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New and Improved Custom Reports Added to Moz Analytics

Posted by Miranda.Rensch

Hello everyone! Miranda here. I’m a Product Manager at Moz and I’m excited to announce that we’ve added custom, automated reporting to Moz Analytics. This is something that already existed in PRO (the predecessor to Moz Analytics), but the new version has some cool upgrades I’d like to point out, so here goes a quick walk-through.

Walk-through of the new custom reports

With the new version of custom reports, you can select (almost) any visualization or data list from within Moz Analytics to be included in a custom PDF and emailed regularly.

To access the new reports, just go into any campaign and click “Custom Reports” in the top right and then click “Create / Schedule Report” to get started.

Next, you’ll begin filling in the details of your report. You can give it a name and a description to appear at the top of the PDF:

In the “Add Modules” step you use a left navigation similar to the normal Moz Analytics experience so you can quickly navigate to your favorite data / visualizations and click the + sign to select them. In the next step you’ll be able to organize them and add notes.

In the “Design Report” step, you can re-order your modules, add notes, and if you have access to branded reports, add your brand logo to be printed on the PDF.

In the next step you can preview your report. Click “Generate PDF Report” to view and save as an actual PDF.

Finally, you can schedule the report to be emailed regularly to you and any others that you specify. You can now also customize the text of the email that gets sent out!

When you’ve finished setting up your report, you can see all active reports on the main Custom Reports page. From there you can see the next scheduled send date and edit your reports.

Other new stuff in Moz Analytics

While we’re at it, we’d like to mention a few other improvements in Moz Analytics:

Crawl diagnostics updates

We made some improvements to the design to make it easier to find the issues exposed by our custom crawler. You can now see a breakdown of your top High, Medium, and Low priority issues at the bottom of the Crawl Diagnostics overview page.

You will also see the issue counts included in the issue drop-down.

We’ve also made sure that all of the crawl data is included in the .csv export. We are still working on making views of duplicate pages and titles visible outside of the .csv.

Keyword opportunities improvement

With this smaller update, we added a button to the keyword opportunities report in the rankings section, allowing you to quickly add an attractive keyword to your list for rank tracking.

Fresh Web Explorer alerts

In case you missed it, we also recently released a big update to Fresh Web Explorer that lets you create and save custom alerts. Use it to get prompt alerts when someone publishes content mentioning your brand, your competitors, or even discover interesting link and outreach opportunities. Cyrus even wrote a whole blog post about it.

What’s next for Moz Analytics?

Here are some of the projects that are currently in-progress and up next for Moz Analytics. This is just the top of our list, but we’d love to know what you think! Please let us know in the comments or on our feature request forum.

  • Monthly timeframes: We are still working on adding monthly timeframe options into custom reports and the rest of the Moz Analytics app. We hope to have that in by the end of the year. Also, we are aware that there are some issues currently with monthly custom reports in PRO causing them to be delayed. We hope to build these monthly reports into the new version of custom reports in a more scalable way and we apologize for the issue in PRO.

  • Lots of bug / UX fixes: We’re working on continually responding to feedback and bugs in the new application. We’ve gotten to many, but not all of them. Thank you for your patience!

  • Contextual help: We’re working on ways to bring help guides and videos directly into the app so that when you need help you can find it quick.

  • Add individual keyword history to Custom Reports: There are a couple of modules that can’t be added to custom reports yet—Analyze a Keyword (individual keyword history), Grade a Page, and Analyze Page Issues. We hope to make those available in the next few months as well.

  • Per-page PDF downloads: We are currently working on allowing PDF downloads of any page in the app. We hope to have that done in the next month or so.

  • Customized timeframe options: We’re in the process of researching our ability to provide more customized timeframe options. It’s a bit complicated due to the variety of data we include in our app, but we’re looking at our options.

  • Multi-user accounts: We’re working on supporting multiple users per account.

  • You tell us! If you have any other feedback or ideas for how this software could be better and save you more time, please let us know on our feature request forum!

That’s all! If you have any questions or comments, chances are other people will too, so why not ask it on the Moz Q&A forum! Looking forward to hearing your feedback. If you’d like to volunteer a half-hour to give more in-depth feedback about this section or reporting in general, please email miranda@moz.com.

