2013 SEO Year End Review - P2 - #seopodcast 219

And welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Charles Lewis, an internet marketing specialist. Welcome to another fun-filled edition. This is, in fact, Podcast SEO Podcast 219. Woo-hoo, 219. As always, there is a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is, listen to the 2013 SEO Year in Review Part 1, which is our last podcast, right? Yeah. We went through so much information on that. One good bit. A lot of information. We talked about, you know, the past year's first half of 2013's podcast, and that covered everything from algorithm changes to content marketing tips to AdWords tips to- On-page tips. On-page stuff. There's a lot going on, so definitely check out that, and that's the fastest way to get caught up with everything that happened in 2013. Absolutely. That, and listen to your rap, right? The Algo- Oh, man. We did the, I dropped the Algo Cataclysm, no, Algo Updates. Google Algo Updates. Right. And G Plus Rap. G Plus Rap. Both of those came out this year, so that's pretty good. Cool. Let's get right into our podcast. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is. Don't be a deuce. If you can, tweet now. I saw you tweeting. Yeah, I did. Out of the corner of my eye. I saw you tried to sneak another tweet in there. What do they need to do? Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 219. Be sure to tag us in it, at E-Wolf Style, at Best SEO Podcast. And that way, we can link up and follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. Excellent. There's also one thing that you could do for us, three different ways. The first one is you could go to our G Plus Local page and write a review. We've made it really simple to get there. There are four simple, easy ways to get there. That is to go to e-webstyle.com slash G Plus. And slash G

Plus. And slash Google Plus. And slash Google Plus. Any one of those four iterations will get you to our G Plus Local page where we know that you have a G Plus account. It may not be active yet. But you got one. You got one. Go ahead and activate it and write us a review there. Please send us an email if you choose. They should also, like, plus one us. A few things. Get there. Leave us a review, most importantly. And if you feel like taking two extra clicks, plus one us and add us to your favorite circle. Preferably a circle that says, I don't know, internet marketing. There we go. SEO. I like internet marketing better. Yep. And then also, another thing you could do, you could, it's only three simple steps. Three steps. All you do is you go onto iTunes, you create an account, and you write a review. And when you write that review, please send us an email at podcast at e-wolfstyle.com. And we will be very appreciative and we will probably punch you in the face. That's a good thing. And that is a good thing. Even if you said it like that, it's a really good thing. All right. And finally, on Facebook, there's actually two places to leave a review. Over on the right, just under, like, the first two sections, you can give us five stars and write a brief comment. Or you can click our review tab, which is there at the top. And our Facebook, let's just talk about all the social ways they can interact with us. Facebook.com slash. E-wolfstyle. YouTube.com slash. E-wolfstyle. Twitter.com slash. Watch this. E-wolfstyle or Best SEO Podcast. There we go. Best SEO Podcast. And if you choose to, you can send us an email, podcast at e-wolfstyle.com. We do have a referral program. You send an SEO client to us. They pay their bill. We pay you. Let's keep moving on. We do have a free website analysis. Go to our webpage, e-wolfstyle.com, and find our free website

analysis. Fill that out and we will get back to you. We have a bit of a backlog, so sorry. And we will get back to you. No algo? No algo. And let's get right into the news. We've got a couple reviews, so no tear tattoo. That's a good thing. And let's do news first. We'll change this from the last one. News and reviews. I thought this was interesting. I read a little article. It said, teens aren't addicted to social. They're addicted to each other. Aren't addicted to social. They're addicted to each other. Right. I can see that because it don't matter what social network it is. Or they'd rather be together. Hanging out. We've just, our society has scared us that our kids are going to get abducted or abused and all of this stuff. So we're really protective about our kids. And they don't have the chance to hang out. Like you and I, I know, at least I'm guessing you, we were on the streets. Yeah, we hung out. I wasn't in the house. Yeah. You were just hanging out and, you know. Just chilling. Just chilling. Sometimes doing good things. Most of the time doing good things. Sometimes doing bad things. And now parents have kind of clamped down on that. So it's not that they're addicted to social. Oh, you're literally hanging out. They're doing everything that they always did. They're just doing it the only way they can on the computer. So I thought that was really an interesting take on that. And the only caveat to that is that, you know, I give my kids opportunities to hang out. Like go outside. Go do the, and they don't want to. So are there friends outside or are there friends maybe across town? And then we start getting to know, you know what? If I didn't have social, I would hang out with a neighbor kid who's a little weird. But I don't have to hang out. But I don't have to because I can be social with somebody else.

