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ANATOMY OF AN ORGANIC TREND, OR “WHAT I LEARNED FROM #ZEBRAGIRL”

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I spend most of my day signed into Twitter (I hate leaving it behind when I leave my desk) and have my Trending Topics set to Dallas-Fort Worth. Cody our Internet marketing specialist pointed out to me that #ZebraGirl was trending, and neither of us knew what that was, let alone how it ended up the third-most popular topic on Twitter for DFW.

It took awhile looking through the search results for #zebragirl to figure out why people were talking about it, but Cody and I quickly discovered people were talking about a girl on the campus of the University of North Texas in Denton who was wearing a two piece black and white outfit in a psychedelic print, and they had nicknamed her Zebra Girl. People sent in “sightings” of Zebra Girl, and there seemed to be an unwritten rule that someone SHOULD tell her, but no one was going to.

In an hour or so since it began, it has become the second highest trending topic, second only to Promoted Trend #subwayfan. It’s trending higher than “Marvin’s Room”, the name of a new single by hip-hop artist Drake which was organically trending nationally. Someone was tweeting about this girl every ten seconds, and that’s not even at the peak of the trend.

The trick to this becoming an organic trend was that it was left alone, just like any other piece of bad PR. But in this case there was also a mystery- who was this girl? Where was she going? People were out on campus trying to spot her. If this were guerrilla marketing, she’d have some sort of reward for those who found her in the form of a promotion or free product. But the authenticity here is what’s keeping the trend going and why people have been talking about a pair of leggings all afternoon. This wouldn’t continue if people were trying to find the BRAND NAME Zebra Girl Spokesperson. It wouldn’t be fun OR funny to find her around campus. The allure is in the idea that her outfit looks insane and she ostensibly doesn’t know.

Authentic intrigue is the key to establishing a social media trend. Upset the ordinary and people will talk about you. Both Alamo Drafthouse and NYC restaurant Jo’s have figured this out recently by creating the best anti-texting PSA ever and writing a scathing rebuttal to a Yelp Review respectively. They threw out “business as usual” (some people might argue it flies in the face of “the customer is always right” to tell people their business isn’t welcome if they act up) and it got them serious attention. You’d think this would be an obvious proposition, but the common approach seems to be “sneak in the marketing and see if they notice” a la Virgin Mobile’s new “Sparah” campaign. You can’t tell me Ashton Kutcher was really excited about that.

No, the hardest thing to do in social media is simply to be interesting, and too many people afraid to be different. But go against the norm, and organic trends are yours.

Filed Under: SEO

HOW WILL SCHEMA.ORG AFFECT SEO?

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Google, Bing and Yahoo announced today that they all were adopting a new extended markup called schema.org.

This extended markup allows webmasters to add additional markup to their site to help search engines better understand their content.

The elements of your site that you can use the schema.org markup on are:

  • Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries …
  • Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject
  • Event
  • Organization
  • Person
  • Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant …
  • Product, Offer, AggregateOffer
  • Review, AggregateRating

Google has a rich snippets testing tool that will validate the code on your site.

We here at Globe Runner SEO anticipate that sites which utilize the schema.org markup will see increased traffic as the search engines more accurately place pages in search results. Search engines will give natural preferences to pages that give a clear window into their content.

