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Find Errors in Your Structured Data with Google Webmaster Tools

Racks of telecommunications equipment in part ...
Racks of telecommunications equipment in part of a data center. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Structured data helps search engines and crawlers properly categorize different types of information on a website.  There is structured data for all sorts of information from addresses to reviews to recipes.  However, implementing structured data correctly can be error-prone and now Google’s Webmaster Tools has added support for debugging this type of information.

More from Search Engine Watch:

Users can click on each content type to see any relevant errors they may have made in their implementation. They can go and test those snippets with the Structured Data Testing Tool in order to test for errors and correct them, according to what Google discovers. Once you’ve used the testing tool to recheck any pages with errors, it will be updated automatically in Webmaster Tools to reflect the corrections or the problems the pages may be having. — Google Webmaster Tools Adds Debugging Support in Structured Data Dashboard by Jennifer Slegg

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Using Hastags on Facebook May Kill Your Content

facebook engancha
facebook engancha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Twitter, hashtags help spread news and link conversations.  On Google+, hashtags help group together related content.  On Facebook, hashtags kill your content?  According to a study by EdgeRank, when hashtags are used by businesses on status messages, both engagement and virality drop significantly.  While this may be related to the posts that are being tagged, it seems to me that this is really a problem with Facebook’s hashtag system.  Unlike Google+ and Twitter, hashtags are not easy to use or browse on Facebook — they also seem disruptive in the news feed — like you’ve just posted a Twitter post without bothering to modify it for Facebook.

Social Times has more analysis:

EdgeRank analyzed 35,000 posts from 500 business pages over the month of July this year. They were shocked by the results. At best, the hashtags had no impact, and at worst, the presence of a hashtag reduced the reach of the posts. Contrast this with Twitter, one of the first sites to use hashtags effectively, 70 percent of brands saw retweets increase with the use of hashtags. — Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Very Effective, Study Says by Kimberlee Morrison

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Why Your Content Always Need Images

Human eye
Human eye (Photo credit: dullhunk)

Posts with images are more attractive to the human eye.  They are more likely to be shared and liked. Every article, blog post, Facebook post, even Tweet is better with at least one image. Images also serve to help break up long bits of text and move the eye down the page.  Done well, images can even help your marketing by catching the eye and providing a favorable impression.

Images can even be their own content, as the success of sites like Instagram and Flickr can attest. Images can capture interesting events, share feelings, and bring us closer to each other.  The success of all the funny cat photos/videos on the internet shows just how much people like good/funny photos.

Besides using your own images, which is a great idea if you have quality photos, there are also paid sites like istockphoto and shutterstock.  Or sites that let you search for free photos — ones with creative commons licensing are best.  Remember that just because a photo is posted on the Internet does not mean that it is free to use.  Copyright holders have been known to go after people who use their photos (and content) illegally, which can cost thousands of dollars.

If you’re using WordPress, Zemanta offers a nice plugin that searches for relative free-use images and has an interface to let you add them to your posts.

How do you use images in your posts?

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