Two Essential Plugins for Your Wordpress Blog

Tracking the traffic to your blog and optimizing it for Search Engines and Social Media shares is extremely important.  These are things that you're going to want to set up as soon as you can.

In the old days, changes to websites for SEO purposes (like customizing title tags and meta tags) and connecting Google Analytics were a matter of customizing the website's code by hand.  

Today, Wordpress users have the benefit of being able to install and use powerful plugins to extend and enhance their blog's capabilities without the need to code by hand.  These plugins offer a simple user interface that is easy to use.

If you are interested in tracking activity on your blog with Google Analytics or optimizing your blog for search engine rankings and social media sharing, there are two essential Wordpress plugins you should consider using on your blog:

1. Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast
This plugin ostensibly simplifies the process of installing and monitoring Google Analytics from Wordpress.  

After creating your Google Analytics account, you simply install the plugin in Wordpress and authenticate with your google account as described here.  That's pretty much it!

2. Wordpress SEO Plugin by Yoast
This powerful plugin can handle SEO duties as well as Open Graph tags for Social Media Optimization.

Follow installation instructions and then take a look at their very informative Guide to Higher SEO Rankings for WordPress sites for more information on setting it up.

Compared to more stripped-down blogging platforms like Blogger, you'll find that the functionality in the SEO Plugin is pretty comprehensive - not only can you customize your Title and Meta Description tags, but you can even enable Open Graph Protocol tags to handle social media optimization.

You'll find a ton of other features in this plug-in that you can configure - and if you're someone who finds SEO fascinating - I encourage you to explore this plugin and see what it can do!

Is Google Analytics Working on my Blogger Blog?

So you've already viewed my tutorial on how to create a Google Analytics account and link it to your Blogger blog and you THINK that you have everything all set up.  But is it?  How can you be sure?

Here are a couple of things you can check to make sure that Google Analytics is correctly tracking your blog traffic:


1. Double Check that Blogger knows your Google Analytics Tracking ID
Log in to Blogger and go to Settings/Other and scroll all the way down.  Blogger should have your Tracking ID listed like this:

If it's not there - you need to go find it, paste it in, and click "Save Settings".  You can find it by logging into Google Analytics and looking under Admin/Property Settings.


2. View the Source
Load your blog's home page in a web browser.  Then view the source code of that page using the "view source" command.  When the source code loads in a new window, do a FIND and search for your Tracking ID to see if it appears in your source code anywhere.  

If it is correctly installed, you should find a snippet of code that looks something like this:

If you don't know how to view the source code of a webpage, Google "How do I view source in Google Chrome", being sure to replace "Google Chrome" with whatever browser you happen to be using.  

If you don't know how to search the contents of the source code, Google "How do I use the find command in Google Chrome?", again, replacing "Google Chrome" with your browser (Or just start using Google Chrome from now on - You will be a happier person).

If you can't find a snippet of code with your Tracking ID in it, something is not right - go back to step one.


3. Check Google Analytics Real-Time
This is a fun one - kind of the equivalent of looking in the mirror to see if you're really there.  Log in to Google Analytics.  Click on the name of your blog to view the "Reporting" overview.  Then select the "Real Time" link on the left hand menu.

Click on the Real-Time "Overview.  Now open a new window (or tab, since you're using Google Chrome now you might as well get used to tabbed browsing).  Go to your blog url (the one you are trying to track).  Once your blog's home page loads up, go back to Google Analytics window.  You should see this:

Nice work.  You're watching yourself read your own blog.  This proves that it works and that everything is set up correctly.  You're done - go do something fun, like find animated GIFs of people clapping!

If you see 0 active users - something is not right.  Go back to step one.


Once you are successful installing Google Analytics - I recommend that you start checking it once a week to monitor your blog traffic.  If you need help - here is a link to the Google Analytics Help Center.

Social Media Project Roundup, Fall 2014

Every semester, my UNI Digital Advertising students work very hard on a massive project: To develop a professional brand using social media. 

Let's take a moment to praise their work and note a few special honors.

The Big Picture

It's always astounding to me what my classes can accomplish in three months.  By measuring our activity and engagement on social media, we can quickly evaluate our performance with quantitative metrics.

From August 22 - November 15, 2014, my 41 #unidigadv students accomplished the following:

• Posted a total of 6,731 tweets on Twitter
• Gained a total of 3,223 followers on Twitter
• Earned an average score of 45 on Klout
• Added 2,258 connections on LinkedIn
• Published 371 blog posts on Blogger
• Earned a record-setting 48,543 pageviews from visitors to their blogs

TWITTER

Most Prolific

Tweeting is one of those things that seems very easy at first glance - until you do it every day in support of a professional brand.  That's hard work!  Here are the top five #unidigadv Tweeps by Tweet volume:

1. Marvin Singleton @Marvymarv_12 - 711 Tweets
2. Bennett Becicka @becickaMKTG - 453 Tweets
3. Alyssa Chekas @DameOfTechWear - 420 Tweets
4. Joslyn Aldape @jonyal2 - 384 Tweets
5. Andrew Niedert @AndrewNiedert - 360 Tweets
    

Most Followers Gained

If you want to wield influence on Twitter, you need followers.  Here are the students who added the most followers during the semester.

