David After the Dentist: Is this real life?

I went to Google and searched for “real life dentist” and the first two results were the aforementioned videos and the first two non-video results was for Real Life Dental in Blacksburg, Va., with the page title “Blacksburg Dentist – Welcome Real Life Dental Care.” Real Life Dental even topped the official davidafterdentist.com Website.

Was this pure coincidence or a stroke of genius by the folks who founded Real Life Dental Care? As an SEO, I’m thinking that it was a calculated and shrewd business decision by the local dentist. How long will that link to the “david after dentist” video last? Who knows, but in the short term, why not take advantage of hugely popular search term?

I decided to look at the site, www.realifedentalcare.com, and its source code. Almost instantly, my warm SEO fuzzies quickly dissipated. For starters, there was no meta description. Boo! Secondly, there was a random line of text at the bottom left of the page that reads “PARAPHRASE SEO FILLED SENTENCE HERE”. What? Would a client of a template-based Website service even know what that meant?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a complicated concept to understand. The basic principle is to provide relevant text-based content on your site that people find interesting. Within that content, link to other pages on your site and to other websites that offer similar content that may supplement yours. And if you are successful at providing interesting and relevant content, other sites will link to you.

The bottom line is that it would appear that this site made a smart move to capitalize on a viral YouTube video and its keywords. I’d love to see their analytics and find out how many people come to their site using the key words “real life dentist.” But, it would also appear that they stopped short of fully optimizing their site. It could use quite a bit of help.

“Download Your Life”

Did you know that you can download your Facebook Information?

Technically, it’s called “Download Your Information,” but I found it under my Account Settings. Login to Facebook (using https://facebook.com to ensure security, more on that in a later post) and click on the “Account” button at the top right. A drop down menu will appear; click “Account Settings.” The default tab displayed should be the “Settings” tab. Near the bottom, you’ll see the option to “Download Your Information.” Click on the “learn more” link and here’s what you’ll see:

This tool lets you download a copy of your information, including your photos and videos, posts on your wall, all of your messages, your friend list and other content you have shared on your profile. Within this zip file you will have access to your data in a simple, browseable manner. Learn More about downloading a copy of your information.

Security
This is a copy of all of the personal information you’ve shared on Facebook. In order to protect your information, we will ask for authentication to verify your identity.

WARNING: This file contains sensitive information. Because this download contains your profile information, you should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.

The process takes quite a while, but you will be notified when it is complete. Once completed, you’ll be able to download your information via a .zip file that will contain the following information:

• Your profile information (e.g., your contact information, interests, groups)
• Wall posts and content that you and your friends have posted to your profile
• Photos and videos that you have uploaded to your account
• Your friend list
• Notes you have created
• Events to which you have RSVP’d
• Your sent and received messages
• Any comments that you and your friends have made on your Wall posts, photos, and other profile content

So, there you have it! It appears that Facebook doesn’t just let your posts evaporate into the ether. Instead, you can download it for posterity and archival purposes, like that old filing cabinet you have that you’ve never cleaned out.

I’ve heard this repeated, emphatically, year after year at search engine optimization conferences. As part of the SEO site audits I do for Business Bullpen, we include the following text in our review of client sites:

Search engines no longer place any value on this metric and it may even hurt you because you are essentially telling your competitors which keywords you believe are relevant. They can then bid on those keywords via Google Adwords and then their paid ads may display above your “organic” (non-paid) results for the keywords for which you want to be found.

Surprisingly, we still get asked, “Are meta keywords still relevant?” The answer is absolutely not. In fact, one could argue that your competitors could look at your meta keywords, discover what terms you deem important, and then run an Adwords campaign using your own keywords against you. Sure, the are ways to analyze any site for keyword density, but why make it easier for your competitors by giving them your list of keywords in your meta data, which anyone can see?

And if you still don’t believe me – never mind the fact I’ve been doing this for four years – here’s Google’s Matt Cutts to back me up.

Facebook's new Insights interface may have caused incorrect like counts for some Facebook pages.

How much do people really like your Facebook page? More precisely, how many people actually like your page?

I visited the official Facebook page for my alma mater, Virginia Tech, today and was shocked to see that the number of people who “like” the page jumped from around 33,000 to more than 140,000 in less than a week. I know the page steadily adds new fans, but this was a huge jump.