I can FaceTime with somebody, you know, in the whole other side of town. So that's a whole other kind of. Digital hanging out. Yeah. So it's going to be amazing. Once, if Google can figure out a way to target G+, to them, to teens. Oh, yeah. And keep them active and keep them. Man, like you already got them on an Android device. They just haven't found a way to prompt them to use G+. A hangout. Yeah. Or a hangout. Because that would be way cooler than Skype or than any of that stuff. Right. Than FaceTime, than any of that. Yep. In regards to hanging out, so. Absolutely. Yeah, because they could do multiples and all that stuff. Share screens and from mobile and just on and on. Nokia purges Here Maps from App Store. First, I didn't realize that there was a thing called Here Maps by Nokia. They took it out of the. Sound like it probably sucks, but okay. Yeah. So I didn't even. I was going to go check out reviews and see if it was any good. Apparently, the new version of iOS causes poor. They're saying it causes poor user experience, so they pull it off. We might argue that the poor user experience already existed. That's just a guess. So, you know, go check it out. Now, they can get all the same benefits. They just go to here.com instead of getting the app. And have you heard of a website called Rap Genius? Yes, I have. They just got banned. They were link scheming. Yeah, they were doing link schemes. They weren't paying for links, but they were saying, hey, if you post this on your page, we're going to tweet your whatever message you want. That's a bartering at least. And so now if you search Rap Genius, they're on like page six. Yeah. But the interesting thing is all of their social stuff still shows. If you search Rap Genius, their site won't show, but their Facebook will show, their Twitter will show. So everything else

that's a legit kind of profile about them will show, but their site. Interesting. Now, what's interesting, what's even more interesting to me is that there are several other companies that participate in similar types of link promo, if you will. Right. Sign up for this and post this, then we're going to tweet you and Facebook you to our thousands of followers and fans. And that's essentially what they were kind of doing. Yeah. And so I don't, that's kind of a social promo package. I don't know if that's, well, Google considered it link spam. Yeah. As soon as they found out about it, it was like. So, you know, that's interesting. That's going to force people to, you know, have to change their strategy. Be, yeah, be really careful about what you're doing to promote links on your website. All right. So we got some reviews. This first one is from iTunes. Freaking amazing and entertaining. Five stars. Amazertain. Amazertainment. Yeah. The interzine. Interzinement. All right. This is from The Biznaz. The Biznaz. The Biznaz. These guys are awesome. I appreciate the insight you give us. Go Houston. Boom. I'm assuming you're from H-Town. Yeah. Houston. Love that. Oh, it was kind of a cool story. Last week, a friend of mine on Foursquare, he checked in at the hotel downtown Houston. And I'm like, this is a friend of mine from high school in Ohio. Went to high school in Ohio. And I'm like, dude, I hope you realize you're in my town and you need to spend some time with me. And we got to hook up and hang out. That was really cool. Punch in the face to Foursquare. Foursquare. Yeah. And Facebook. He checked in Facebook. I just happened to see it on Foursquare first. All right. Next one. This is Joe Morganson, owner of GM Creative Group, LLC. GM Creative Group. Punch in the face for the review. Even before we read it. Yes. J-M. It's not. Yeah. When your name is Joe, it's usually J-M, or your initials, not G-M, which

is a car. All right. Big fan of your podcast, gents. Here's a kick in the shins, followed by a toss off a cliff. Yes, the road is bumpy for any small online business to compete with the heavyweights. But your podcast makes the journey a bit smoother for us small guys. Thanks for making your great content easy to consume and implement. Five stars. Appreciate it. I was just on your website and submitted a link to one of my websites for you to review. Looking forward to your critique. We'll get to that soon. Got you, Jim. We will get to that. I'll shoot straight with you. Manage some expectations. They probably won't be until after the first. Yep. Into the new year. We'll get to it. Cool. And then finally, we've got the title of this review is Great SEO Delivery in an Entertaining Way. Sound is good too. Five stars. This is from Philip Christensen from the U.S. I am new to SEO, and I have found this podcast to be a fun way to learn. I can't wait to snatch that first position on Google. Another top position snatcher in training. I feel like a ninja, right? You know, everyone's using ninja, SEO, ninja. We should probably create a badge. Like top position snatcher. Like if you can do a certain things and get your site ranked here, and we can quantify that, you earn this badge. Oh, that's a great idea. All right. Yeah. I like that. Okay. Whatever plagued their sound quality before has clearly been fixed. I like nice sound. Thank you for delivering. Punch in the face to you. Punch in the face, Mr. Philip. Appreciate your support and you tuning in. And I did the short one, right? Yep. Yeah. Go, Houston. Cool. All right. That is the potatoes of our podcast. We are now going to get into the meat. We're going to cover podcast number 196 through 212. This is as much. So not through 218. All right. Yeah. No. Yeah. Just through 212, which will miss about