Happy reporting!
Miranda Rensch
Product Manager @ Moz


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Must-Have Social Media Meta Tag Templates for Improved Sharing and SEO

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

At Moz, we strive to include social media metadata in all new pieces of content that we publish. This allows us to optimize for sharing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinerest by defining exactly how titles, descriptions, images and more appear in social streams.

Think of it as conversion rate optimization for social exposure.

The implications for SEO are also significant. We know from experience and studies that the right data, including optimized images, helps content to spread, which often leads to increased links and mentions.

Knowing exactly which social meta tags to include can be confusing even to experienced webmasters. This post by Micheal King is a huge help, and Wordpress publishers who use Yoast’s SEO plugin are well ahead of the game. For the rest of us, consider the different structures supported by the major social platforms:
  • Twitter Cards: Summaries, Images, Galleries, Apps, Video, Audio, and Products
  • Pinterest Rich Pins: Products, Recipes, Movies, and Articles
  • Google+: Articles, Blog, Book, Event, Local Business, Organization, Person, Product, and Reviews
  • Facebook: Articles, Photos, Audio, Video, and more

To help ease this problem, I created four social media tag templates that you can fill out, customize for your own use, and share with your team and others.

How to use these templates

Simply copy and paste the template into the text editor of your choice. Make sure to replace any orange or green text with your own data, and customize, eliminate or add any tags you find necessary.

The first three of these templates are optimized using a typical “article” markup and data, ideal for blog posts and most written content. The final template contains markup for product pages.For other post types, such as book or recipes, refer to documentation linked at the end of this post for reference on what to customize.

When you are done, don’t forget to test and apply for approval.

1. The Minimal Template

This slimmed back version runs lean and fast. It contains a bare minimum of data for optimized sharing across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

Title tags and meta descriptions are included even though they aren’t technically social media meta tags. This is because they can be used by Google+ and other social media platforms, and it is best practice to include them on every page you publish.

Minimum Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” value=”summary”>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />

2: The Standard Template

The standard template represents a more robust implementation of social tags and is meant to work across all platforms. In addition to all of the features of the mimimal template above, the standard template includes the following:

  • The basic Twitter Summary card
  • Twitter thumbnail image
  • Facebook Page Insights

Standard Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle“>
<– Twitter Summary card images must be at least 200x200px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numeric ID” />

3: The Full Monty

This is the monster! In addition to all the data contained in the standard template, the full template contains:

  • Google Authorship and Publisher Markup. Although this data doesn’t change your content appearance in Google+, it potentially add links to your Google+ pages in search results.
  • Schema.org article markup
  • Twitter Summary card with large image
  • Expanded Open Graph article data

Full Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Article”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Google Authorship and Publisher Markup –>
<link rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Profile]/posts”/>
<link rel=”publisher” href=â€�https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Page_Profile]“/>

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<!– Twitter summary card with large image must be at least 280x150px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image:src” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”article:published_time” content=”2013-09-17T05:59:00+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:modified_time” content=”2013-09-16T19:08:47+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:section” content=”Article Section” />
<meta property=”article:tag” content=”Article Tag” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numberic ID” />

Bonus: The Product Template

For merchants, product markup is very popular, and usually easy for developers to implement in their shopping cart software. The product template differs from article markup in only a few ways:

  • Modified <html> tag to reflect schema.org product data
  • Twitter Product Card includes required data labels
  • Open Graph data includes price and currency data

Product Social Media Tag Template

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”product”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>
<meta name=”twitter:data1″ content=”$3“>
<meta name=”twitter:label1″ content=”Price“>
<meta name=”twitter:data2″ content=”Black“>
<meta name=”twitter:label2″ content=”Color“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”og:price:amount” content=”15.00” />
<meta property=”og:price:currency” content=”USD” />

Tools for testing and approval

A. Twitter Validation Tool

https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/validation/validator


Before your cards show on Twitter, you must first have your domain approved. Fortunately, it’s a super-easy process. After you implement your cards, simply enter your sample URL into the validation tool. After checking your markup, select the “Submit for Approval” button.

B. Facebook Debugger

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug


You don’t need prior approval for your meta information to show on Facebook, but the debugging tool they offer gives you a wealth of information about all your tags and can also analyze your Twitter tags.

C. Google Structured Data Testing Tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Webmasters traditionally use the structured data testing tool to test authorship markup and preview how snippets will appear in search results, but you can also use see what other types of meta data Google is able to extract from each page.

