Post on 01-Nov-2014
description
Solving Linkedin share problemsLinkedin share image/thumbnail not
showing? This presentation contains trial & error tests from www.imagebankpro.com …
and easy to apply solutions!
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 1
The situation
• I’m using sharethis and addthis plugin to share pages to Linkedin
• Tried open graph (og:image) but no success• Trial & error (lots) gave me some solutions• In the next slides, i will explain what i did and what the result was
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 2
The homepage ‐ visual
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 3
The sharing popup – no image!
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 4
The homepage ‐ code
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 5
Trial & error
• Save source as html and upload as test.html• Sharethis no difference, linkedin company share no difference
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 6
Trial & error
• I change something and save as test1.html, then test2.html and so on
• It’s very important to do that, because otherwise you will not see the reality due to caching problems
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 7
Trial & error
• Change relative to absolute path of header image –didn’t work
• Resaved image into jpg ‐ didn’t work• Moved the header image into an article tag – didn’t work
• Stripped the whole page – didn’t work• Added title tag to image – didn’t work• Made title and alt tag the same – didn’t work• Moved the page to a different domain – didn’t work• But then …
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 8
Trial & error ‐ visual – stripped page
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 9
Trial & error – code not good
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 10
Trial & error
• Changed the code again – bingo!
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 11
Trial & error ‐ success code
• The difference: only one paragraph and image within that paragraph
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 12
Now going back to the original(the not stripped page)
• Changing the code and using sharethis …
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 13
What did i do?
• I added the same image to the intro paragraph and used style=“display:none;”. Of course, that’s only because i wanted to use the header image
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 14
One remark
• For one reason or the other, it wasn’t immediately working on my homepage (www.imagebankpro.com). I guess Linkedin has somewhere a cache.
• After a fex hours, it also worked on home
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 15
What’s next• I tried my theory on another website, and … it didn’t work. Damn.
So again, trial & error …• What was the situation: a news page
http://www.lemento.com/nl/nieuws/belfius_insurance_adverteert_in_metro.asp
• This page: no result, although i applied my theory …• Net step: I saved the source as html • http://www.lemento.com/nl/nieuws/belfius_insurance_adverteert
_in_metro.html and yes ‐ it worked• Than, I created a folder and saved the newsfile as index.asp. The
link became http://www.lemento.com/nl/nieuws/belfius_insurance_adverteert_in_metro/ exactly the same page, only the extension “.asp” was not there anymore ‐ BINGO
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 16
So
• I can’t explain this – it looks like linkedin doesn’t like asp‐pages and has no problem with html.
• But the asp problem is not always there.• And that’s not all … i continued with other content pages and again other problems
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 17
Trial & error
• Saved page as html – wrong description (some footer content)
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 18
Trial & error
• Main reason: meta description too short!
• So i changed it – made it much longer
• And the result ‐ Yes
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 19
Trial & error
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 20
Trial & error
• Interesting is also to see that “Building corporate brands” is not the <title> of the page, but the H1 in the content. That can be interesting for other people too
• My conclusion: the moment that Linkedin understands the page, it pulls the right picture, description and title.
• If the metadata are not ok, Linkedin is not interested in sharing the page
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 21
Trial & error
• Other problem is the order of the attributes. If you use an invisible image, you have to put style=“display:none;” at the end. When it’s immediately after <img , it’s not working. Be careful, because Tiny mce has a different default behaviour!
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 22
Trial & error
• Now i have 2 pages, identical source code, one page ok, the other not. But ..
• Page is saved source code ‐ linkedin ok http://www.lemento.com/nl/Portfolio/mediamarktsaturn.asp
• Page is executed code on server – linkedin not ok http://www.lemento.com/nl/Portfolio/media_markt_saturn.asp
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 23
Load speed?
• Tools.pingdom.com• Big difference!!
3/15/2013Solving Linkedin share problems ‐www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom
Vanderbauwhede24
Server processing makes this page slower and not good enough for linkedin
This page (saved source) is fast enough for linkedin
Load speed?
• Very fast imagebankpro.com
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 25
Conclusion
• Lots of reasons – lots of details in solutions– Clean code– Well defined metadata– Tricks to force the image (display none)– Fast pages
• I don’t say i solved this totally, but for me it’s a big step forward.
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 26
Good luck with your project
• Tom Vanderbauwhede is managing director of Lemento and ImagebankPro.com. This presentation is the first in a long series of Lemento Labs presentations
• FYI: i like solving problems, never shared the solutions before. From now on, i will share everything. Do me a favour and like/follow us on no matter what social network!
• https://plus.google.com/108608210692028451972• http://www.linkedin.com/company/imagebankpro• https://twitter.com/imagebankpro• http://www.facebook.com/imagebankpro
3/15/2013 Solving Linkedin share problems ‐ www.imagebankpro.com ‐ Tom Vanderbauwhede 27