Transcription
Eric McGehearty: Hi, it’s Eric with Globe Runner SEO, and I want to talk about something new, it’s Schema.org. Today Google Bing announced jointly that they were going to use Schema.org. Schema.org is basically very similar to what I’ve talked about before, which is microformats.
It’s a language system, it’s an add on system to an HTML markup that you would have on your page and your website page that Google, Bing, Yahoo have all agreed to use. It’s going to continue to grow, it’s going to be a library of markups that we can add to a webpage. The whole idea is to make search engines smarter so they can better engage with your content.
Honestly, it’s really not that complicated. There are extra codes, extra tags that I can put next to specific types of elements that allows a search engine a greater depth of understanding. So for instance, the example that they give on Schema.org is “Avatar”. If I put in my website a headline that said “Avatar”, how does the search engine know that I want to talk about the movie “Avatar” or if I’m talking about an avatar for representing a person’s face, right? How do they know?
Well, I could put in, from Schema.org, these additional microformats that would then tell the search engine, “This page is about the movie ‘Avatar’.” I want to also put in some extra text in there and I could in a person’s name and I could specifically label that name using the microformats and say, “And the director is,” right? So I’m able to actually tell the search engine all the nitty gritty details about the pieces of content on my page.
Here’s what’s neat microformats have been used been used for a little while, but the initial push of microformats was, for instance, reviews were a big push on microformats so that the search engine could put star ratings next to search results. That’s certainly still part of it, but now there’s an emphasis on people, places and things as well. Events are still part of it, that was part of the initial microformats rollout.
Today, if you have a company page and you have your employee page, you can add microformats in there to say, “This is a person. Here’s their email address, here’s their contact information,” things like that. If you’re a small business, a local business, or if you have locations of any kind, this is a really great opportunity to tag your location. You can tag your phone number, you tag your address, tag your business name, and you can really optimize that content so that the search engine really understands that you’re referring to yourself.
Also, let’s say that you had your address and then an alternative location on that same page. Well, you want to make sure that you tag your address properly so in local search results you come up, but that other addresses on the page are tagged differently to represent that those are representing other places on web, other things that you’re listing on your page. So there’s a lot of ways you might think about using it.
There was one that I found particularly interesting as an SEO person. There’s actually a way, using these microformats, to indicate a link without having a clickable link on your page. So, for instance, if I was referencing something, and I wanted to reference the Wikipedia article so Google knew that I was talking about this specific thing that Wikipedia is talking, I could do that without linking to Wikipedia.
I don’t actually affect the user experience, the user doesn’t even see a link, there’s no clickable text on my page, but Google sees that there’s a link out to Wikipedia. That would almost certainly affect search results in the same way that links now affect search results as a vote or passing credibility.
So Schema.org, visit it. If you’re a web developer and you’re interested in SEO, it’s a must have. You must learn this stuff if you want to stay on the cutting edge. Here at Globe Runner, of course, we’re staying on the cutting edge for our clients, and we’re excited to start integrating this in. It was announced this morning and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

GET YOUR TWITTER FOLLOW BUTTON!

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Back in February, we did a blog post about Twitter redesigning its interface with additional features and rich media integration. Now, Twitter has recently rolled out another change that may have a large impact for businesses; the Twitter Follow Button. Users can now click an embedded Twitter button to follow Twitter accounts directly from websites that interest them.

Officially released on May 31st, this new feature allows businesses with a Twitter presence to generate a simple code for the follow button that embeds on their website, allowing users to follow the company’s account on Twitter with a single click. This single-click action is important because it allows visitors to remain on the company’s domain without being redirected in order to access Twitter, preventing them from having to leave the page and alter their train of thought. Users must be logged in with Twitter to be able to one-click follow- if they are not, they will be prompted to log into Twitter through a pop-up window.

With the option for a business to show how many Twitter followers they have next to the follow button, companies can flaunt their massive amount of followers. Or, companies can choose to hide their number of followers if they don’t feel confident with the figures. It’s common for consumers to judge the validity of a business based upon the number of followers, friends, and reviews they have, so some may find this feature beneficial.

Social media marketing strategies are very important, and social media sites are adapting to the changing consumer and the way they interact with businesses. Sites like Twitter allow companies to communicate with consumers in a unique and personal manner, but driving traffic away from a company’s main site to access another communication channel is superfluous and unnecessary. The Twitter follow button presents a simple solution to growing your Twitter community without disrupting the user experience of your home site.

WORDPRESS SITE HACKED: HACKED AFTERMATH GUIDE

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This is very common these days. There are lots of hackers that want to insert unwanted links into your website.  This guide will provide you solutions to neutralize the situation.

