What's new in Social SEO: Open Graph & Twitter Cards

As an all encompassing web development agency, WebSight Design continues to assist many clients after the launch of their website with internet marketing services and search engine optimization. Our main focus with search engine optimization is to optimize clients' sites for organic rankings in search engines in order to drive traffic back to their site and generate leads. Also, by managing our clients' social media platforms, we can successfully utilize all of the marketing tools provided for developers by the social companies. WSD practices only organic, white hat, SEO Metadata best practices. Metadata is that which is displayed  on search engine result pages (SERP) when a website comes up for certain queries. In the social realm, it is the information displayed when a post is "shared." Both entitle the same concept - Title, Description, and Image. We do so by providing relevant and accurate content by optimizing content for the user'sneeds, which is exactly what the Google's latest algorithm, Hummingbird, is looking for. The latest in the SEO world, besides providing relevant content, is the significance of social media on a site's rankings. As the online responsibilities have shifted from link building [which is now almost obsolete], social media is critical to an online presence and search engine rankings. This new strategy involves being responsive, interactive and engaging with customers and/or users as well as optimizing metadata. When users are engaged, they will 'follow', 'like', 'retweet' and 'plus one' the information put out, and the more attention the posts receive from fans, the more attention the posts will receive from Google and Bing and other search engines, ensuing more attention to the main site. With using the new tools available and by consulting your web developer, there are many ways to improve your social media metadata. To make our clients' social posts more discoverable and more populated by likes, follows, retweets, etc., WSD implements the most up-to-date plugins and API's (Application Programming Interface) to our clients' sites. Recently, Facebook and Twitter  released software that entitles each site to have their own meta data. Facebook introduced the Open Graph platform that allows third-party developers to integrate their pages into the social graph - a graph that depicts personal relations of Facebook users. This allows your site and content to be included in the suggested ads that pop up on users' feeds. It also allows the meta data displayed on Facebook to be determined by the you as the site owner, including selecting the photo to be displayed, providing for a much more attractive post. Twitter's new feature for their link sharing options is Twitter Cards. Twitter users may have recently noticed the large photos that now show in the Twitter feed, as opposed to the link that was before. Without Twitter Cards, large photos are only displayed when uploading a photo. With Twitter Cards, via code-level adjustments, users can edit metadata for the ability to provide a title, description, and an image to be displayed [largely] when sharing a link. Implementing Twitter Cards increases the click through and retweet rates on links shared, therefore increasing visibility and inevitably traffic to your website. As we at WSD continue to build out and grow our Internet marketing department, we plan to engage and enlighten our clients and others. If you are looking to beef up your digital presence, have your brand recognized across all social platforms, or aiming for first page rankings on Google, we can assist in aligning your brand in the desired online space. Contact us today to begin engaging with your clients in the most effective way.