1. Alyssa Chekas @DameOfTechWear - added 339 followers
2. Andrew Struik @ArtOfDesigns - added 257 followers
3. Annie Forsythe @NonprofPanther - added 231 followers
4. Marvin Singleton @Marvymarv_12 - added 178 followers
5. Sarah Schwendinger @savvy_traveler1 - added 140 followers
    

LINKEDIN

Most Connections Gained
When job hunting, who you know is often as important as who you are.  Here are the top three class members who gained the most connections on LinkedIn during this project:

1. Marvin Singleton - 410 Connections
2. Andrew Niedert - 138 Connections
3. Brady Feldman - 114 Connections

Highest Quality Profiles

Working to build a high quality Linkedin Profile can help you stand out to potential employers.  The following students all had excellent profiles.

• Joslyn Aldape
• Kelly Heth
• Olivia Hottle Mossman
• Jess Petersen
• Evan Seuren

Most Recommended

These two had the greatest number of recommendations by others on LinkedIn:

• Kelly Heth (8 recommendations)
• Olivia Hottle Mossman (7 recommendations)

BLOGS

The real content was being generated on student blogs, where students developed unique and original posts related to their professional brand.  They then attempted to organically attract an audience of readers - a difficult challenge!

Most Visited Blogs

This semester I am happy to report that we had two blogs that SHATTERED the longstanding class record of 4,833 pageviews held by #unidigadv alum Emily Droessler for her Sports and Social Media blog.  Both were fashion blogs for niche audiences and both clearly tapped into a market need for fashion advice and tips.  

Congratulations to Jess Petersen and Evan Seuren for their incredible work this semester! Take a look at their excellent blogs:

 

We had NINE students who earned over 1,000 pageviews to their blog during the course of the semester - they did a fantastic job attracting and engaging their visitors.  Browse through their blogs and see what they came up with:

1. Jess Petersen - Ask a Tomboy - 12,506 pageviews (Record Breaker!)
2. Evan Seuren - Dude, What Should I Wear? - 8,702 pageviews (Record Breaker!)
3. Kelly Heth - Fortitude, Grin & Grow - 3,613 pageviews
4. Scott Evans - Technical Scott - 1,355 pageviews
5. Bethany Carin - Bethany Carin Design + DIY - 1,200 pageviews
6. Collin Cahill - Televisionary - 1,181 pageviews
7. Marvin Singleton - Helping the Community Rebound - 1,158 pageviews
8. Kelsey Lonneman - Flying Design - 1,131 pageviews
9. Annie Forsythe - Social Media Impacts on Nonprofit Fundraising - 1,075 pageviews

Thanks again for a great semester - if you get nostalgic you can always tune into #unidigadv on Twitter and help the newbies out!

Did you have a favorite blog this semester that I didn't mention?  Tell me about it in the comments!

Adding Open Graph Protocol (OGP) tags to your Blogger Blog

The Open Graph Protocol is a relatively new way to turn any web page into a sharable social object by adding tags to identify key attributes for that page when shared on a social network like Facebook.  Before we look at these OGP tags and how to integrate them into your Blogger blog, let's take a look at how website links are shared on social networks.

Sharing Links on Facebook
When you share a URL while creating a Facebook status update, Facebook scans that webpage and automatically generates a preview of that content which includes some useful information in addition to the URL you typed:

• A TITLE for the web page you are sharing
• A brief DESCRIPTION of the content on that page
• An IMAGE from the page

Once you publish your status, these extra bits of information become very important, as they will likely influence whether one of your friends will click on the link.  If the image looks intriguing, or if the copy seems interesting, your shared URL will likely be clicked on.

However, sometimes when you share a link, Facebook's automatically generated image, title, and description are either missing entirely or not very compelling. In the post below, notice that there is no associated image or description - just a title and url.

As digital content publishers who want to make our content as sharable and clickable as possible, this can be a real issue.  Fortunately, Facebook provides a number of sharing best practices that can help.

First Step: Learn about the Open Graph Protocol
Facebook describes several open graph tags that it recommends integrating into your site to help Facebook generate previews.  The main tags which Facebook uses when generating previews are:

• og:title - the title of the page you are sharing
• og:description - a detailed description of the content on the page
• og:url - the URL of the web page
• og:image - the URL of the image you want shown
• og:site_name - the name of the website you are sharing
• og:type - the type of content you are sharing (blog, website, article, etc)

The syntax for an open graph tag is similar to other meta tags used in HTML.  For example, the og:title tag can be written as:

<meta property="og:title" content="Title of your Page">

Open graph tags are placed in the <head> section of your HTML file. For a complete description of each tag, visit the Open Graph Protocol website.

