Internet Marketing for Small Businesses: With Love, From Twitter: Weekly Forum Update

seochat-wmw-cre8asite-threadwatch-roundup The biggest news in the social media sphere this week is that Twitter favs have been replaced with heart-shaped “likes.”

Members of Threadwatch were quick to pick up that story – while the rest of our communities were more focused on site speed, user behavior, and Google’s antics in Europe.

Don’t let yourself fall behind the times – here’s the latest from the cutting edge!

Twitter Introduces Likes, Replaces Favorites

“I never knew that people cared that much about favorites on Twitter,” writes one of our Threadwatch reporters. The reaction to Twitter replacing star-shaped favs with heart-shaped likes was powerful. And much of it was also negative.

The volume of the reaction makes more sense than you might expect, though. Twitter’s third-quarter earnings this year were way down, and the switch to likes could be one of several changes that the social media platform has in store to try and save itself from the gutter. You can find a link to an article from The Verge, too, which will help you understand the passion behind favs.

Google: EU Antitrust Fine is “Inappropriate”

The users of WebmasterWorld were picking apart the most recent salvo of legalese from Google this week. Google has been duking it out with courts in Europe for quite some time now, and the battle is only heating up. According to Google, paying an antitrust fine would be inappropriate because, “The statement of objections fails to take proper account of the fact that search is provided for free.

A finding of abuse of dominance requires a ‘trading relationship’ as confirmed by consistent case law. No trading relationship exists between Google and its users.” Maybe not search users, but there is a relationship between advertisers and Webmasters, no?

As user heisje writes, “…nothing wrong with their dominant position, as they are the best existing search service. But then follows the abuse of dominant position, in a multitude of ways, already broadly discussed now… At Google they know well they cannot fool by their leaked PR spin either the EU or webmasters. Their PR is aimed at the masses of end users of their search service…so that they may rally mass consumer and political support.”

A decent strategy, but will it work?

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One of our moderators has graciously offered to provide site speed reviews in their spare time! If you’re looking for tips, or if you just want someone to have a conversation with, as opposed to an automated tool, head on over and post in this thread!

How Well Do You Know Your Users?

You can use all the rhetoric you like about “target users” and who your audience is – but have you really done the research to get to know your users and their behavior? That’s what folks on Cre8asiteforums are discussing this week.

Kim Krause-Berg writes, “…there are studies on mobile and whether or not revenue increased with a responsive design. What fascinates me is that the same incentive is not applied to accessibility design. Companies are racing to get a mobile site to pass Google’s test but will continue to ignore accessibility standards…”

Another user, iamlost, shares some of the thresholds and guidelines he uses to measure user behavior. If you’ve never tried researching the users of your own site, check out this thread for advice on how to get started!

Google Tests Epic Length Snippets

A website with a “Pinterest-style” display and a meager 18 word meta description was discovered to have a massive, 7-line snippet in Google SERPs this week.

According to an article from The SEM Post, this could indicate that Google is testing longer snippets for special types of websites. The lengthy snippets were found being used for recipe sites and some ecommerce sites as well. A Threadwatch reporter wonders what use such lengthy snippets could have –

“If recipes were listed out wholly in snippets, it would make for a very busy search page. But it would also continue a trend of Google adding features so that users don’t ever have to leave their site.”

User Behavior As a Ranking Factor?

Users on SEO Chat are discussing a study from Link-Assistant.com that claims user behavior is a ranking factor and that it can be used to the advantage of your website’s SEO. Some users were skeptical of the claims.

Fathom writes, “The output of user behavior are ‘LINKS!’ IMHO digressing ranks to be 100% about Google’s users whether your Google referrals are extremely high or extremely low is a worse metric to what they currently have.”

But another user, jeffryag1026, writes, “The more a searcher can interact with the page and the more that they do, the higher the page will be ranked. If you think about it…it really is a great way to measure relevancy…” What do you think?

Social Media is a Minefield for Copyright Issues

A user on Cre8asiteforums has been looking for photos to use in a Facebook advertisement. With no budget to pay for images and the right free images being difficult to find, what can they do?

“I have in the past asked express permission from someone…to use some cool pictures they’d shared for an advert campaign, but they were happy with me just posting a link to their page and saying thanks… So how could I provide adequate attribution to an image that I’m using…?”

EGOL suggests browsing public domain images, or buying a small camera to take your own images.

“Images are extremely valuable,” he writes. “They are often worth more than the text on the pages where they appear.” How do you navigate copyright issues in the modern age of social media?

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