Category: News & Trends

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Facebook Cleans Up Fake Users and Likes From Accounts

Did you know that September 27th Facebook started to purge its system and your account of fake likes and bogus users?

In fact this is what Facebook Security had posted on its wall:

“These newly improved automated efforts will remove those likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk likes.”

That means if you bought followers – actually I know some business clients who were actually thinking of doing this at one time, when a like actually meant something. So far our Spokesdog Facebook page is still there, but Facebook may clean that up too in the not too distant future.

Facebook states that this clean up effort is to improve things for personal accounts and brands, and it does make sense. With the ability of people who friend you to have access to your wall for their business or spam, it is a good idea for Facebook to clean up its act.

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Tidbits on Creating Your Google Shopping Data Feed

I’ve recently been at a seminar for Google Shopping and wanted to share some great tidbits that I have gleaned from the seminar.

First it is important to know that the pictures of products that can appear in the organic search results on Google.com are driven by a data feed you create and install in the Google Merchant Center. Previously this service was free, but by October 1, 2012 only only those data feeds that are tied to Google AdWords will be shown.

  1. You create and install your data feed as an .xml or .csv file in the Google Merchant Center to get started.
  2. The settings area in the Google Merchant Center is where you will link your Google AdWords account. Once you have set up an account, you very simply just input your AdWords 10 digit account number to link your feed to AdWords for payment.
  3. The most typical errors are image URL errors. Make sure that you have a link to a 400 pixel by 400 pixel image and a 250 by 250 pixel image in your data feed.
  4. You MUST list either the GTIN or MPN for your feed to go live.
  5. Know that your description in your data feed will be used for your ad text. So make it descriptive yet selling.
  6. Your title for each product can have a maximum of 69 characters. Your description can have a maximum of 500 to 1,000 characters. Remember this includes spaces.
  7. Do not put promotional verbiage in your product description like free shipping. You will be adding promotional text in Google AdWords for your specific feed’s promotional message.
  8. Do not use all capitals in any words such as THIS as AdWords does not allow block capitals.
  9. Make sure to add the new AdWords attributes to your feed to allow more targeting of your promotional needs now that your program must be tied to AdWords.
  10. Carefully review the required Google category attributes as there are as many as 32 or so that are required now.

Check back Wednesday for more great tidbits. You can watch the full seminar on YouTube for additional information.

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Are You Focused On Building Your Mobile Empire?

Everything I have been reading lately is really pushing the growth trend of mobile and I have to say I think that the growth and opportunities for doing business and connecting with others via mobile phones and tablets is a sector to really watch. I think that for pay per click programs there are some real growth opportunities for advertisers to move into mobile before the cost per click goes up to the level of desktops. I think that more casual surfing will be done with tablets, but I don’t think that laptops will ever go away – at least not yet.

As for me, I love being untethered to my desk, with full email access on my smartphone. Not only do I do email, but I use my smartphone for a mobile hotspot to power my tablet and laptop. I use my smartphone’s navigation tools and do review deals and discounts to decide if I will visit a new store for the first time. I consider having the information at my fingertips wildly freeing. But my usage only reflects about 40% of the US market at this time. That means there is about 60% more of the population who will, in the near future, be using new smartphones to connect the way I am now. That means astronomical growth and market positioning for those businesses who embrace this new way to connect with customers or at least to give additional options to connect now.

For many the first step into the mobile market it to advertise there, and that’s a great start. AdWords allows you to target smartphones with full Internet browsers and tablets separately from desktops. What I’ve found is that for high cost keywords the mobile and tablet click prices are cheaper, they do have less impression activity, but they do still generate conversions.

Think about what you should be doing in regards to positioning your own business to take advantage of this new trend in mobile and you may just find yourself riding a new crest of traffic and sales that takes your business to the next level.

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Scribe SEO Plugin Reviewed

I thought I would run the Scribe WordPress plug-in through its paces and let you know my thoughts and if it is worth the monthly subscription fee.

First, I bought the publisher level and paid a discounted fee of $17 a month instead of the regular price of $27 per month. The plug-in touts itself as SEO made easy. You will need to have one of several themes in use or piggyback on the All in One SEO plug-in to use Scribe. For more information you can visit the business’ website. I think that if I had paid $27 a month, I would be very unhappy, but as I only paid $17 a month I am willing to continue through this weekend to test the options.

Once installed, you will see several new fields in the left hand sidebar of your blog: a Scribe Keyword Research Tool where you enter in your potential keywords for your blog post to get suggestions, the Scribe Content Optimizer, and Scribe Link Building tool. From the website, it sounds like this is a great tool to help you do all these things to improve the content of your blog post to get better placement, but in reality is is just a reminder checklist of things to do. It will green light that yes your blog post has content. Whoops, you forgot to write a custom title tag, but get this without suggestions and without automation. Hey, the All In One SEO plug-in will write both your meta title and meta description tag for you FOR FREE!

Once you perform the analysis of your blog post, which is where your subscription fee comes into play giving you a word count, readability scan, the tool will make some recommendations of blogsites where you can go and try to get back links. It does not help you get back links, just gives you a shortlist. It will then give you some suggestions of social media sites you can try to get links from too. What the tool does not mention to you is that all WordPress applications and most forums will do not follow your links.

Do I think that this plug-in is worth the money. No, I do not. I feel like for me as a professional blogger, I can write my own post it note, did I put a title on my blog post, and did I install the All In One SEO pack for WordPress and set up automatic generation of the meta description tag without paying $17 a month. I can’t wait to install this one.

Oh, by the way it gave a 95 rating to this blog post.