Maybe you remember a couple of months ago when Facebook accidentally rolled out some changes to fan pages, giving all of us a sneak peek of what was to come. Well, now those changes are actually here.

Throughout the day, I manage and monitor multiple fan pages. I just received a notification at the top of the screen to “preview” or “upgrade” to the new style of fan pages. Upon clicking “preview,” I was given a very useful tour of the changes that Facebook accidentally shocked us with two months ago.

And now I will give you that same tour with some explanations and interjections along the way.

1. Facebook Photos Change

Fan pages will now feature the most recent pictures in a bar across the top of the page just like new individual profiles. This bar will feature the photos added to the wall by the admin or any photo that tags the fan page.

The fan pages that we monitor often receive irrelevant or spam-like photos in the “Fan Photos” section of our page. The good news is that these pictures will not be featured in the bar at the top of the page. Also, as it stands now, individuals cannot tag a fan page in a photo, which prevents spammers from simply tagging multiple fan pages in a picture and as a result, receiving the most prominent space on those pages. I’m glad that Facebook anticipated these issues and prevented this new feature from becoming a spam fest that all admins would have to monitor carefully.

2. Facebook Navigation Change

A big change to the overall format of the fan page is the location of tabs, which are often where we and other marketers host campaigns and special features of the page. Instead of being located at the top bar of the page, these tabs are now available below the profile picture of the page. These tabs now feature an accompanying icon; it will be interesting to see if these icons will be customizable in the future.

Developers are thrilled with the updated model for building apps on Pages announced today, which brought the introduction of iFrames to pages. According to Facebook, “this means you can now build apps that run across Facebook (including Pages and Canvas applications) using the same simple, standards-based web programming model (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). In addition, you can easily integrate social plugins and the Graph API within your tab.” Basically, developers now have much more freedom in tab creation and greater potential for interaction among fans.

One negative of this new tab location is a less prime real estate position on the page. It will be interesting to compare traffic to these tabs before and after this switch. Also, just as with individual profiles, there is no longer an “info box” displayed below the profile picture.

3. Facebook Wall Filters Change

This new feature is one that I have a problem with as the moderator of a page. Now, instead of posts appearing on the page in chronological order, it seems as if “top posts” and “the most interesting stories” will appear first. These top posts are determined by the number of interactions, which translates to likes and comments. This could make monitoring comments a nightmare because the spam could be hiding at the bottom of the page or it could be displayed prominently if it happens to attract comments and likes from fans. Moderators will have to regularly check deep into the page to ensure that spam or profanities aren’t lurking on the page somewhere instead of simply checking the most recent comments at regular intervals.

Fortunately, admins can still choose a default landing of either “Everyone” or just posts from the admin. By selecting a default landing of admin posts only, moderators can help eliminate the potential prominence of spam.

Luckily, Facebook also has a new feature, a moderation blocklist, in the works to block spam and profanities. Using this blocklist, admins can choose strong filters, medium filters, or none at all. Admins are not allowed to see the words or types of spam associated with each filter. However, admins can tailor the filters by “unmarking” spam that automatically goes into the Spam filter. This Spam filter was instituted in October 2010; it currently catches recognizable spam and places it into a filter only available for admins to view.

4. Facebook Admin View Change

This is the most interesting change for me. Before the switch, an admin could interact as the brand page ONLY on the page itself through comments and wall posts. Now it appears as though admins can log into Facebook as the fan page, which now opens up the possibility for the brand page to interact in the following ways:
Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
Like other pages and feature them on your page
Make comments as your page on other pages

Basically, these changes give the branded page a bigger voice on Facebook by allowing them to interact with other pages through likes and comments. The first bullet point above is an interesting one, though. For pages with a lower number of fans, these notifications will be helpful so that admins can receive a quick reminder and remain active on the page without having to check for comments and interactions throughout the day. However, for pages with a large fan base, these notifications would come in overwhelming numbers, making this “helpful reminder” into an overload of notifications. Can you imagine getting about 500 notifications within 10 minutes of posting a comment?

5. Facebook Settings Change

This change is not too exciting – just a new location for managing admin controls and certain features of the fan page.
Facebook is now allowing admins to preview this feature for the next 4 weeks, but these changes will become mandatory on all pages starting March 10, 2011. Admins should note that after opting to the new version, they will not be able to revert back to the previous version.