four podcasts. So we'll get those never. All right. You go. All right. So podcast number 196, tip for landing pages. All right. So you've got to remember to maintain your site, Matt. Who do you maintain that for? Well, you want to maintain your site, Matt, for Google Pirate, Monster, Dinkie. Well, you know, we're talking about landing pages, right? And so a few of the things we've talked about during that was maintaining your site, Matt. Yeah. Because usually landing pages are, should be a part of the same domain name. And the problem people tend to run into or that we've noticed from clients is if they do have a landing page, it's not included in their site map, especially from, you know, an SEO perspective. Yeah. And so your landing page, whether it's paid or whatnot, should be optimized and should be included in their site map. So you said, I heard you specifically, you said site maps. Are you telling me there's more than one site map? I mean, we have a kind of a static site map. Right. Then you have an HTML site map. Right. You should do an XML site map. Then maybe you have a ton of video and things like that on your site. A video site map would work well. Yep. So you need to have these and if you're consistently adding content, let's say if you're in the industry that's frequently blogging, frequently posting new content, update your site map frequently and resubmit it in all of your webmaster tools, Google and Bing. So that way they can be abreast of the new pages and site changes you've made. Index it quickly. And then finally we talked a little bit more about writing for the user, not for the search. And that was podcast number 196. You know, podcast number 197, we talked about adding detail and expanding the content. And this was around the time this is around August. So this may have been after Panda version update. And so we began talking about different content and

make how can you make your content better? And one of the things you do is make sure that your images are meaningful. Right. You don't want to have tons of stock photos that really don't convey a certain message. Nothing wrong with using them. But if you are, then, you know, we believe you should fix them, maybe change a color, maybe add some verbiage, make the image, customize it as much as you can. And that way you can give it value. You can actually give it a meaning and not just some kind of random stock photo. You also want to add detail to your content. Right. So maybe your content is thin. Maybe you have a page that doesn't have much value. Right. Expand on that content. Give some details. Ask some follow-up questions. Do some follow-up research. So now your content isn't thin, but it actually works. Right. And that whole thing will expand the SEO by improving that content, by adding images that are useful, that have value, by adding research and background questions. Then the people who find that content and find that page actually have some value. So that's one good way to expand the ad detail and expand all your content. Cool. Number 198. This is e-commerce SEO tips. E-commerce is a unique aspect of SEO. SEO, there's really kind of two fundamentals that you've got to get right, and if you get right, that's going to cover probably 80% of the challenges you'll bump into, and we'll call it three. It's going to be your URL structure based on the products that you have. It's going to be your structure in general, so your navigation, and it's also going to be your original content. So with regard to original content, if you're copying content from the manufacturer of the products that you're selling, now, it's not a bad experience for the Google user. It's just not what Google wants. Google wants original content, so make sure you rework that content. Yeah, not bad for the user because at the end

of the day, the manufacturer created it, so it's probably an accurate depiction of whatever this product is. It's the details they want. Yeah. Just from a search perspective, your content's not original. And so it's going to be extremely hard for you to rank for said content if yours is a duplicate from the manufacturer who has a bigger brand and higher ranking and probably a better PR, now, I'm going to outrank them. You end up in what's called the supplemental. Yeah, you'd be better off rewriting their content. And we also talk about creating social media channels for SEO within your e-commerce platform. So, you know, just real quickly, if you're about to check out, hit them up for a Facebook like or a tweet or whatever it may be. A picture would be a good idea. One of the things I've encouraged people to do is create some sort of social engagement after the conversion. So maybe you give that client an incentive to post a box opening or to do something like that once they receive their package in the mail. And so this could be days after the actual on-site conversion, you know, once they receive the package. Maybe you include a card that says, hey, a QR code even. You scan this when your package comes and that engages them socially. And write a review. The last thing I don't want to leave out in regards to the e-commerce SEO, Chris talked about a lot of it has to do with the structure. One of those structures is really making sure your software, whatever you're using, understands what should be an H1, what should be a paragraph, what should be a page title. Because usually the products, a product page, right, the product name becomes the page title, becomes the H1. And if your cart, open cart or whatever you're using isn't configured to code that correctly, then instead of your product title being an H1, it may be strong or bold. Right. Which will look the same but just has a totally