D. Pinterest Rich Pins Validator

http://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/validator/


Like Twitter, Pinterest requires an approval process to enable Rich Pin functionality. Use the Rich Pin Validator tool to test your data markup and apply for approval at the same time.

Tips and best practices

Optimizing for images

The image you link to in your social data does not actually have to be on the page, but it should represent your content well. The image allows you to controll what people see when they share your content, so it’s important to use quality images.

Every social platform has different standards for sizing. Typically, it’s easier to keep it simple and choose one image size that will work for all services.

  • Twitter thumbnail: 120x120px
  • Twitter large image: 280x150px
  • Facebook: Standards vary, but an image at least 200x200px works best. Facebook recommends large images up to 1200px wide.

In short, larger images offer you the most flexibility. When in doubt, test each page using the appropriate tool below to see exactly how your images will appear in snippits.

The importance of Open Graph data

If you could choose only one type of meta data to include, your best bet is Open Graph. That’s because all the platforms can use it as a fallback, including Twitter to a large degree.

Facebook page insights

The meta property “fb:admins” requires that you enter your numeric Facebook id number, and gives you access to analytics about how your website content is shared on Facebook. Read more about Page Insights, including how to set it up and discover your numeric id.

Further resources

Use these templates as a starting point, but you can customize them in millions of ways. A few valuable resources to aid your journey:

What are your best tips for optimizing your content for sharing? Let us know in the comments below.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Continue reading →

3 Must-Have Social Media Tag Templates for Improved Sharing and SEO

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

At Moz, we strive to include social media metadata in all new pieces of content that we publish. This allows us to optimize for sharing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinerest by defining exactly how titles, descriptions, images and more appear in social streams.

Think of it as conversion rate optimization for social exposure.

The implications for SEO are also significant. We know from experience and studies that the right data, including optimized images, helps content to spread, which often leads to increased links and mentions. We also know from correlation studies that content with higher social metrics exhibits many of the same qualities as content that performs well in search results.

Knowing exactly which social meta tags to include can be confusing even to experienced webmasters. This post by Micheal King is a huge help, and Wordpress publishers who use Yoast’s SEO plugin are well ahead of the game.

For the rest of us, consider the different structures supported by the major social platforms:

  • Twitter Cards: Summaries, Images, Galleries, Apps, Video, Audio, and Products
  • Pinterest Rich Pins: Products, Recipes, Movies, and Articles
  • Google+: Articles, Blog, Book, Event, Local Business, Organization, Person, Product, and Reviews
  • Facebook: Articles, Photos, Audio, Video, and more

To help ease this problem, I created four social media tag templates that you can fill out, customize for your own use, and share with your team and others.

How to use these templates

Simply copy and paste the template into the text editor of your choice. Make sure to replace any orange or green text with your own data, and customize, eliminate or add any tags you find necessary.

The first three of these templates are optimized using a typical “article” markup and data, ideal for blog posts and most written content. The final template contains markup for product pages.For other post types, such as book or recipes, refer to documentation linked at the end of this post for reference on what to customize.

When you are done, don’t forget to test and apply for approval.

1. The Minimal Template

This slimmed back version runs lean and fast. It contains a bare minimum of data for optimized sharing across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

Title tags and meta descriptions are included even though they aren’t technically social media meta tags. This is because they can be used by Google+ and other social media platforms, and it is best practice to include them on every page you publish.

Minimum Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” value=”summary”>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />

2: The Standard Template

The standard template represents a more robust implementation of social tags and is meant to work across all platforms. In addition to all of the features of the mimimal template above, the standard template includes the following:

  • The basic Twitter Summary card
  • Twitter thumbnail image
  • Facebook Page Insights

Standard Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle“>
<– Twitter Summary card images must be at least 200x200px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numeric ID” />

3: The Full Monty

This is the monster! In addition to all the data contained in the standard template, the full template contains:

  • Google Authorship and Publisher Markup. Although this data doesn’t change your content appearance in Google+, it potentially add links to your Google+ pages in search results.
  • Schema.org article markup
  • Twitter Summary card with large image
  • Expanded Open Graph article data

Full Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Article”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Google Authorship and Publisher Markup –>
<link rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Profile]/posts”/>
<link rel=”publisher” href=â€�https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Page_Profile]“/>

