SCSC Web Dude Blog

Marketers create a lot of content. Yes, content is king, but a king is powerless without followers. So, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you want to reach a broader audience with your awesome new post? Sharing on social media, of course. The huge audiences of Facebook and Twitter make them the best platforms for sharing, but do you know how to optimize that outreach potential? Why was Open Graph Created? Facebook introduced Open Graph in 2010. It promotes integration between Facebook and other websites by allowing them to become rich “graph” objects with the same functionality as other Facebook objects. Put simply, a degree of control is possible over how information travels from a third-party website to Facebook when a page is shared (or liked, etc.). In order to make this possible, information is sent via Open Graph meta tags in the part of the website’s code. Now, other social media sites also are taking advantage of social meta tags. All of the other major pl...

Chris Silver Smith  on March 24, 2014 at 9:22 am This month, Google Maps just  announced  a new events feature appearing on Android phones which has already been appearing in desktop local search results — for some types of business, events information is now being displayed in addition to the other local profile elements. The focus on events continues to indicate how much importance Google places on this data (and why local businesses should optimize for it). Here’s an example of the events feature screenshot from my Android phone — the venue is Biscuits & Blues in San Francisco: As you can see, Google shows a few listings under “Upcoming Events” for the restaurant. If you click on the one for “Tommy Odetto Group,” it displays event information and ordering options from EventBrite. The same info may be seen from desktop search for the business name, where the events are shown in the right hand Knowledge Graph box: On the Place Cards that are part of...