WordPress itself can be properly secured when taking into account the appropriate standards and procedures. Spending a little time and proactive steps will allow you to overcome any issues that may arise from an intrusion into your wordpress blog or wordpress site.

How do you detect if your website has been intruded upon?

  1. Utilize TAC:  This plugin will allow you to detect if your theme has been hacked or altered with malicious links
  2. Review Source: Look over your website in code view. See if they’ve comprimised any links.

What are some common causes of any security intrusion:

  • Simple Passwords
  • Plugins that expose security risks
  • Non-secure File Transfers

How do you avoid being hacked again?

There are some simple and low cost proactive steps to make your website become more difficult from being hacked. A handful of these may be obvious steps:

Passwords

  1. Change passwords often
  2. Utilize a password generator (See Links below).
  3. Make sure your password is more than 14 characters long and utilizes capital letters, integers or numerals and various symbols.

Backup your WordPress site

  1. Backup your WordPress site and WordPress database frequently
  2. Install a wordpress plugin to backup your website
  3. Store backups on dropbox
  4. SCM: Utilize Git or SVN and deploy your files using version control

Utilize Secure Entry

  1. Transfer files utilizing SFTP or SCP.
  2. Login using HTTPs
  3. Force SSL when exchanging passwords

Restrict Access

  1. Set restrictive permissions in areas of possible intrusions. Especially for your wp-config file. If your wp-config file is exposed; it contains your database password.
  2. Setup htaccess password for your wp-content folder
  3. Store database dumps in a folder inaccessible to the web and spiders
  4. Set up a wordpress salt for your password. This will allow only users with the particular salt entry to your wordpress site.
  5. Limit access to your mysql database. Limit external access to your database if you can.

Finally

  1. Update WordPress: Keep your WordPress core updated. There may be important security releases that will avoid you future headaches!

What if my wordpress blog has already been hacked?

Most likely the intruder or the hacker has probably added malicious links to your website.

This may mean removing the code that has been altered.

  1. Recover as much data from your WordPress theme as you can. If you have a backup restore it from a safe point.
  2. Backup the malicious theme or site: Doesn’t hurt to be able to have something to compare your changes with.
  3. If you cannot you must manually remove code in your theme and database
  4. Reinstall WordPress: The core of WordPress may have been altered or changed. Doesn’t hurt to upgrade and get the latest version of WordPress. There may have been a security release that will save you future headaches.

Resources

  1. GRC Password Generator – Secure password auto generator. The page itself is also secured via https !
  2. Random Phrase Generator – If you require remembering your password i recommend using this tool. I would recommend using numerals and different case to increase your password complexity
  3. WordPress Documentation on Security
  4. WordPress File Monitor Plugin

Update: Thanks Jon Hoff for the tips

SOCIAL SEARCH

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If you’ve done a search on Bing or Google recently, you may have noticed the addition of “social circle” qualities included within the search results. For example, links that have been “liked” by members of your Facebook network may be pushed towards the top of the search results when searching with Bing. Or, if you’re using Google, you may see links that have been shared by members of your Twitter network included within the search results. This new feature of a social search allows a user to view more personally relevant results determined by the user’s social networks, making results unique to each person who has their own network of friends. Traditional search algorithms are used alongside the new social search feature, so search results will still appear normal if not shared or liked by anybody in your social network.

Through research, Bing states in a recent blog post that 90% of consumers look to their family and friends when making a purchase decision, and almost 80% of consumers will postpone a purchase decision until getting approval from a friend. Adding social qualities within the search results creates more of a conversational aspect to the search process, using the collective knowledge of the web as opposed to only facts and inbound links. Your friends, and the global community, can now help you discover information that is more relevant to you.

There was one issue with Bing’s social search that I found misleading when searching for a particular product. After searching for a specific product category, like cameras, it appeared on the search results page that a handful of my friends on Facebook liked some of the camera product pages on certain websites. In reality, that was not the case. My Facebook friends only liked the parent website that the products are listed under, i.e. Overstock.com, and not the actual product page. This may fool some consumers into making a purchase because they perceive they’re friends “liking” the product page when they actually have no interest in the product. Bing claims this will allow you to trust the source from which you are buying your product, but I don’t think users will view it that way.

