Rich snippets made their introduction in the beginning of 2009 and yet it is still new to many web designers. As business owners we have so much to learn to stay on top of new technology, marketing, social media and new code like HTML 5. But rich snippets also known as micro data, micro formats and RDFA are little bits of code you add to a website that flags certain fields to alert the search engines of key pieces of information. They help display information within the actual SERP or “Search Engine Results Page”.

Some of the most common fields to highlight are name, company location, address, phone, recipes, products, events and people’s profiles.

Once you take the initial step to insert this code around those fields you won’t have to do anything else to get those fields to be highlighted in the search results. As we all struggle to get our clients found we need to take advantage of every little plus we can and adding Rich Snippets is worth your time to learn it and implement it.

“Your web pages have an underlying meaning that people understand when they read the web pages. But search engines have a limited understanding of what is being discussed on those pages. By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages—tags that say, “Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video”—you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way. Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that allows you to do this. – quoted Schema.org”

There are three formats to get these rich snippets to appear on your webpage they are HTML 5 microdata, mircoformats, and RDFa. HTML 5 is the preferred format going forward so my advice is to focus on learning the key pieces to those tags and sell them to your clients. You can review the guidelines on http://schema.org, on this site you will see a quote that says,

Search engines including Bing, google and yahoo rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

SAMPLE OF MICRODATA

HTML ON PAGE

<div>My name is Tracy Schloss but I usually get called webette.
Here is my website home page
<a href="http://www.schloss.com">www.schloss.com</a>
I live in Denver, CO and work as a Web Designer at Schloss Web Services.
</div>

HTML MARKED UP WITH MICRODATA CODING

<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person">
  My name is <span itemprop="name">Tracy Schloss</span>
  but I usually get called <span itemprop="nickname">webette</span>.
Here is my website home page
  <a href="http://www.schloss.com" itemprop="url">www.schloss.com</a>
  I live in Denver, CO and work as a
  <span itemprop="title">Web Designer</span>
  at <span itemprop="affiliation">Schloss Web Services. </span>.
</div>

SAMPLE OF MARKED UP USING MICROFORMATS

HTML ON PAGE

<div>
   <img src="www.schloss.com/tracyschloss.jpg" />
   <strong>Tracy Schloss</strong>
   Web Designer at Schloss Web Services
   765 Blue St
   Denver, CO 12345
</div> 

HTML MARKED UP WITH THE HCARD (PERSON) MICROFORMAT

<div>
   <img src="www.schloss.com/tracyschloss.jpg" />
   <strong>Tracy Schloss</strong>
   <span>Web Designer</span> at <span>Schloss Web Services</span>
   <span>
      <span>765 Blue St</span>
      <span>Denver</span>, <span">CO</span">
      <spanv12345</span">
   </span">
</div">

SAMPLE OF RDFa

HTML ON PAGE WITH RDFa

<div">
My name is Tracy Schloss but people call me Webette. Here is my website home page <a href="http://www.schloss.com"">www.schloss.com</a">.
I live in Denver, CO and work as a Web Designer at Schloss Web Services.
</div">

HTML MARKED UP WITH RDFa

<div xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#" typeof="v:Person">
  My name is <span property="v:name"">Tracy Schloss</spanv,
  but people call me <span property="v:nickname"">Webette</span>.
  Here is my website home page
  <a href="http://www.schloss.com" rel="v:url"">www.schloss.com</a>.
  I live in Denver, CO and work as a
  <span property="v:title"">Web Designer</span">
  at <span property="v:affiliation"">Schloss Web Design</span>.
</div">

There are so many other fields that you can flag for your clients. Event flags, People flags, school, goverment, restaurants, retail, sports, local business data. Review the full list below to see how you can intergrate these into your clients website.

Full list of Rich Snippets

After you insert them test your code with the google Rich Snippet testing took.
Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool

Twitter is called a micro-blogging platform and with that they have a character limit of 140. If you write a blog post and want to share that link on Twitter chances are the URLs are too long. If you have been watching Twitter and following thought leaders that interest you the links they post to go to their stories are all very short so they can write a brief sentence telling you about the story. Another new business that Twitter has helped create is the URL shortening services. Many have a free and paid version.

What is the difference and why do I need to pay for a service when there are free options out there. My reply is “it depends on how much you are interested in tracking where that click came from”.  I have some clients that just want to shorten the URL and post the tweet and get traffic to the article. Then there are the clients that are actively trying to monitor their efforts in social media and they review the amount of clicks that and from that one tweet. There is no wrong or right it really depends on how much time you invest into monitoring. Of course if you use Google Analytics you can track that you had clicks from Twitter but not that exact tweet. Do what works for you and you may find as you invest more time into Twitter that you may eventually pay to shorten that URL.