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<!– Twitter summary card with large image must be at least 280x150px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image:src” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”article:published_time” content=”2013-09-17T05:59:00+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:modified_time” content=”2013-09-16T19:08:47+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:section” content=”Article Section” />
<meta property=”article:tag” content=”Article Tag” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numberic ID” />

Bonus: The Product Template

For merchants, product markup is very popular, and usually easy for developers to implement in their shopping cart software. The product template differs from article markup in only a few ways:

  • Modified <html> tag to reflect schema.org product data
  • Twitter Product Card includes required data labels
  • Open Graph data includes price and currency data

Product Social Media Tag Template

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”product”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>
<meta name=”twitter:data1″ content=”$3“>
<meta name=”twitter:label1″ content=”Price“>
<meta name=”twitter:data2″ content=”Black“>
<meta name=”twitter:label2″ content=”Color“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”og:price:amount” content=”15.00” />
<meta property=”og:price:currency” content=”USD” />

Tools for testing and approval

A. Twitter Validation Tool

https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/validation/validator


Before your cards show on Twitter, you must first have your domain approved. Fortunately, it’s a super-easy process. After you implement your cards, simply enter your sample URL into the validation tool. After checking your markup, select the “Submit for Approval” button.

B. Facebook Debugger

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug


You don’t need prior approval for your meta information to show on Facebook, but the debugging tool they offer gives you a wealth of information about all your tags and can also analyze your Twitter tags.

C. Google Structured Data Testing Tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Webmasters traditionally use the structured data testing tool to test authorship markup and preview how snippets will appear in search results, but you can also use see what other types of meta data Google is able to extract from each page.

D. Pinterest Rich Pins Validator

http://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/validator/


Like Twitter, Pinterest requires an approval process to enable Rich Pin functionality. Use the Rich Pin Validator tool to test your data markup and apply for approval at the same time.

Tips and best practices

Optimizing for images

The image you link to in your social data does not actually have to be on the page, but it should represent your content well. The image allows you to controll what people see when they share your content, so it’s important to use quality images.

Every social platform has different standards for sizing. Typically, it’s easier to keep it simple and choose one image size that will work for all services.

  • Twitter thumbnail: 120x120px
  • Twitter large image: 280x150px
  • Facebook: Standards vary, but an image at least 200x200px works best. Facebook recommends large images up to 1200px wide.

In short, larger images offer you the most flexibility. When in doubt, test each page using the appropriate tool below to see exactly how your images will appear in snippits.

The importance of Open Graph data

If you could choose only one type of meta data to include, your best bet is Open Graph. That’s because all the platforms can use it as a fallback, including Twitter to a large degree.

Facebook page insights

The meta property “fb:admins” requires that you enter your numeric Facebook id number, and gives you access to analytics about how your website content is shared on Facebook. Read more about Page Insights, including how to set it up and discover your numeric id.

Further resources

Use these templates as a starting point, but you can customize them in millions of ways. A few valuable resources to aid your journey:

What are your best tips for optimizing your content for sharing? Let us know in the comments below.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Continue reading →

4 Social Media Tag Templates for Sharing and SEO

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

At Moz, we strive to include social media metadata in all new pieces of content that we publish. This allows us to optimize for sharing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinerest by defining exactly how titles, descriptions, images and more appear in social streams.

Think of it as conversion rate optimization for social exposure.

The implications for SEO are also significant. We know from experience and studies that the right data, including optimized images, helps content to spread, which often leads to increased links and mentions. We also know from correlation studies that content with higher social metrics exhibits many of the same qualities as content that performs well in search results.

Knowing exactly which social meta tags to include can be confusing even to experienced webmasters. This post by Micheal King is a huge help, and Wordpress publishers who use Yoast’s SEO plugin are well ahead of the game.

For the rest of us, consider the different structures supported by the major social platforms:

  • Twitter Cards: Summaries, Images, Galleries, Apps, Video, Audio, and Products
  • Pinterest Rich Pins: Products, Recipes, Movies, and Articles
  • Google+: Articles, Blog, Book, Event, Local Business, Organization, Person, Product, and Reviews
  • Facebook: Articles, Photos, Audio, Video, and more

To help ease this problem, I created four social media tag templates that you can fill out, customize for your own use, and share with your team and others.

How to use these templates

Simply copy and paste the template into the text editor of your choice. Make sure to replace any orange or green text with your own data, and customize, eliminate or add any tags you find necessary.

