Hashtag, you’re doing it right!
If you’re a social media novice, hashtags may seem confusing and you’re right, they are. But they are integral to the way we communicate online, and search. As our world of technology grows and grows, so does the infinite amount of information available for us to search through on any given platform that we choose at that moment. The hashtag’s widespread use began with Twitter but has extended to other social media platforms. In 2007, developer Chris Messina proposed, in a tweet, that Twitter begin grouping topics using the hash symbol. Twitter initially rejected the idea. However wide spread use took fire, we mean took off. Case in point the #SanDiegoFire, at Messina’s suggestion, to tweet updates on a series of forest fires in San Diego. The practice of hashtagging took was a blaze; now users and brands employ hashtags to cover serious political events (#Cairo) and entertainment topics (#MileyCyrus) alike. Numbers are supported, if you click on any trending topic on social media you see they are quite the popular little guy popping up everywhere. However, punctuation marks are not, so commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks and apostrophes are out. Forget about asterisks, ampersands or any other special characters. If you’re a grammar junkie…. #sorrynotsorry Keep in mind that the @ symbol does something completely different. Using @ before a person’s Twitter handle will tweet at him directly, letting him know you have written to him via the @Connect tab. A hashtag will not. Sometimes users will hashtag a celebrity’s name instead of using her Twitter handle — it is acceptable to tweet #highwaytohavasumovie or @highwaytohavasumovie. But if you are trying to reach someone directly, don’t use a hashtag. Most major social media platforms support hashtags. These include: Twitter: Twitter is the birthplace of modern hashtag usage — as such, its hashtags are more versatile than other sites’ (see “Tone & Voice,” below). Twitter hashtags are mainly used to denote specific topics of conversation; the “Trends” sidebar of your Twitter feed curates a list of hashtags you might be interested in, based on your tweets. When you search for a hashtag on Twitter, there are three ways to filter the results. The “Top” option displays the most relevant and popular posts, including those from users you don’t follow. “All” shows you every tweet that uses the specific hashtag in real time, and “People you follow” will only display results from users you are following. Hashtag Search Results Embarassing as it is to admit, this is how we do most of our searching while on Facebook: Facebook only recently added hashtag support in June 2013, and the practice has not picked up much steam. Nevertheless, clicking on Facebook hashtags will take you to a list of posts containing the same hashtag. It’s completely useful in the Facebook environment, literally weeding out all the posts that you are not looking for and truly helping to bring to the forefront the ones you may be interested in, or extremely helpful to find old articles you stumbled upon and forgot to save. Instagram: Hashtags can be used to complement photos shared on Instagram and help you discover new accounts and pick up followers. Some hashtags were created specifically for Instagram photo challenges — #ThrowbackThursday, for example, encourages users to post retro photos. Vine uses hashtags in the same way — try accompanying each of your Vine videos with at least one hashtag to maximize shareability. Google+: When you click on a hashtag in Google+, the search results will include the original hashtag as well as posts with similar tags and keywords. Google search results display on the left side of the page, while hashtag results from within Google+ appear on the right. Google also gives you the option to search within Facebook or Twitter. Tumblr: Tumblr posts have a special “Tag” section where you can enter tags. These tags function like Twitter hashtags, organizing posts by topic, but the hash symbol is inserted automatically. Hashtags included in the main body of a post are not transformed into links. Pinterest: Use Pinterest hashtags to mark and search for content. Click on the hashtag in a pin description to navigate results that contain the exact hashtag, plus pins with the same word or phrase in the description. If we totally confused you, not to worry. That’s what we’re here for. We love this $h!t!! Shoot us an email and we can talk strategy and how to make the most of your hashtagging!
Importance of Proper Keywords
By Sue Jenkins from Web Design All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition The first thing you can do to improve a website’s search engine friendliness (search engine optimization) is to maximize the importance of proper keywords you use in your content. One of the things that search engine robots and spiders do is search for meaningful content within the text on pages that they crawl. This means that the sites you design need to help those bots find that content by including site-specific keywords that identify a company’s products and services, especially on the home page. Keywords can be any words or short phrases (keyphrases) that describe the product, service, or information on the site that needs to be advertised. If your site sells products, tell the world about them using clearly identifiable keywords that visitors might use. This can help visitors around the world using search engines to more readily find a particular website. Keep in mind that the keywords within the text of the site’s pages can be the same as any keywords listed in the keywords meta tag. However, because content keywords and key phrases can be integrated into the text in the body of the page, you have much more latitude for including the most popular keywords within the text that the site’s target audiences are likely to use when doing a search engine search. To evaluate your site’s content and find ways to maximize keywords, look through each page on your site with the following key concepts in mind: Verify that the text on each page — especially the home page — includes descriptive keywords and key phrases. For instance, if the website offers printing services and uses only chlorine-free 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper and vegetable-based inks, Chlorine-Free 100% post-consumer recycled paper and vegetable-based inks would be great key phrases to include in the page’s text. Find ways on every page to hyperlink any keywords or key phrases to other relevant pages on the site. If you see keywords that aren’t yet linked to somewhere else on the site when they should be, add them. For instance, if the copy on a page includes the phrase, “Our services include graphic design, offset and digital printing, mailing and fulfillment,” you can easily turn the words graphic design, offset, digital printing, mailing, and fulfillment into individual hyperlinks that link directly to those five pages on the site. To emphasize certain words or phrases within the page content, mark up headlines and bylines using headings tags such as <h1>and <h2> and mark up other important text with <strong> (bold) and<em> (italic) styles. By using these heading and emphasis tags, you’re alerting search engine robots that the content contained inside those tags is likely to be more relevant to search engine users than other content on the page. If you’re advising clients about improving the content on their pages, tell them not to worry about being too conservative with the amount of content placed on every page. Many site owners think that having too much copy will scare away readers. In fact, some SEO guidelines recommend having a minimum of 200 words on every page so that the spiders and robots have something to read and index. When you have finished reviewing and updating your site, the content should be well marked up with heading, italic, and strong tags for emphasis; the copy should include lots of descriptive keywords and key phrases; and when applicable, those keywords and key phrases should by linked to other relevant pages on the site.