Http://tiny.cc
Tiny was one of the first URL shortening services and still pretty popular. Right on the front page you just put the URL of your article and hit the button and copy the new shortened URL. Easy right! The thing to note is they offer no tracking on the URL.

Http://bit.ly
This is the default URL shortened for Twitter and Tweetdeck. You can create an account and look at the number of clicks your URL is getting.

Http://ow.ly
If you use the HootSuite application you will have your URL shortened by them. You can track your clicks and within HootSuite you can schedule your Tweets. (but that is another post about using the tools of Twitter)

Of course there are probably dozens of additional options but these are the three big ones.

It is actually called a vanity search and so many people are surprised by what they see. If you have a LinkedIn profile, Twitter account or a Facebook page I would bet you they are on the first page of the results. Is your website on the first page? Due to the heavy traffic of the social giants they will show high but your goal should be to have your website on the list as well.
Another thing you should learn by doing this is all the other places you show up. Are those websites telling your story you want told? Are you able to edit any of these websites? Try to optimize the data on those sites if they are going to come up high for your name make sure any profile information points back to you and your website.

Learn all the sizes of everything Facebook. What size graphic can I put on my Facebook fan page sidebar? Look at our graphic to see all the sizes you will ever need.

Facebook Infographic

As a mother, I gave my children the gift of a name when they were born. As a web-professional, I gave them the gift of their dot-com names so when the time comes they can have their own place to post their schoolwork, share a resume or portfolio or create a professional website.

A domain name (www.yourkidsname.com) is real estate for the 21st century – and if you haven’t thought about buying your child’s name as a domain for them to use in the future, you should – before it’s too late!

A few facts

• There are approximately 50 million .com domains registered
• 90% of the world’s 90,000 surnames are already taken
• 85% of the words in Webster’s dictionary have been registered as domains
• Some domain names have been sold to companies for as much as $8million!

With the explosion of the internet, we’re simply running out of domain names – but it’s not too late! For less than the cost of a video game your child will quickly grow out of, you can buy a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for 10 years, sit on it until your child needs it or build a simple site and use it to give your child a permanent email address. What’s better — Tracy546379@hotmail.com or tracy@tracyschloss.com?

So how do you do it?

First, go to a domain name registration site like www.godaddy.com, www.register.com
or www.networksolutions.com.

Enter your child’s name into the search window to see if the .com domain is available. If not, try a dash between the first and last name – you may get lucky. Or choose another extension like .net, .biz, .info, or .us.

Once you’ve settled on the name and extension, choose a purchase plan that works best for you – you can choose to renew every year or buy a multi-year package. If you have a website to launch, great – the registration sites also offer hosting services and will walk you through the steps to get your site live on the web and your email address working.

If you don’t have a website now – no problem. It’s perfectly ok to “park” the domain until whenever you’re ready to upload a website. Once you’ve registered your name and paid the fee, the URL is yours to do with as you please.

Several times a year my family gets approached by someone wanting to buy our family domain name. So far we’ve said no … but buy your domain name today and you may find that you’re sitting on waterfront property.
]]> http://schloss.com/2012/01/www-yourkidsname-com-buy-your-childs-dot-com-name-before-its-too-late/feed/ 0 http://schloss.com/2012/01/search-marketing-standard-magazine/ http://schloss.com/2012/01/search-marketing-standard-magazine/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:28:38 +0000 candylane http://schloss.com/blogschloss/?p=378

Recently I found a great quarterly magazine called “Search Marketing Standard” they have a an electronic subscription as well as a magazine version. I got my first copy this week and I sat down and read it cover to cover. There is great information inside if you are interested in SEO. I have to do a plug for my friend and colleague who shared the magazine with me “Mary Bowling” did a story in this winter issue on local search reviews. I highly recommend this magazine.

One piece that I love the event calendar for 2012 – listing high profile events like the Affiliate Summit this month, Social Media Commerce Strategies, Online Marketing Summit 2012 and many other events you should check out.

Check them out at www.searchmarketingstandard.com.

In this age of Google Images the way that people can find images is easier then ever. However that doesn’t mean they are there for the taking and too many people search and take what they need for everything from homework assignments to websites and advertising. As a website designer I am here to provide a warning to other website designers.

Getty images a leading stock photography company is on the warpath cracking down on people who have illegally used their images on a website. They have some sort of robot that is looking at every image on websites and fining people thousands of dollars for the usage of just one image.