Now you may be asking yourself, “What about Google?” Google still has a stronghold on the search process with a large following. Although Facebook and Bing have created a partnership to give Bing better access to Facebook’s information for search results, Google can also use your “social circle” to give you personally optimized and relevant results. Google uses Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, and other publicly available sites to show you results that people in your social circle have shared or recommended. It operates in a very similar way to the Bing social search, but without access to Facebook data. Google claims they will soon find a way to access Facebook’s data for similar search purposes, but I wouldn’t expect a partnership to form.

Google is also trying to implement a new social layer, called “+1”, which will allow a user to publicly approve of a link or website. This appears to be Google’s attempt to compete with Bing’s inclusion of Facebook data in their search results. Something tells me that it’ll be difficult for +1 to catch on with users, as there is already a wide assortment of social features and buttons on the web, and adding another might create more clutter for the user. Although, Google has surprised me in the past, so I can’t ever completely count them out.

I recently attended a seminar for the Dallas Ft. Worth Search Engine Marketing Association where they discussed these new social search features in detail. Their was much talk about creating valuable content that will entice viewers to like, share, or repost within their social circles. After all, content is the reason your brand gets shared. Finding the social “influencers” of the net and using them to share your content can help generate traffic and exposure. Conversations are happening right now about your brand, and real-time marketing should be implemented to be a part of that conversation. There is social relevancy in what is being said about your brand, and having a consistent presence in conversations will work in your favor.

How do these new social search feature effect your business? Are you going to have to change your current SEO tactics? Do you need a Facebook page? Will this benefit local search? Contact us today to learn how our team at Globe Runner can help your business adapt and benefit from these changes.

GIT: A BEGINNER’S STORY

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My Personal Story

I hadn’t planned on applying for an internship this summer and instead was going to wait until Spring 2012, but I found an amazing opportunity through my university to join the team at Globe Runner SEO. The description of the job sounded exactly like what I wanted to do for my career path, so I updated my resume and sent in an application. After applying for the Internet Marketing/Web internship, I was asked to come in for an interview and technical assessment. It’s hard to express in words how much I was simultaneously excited and scared about this potential new job. When the interview process was over, I was soon offered the position and able to start a week later.

I have never been exposed to Git, the open source, distributed version control system used for source code management. On day one, some might say I was thrown into the Git inferno. Fortunately, I had the help of an advanced Git user and amazing instructor, Chris Lee. He was able to show me the basic commands of Git, and what those commands are used for. At the beginning of the learning experience I was very intimidated by the usage and syntax of Git, but then started to better understand as the processes and uses became more clear.

Step 1: Find your terminal

The first step was to find and utilize a program that I didn’t even know existed on my computer, Terminal. Terminal uses a command line interface to let users interact with the computer, and Git can be run using Terminal.

Step 2: Create an SSH Key

Before accessing Git through Terminal, I had to create a SSH Key that allows for the identification of source code changes and also creates a secure communication channel between my machine and others. After telling Git who I am by using the command git config, I was ready for the next steps.

After setting up my SSH Key and telling Git who I am, the next step was to start using and learning the processes of Git. This was the part where I struggled the most as a new user because there are many commands to learn. There were a few commands that I was using very often, so I will point them out because of their important roles.

Step 3: Create a repository

The command git init will create a repository at the current local directory, and git status will tell me information about the working copy. Using git add will allow for the addition of new files to the staging area, where files are held before they are eventually committed using the command git commit. If I don’t feel comfortable with what is in the staging area and don’t want to commit those files, I can use git reset to clear the staging area. To view changes that were made, the command git log will show me the history of commits.