So, I sent a Tweet to the guy that managed the page and he wrote back:

I think that’s a glitch. Facebook has dropped a new insights interface and I’ll bet they’ve somehow screwed up.

While I haven’t seen any glitches with any of the other pages I follow or maintain, his explanation is the only one that makes sense. As much I’d like to believe that 140,300 people like my alma mater, that kind of jump in traffic just doesn’t make sense.

I check the Facebook blog and searched the Web for “Facebook like numbers off” and “Facebook like total glitch” and other variations and have found nothing on this issue. But, if you see something that’s not quite right with your Facebook page, it’s probably not you, it’s more than likely Facebook and its new Insights interface.

In the beginning, the prime directive of optimizing your Website was to get it to appear as high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) as possible. Like many things in life, everyone wanted to be No. 1. Not much has changed in the last 10-15 years. The benchmark for successful SEO has been appearing on the first page of search results. The methods of successful SEO, however, are constantly evolving – but that’s a post for another day.

Last month, I discovered a new option in my Google Webmaster Tools dashboard called “Search queries.” I clicked on it and found a bevy of information that could alter the course of how SEO professionals benchmark their success.

Not only do we get to see which search terms are leading people to our pages, but we get to see where our sites ranked in the SERPs, how many times we appeared in a SERP (i.e., impressions), how many times people actually clicked on our results, and subsequently, the clickthrough rate for each particular search term. Not only can you see all this information, but you can sort it by category.

This new set of information changes the way we look at SEO. In the past, we optimized sites to help them appear high in the SERPs. It was understood that sites ranking high in the SERPs got more traffic because people usually trust what the search engines consider the top results. But now Website owners can actually look at the clickthrough rates of the search terms and see whether or not being at or near the top actually translates into meaningful traffic.

What good is it to appear No. 1 in Google for “splendid widgets” if no one is clicking through to your site? If this is the case, there is a problem, and it’s probably with how your site is optimized. Either your meta description isn’t worded properly, or your page title doesn’t convey the proper keyword-rich information. But, then again, if that’s the case, then why is the search engine ranking you No. 1? Only they can answer that question, and my bet is that they won’t. Regardless, if you’re not getting the clickthroughs, it’s time to re-evaluate your site’s SEO.

Conversely, you can also discover keywords and phrases that send traffic to your site that you may not have been aware of. If this is the case, jump on it and consider optimizing your site, or a page on your site, to specifically target those search terms. For example, four of the top five search terms for which my personal site appears in SERPS have something to do with Texas Longhorns Cheerleaders, or some variation of the term. All because I posted a photo of some rather frightening looking Texas Longhorns cheerleaders prior to the BCS national championship game. That was nearly six months ago and I still get considerable searches and traffic from that post. I have more than 1,500 blog posts and that one is the most popular.

The bottom line is that it’s not enough to be No. 1 on Google. We have to dig deeper with tools like “search queries” and see if being No. 1 is resulting in traffic. If it’s not, then we need to rethink how we’re optimizing our sites.

*Note: Yahoo Site Explorer recently launched a similar tool called “Top Queries – Beta,” but the results have not been nearly as robust as Google. We’ll keep an eye on it and hopefully we’ll start seeing more data in the months ahead.

As YouTube celebrates its fifth anniversary, I felt it the perfect opportunity to talk about how the web video giant (which still hasn’t turned a profit) has revolutionized how we view, share and host our videos. Whether you are posting videos of family vacations or your company’s latest product demonstration, YouTube has completely changed how individuals and businesses publish content.

Prior to YouTube’s launch in 2005, company’s often hosted their own videos. They would produce a video and then convert it to either a Quicktime, Flash or Window Media file and build the videos into their website. At the time, it was the only viable option and it allowed companies to control their message and keep content on their pages. This practice predates social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, so most companies weren’t thinking about allowing others to embed their videos or share their content easily.

As a web content developer with a Northern Virginia-based government contractor in 2003, I was tasked with producing videos and posting them on the company’s various sites, internal and external. The biggest obstacle was video compression and bandwidth. Seven years ago, a 20-30 megabyte compressed video was a fairly large file and when added to a website, it can eat up a ton of bandwidth on our web servers if viewed enough times. This became an issue, even as compression technology was rapidly improving.

