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Thanks so much for the thorough answer, Paul. I was hoping I would get answers like these so I can go ahead. I appreciate your comments about ranking although, I am not sure I am concerned about that so much in this instance. I'll have to give it some thought.

Hi Joni I would definitely recommend to optimise for better CTR. My lazy way is to just Buffer(app) the posts, see how the reaction is and the CTR, and republish it with a tweaked social media title and image. Image is king on social so I do tests for that. I saw an article here on moz some days back, which is one of the better ones ive seen recently about Facebook http://moz.com/blog/forget-googles-games-make-social-a-primary-traffic-source you might want to take a look.

Well thanks for clarifying

Thank you for your comment. I tested with many browsers / language configurations. I'm not logged. My keyword is "RAGQ". It's a business name. zqMIwSC UYMAr3k

I'm not sure I get what you are asking. You mention products but also mention hotels. Can you share exactly the issue you are facing? Facebook is not meant for just loading products or hotel locations. It's more about sharing things they are doing over time or having a facebook page for each hotel location. But if you are talking products, take a look at what ModCloth does. They mention their products in really interesting ways that drives traffic to those pages.

Theres a few other things you should take into consideration with Twitter. A retweet from someone from little to no followers is kinda useless. It also makes me wonder if they are a spam bot. It won't nessecarly generate any good will. I have a couple of Twitter accounts. 1 business. I use the business account to provide product updates, downtime notifications etc 2. personal. My personal account is based around music and a personal blog/brand I have built over many years in a very small niche. Through this I have achieved a decent amount of followers that I interact with reguarly. I have also been able to convert a good portion of followers. My followers have also recommend my services to their followers knowing that I offer the service their contact is looking for. Even when they don't use my services. It makes them look like an authority/knowledgable person with contacts. I saw a tweet that made sense. It was something like "facebook is for friends that you hate, twitter is for people you don't know but love". This is true. My twitter feed is not disimilar to an active forum. My best advice is: Create a personal account, build followers in your niche by interacting with them (even if at first they don't respond) Be real. Sounds cliche but, twitter is about interaction, communicating and sharing thoughts with similar minded people... And you better believe they will all be similar minded. During recent elections here in Australia, it seemed everyone was giving their 2 cents about how Labour should win. If the election was based off my feed, they would have won. They didn't and we now have a new Prime Minister. Be careful with the links you provide. Especially early on while people are getting to know you. If you over do it, an unfollow is only a click away. In all honesty, if you are new to Twitter and want to promote your company, I would use their paid ads. Why ? Because you can define the audience you are trying to attract. At first I detested twitter ads, but since they';ve fine tuned it, I do often click a link or at least favourite it so I can come back and look at it later. In saying that, make sure your site is responsive. Damn, I hate clicking a twitter link to find it's not working on my browser. Smartcompany.com.au were guilty of this and it annoyed the shit out of me as they have really interesting headers. i.e. I'd click through and would get page not found. Don't tweet people/companies with a link to your site. If it's a new account and you do this reguarly you're looking at a ban. Users hate this. Trying to get followers by favouriting their tweets in the hope of a followback, is also a no no. I think AJ Ghergich @seo has found a really good balance for Twitter. He posts a lot of great links to other people sites, many sites I haven't seen before and he interacts with his followers. @randfish is also Ok. Though he doesn't interact unless you're a seo celebrity or similar. I guess the same rings true for twitter as it does for SEO. Look for authorities who are active and interesting. Hope that helps

I support with Yusuf's answer. It picks the count of mentions in the specific URL (homepage), rather than cumulating everything under the domain. I guess, MOZ needs to work on that to get a good match with our actual mentions from our internal reports.

Hi there! Martijn altered your code snippet, which was missing the rel="author" attribute. You should be able to "select all" and then copy and paste the code. Please let us know if that works. Thanks!

You're most welcome!

Thanks so much for your responses. I would be using it to manage clients' social media presence across platforms.

It also helps to know the Facebook social audience that you are reaching out two, some appreciate much engagement and feedback others like it in moderation. But generally if you don't participate your doing social wrong.

Thanks, Dan, your comments and links were useful. Best, Christopher

Are you sure its not your site, have you seen the problem on any competitors ? Is it the same page (i.e a duplicate ?)

Of course we've seen results from whitehat SEO.  That's not to say that blackhat SEO doesn't work, too.  Afterall, who would take such a risk if it didn't work...but it is a big risk.  Many sites using blackhat techniques wake up one morning to find their site's rankings are in the toilet or worse. The rest of the advice that's been offered is good.  Create truly good content that's valuable or entertaining and build up your audience.  Whitehat SEO does work; however, Whitehat SEO with unoriginal, boring content, doesn't work so well.  And like SEO 5 Team said, if you know your competition is violating the guidelines, report them.  Beyond just the small business reporting, you can actually submit a spam report: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com

Thanks for that!  My boss updated it quickly yesterday ... it's fixed now. I suppose Google is just slow to catch up.  We have links to FB on a lot of our other sites, but I'm going to do some extra link building for the page over the next few days.  Hopefully that will help!

Thanks for the answers all.  I learned a new term - 7 pack! My client is not geographically sensitive, so the "Places" aspect doesn't matter to them.  So it sounds like going the G+ route is a bit roundabout for getting traffic to the site.  I'm a little stunned that after all the hype about G+, the responses here mirror what I'd been seeing. -Jim

Just thought I would mention a few things I have tried in the past. Same competition and prizes Firstly - I sent out an email version of a newsletter with the competition. I had 1 response to the competition. Secondly - I send out the same newsletter to 300 people in hard copy - I received 50 entries. Thirdly - I put the competition on Facebook. Received an overwhelming response - most by referral from other people entering. I end pulling it off Facebook as it was attracting people from outside my target market. These competitions are listed quickly on competition websites. So in answer to your question - if your target market is stay at home mums then facebook is a great tool. What exactly is your objective for the competition. Is it a) To promote your brand to your existing client base b) Gain new potential clients. c) Grow the number of facebook likes your business has. Depending on your objective will depend on your strategy. If you are in a specialized technical industry ask for 50 words on a particular item / industry vision. This will weed out a lot. Those it doesn't you can usually pick up if they do / do not know what they are talking about. Maybe you could post the competition on Linkedin - at least then you have a better fit for your target market.