The first three of these templates are optimized using a typical “article” markup and data, ideal for blog posts and most written content. The final template contains markup for product pages.For other post types, such as book or recipes, refer to documentation linked at the end of this post for reference on what to customize.

When you are done, don’t forget to test and apply for approval.

1. The Minimal Template

This slimmed back version runs lean and fast. It contains a bare minimum of data for optimized sharing across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

Title tags and meta descriptions are included even though they aren’t technically social media meta tags. This is because they can be used by Google+ and other social media platforms, and it is best practice to include them on every page you publish.

Minimum Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” value=”summary”>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />

2: The Standard Template

The standard template represents a more robust implementation of social tags and is meant to work across all platforms. In addition to all of the features of the mimimal template above, the standard template includes the following:

  • The basic Twitter Summary card
  • Twitter thumbnail image
  • Facebook Page Insights

Standard Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle“>
<– Twitter Summary card images must be at least 200x200px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numeric ID” />

3: The Full Monty

This is the monster! In addition to all the data contained in the standard template, the full template contains:

  • Google Authorship and Publisher Markup. Although this data doesn’t change your content appearance in Google+, it potentially add links to your Google+ pages in search results.
  • Schema.org article markup
  • Twitter Summary card with large image
  • Expanded Open Graph article data

Full Social Media Tag Template: Article

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Article”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Google Authorship and Publisher Markup –>
<link rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Profile]/posts”/>
<link rel=”publisher” href=â€�https://plus.google.com/[Google+_Page_Profile]“/>

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<!– Twitter summary card with large image must be at least 280x150px –>
<meta name=”twitter:image:src” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”article:published_time” content=”2013-09-17T05:59:00+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:modified_time” content=”2013-09-16T19:08:47+01:00” />
<meta property=”article:section” content=”Article Section” />
<meta property=”article:tag” content=”Article Tag” />
<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”Facebook numberic ID” />

4. The Product Template

For merchants, product markup is very popular, and usually easy for developers to implement in their shopping cart software. The product template differs from article markup in only a few ways:

  • Modified <html> tag to reflect schema.org product data
  • Twitter Product Card includes required data labels
  • Open Graph data includes price and currency data

Product Social Media Tag Template

<!– Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes. –>
<html itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>

<!– Place this data between the <head> tags of your website –>
<title>Page Title. Maximum length 60-70 characters</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Page description. No longer than 155 characters.” />

<!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”The Name or Title Here“>
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”This is the page description“>
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg“>

<!– Twitter Card data –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”product”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@publisher_handle“>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Page Title“>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Page description less than 200 characters“>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@author_handle”>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.html“>
<meta name=”twitter:data1″ content=”$3“>
<meta name=”twitter:label1″ content=”Price“>
<meta name=”twitter:data2″ content=”Black“>
<meta name=”twitter:label2″ content=”Color“>

<!– Open Graph data –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title Here” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.example.com/” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Description Here” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Site Name, i.e. Moz” />
<meta property=”og:price:amount” content=”15.00” />
<meta property=”og:price:currency” content=”USD” />

Tools for testing and approval

A. Twitter Validation Tool

https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/validation/validator


Before your cards show on Twitter, you must first have your domain approved. Fortunately, it’s a super-easy process. After you implement your cards, simply enter your sample URL into the validation tool. After checking your markup, select the “Submit for Approval” button.

B. Facebook Debugger

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug


You don’t need prior approval for your meta information to show on Facebook, but the debugging tool they offer gives you a wealth of information about all your tags and can also analyze your Twitter tags.

C. Google Structured Data Testing Tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Webmasters traditionally use the structured data testing tool to test authorship markup and preview how snippets will appear in search results, but you can also use see what other types of meta data Google is able to extract from each page.

D. Pinterest Rich Pins Validator

http://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/validator/


Like Twitter, Pinterest requires an approval process to enable Rich Pin functionality. Use the Rich Pin Validator tool to test your data markup and apply for approval at the same time.

Tips and best practices

Optimizing for images

The image you link to in your social data does not actually have to be on the page, but it should represent your content well. The image allows you to controll what people see when they share your content, so it’s important to use quality images.

Every social platform has different standards for sizing. Typically, it’s easier to keep it simple and choose one image size that will work for all services.