Step 4/5: Stage your Changes and Commit with Git

Finally, after navigating to the appropriate directory, creating a repository, adding files to the staging area, committing those files to the repository, and checking the status on the working copy, I can now push the changes to a remote repository. I first need to tell Git about the remote repository using the command git remote add origin <remoteURL>. When Git knows where my remote repository is located, I can now push my changed files to that repository using git push origin <branchname>. Now, my files should be located on the remote repository where they can be accessed by other developers if using a central server model.

Overall

As you can see, learning Git takes time, patience, and hard work. I am still extremely new to Git, but I’m very excited to become fluent in the use of it and discover new ways to use it. I’m sure my time at Globe Runner SEO will have me proficient in the use of Git in short time.

WELL PLAYED: LILLY PULITZER’S FACEBOOK FAN STAMPEDE

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Popular amongst women of all ages, Lilly Pulitzer has been a long-standing symbol of fun, feminine fashion including their hallmark product- the brightly colored shift. One particular consumer segment received a big gift from the Lilly Pulitzer brand when the company developed a line of bags and accessories in custom-designed sorority prints. Originally the prints were for four national sororities- Delta Zeta, Kappa Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Delta Delta Delta.

There are significantly more sororities than just those four. The  National Panhellenic Conference recognizes 26 international sororities, not to mention the historically African-American, Latina, special interest and local sororities found on college campuses nationwide.

About a month ago, the designers at Lilly Pulitzer made an announcement on their Facebook page that they wanted to add groups to their sorority prints, but to decide which groups to represent, they were going to put it to a vote on their Facebook page.

Lilly’s page, which had about 140,000 fans already (being a national brand does have its perks), gained 50,000 followers within a week of the anouncement as girls got their groups together to “Like” the Facebook page and vote for their group. After a week, the groups got narrowed down to nine sororities for the last round of voting.

1,023 likes and 713 comments, all from die-hard brand supporters. Look at that level of engagement. Then check out when they announced the winners:

ALMOST FIVE THOUSAND LIKES. The Lilly Pulitzer Facebook Page now has close to 260,000 facebook fans- almost double what they started out with. And the next time they want to add more

The best part of what Lilly Pulitzer did with this online contest is the human aspect of it- the design team at Lilly would do  off the cuff video responses to their fans as the voted rolled in and they reached different stages of the contest.
This accomplished a few things simultaneously:

  • It humanized their brand and let people see what goes on behind the scenes at a company they love
  • It encouraged more participation among their users
  • It crowdsourced opinions on a product they knew they were going to make anyway, quickly identifying needs and and getting a consensus without having to spend time debating amongst themselves- a process which would probably lead to a similar outcome without getting them any new Facebook fans in the process.

By holding this contest on their facebook page, they saved time and money on promotions and  R&D while building loyalty within their consumer base.

Well played, Lilly Pulitzer. Well played.

MAY 2011 FACEBOOK PLATFORM UPDATES

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If you’re trying to develop a Facebook application. Recently, Facebook has provided a new feature for developers: The ability to create test users.

Having the ability to create test users for your Facebook application will allow you to test your custom Facebook applications.

This is very useful when you’re trying to produce FBL queries or graph api queries about particular users.

The new features allow developers to:

  • re-authenticate Facebook users to confirm user identity
  • Generate test Facebook users email and passwords via the Facebook Graph API

Facebook Send Button

Along with another recent update the new updates provide developers with the combined like or send button. This feature allows Facebook Users with the ability to send and share links or url’s privately as a Facebook Message.

REMOVING CONTENT FROM GOOGLE

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One piece of online reputation management is removing defamatory content from Google. Kenton J. Hutcherson principal attorney Hutcherson Law talks about removing content form Google with a Court Order. Also you can report other types of content that you would like removed, copyright, personal information and the like.

Hutcherson Law specializes in Internet Law

Transcription
Eric: Hi, this is Eric with Globe Runner SEO and today I’m with Kenton Hutcherson with Hutchersonlaw.com. Kenton is fantastic. We just had the pleasure of listening to him speak at DFWSEM. He talked about a lot of really interesting things. He talked about how companies can be harmed by information that’s posted by anonymous users on websites like the Ripoff Report. It was really fascinating stuff. And as a company, sometimes we help clients manage their reputation. Kenton, can you give me a little more insight into that that my clients might be interested in on how they can protect their reputation online?