Twice this year while redesigning clients websites we took the images they already had from the original website and added them to the new design and then bought stock images for the rest of the new pages. It was stupid to not have demanded that my clients show me proof that they owned the images before I let them go on the new website. The clients both assumed that the last designer who built the first site had in fact bought the images, but since ties were cut for the redesign they had no proof they owned them. Getty Images using this robot found images on their sites and they were both sent certified letters demanding the images be removed and the legal letter demands a crazy fee of $1500-$1800 to be paid. At this point we have tried to settle the fee but have not heard back from Getty yet. I encourage people who get these extortion letters to contact Getty – do not ignore them it is the law and it is their right to be compensated for the use of the owned stock photos.

My only wish is that Getty was a bit more fair in how they demand payment. In both cases the websites did not cost as much as they are trying to get for one image. If these types of cases were brought to court we would be given a change to tell our story and it seems in this case we have no recourse. Since this is all rather new territory I can only hope that the law catches up in protecting the photographer as well as the website designer.

My warning is this web designers – NEVER assume your clients own the images and suggest they buy stock photos to replace all old images unless they can prove they bought them or took them. It is just not worth them getting pinged or you having any responsibility for this very expensive cost.

Stock images on some of my favorite stock photo websites are;
Istockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com
www.bigstockphoto.com/

They all have a great selection and the cost starts as low as $2.00 an image. Consider getting a legal contract drawn up to protect you against this kind of action and protecting you as a designer.

As a photographer myself it was never my intention to steal an image from Getty Images and I understand all too well the copyright laws, but as a web designer we must protect ourselves and our clients from this sort of high price fees being charged by Getty. Other stock image companies are now following the way of Getty so beware this is not going to go away. The Google image bank is out there and we can search anything but beware and do not use them on a website.

http://places.google.com – the main landing spot to search for Google place pages

http://google.com/support/places – get your Google places page questions answered here

http://youtube.com/googleplaces – Find YouTube videos on how to use Google places

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com – the official blog for Google maps and Google places

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/businessphotos – how to get Google to take pictures of your business

http://google.com/help/maps/favoriteplaces/business/index.html – sign up to be considered a favorite place and learn about QR codes

First of all you will need to claim your Google Place page (See How To Claim Your Google Places Page).

Gather this information and type it out in word before you begin to insure spelling and grammar are in place.

Then know thy competition what does that carpet store down the street have on his places page? How many photos, reviews, coupons? Watch them and do better.

Business Name – Try to be consistent with all your marketing materials and the way it appears on other listing engines like YellowBook.com. If you are a company called Smith Bros Plumbing, but sometimes you type it all out Smith Brothers Plumbing. Be consistent or you may end up with two listings.

Address – again if your address could be Court or Ct – be sure what is out there and make sure they all align. Google maps works with Google Places so if you want to be found on the map – get it right… it matters

Web address – it won’t matter if you use the www or not but get it in there so people looking for more information can find it

Description – you get up t 200 characters – you can load this a little with seo phases as you tell the people how you can help them…the whole marketing to them thing isn’t working anymore so if you use those 200 characters to be helpful to what they need you may get a better response.

Category – sometimes it may be hard to fit into a direct exact Google places category review the list of Google categories here before you start and review some of your competition – where ever they are (if they are selling the same things) you want to be right alongside of them in the search.

Hours – gives you an opportunity to broadcast your store hours even before they get to your site

Services – let them know how you can help them. Are you looking for carpeting, we have over 5,000 types in all price ranges…

Map – they will have a little pinpoint on the map where they think your business is – if the marker is incorrect click the FIX INCORRECT MARKER LOCATION link and follow those instructions on how to correct it.

Customer quotes – often called reviews – get them… build them up with clients and friends so that you can rise to the top in google places. Google actually rewards companies with good comments

Photo – the first thing I hear when I speak to someone about the photo is “It’s not a picture of my store it’s across the street” yes the photo already on your place page is taken from your front door looking out. So while that doesn’t make it easy for people to find you – you can add your own photos to the places page and I recommend taking one of the front of your building for that reason.

If you have a blog on your website it was added to your website for you to create index-able, categorized, content that by all rights should be defining you as an expert in your field. Old static websites did not have that sort of flexibility and it’s time to learn how to use your blog to the best of its ability.

You can write all the blog stories you want, but if no one is reading them how is it helping your business? The most important part of having a blog is to get it read and that is best achieved by adding a share feature after each blog story. If you are using WordPress there are some free plugins that do the job very well. My favorite thus far is “share and follow” this has two parts to it. First to follow you on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and add an RSS feed if someone wants to follow your blog stories. The second part is all about sharing your blog stories if someone finds them and wants to pass along your knowledge.

If you are writing blog stories it is so important to be posting them on Twitter and updating your fans on Facebook and then passing on the story link to your status updates in LinkedIn. But having those share buttons below the story allows readers to share directly to their accounts. This is how you get your story read. It takes time to write the story why have it live in cyberspace if no one reads it? Call your web designer and have them add a share feature to your website today.