  • Twitter thumbnail: 120x120px
  • Twitter large image: 280x150px
  • Facebook: Standards vary, but an image at least 200x200px works best. Facebook recommends large images up to 1200px wide.

In short, larger images offer you the most flexibility. When in doubt, test each page using the appropriate tool below to see exactly how your images will appear in snippits.

The importance of Open Graph data

If you could choose only one type of meta data to include, your best bet is Open Graph. That’s because all the platforms can use it as a fallback, including Twitter to a large degree.

Facebook page insights

The meta property “fb:admins” requires that you enter your numeric Facebook id number, and gives you access to analytics about how your website content is shared on Facebook. Read more about Page Insights, including how to set it up and discover your numeric id.

Further resources

Use these templates as a starting point, but you can customize them in millions of ways. A few valuable resources to aid your journey:

What are your best tips for optimizing your content for sharing? Let us know in the comments below.


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9,000 Uniques in One Day: A Viral Marketing Case Study

Posted by ViperChill

One of the most popularised examples of viral marketing is that of Microsoft’s Hotmail (now Outlook Online) email service. Every single email sent using the site came attached with a small signature which read “Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.” Doug Rushoff was one of the first people to use the phrase viral marketing online, and likened the concept to someone who is susceptible to an idea being infected by another, and then sharing it with others, in turn “infecting” them.

The Hotmail example fits this ideology perfectly, and helped propel the service to a point where it was adding in excess of 270,000 new users every single day.

The concept of something going viral doesn’t just apply to the internet of course. Another phrase associated with the idea—word of mouth—is definitely more relevant to the offline world. It may be watching a TV show and going into work to talk about it, reaching more people who then watch the show and tell even more people. It may be having a great experience at a restaurant and telling a friend, who visits that very restaurant and then tells even more people to go.

The end result is that one person can help something spread to far more people than themselves. The internet has simply made it much easier for one person to reach a huge audience with a message that’s worth sharing. In the last 10 years, the number of people using the Internet has gone from being measured in millions to being measured in billions.

This was a version of the planned introduction for the book Viral Marketing for Dummies which Wiley asked me to publish a little over a year ago.

Though I actually quit my contract and stopped working on the book (long story), I’ve still been involved in various viral marketing campaigns. The one I would like to share with you right now was built purely to show that the ideas I was sharing in the book actually had merit.

Join a story rather than creating a new one

Though it’s certainly not impossible to create your own viral category to get some buzz, it makes your job much, much easier if someone is already talking about a topic that you can leverage for your own gain.

Lyndon Antcliff, most notable for fooling the world’s media into thinking that a teenager stole his Dad’s credit card to play Xbox with a hooker, is very good at this. He often tweets the latest viral trends and helps his clients to capitalise on hot topics of the moment.

Again, you don’t have to only take advantage of what people are saying now. When Monster Slippers wanted their slipper company to go viral, they created an elaborate story to say that a Chinese manufacturing incident left one customer with a size 1,450 shoe, almost as big as a car.

The story was picked up by multiple news outlets, all linking to Monster Slippers as they were the one to break the story. That was until they all figured out the customer who received the unusually large footwear actually looked identical to a staff member of Monster Slippers.

I didn’t have anything I actually wanted to promote in my example, besides a cause that I believed strongly in, so decided to pick up on a news event that a lot of people were talking about: The demise of Google Reader and, potentially, Feedburner too.

Stick to one core theme

“What did the fox say?” just wouldn’t be the same if we also wanted to know what the eagle, walrus, and piranha say too.

The Old Spice videos featuring actor Bruce Cambpell basically ran as an idea that you couldn’t be Bruce with his great physique and confidence, but you could at least smell like him. They didn’t run with this theme just once, but used it in multiple highly successful commercials.

Old Spice is a smell. It doesn’t necessarily make you smell better than any other product. There’s nothing inherently amazing about it. Yet after those commercials ran, you couldn’t walk into a supermarket and find it on shelves very easily. They found one theme and stuck with it, even creating unique videos for Redditors in an AMA format.

Another reason for sticking to one core theme is that you really have to give sharing a purpose (next section). If there’s no clear message that you want to spread, it’s hard for people to get behind the idea and want to share it with others, whatever it may be.

I’ve already mentioned that I wanted my idea to focus on the news events surrounding the demise of Google Reader as well as the potential demise of Google’s Feedburner product. I think it was much better for me to pick one of these rather than try to get the message across about both.

