Solving linkedin share problems

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


The homepage ‐ visual


The sharing popup – no image!


The homepage ‐ code


Trial & error

• Save source as html and upload as test.html• Sharethis no difference, linkedin company share no difference


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


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 …


Trial & error ‐ visual – stripped page


Trial & error – code not good


Trial & error

• Changed the code again – bingo!


Trial & error ‐ success code

• The difference: only one paragraph and image within that paragraph


Now going back to the original(the not stripped page)

• Changing the code and using sharethis …


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


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


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


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


Trial & error

• Saved page as html – wrong description (some footer content)


Trial & error

• Main reason: meta description too short!

• So i changed it – made it much longer

• And the result ‐ Yes


Trial & error


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


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!


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


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


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.


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


Solving linkedin share problems

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