword count at 5.48, compared to 10.22 for desktop.

User experience features were also found to play a big part in mobile rankings, with high ranking mobile pages having fewer internal links, a higher prevalence of unordered lists, and a lower number of images than high ranking desktop pages.

Other important factors included a fast load speed (top pages averaged a 1.10s load time), and an avoidance of flash, with only 5% of the top ranked pages incorporating this.

Overall, the report suggests that the factors that influence search rankings in mobile are slightly different , although not entirely separate, from those that influence desktop.

Google warns webmasters not to use “sneaky” mobile redirects

Last month Google reiterated it’s policy on mobile redirects, stating that sites that redirect in a “sneaky” way can expect to receive penalties.

The warning is directed at webmasters who implement redirects to unrelated content on mobile landing pages. This means that when a user clicks through the site fro the SERP’s, they will be directed to an unrelated page, often without knowing.

This isn’t always something implemented by webmasters, and can also indicate that a site has been hacked. Whatever the reason, these kind of redirects are against webmaster guidelines, and the new announcement suggests that Google will be placing a bigger emphasis on identifying and penalising sites acting in this way.

This isn’t to say that any mobile redirects are being targeted, as Google’s Search Quality team stated; “Redirecting mobile users to improve their mobile experience (like redirecting mobile users from example.com/url1 to m.example.com/url1) is often beneficial to them. But redirecting mobile users sneakily to a different content is bad for user experience and is against Google’s webmaster guidelines.”

Mobile ad-blocking: What does this mean for mobile advertisers?

Posted on 15/10/201519/02/2016 by Jen Mottram

The announcement of ad-blocking capabilities included with Apple’s latest software update, iOS9, has advertisers worried all over the world – what does this mean for the state of mobile advertising itself?

Released to the public in September, iOS9 makes it much easier for developers to develop ad-blocking software which works to block adverts on the Safari browser on the iPhone. Unsurprisingly, this has been met by much dismay from mobile advertisers and publishers alike. Many websites rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat, and with the increasing growth in mobile usage, mobile advertising is going to become increasingly important. 60% of global consumers currently use their mobile phone as their primary internet source and with this figure only likely to increase further over the coming years, what will mobile ad-blocking mean for these websites?

We’ve seen these mobile ad-blockers rise to the top of the paid charts in the App Store, however less than 48 hours after the release of iOS9, the number one ad blocker (Peace) was pulled from the app store. Marco Arment, the creator of Peace, said ‘it just doesn’t feel good’, and in his blog post, he states that ‘while ad blockers benefit a ton of people, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve it.’ It would seem that this is referring to smaller businesses and publishers, who depend on advertising to monetise their online presence. More content is now consumed on mobile than desktop, so without mobile advertising revenue, many independent publishers could face the threat of closure.

These ad-blockers only work on Apple’s Safari app, which for some people, has raised suspicions. Could this be a move for Apple to increase their revenue through in-app advertising? According to figures from the Q2 State of Mobile Advertising report 2015, Android has now overtaken Apple for app monetisation, so it is possible that this is an effort to move advertising away from the mobile browser and towards apps; which in Apple’s case, would increase profits. Google, as many of you will know, is one of the biggest online advertisers. While this move wouldn’t send them under, it could take a sizeable portion out of their mobile advertising profits and could stop users seeing both search ads and ads on Google’s Display Network.

Another of iOS9’s key features is the enhanced Spotlight search, which aims to direct users towards apps before looking on their browser. This is a great move for Apple, and further helps them in their efforts to increase in-app advertising revenue whilst also eating into Google’s mobile browser advertising profits. The announcement earlier this year that Apple may no longer feature Google as Safari’s default search engine should have Google worried; about 75% of their mobile search revenue came from iPhones and iPads in 2014. Whilst Android still dominates the mobile OS market, Apple is creeping up, with iOS boasting market share growth figures of 12% last year.
Although iOS9 requires users to download applications to block ads, it is possible that it might be included as a default feature in future versions of their mobile operating system- this is something that Google should be preparing for.

It will be interesting to see what the effect of iOS9 and Apple’s recent moves will have on the mobile advertising industry in the next year. Will Apple dominate mobile search? Will Google have to devise a new mobile advertising strategy? Will publishers start to put content behind paywalls in order to survive?

An Introduction to PPC Landing Pages: Dos and Don’ts

Posted on 15/10/201516/03/2016 by Jen Mottram

In simple terms, a PPC landing page is a web page which a user ‘lands’ on subsequent to clicking a paid ad. Essentially, there are two broad types of landing pages; click through pages and lead generation pages. Click through pages are more often than not used in ecommerce with the intention of moving a user further down the purchasing funnel. They use a CTA such as ‘add to cart’ to achieve this. Lead generation pages usually include a form designed to collect personal information about a user in order to market a product or service to that user at a later date.

The Faster, The Better

It takes someone just seconds to make a strong first impression and the same can be said when considering landing pages. This is just one reason why it is important to provide a fast loading time when navigating a user to your landing page, not to mention the fact that it improves your Google Quality Score, effectively increasing your ad position for a lower cost. Providing a fast loading time keeps the user engaged and reduces your bounce rate.

Keep it Simple

Avoid making your landing page look ‘busy’ with distracting videos and pictures because that is exactly what they will do; distract the user. Living in such a fast paced society, it’s important not to bog the user down with excessive amounts of text and jargon, they must be able to understand the message you’re trying to convey in a relatively short space of time. Besides, lots of images and videos will only slow your load time down anyway.