How Facebook "Sees" your Page
To understand how Facebook ingests a webpage to generate a preview, use Facebook's Open Graph Debugger.  This helpful tool will allow you to enter any URL and get a "scrape" of what Facebook finds when it scans the page.  It will alert you when there are issues that need to be addressed. 

 It will also generate a preview to show you how your page will appear if a Facebook user shares it on their timeline.

Time to Fix your Blogger Blog, OG style
In a previous post, I discussed the use of Title and Meta Description tags, which are very important for your blog's SEO.  I also described a method of optimizing how Blogger generates title tags to improve your blog's SEO.  Read these posts before you go any further!

Because Blogger dynamically generates the pages in our blog based on templates, we thankfully do not need to manually add OG tags to every blog page/post.  That would be a major headache!  Fortunately for us, we can update a few lines of HTML code in our blog's template that will automatically update all our pages and posts - including any new pages and posts we create in the future.

What we'll be doing is telling Blogger exactly how to handle the TITLE, META DESCRIPTION, and OG tags on 1. your blog's home page and 2. your blog's various posts and pages.  We will do this by using IF statements. 

Here is the code you will insert into the <HEAD> section of your Blogger template:

<!--START CUSTOM CODE-->

<meta property='og:url' expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl'/>
<meta property='og:title' expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle'/>
<meta property='og:site_name' expr:content='data:blog.title'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
<meta property='og:image' expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl'/>
<meta property='og:type' content='article'/>

<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/> - PUT ANY ADDITIONAL TITLE COPY HERE</title>
<meta property='og:image' content='PUT YOUR IMAGE URL HERE'/>
<meta property='og:type' content='blog'/>
</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta property='og:description' expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription'/>
</b:if>


<!--END CUSTOM CODE-->

Select this code and COPY it.  Then read on.

Important note: before you start editing your blog's HTML code, you'll want to make sure that you are happy with the template you are using.  Because we're going to customize the code associated with a specific instance of a template, it is important to realize that if you ever change your template for any reason, you will lose the work you're about to do!

Time to Get Geeky: Come Edit Your Template's HTML with Me
Ready? Let's do this. Go to Blogger and click on your blog.  Click on the "Template" button on the left hand menu. 

Click on the "Edit HTML" button and be prepared to feel a surge of geeky neuronic energy course throughout the synapses of your brain.

Take a deep breath.  Repeat to yourself: "It's just a text file.  It's just a text file.  I can handle this!"

Now very carefully find the <title> tag that exists in the code.  Select the title tag code and everything inside it.

Delete it.  Then replace it with the code I gave you earlier in this post.  

Be sure to carefully EDIT the parts of the code marked "PUT ANY ADDITIONAL TITLE COPY HERE" and "PUT YOUR IMAGE URL HERE".

This code creates og:url, og:title, and og:site_name tags that are dynamically generated from Blogger's page url, Blogger's page title, and your blog's title. It then creates og:image and og:type tags (IF the page is a normal post or page).  Otherwise, it creates og:image and og:type tags for your home page which are different.  Finally, it creates an og:description tag that is populated from the meta descriptions that you create for your pages.

Once you are done, click "Preview template".  If you have made any errors or broken any of the code - it should give you an error message and tell you what the issue is.  If your preview looks good, then click "Save Template".

You're Not Done Until You Test Your Pages!
To test your pages, go back to Facebook's Open Graph Debugger and try your pages out. It will give you a preview of how each page will look when shared.

Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about!

Acknowledgements
I'd like to acknowledge the help of the following two blog posts which helped me greatly in patching together the above code that both improves SEO and adds OG tags to Blogger posts and pages:

Adjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO by Muhammad Faisal
and
How to Add Open Graph Protocol in Blogger Blogs by Muntasir Minhaz

Thanks guys!

Linking Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts

I had a few questions asked about how you can link your Google Analytics account to your new Google AdWords account as required by your new assignment, so I put together a short video walkthrough to show you how to do this:

   

Mentioned in the video is a promotional offer that Google is running where you can get a coupon code for $75 of free advertising on AdWords for spending $25 on any AdWords campaign.  This offer only applies to new AdWords users, so if you already have an AdWords account, you may not be able to take advantage of it.  The details of this offer can be found here.

Also mentioned in the video is this AdWords Help page that has a step-by-step walkthrough of how to link the two accounts.  Analytics Help also has a walkthrough available with screenshots.  

Good luck!