For years now, the squeeze page has practically been the lingua franca of the marketing online world. Whether you’re in real estate (and actually, the real estate industry in particular has leaned particularly heavily on squeeze pages), banking, e-commerce or anything else, the conventional wisdom has been to target tightly focused groups of consumers through these web pages/marketing tools.

These pages do OK at helping marketers identify which keywords or keyword phrases do well in terms of attracting targeted traffíc and if they’re well designed, at gathering email addresses or other contact information from these visitors. However, there are much better methods of doing keyword research than creating a separate squeeze page for each of your keywords. Additionally, building and maintaining these pages represents an investment of time and money which isn’t likely to produce a worthwhile return.

The squeeze page is dead – it just doesn’t know it yet and neither do the marketers who still use this direct marketing-style methodology in their líst building efforts. I know there’s probably at least a few of you out there reading this that still use them and are wondering what exactly is wrong with squeeze pages.

As it happens, the answer is plenty. They’re unappealing to consumers and increasingly, they’re seen as undesirable pieces of virtual property by the search engines as well. When you’re trying to market your business with a tool that turns off both your target market and the search engines, it’s clear that the time has come to abandon ship. I’ll explain in more detail below.

They’re Completely Unappealing To Readers

You’ve seen a squeeze page before – and chances are you’ve hit the back button on your browser almost immediately. These pages almost universally feature incredibly unattractive cookie cutter designs and copy which is generally nothing but sensational hype. That alone is enough to turn off most readers, not to mention that squeeze pages seem all too often to be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Put simply, they don’t look professional by any stretch of the imagination – but they do look professional enough to fool many business people who are new to the medium of the web into using them at least for a while.

Think of it this way – if you got a flyer in the mail that looked like one of these pages, would you be in a hurry to contact the marketer to sign up for their mailing líst, let alone actually do business with them? Probably not.

As a general rule, if it looks too awful to be true, it’s just what it looks like and squeeze pages are a prime example of this. They lack any kind of credibility with your prospective customers, especially when you’re in the real estate business. These pages make you look like the online equivalent of a shady used car salesman, not the kind of person that people want to do a real estate deal with. There are other things about squeeze pages that turn off your potential customers, but since there’s some crossover with this and the SEO shortcomings of the format, we’ll get back to that a little later on.

Google Slaps Squeeze Pages

It’s true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue – relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isn’t that relevant to many, if any, actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.

Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (“classic” squeeze pages, after all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales letter – in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.

Squeeze Pages Can Sink Your Main Site

Let’s get back to that subtitle about Google “slapping” squeeze pages, because this is one of the most important points I’d like to make here today. If your squeeze pages either link to or are part of your main site, they’re more than likely causing a slump in your main site’s search engine ranking, making you less visible to your market online. In other words, the exact opposite of what you’d hoped to accomplish. If these pages link to your site, you can be penalized for these links from unpopular sites in what Google considers to be an iffy online neighborhood – and what are the three most important things in real estate? Exactly.

Another way that squeeze pages can drag down your online presence is through having a large percentage of duplicate content. Many businesses throw up dozens of squeeze pages which are basically identical other than the targeted keywords for that particular page. Even if you make an effort to rewrite the content on these pages, there’s only so much you can do without putting a disproportionate amount of time or money into the effort.

So if squeeze pages are out, what are real estate professionals to do in terms of marketing online? There’s plenty of options, all of which are better choices than building a series of squeeze pages. I won’t go into them all here, but as always on the web, it’s all about good content which is geared towards readers first and search engines second. When your market sees you as credible and reputable, they’ll beat a path to your door and happily sign up for your email list. And where the market goes, the search engines will follow; but no one’s flocking to squeeze pages.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 4 years, you know how popular and widely used Facebook is today.

Just a couple of years ago, you had to relentlessly encourage family and friends to join this social networking website (shortly after others had convinced you to join). Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone who hasn’t got a Facebook account.

At last count, there were over 350 million users on Facebook and this number is continuing to grow. It overtook MySpace as the number 1 social networking website on the planet last year and is just behind Google when it comes to online traffic. You can then understand how important Facebook marketing has become for websites everywhere.

It’s Not A Pitch Zone

The most important thing to remember about social media is that it is not a place to blatantly and endlessly pitch your product or service. If you do this, then you will not get any favors from social media users, will get largely ignored and even receive bad reviews.

Social media is actually used for building relationships with potential clients in the market. There are a number of ways you can do this:

• you can post helpful information (links) that helps them solve a problem.

• you can personally chat with them to assist them.

• you can create content addressing the needs of users and post it.