Relevancy is Key

It’s very unlikely that you’d walk to an aisle in a supermarket marked ‘bacon’ only to find boxes of eggs there instead. It would be pretty disappointing too. Don’t make the same mistake with your landing page. Keep it relevant to what your ad has proposed and re-emphasise its message; do not disappoint. Don’t send the user to the homepage, instead, take them to the purchase page and provide them with more information about your product or service. By keeping your ad relevant, you’ll lower your CPC, increase conversions and ultimately, improve ROI.

Provide a Clear and Simple CTA

Don’t hide it below the fold or with mouseover effects. Champion it. It’s important that the user knows what to do next and it’s your job to guide them to the action you want them to take. This being said, what you don’t want is for the user to feel too ‘pushed’ or committed. Use a ‘soft’ CTA, for example, ‘add to cart’ rather than a CTA such as ‘submit’ which may discourage the user.

And Finally, Test, Test, Test!

Your landing page is an important element to your campaign so it’s important to test it as often as is necessary. This can be achieved in two ways; A/B testing and multivariate testing;

A/B testing allows you to test two entirely different pages against each other to determine which one is more effective in terms of performance.

Multivariate testing lets you test a number of components within a landing page at one time to determine which combination of components are most effective. Anything can be tested from CTA variations and navigation to headlines and copy. Testing your landing page is vital in determining what works well, what doesn’t, what to use and what to avoid.

Fusion SEO Market Updates: September 2015

Posted on 01/10/201508/03/2016 by Joshua Carter

Google warns of harsh penalties for repeated guideline violations

JUDGE

Google has warned that sites found repeatedly violating webmaster guidelines, or that have a “clear intention to spam”, could face harsher manual action penalties.

Usually, if a site receives a manual penalty for violating guidelines, they need to rectify the violation and send a reconsideration request to Google in order for this to be revoked.

However, if after a positive reconsideration request a site then proceeds to further violate guidelines, the new blog post states that “further action” will be undertaken.

This “further action” will make any future reconsideration requests more difficult to carry out, less likely to be accepted, and in general reduce the chance of any manual actions being removed.

Summing this up, Google state that “In order to avoid such situations, we recommend that webmasters avoid violating our Webmaster Guidelines [in the first place], let alone [repeat this]”.

HTTPS acts as a “tiebreaker” in search results

In a recent video hangout, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes emphasised again the slight ranking boost given to HTTPS sites, clarifying it as a “tiebreaker”.

In situations where the quality signals for two separate sites are essentially equal, if one site is on HTTP and one is on HTTPS, the HTTPS site will be given a slight boost. This reflects Google’s recent attitude towards HTTPS; whilst Google doesn’t regard encryption as essential, it is heavily recommended.

This doesn’t mean that HTTP is viewed as a negative by Google, and Illyes clarified that it’s still “perfectly fine” for a website to not be HTTPS.

However, whilst having a site on HTTPS alone isn’t enough to result in a positive SERP ranking, “if you’re in a competitive niche, then it can give you an edge from Google’s point of view”.

Google hints that structured data could be used as a ranking factor

How to make toast

Although data that is relevant to a specific site or niche works to make a sites SERP snippets richer, and in turn could potentially improve CTR, it’s not something currently used by Google as a ranking factor.

However, new comments – alongside the fact that Google now issues penalties for improper schema implementation -suggest that this could change in future. Acknowledging the usefulness that structured markup can have to users, Mueller stated that “over time, I think it is something that might go into the rankings”.

Mueller gave a brief example of how this might work, saying that in a case where a person is searching for a car, “we can say oh well, we have these pages that are marked up with structured data for a car, so probably they are pretty useful in that regard”.

However, it was emphasised that this wouldn’t be used as a sole ranking signal, and that a site would need to have “good content” as well being technically sound in order to benefit from any potential structured data ranking factors.

Study finds increased CTR on position 2 results with rich snippets

Blue nile snippets

Market research company Blue Nile Research has suggested in a new study that rich snippets could shift CTR percentage from position 1 to position 2.

The study compared responses to three scenarios; a result in position 1 with no rich snippets, a result in position 2 with rich snippets (such as stars, images, videos etc), and a result in position 2 with no rich snippets.

A comparison of clicks for each scenario found a 61% click share for the position 2 with rich media, whereas the position 1 with no rich media had only 48% click share. Meanwhile, position 2 with no rich snippets had the lowest click share at 35%.

The study looked at the search habits of 300 people in a lab environment, and as such doesn’t necessarily give the most accurate representation of natural user activity. However, it does suggest that structured markup and rich snippets have a valid part to play when considering how to boost click through rate.

Google says linking externally has no SEO benefit

Although it’s common knowledge that gaining links from good quality sites can have a positive SEO benefit, the effect of linking out externally hasn’t always been as clear cut.

It’s often been thought that whilst not comparable to earning links, linking to external sites could provide a marginal search benefit. Although not ever explicitly confirmed, this belief has been reinforced by Google; in 2009, Matt Cutts stated that “in the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighbourhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites”.

However, new comments have suggested that this isn’t the case. When asked “is there a benefit of referencing external useful sites within your content?”, Google’s John Mueller clarified that “It is not something that we would say that there is any SEO advantage of”, but that “if you think this is a link that helps users understand your site better, then maybe that makes sense.”

So, although linking eternally appears to have no direct SEO benefit, it should still be considered as a valuable part of creating a user friendly site architecture.

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