We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.

Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.

Here are five important ways in which Bing might just be starting to get an edge on Google.

Google announced the addition of +1 button data to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. These new metrics can show you how the +1 button actually affects the traffic to your site.

In WMT, there is a Search Impact report, which shows how +1′s affect your organic search traffic. “You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out,” says Google software engineer Dan Rodney. “Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.”

An Activity report shows how many times your pages have been +1′d, from buttons on your site, as well as on other pages like Google Search.

An Audience report will show you aggregate geographic and demographic data about who is using the +1 button with your content. Google only shows this info, however, when a “significant” number of users have +1′d pages. They don’t say what number they consider “significant” to be.

Users will find a +1 Metrics menu on the side of the page, where each of these reports will be able to be found.

Also included are the Social Actions report, which tracks the number of social actions taken on your site, and the Social Pages report, which lets you compare pages on your site to see which are driving the most social actions.

“Over the next few days (and if you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code), if you’ve added +1 buttons to your site we’ll automatically enable Social Plugin Tracking for +1 in your account,” Rodney says. “You can enable tracking for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.”

Source: WebproNews

Unfortunately it can be difficult to get Facebook pages to appear in the SERPs, even for larger household names.

I thought it would be useful to take a quick look at a few Facebook Page optimisation techniques, and some of the more common SEO problems on the site…

Let’s look at what’s out in the open:

Likes

How you go about getting extra ‘likes’ is an entirely different kettle of fish, but in general the usual social buzzwords apply: Relevant, regular, engaging content please.

URLs and naming conventions

The most visible element on the web. Keep it succinct and branded. It’s also worth thinking about other channels you operate on.

If your Twitter account is @GreatDonuts, don’t call your Facebook page ‘We make Great Donuts’. That may sound obvious, but it’s often overlooked.

Privacy

Not to be patronising, but there is occasionally confusion over privacy settings and in the past I have come across a few page owners who’ve inadvertently locked their page down.

While there are cases when you only want to display content to fans, do a quick double check to make sure anyone can find you easily.

Multimedia

Unless you’re a band, that’s images and videos to you. I’d hope that any serious marketer would already optimise here, but it’s easy to forget to name or tag a Facebook picture properly, especially if you’re adding it using an external CMS.

Info and about

These are one of the most important places to put your keywords. Get a good SEO copywriter to optimise your information page.

Most visitors won’t read the information page, but it’s a good place to park some dense, keyword-heavy copy. Similarly, you’ll also want to put your brand name (or better still, a link) in the ‘about’ box.

Everything else…

Since the reintroduction of iFrames, every landing page is a separate company microsite as far as SEO goes, so make sure you’ve put aside enough time and resources to optimise everything on them.

Don’t (just) rely on being popular to generate authority. Again, consistency and attention to detail will help.

Unfortunately there is a fairly limited lifespan for most social media.

Most posts on Facebook receive around half of their ‘Likes’ in the first 90 minutes, before slowly grinding up to around 95% a day or so later, so you have a fairly small window of opportunity.

It’s also relatively hard to build a legitimate link-building campaign around a tab unless you are doing something long running and particularly awe-inspiring there, and you will also run up against UX problems.

Usually tabs won’t have optimised navigation, so directing to older content can confuse users. In addition, fresher content is generally more likely to appear in the SERPS.

As mentioned, all of these are fairly straightforward, but unfortunately that’s not the end of your SEO efforts.

Never mind the SERPS

It’s often said that Facebook is a walled garden, and the wall holds whichever side of it you are on. Facebook is now well on its way to 700M users. Another massive number, and as any social guru will tell you, one that businesses can’t afford to ignore.

Always remember that for Facebook users, being redirected to your site to purchase is often a major turn-off.

Facebook are on Facebook –they don’t want to be on your site. This has seen a lot of companies leaping into the F-commerce arena in an attempt to lower abandonment rates.

Whether you are setting up second home or considering ignoring platform instability and throwing all your eggs into Facebook’s basket, once all those searchers have found Facebook, they like to stay there.

From an SEO standpoint, this means that concentrating entirely on SERPS might not be the best tactic, instead, you may want to focus on Facebook’s internal search.

Whenever you type a search term into Facebook’s autocomplete search bar and hit enter, Facebook takes you directly to the top-ranked page.