Along came YouTube. And suddenly, those movies that were eating up bandwidth on companies’ servers, could be uploaded to this new service, in virtually any format, and be converted to a Flash movie, that could be shared via a link or embed code with anyone in the world. For most, this was an incredible new offering and it was free. Most companies, however, were skeptical. Why would they allow their video to be available to anyone in the world? Once it’s out there, you give up some control over who sees the message and how it is presented, right? Well, yes and no.

Fast forward five years. It’s hard to find a well-known company that does not have a YouTube Channel that it uses to share its official videos. Businesses finally came to the realization that once your message is out there on the web, regardless of where it’s hosted, anyone can get it and manipulate it. It’s just a risk of doing business in today’s wired world. And with the advancement of privacy controls on YouTube, we can control whether or not people can leave comments, rank the video, or even embed it on other sites. So the old arguments of losing control of your message are invalid and unfounded.

First, let’s get the bandwidth issue out of the way. It’s a non-factor today thanks to plummeting media storage costs. Next.

The biggest advantage to using a site like YouTube to host your videos is the search engine results. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who believe that by posting your videos on YouTube, you will cannibalize your own website’s traffic. My response to that belief is, “so what?” Look, YouTube allows you to create a channel, with a link to your official website. Your videos can provide viewers with easy ways to reach you. And you can monitor traffic and views of your videos, so don’t look at YouTube as competing with, or cannibalizing your site’s traffic; instead, consider your YouTube Channel an extension or your website. The point is to get your message out on the web and YouTube will do that for you.

And let’s not forget that YouTube is a Google property. Hello. Google. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The world’s most dominant search engine. More and more Google searches are yielding YouTube videos at the top of the SERP (search engine results page). If a YouTube video shows up at the top of the page, don’t you want it to be yours? I would.

Lastly, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that YouTube is not the only video sharing site on the Web, so even if you’re not wild about it — maybe that Leave Britney Alone dude kinda creeps you out — check out other popular sites like Vimeo (my personal favorite) or Viddler. Regardless of which video sharing site you choose, if you have videos you want to share, get them online today and get your message out there. You never know who could end up watching it… it could be your next client.

And now, a perfect example of a major corporation that has truly embraced the power of YouTube and social media:

“The video was very well received at the Orange & Maroon Tour Dinner and afterward when I sent the YouTube link around to the Maryland Hokie Club Members and VTAF folks in Blacksburg! Seth Greenberg even asked the room to ‘be quiet and listen’ when his first interview came on and everyone paid attention after that! Thank you again on behalf of NCSI and the MD Hokie Club.”

Instead of using his “Contacts” in his phone’s address book, he just “clicked” on the phone number in my e-mail signature – well, at least that was his plan.

My signature includes my Google Voice number, which rings my home and cell phone simultaneously until I answer one of them. If I don’t answer, Google Voice takes a voicemail, which is then transcribed and e-mail to me and sent via text message to my phone. The only problem was, I was using a phone number format that was not compatible with my client’s smart phone.

I used 540/200-8530. He could dial the 200-8250 part, but because he’s in Charlottesville, it wouldn’t go through without the area code. I had never thought about the format of my phone number in my e-mail signature… until today.

I immediately changed it – while still on the phone with him, actually. I sent him a follow-up e-mail and asked if he could dial the full number and he responded in the affirmative.

I changed the format to (540) 200-8530 and now his smart phone can read it. How do you have your phone number displayed in your e-mail signature?

Remember when it was easy to spot SPAM or Phishing attempts? English was clearly not the criminals’ first language. The sentence structures were terrible and there were spelling errors throughout the e-mail. Unfortunately, that’s not the case any more. The e-mails are written well enough to pass as legitimate correspondence from reputable companies.

Despite improving their spelling and grammar, there are still dead giveaways if you pay attention. Here are some things to look for to help spot a fraudulent e-mail.

(FYI – Click on the image below to open a bigger version.)

1) Look at the “From” e-mail address. If it’s not from the actual company named in the e-mail, then that’s your first hint. For example, this e-mail claiming to be from LinkedIn comes from a hotmail account. Already, I know this was not legit.

