The "Structured Social Sharing Formula" (SSSF) was first presented at MozCon 2012 by Dana Lookadoo. She shared 10 best practices for optimizing social sharing for Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. The process includes marking up pages with microdata (Open Graph Protocol), best practices for formatting, how to find & use hashtags, and tagging URLs to track social referral data in analytics.
5. Anatomy of a Share Snippet
http://www.chromeweblab.com/
A
A. Share Blurb
B E
B. Title C
C. Description
D. Image
E. URL (Title link)
D
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
6. Structured Social Sharing Formula
10 steps for
optimized
engagement
with microdata
& analytics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29335885@N08/4343794386/
9. 2
OG:
Description Snippet Description
<meta property="og:description" content="Web
Lab. A series of interactive Chrome Experiments
made by Google. See the magic of the web brought
to life. Open to the world online. Live from the
Science Museum, London. Enter the Lab." />
<=188 char.
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
14. 6
UTM
Variables Tracking Tags
http://www.chromeweblab.com?utm_source=google+
&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=chrome
URL Source
Medium
Campaign
URL + UTM Variables = Social Referral Data
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
15. 7
Share Blurb
for FB & G+ Share Content
“Share what’s new” (FB) or “What’s on your mind?” (G+):
Can't wait to experience this in 3 weeks!
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
16. 7
Share Blurb
for FB & G+ Share -> SPYW
Blurb = Page Title
Front-load
keywords?
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
20. 9
Twitter /
Retweetable Optimal Tweets
Steps
1. Append UTM tracking tag to end of URL.
2. Create bit.ly or custom short URL.
3. Choose a single #hashtag, if any.
4. Create “retweetable” tweet.
Size Max Characters = 140 – 5 – (LEN)@YourProfile
Format
Latest Greatest SEO Post Title:
bit.ly.Moz3Xlu by @YourProfile #hashtag
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
24. 10
Document
& Track Social Share Blurbs
@lookadoo @YoYoSEO
25. Cut & Paste!
After the worksheet, just cut & paste!
Google+ and Facebook will scan the
page to pull the tags and image.
Tweet.
Log in to Google Analytics to track
engagement.
26. There’s no 2nd chance to make
a good 1st impression!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geckoam/4951244309/
27. Resources
Presentation - SlideShare Google+
http://yseo.us/sssf Variety of methods for Google+: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/snippet/
NEW: Tool that automatically creates code using Schema.org microdata
SSSF Worksheet Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
http://yseo.us/sssfw
Facebook
Facebook Open Graph: http://ogp.me/
Facebook Debugger: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
WordPress Plugins
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/like/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
URL Tagging - Google
http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
Hashtags
http://hashtags.org/
http://tagdef.com/
http://twubs.com/
@lookadoo #MozCon @YoYoSEO
28. Dana Lookadoo
SEO Consultant, Trainer
Yo! Yo! SEO
YoYoSEO.com . dana@yoyoseo.com
@lookadoo . @YoYoSEO
Editor's Notes
Post about presentations & how not to kill kittens. No structured markup – like killing puppies : Facebook grabbed Rand’s avatar. Google+ found no image on the page large enough to pull.
Preview: See “best guess” from page content.If no structured directives, Google & Facebook parse the page and attempt to find the best title, description & image(not recommended).
FB & G+ share snippets contain – your blurb about the post, title, brief description of the page, a thumbnail image. Title links to URL. This is extracted from content found at the URL. If you don't specify what to share, FB & G+ determine it for you. How do you specify that? I’m going to show you the formula.
10 best practices for optimizing social sharing for BOTH Facebook,Google+ & even Twitter. Add analytics and tracking. This all-in-one formula with structured markup makes a difference for SEO.
5 of the 10 steps include placing additional <meta> in the <head> of each web page, Open Graph Protocol. OG works for Google and FB. You don’t have to create 2 sets of tags for Schema.org.
4 of the 5 OP tags are required (red asterisk). Title is the first required tag. It becomes anchor text to the page. Size? Have seen up to 134 characters. Follow best practices for Titles.
NOT REQUIRED. Like meta description but not so limited by #. 188 characters display. I’m still testing character length. Last week saw 453 pulled from page w/o markup. Google may change how much they display in their tests.
REQUIRED to work in G+ & FB! Google prefers a square image. Height must be at least 120px. If width is <100px, then aspect ratio must be no greater than 3:1. FB will display same square image.
Images that are too small or not square enough are not included in the G+ Snippet, even if the images are explicitly referenced by Open Graph markup or schema.org microdata. They’ll look for other image on page & you have NO CHOICE “Choose Thumbnail” on G+.
REQUIRED! Specify the type of content (object) being shared. DEFAULT:Any non-marked up page is treated as og:type website. Other type values include article, book, video, music, profile - http://ogp.me/#types
REQUIRED! They want the canonical URL.
Done with markup. URL tagging w UTM campaign variables gives you social referral data. All you need to do is identify your URL, the source (social network), how it is delivered (medium) & campaign! With all the social clients, like TweetDeck, you won’t get full social referral data without tags.
Blurb you want to share about post in “Share what’s new” (FB) or “What’s on your mind?” (G+) boxes
Pro Tip! Show up in Search Plus Your World personalized search. Social share becomes the Title tag on share page. Think SEO & front load keywords – without being spammy. Think message & engagement 1st.
Type # and Google+’sautocomplete displays showing hashtags other people have used. Pro Tip: Discover trends!
Facebook is not Twitter! Forget the hashtags. But, there are ways Pages can use them, something not to be covered now.
Use tools to discover hashtags for your topic. Tagdef has autocomplete. Chose 1. Don’t abuse hashtags.
Make them retweetable and be found! Follow this formula for your max character size: Length of your profile + 5 characters, subtract from 140. Best format…
Free, not as seen on TV. Download to document and track. Contains basic standard meta tags plus…
Open Graph Tags with Conditional Rules to count the length of the description. Unsure full Title length restrictions.
UTM Campaign Variables. Required: Source, Medium, Name
Plan shares for Google+, Facebook, Twitter
All you need to do is cut and paste into Facebook or Google+ and WALLAH! You get an optimal snippet that looks good and is tagged for tracking. Tweet & track.