You couldn’t save Google Reader after it was announced to be shut down, but Feedburner still has some legs (for now) and that’s the one I care about the most.

Make it easy to share, and give sharing a purpose (!)

This is possibility the most overused advice when it comes to teaching people how to get ideas to go viral but it is still relevant. Of course, you can’t just stick social media buttons onto a site and expect something to instantly spread across the social stratosphere (that’s what we’re calling it these days, right?).

Not only did I put sharing buttons on my site, but I also decided to actually give people the text they could use on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Going back to my earlier point about purpose, people had to believe that they would actually get a response and that sharing would do something productive. Whether that’s positioning themselves as someone who is intelligent and in on the latest news (whether it’s movies, the next viral video, etc.) or, like me, they wanted to rally behind a cause.

One of my good blogger friends actually tweeted the story without knowing about it.

Thanks Steve!

Execute properly

Though I had no real idea if the Feedburner minisite would actually take off, it was worth a try. I wasn’t actually promoting anything besides having a case study for the book I was writing, but even still, I wanted to at least make it look semi-professional and not just like a random blog post on a website.

I thought about not only the big details—like why Feedburner might actually shut down—but also the small details, like having an upside-down Feedburner logo as the website favicon. I also decided to take a comic strip style approach and use my limited skills in Photoshop to put together something hopefully, as least slightly, humorous.

There was even a comment that said I ripped off the style of the Oatmeal which I’ll take as a compliment judging by Matt’s huge success after working here at Moz.

Finally, I also enlisted the help of three others to throw in the ever-important cat pictures with the hashtag #pleasedontkillfeedburner. Thanks to Ramsay and Chris for kindly sharing pictures of their cats which I could also use in the comic.

To put together the theme of the site, I simply headed over to my usual design haunt, ThemeForest, and picked up a template. Then I got to work in Photoshop without caring too much for standards or usability. I viewed the project as time-sensitive, so I wanted to get something up as quickly as possible.

Just be careful which font you use…

Funny; that’s not even Comic Sans.

The end result

Just to clarify, the only piece of promotion I did for this was around two personal tweets and I emailed no more than six people about the idea. If you consider that a tweet of mine would only get a few dozen clicks, I was quite surprised by what happened when I woke up the next day: The site made the homepage of Hacker News.

Here are the stats for the first week of the site going live:

To give even more transparency, here’s a list of some of the sources which sent traffic. Notice that a lot of the tweets sent a surprising amount of people to the page:

There are a lot more but that screenshot was getting long enough as it is. Here are a few other results from this campaign:

  • The site has between 300-500 backlinks (!) depending on which link checker you use
  • The domain is now a PR 4
  • It has been shared on social media over 1,400 times
  • The entire website was built in less than one day

Some people might argue that I’m fortunate that the article went viral on Hacker News (I didn’t submit it, and don’t know who did). If you’re one of those people, well I’ll just say that I’m also “fortunate” to have the idea for the site, to register the domain, to contact people for cat photos, to spend a day in Photoshop and to actually execute my idea.

Of course, not everything you create with the idea of ‘going viral’ is going to be a hit. But if you keep focusing on creating content that follows this outline (relevant to hot topics, gives people a reason to share, execute the idea properly) then no doubt that something you create is going to get a lot of attention.

Even with this campaign there were a few mistakes I made:

  • The site looks terrible on mobile devices. Seriously, don’t bother opening it in your iPad
  • I lost the account access to the email used in the graphic so I have no idea if Google responded after the initial buzz (duh!)
  • Ideally this would have been a campaign I could have linked to other web properties after the traffic burst subsided

Though in recent months I’ve been a very public advocate on the ViperChill blog that, quite simply, quality content doesn’t rank as well as it should, I still believe in it. Every time I’ve showed terrible websites ranking highly in Google, I’ve always stated that I would love for the opposite to be the case.

If you would like to hear more about this topic (I wrote 20,000+ words for the book before scrapping the idea) then please let me know in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do. There is a lot more to cover, but hopefully this post gave you a bit of inspiration about taking action on those random ideas I’m sure you have from time to time.

As a final plug, I’ve actually just started a brand new niche site case study (introduction post here) where 3 people will be tackling the same niche from three different angles. One of us is using only SEO, I’m relying purely on creating great content and the third contributor is a total beginner to creating sites who has all options available to him.


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