2) What are they asking you to do? In this case, “LinkedIn” wanted me to “confirm and validate” my “new profile.” As if the warning sirens weren’t already blaring, they are at deafening levels now. I set up my LinkedIn account a long time ago, so I know for a fact that I don’t have a “new” profile.

3) Online social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace will never ask you to download a file in an e-mail, especially to validate your account. Stop and think for a minute – these sites are Web-based, not an application you download to your computer. There is NO reason to download a file to review and verify your account.

4) By now, I’m only still reading this fake e-mail out of curiosity. Look at the file extension they want you to download – it’s a .pif file extension. A .PIF is a program information file associated with early version of Microsoft Windows (we’re talking Win 95). According to filext.com, when you click on a .PIF file, the information in the file is used by Windows to run some program; including code that can be in the PIF file. It is a potentially dangerous file type, so never click on one received via e-mail.

Well, I hope this helps keep your computers safe. Remember, if you don’t have an updated virus detection program, it’s cheaper to buy a new licenses for $60 than it is to pay the Geek Squad at Best Buy three times that much to clean our your computer and then still have to pay $60 for virus protection software.

Lastly, when in down, do not click on any links or download any files. It’s better to be safe than spend a crap load of money to fix your mistake. Happy Interwebbing!

The only problem I found with the blog post is that their instructions aren’t very clear, as evidenced by the numerous questions that appeared in the comments section. So, after piecing together the responses and doing a little trial and error myself, I decided to come up with a soup-to-nuts list of steps for implementing WebDigi’s strategy for adding GA to FB.

1.) For starters, you will need to create a new Google Analytics (GA) account for your Facebook fan page. This is completely separate from any other analytics you use to track other sites – this GA account is specifically for your Facebook fan page.

2.) If you don’t have a Gmail account, get a free account at Google.com and then visit Google.com/analytics to get started.

3.) Once you add a new site to GA, you will get some code to add to your site. Do not copy the entire set of code. Instead, just look for a small string of code that looks something like “UA-12345678-9.” Copy this string of code and move on to the next step.

4.) Visit http://ga.webdigi.co.uk/ and generate an image tag by using Webdigi’s code generator. (You’ll need your Google Analytics UA code you copied in step 3.)

5.) Enter your GA code in the first box, facebook.com in the second box, page link information in the third box, and the page title in the last box. Then click “Generate Code.”

6.) Copy the code and then move on to the next step.

7.) Go to the Static FBML Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=Static+FBML&init=quick#!/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&ref=search&sid=616126479.2955418844..1

8.) In the upper left, click on “Add to my Page” and choose the fan page(s) you’d like to add FBML to and click “Close” when you’re done.

9.) Go to your Facebook fan page and click on “Edit Page” just below your page’s profile picture.

10.) Under “Applications” look for FBML and click on “Edit”

11.) Change the Box Title to whatever you want (i.e. Links, Contact Info, etc.)

12.) Paste the code from step 6 into the big text box labeled “FMBL:” (You can also add other text, but just put the code at the bottom.)

13.) Click “Save Changes”.

14.) Go back to your page.

15.) Click on the “Boxes” tab. (If you do not have Boxes enabled, click on the big plus (+) button and add it.

16.) Look for the box with the title you created in step 11. For this example, we used “Thanks for stopping by!” Click on the pencil icon on the right – this is the “edit” button.

17.) A drop-down menu will appear – click on “Move to Wall tab”

18.) This step is purely optional. It’s more for aesthetics. After you add the box to your Wall, you will be taken to your Facebook fan page home page (usually your Wall unless you’ve changed it). Look in the left column for the “Google Analytics” box, which is blank. Roll your cursor over the header, click and move it to the bottom of the left column.

19.) If you used FBML to create custom tabs (i.e. pages) for your Facebook fan page, you can add the same code (from step 11) to the bottom of each of your FBML custom pages.

20.) That’s it, you’re all done.

Now all you have to do is sit back and wait a day or two for Google to pick up on the tracking code you added to your Facebook pages. If you have questions, or would like us to blog about a specific topic, please let us know by leaving a comment below, or visiting our Contact Us page.