The bottom line is that you want to be seen as genuine and helpful. This way, word can get out that you’re the real deal and before you know it, people will become interested in what you have to provide in terms of products and services.

Of course, the things you share on social networking sites such as Facebook shouldn’t be the nitty gritty stuff that you have to offer. You should share helpful information in the form of teasers that will interest people enough to ask and wonder if there’s more. Offering free stuff is great for getting attention too.

How To Market On Facebook

The great thing about Facebook is that from the outset, it has encouraged all users to use the website as a means of sharing information and marketing whatever they please. As a result, it has developed many ways for users to do this. You are not obliged to use every single one of them, but a combination of them can only improve your Facebook marketing.

Pages

This is probably THE marketing tool out there on Facebook. On its website Facebook describes Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” It is specifically designed for promoting a business and everything it has to provide. People can then become a Fan of your page and when they do this, they let their friends know that they’ve become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. The potential for your Page to gain a lot of popularity in a small period of time is great.

Of course, it’s all dependent on the content you give out for people to use. You need to show them a reason to become a Fan of your Page as well as a reason for staying on.

Events

Create events to be held at a certain date and time. Depending on your type of business, you can create one for a local or international audience. It can be any one of the following:
• seminar: It should be introductory and free but you could promote a paid one too.

• webinar: A seminar conducted online which anyone in the world can join.

• product/service launch: If you are about to launch a product or service, this is a way to gain attention.

The best part about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral, and before you know it, people will be attending your event in droves.

Advertising

Finally, about a year ago, Facebook introduced an advertising service where people can put ads promoting their website or their Facebook Page and they pay per click (PPC) or impression (CPM). It works in a similar way to Google Adwords.

You can target your ads to certain geographical locations but in addition, given the nature of Facebook, you can attach your ads to social actions. For example, if you were a wedding photographer and wanted to promote your services, your ads could be set up to appear only to females between the ages of 24 and 30 and whose relationship statuses indicate they are engaged.

It must be noted, however, that Facebook Advertising is still in beta mode which means that it will only improve in the near future.

Embrace Facebook

If you want to market your website online, you would be absolutely nuts not to use Facebook marketing as one of your key strategies. Just be careful not to get caught up in it too much because it can become a very time consuming activity.

Author: Martin Sejas

You have a beautiful website with great products, great guarantees, many comprehensive pages and great customer service. Unfortunately, Google and other search engines won’t give your website high rankings.

There are several reasons why search engines do not list websites although they look great and offer quality content:

1. Your web pages are meaningless to search engine spiders

Search engines use simple software programs to visit your web pages. In general, search engine spiders won’t see anything that is displayed in images, Flash elements, JavaScript (except for a few exceptions) and other multimedia formats.

If the main content of your website is displayed in images or Flash then your website can be totally meaningless to search engines. If your website navigation is pure JavaScript then chances are that search engines won’t find the pages of your website.

Your website will look like a single page site although it consists of many different pages.

Solution: Check your website with IBP’s search engine spider simulator to find out how search engine spiders see your website.

2. The HTML code of your web page contains major errors

Most web pages have minor errors in their HTML code. While most search engine spiders can handle minor HTML code errors, some errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages.

For example, a tag at the top of your web pages could tell search engine spiders that they have reached the end of the page although the main content of the page has not been indexed yet.

Solution: Verify the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP demo version (IBP main window > Tools > HTML Validator).

3. The HTML code of your web pages doesn’t contain the right elements

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords then these keywords must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.

There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings. All of them should be in place if you want to get high rankings.

Solution: Analyze your web pages with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you in detail how to edit your web pages so that they will get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines for the keywords of your choice.

4. Your web server sends the wrong status codes

Some web servers send wrong status codes to search engine spiders and visitors. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the “200 OK” code.

Some servers send a “302 moved” or even a “404 not found” response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.

If your web server sends the wrong response code, search engine spiders will think that the web page doesn’t exist and they won’t index the page.

Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator mentioned above to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not “200 OK”, the spider simulator will return a warning message.

5. Your robots.txt file rejects all search engine spiders

If your robots.txt file does not allow search engine spiders to visit your web pages then your website won’t be included in the search results. Some robots.txt file contain errors and search engine spiders are blocked by mistake.

Solution: Check the contents of your robots.txt file. In general, it is not necessary to use a robots.txt file if you don’t want to block certain areas of your website.

Search engine spiders must be able to understand your web pages if you want to get high rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines. The tips above help you to make sure that search engine spiders see what you want them to see.