Kenton Hutcherson: Sure, absolutely. One of the key things, one of the most effective things that I’ve found out in terms of my work as an Internet attorney is if I can get a court judgment, a court order saying that a certain posting on a website is false and defamatory, I can take that judgment to Google, and Google now actually has a portal on their website where you can upload that court order. They will honor that, actually remove that link from their search index.

Eric: Wow, wow. That’s really big. But you can’t just go to Google and say, “This guy said something nasty about me.”
Kenton: Right. I’ve had a lot of clients that have tried to do that. And there’s a lot of frustration out there because people are like, “Look, it’s destroyed my business. These things are just blatant lies.”

Eric: Right.

Kenton: And Google’s position, I mean I can’t speak for Google but my impression is that they’re not the Internet police. They don’t want to get involved between a speech screen two people about what’s true and what’s not. And so they need something to hang their hat on for them to take action. And it seems to me that they’ve made the decision to defer to the courts, which is what we have to validate these types of issues in our society. And so as long as you have a court that’s already made that judgment for you, Google will honor that.

Eric: So another question that I think clients may have is how do I sue somebody, how do I get a court order when the Internet is such an anonymous place and I can’t put my finger on who it is that made that statement on some random website? I can’t sue the website, you know? I would like to sue the website but they didn’t say it. I’ve got to find that guy, right?

Kenton: A lot of times, yes. There are three options. Number one, a lot of people that have been defamed have a pretty good idea of who defamed them.

Eric: OK.

Kenton: They may have one client that was really unhappy and they’ve already complained. Maybe they have a disgruntled former employee. Maybe they know a competitor that’s doing some things that they shouldn’t be doing. In those cases, a lot of times we’ll file a lawsuit against who we think it is and then in the discovery we can ask them in a deposition under oath whether or not they’re the ones that posted it. We can get computer records about what their activity was. You can also issue a subpoena to the website to verify who it might be.

The second one is to file a John Doe lawsuit and then issue a subpoena to the website to obtain the identifying information and get the IP address, and get the name they used when they logged in. About 50 50, 50 percent of the time that will actually lead you to the actual person.

Eric: OK.

Kenton: A lot of times it doesn’t take you anywhere. Maybe they logged in at a Starbucks cafe.

Eric: Right.

Kenton: Right, where it’s impossible to trace who the actual IP address went to. The third thing you can do if none of those options work, you can file a lawsuit against the name that they used in the posting, the street name. And in that case what you need to do, depending on the local court rules, you can serve them by publication which is where the court gives you the authorization to post a legal notice in the newspaper where the court is located for a certain period of time. And then after a certain period of time in that publication, they are deemed to have been served in a lawsuit.

And so theoretically, they’re going to get notice, they’re going to file, they’re going to defend themselves and the lawsuit will go on as it should. In a lot of cases they don’t show up and so you then essentially win by default.

Eric: Right. So even if you never find the guy, it doesn’t matter. You can get a court order, file that with Google and get the…

Kenton: Well, potentially. Of course you have to have a good faith pleading, you have to prove to the court that you actually have a legitimate defamation claim. But there certainly are options out there if you can’t find the person who made the posting.

Eric: Wow, fantastic. Well, I think that’s some really great information. And you could get really hit hard. If somebody online complains about your company, it can really hurt your reputation. And once you lose it, it’s so hard to get back. It’s great that we have guys like Ken that can help us with these really challenging situations and potentially lose millions of dollars to businesses. And now we have a way that we could recover our reputation if something like that happened to one of our clients or to anybody that we knew. I really appreciate your time, Ken.

Kenton: My pleasure.

Eric: This has been great. Thank you very much.

Kenton: Thank you.

Filed Under: SEO

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