different amount of value in regards to SEO. On SEO. So you want to make sure that it's coded, right. And that was 198. That was 198. Number 199, we talked algorithm changes to the SERPs. This is at the end of August. And so one of the things we talked about, well, a few things, was displaying social media options for users. We continued this conversation. And so we gave the first example, right, of people checking out, giving them Facebook things. But maybe you also want to give people options to share. Once you've checked out and you're on that page, hey, share your purchase on Facebook or tweet this purchase or recommend this to somebody else. Those sort of social options give people ways to do things. Some algorithm changes in the SERPs. We talked to Google Panda, targeted bad content and thin content. Penguin targeted, you know, bad links and links coming from not so much trusted sites or links that didn't have the right type of quality. We talked about Google released a disavow tool this year. Right. And so if you are being targeted and you do have those links, then Google provided a way to go in and tell them, hey, I don't want these people linking to me. I don't know who they are. They shouldn't be linking to me. I can't go and have them removed, so please don't value them. That's what the disavow tool does. And then the last thing we talked about was some marketing tips for Foursquare, right? So give people, we were just talking about badges, right? You could create badges. You could give people an incentive. Red Robin is my, they do a great job at Foursquare. Check in on Red Robin and you get 20% off your meal. Boom. And that's great Foursquare usage. So take advantage of Foursquare, especially for like brick and mortar locations. If you have a physical establishment where people can come to and do something, like sit down and eat or buy a product or whatever, then Foursquare can

work wonders for you. You know, if you come here and you check in on Foursquare, you get a free cup of top position snatcher coffee. Just want to let you know, guys. Stop by. All right. Podcast number 200, analyzing existing keywords and rankings. We continued our discussion about Foursquare and encouraging user engagement with Foursquare. We talked about analyzing existing keywords and ranking. Not surprising. These are our cliff notes of our, that looks like our title. I think I've read that before. So there's a number of ways that you can analyze keywords. There's the keyword tool in Google, which made a change this year, which we don't like the tool as much. You getting used to it? I'm getting used to it. If I'm liking it, I'm just getting used to it. Yeah. So we feel like it took away some ease of use, really. How about ranking? There's a number of tools that you can use for ranking. You know, SEMrush, we're actually going to have a, I think we're going to have a partnership with them here pretty shortly. So I can certainly highly recommend them. That's a great tool for looking at ranking. We use a word position, there was one called Word Position Gold that I used to use. And we've got another one, I can't even remember. We use Web Position. Web Position. Web Position. It's called Web Position. And ironically. It's called Web Position Rankings is what it's called. So that's a good tool. There's lots of tools out there. I think even Market Samurai. Market Samurai. We'll do stuff like that. Mars has one. Yeah. You know, there's several out there. So that can understand your ranking. You want to follow that on a regular basis and then keep tracking your keywords. By the way, we're going to lose a lot of our keyword abilities here shortly. One of the most, probably one of the most important tools to use for the sake of checking your keywords and ranking would be Google Webmaster Tools. Yeah. If you log in

there, you can see search queries, which is a lot of new things they've added this year. Right? You can go in and see which keywords are bringing the most traffic. How many people have looked for them, where your average position for those phrases is. Now, I will say, I don't think that particular part is that accurate because Google Webmaster Tools will report an average position of, let's say, nine for a certain phrase. But then when I look at our Web Position reports, it'll say position 12. And then when I do a search, it's actually in position 12. And so. Trying to figure out that. Yeah, I've been trying to figure out that. I'm not quite sure. But I will say the list of keywords that Webmaster Tools gives you is a great understanding of the words your site is ranking for. Yeah, what's driving traffic to your website. And ultimately that does. And by the way, what you just talked about is the first item we talked about in Podcast 201. In Podcast 201, yeah, why your business should be on social media. And we talked about, yeah, mastering Google Webmaster Tools. Like, if you're doing SEO, if you're managing a site, you have to get familiar with Webmaster Tools. We've just been talking about keyword ranking, but search queries are in there, links are in there. If your site has any spam actions or manual penalties, that's where you'll be messaged at. Managing and submitting site maps is done there. Your site demographic, where you like to rank, you set that there. That's where a rap expert is spending a lot of time right now. Yeah, in Google Webmaster Tools. So you definitely want to do that. We also talked about. Rap Genius. Rap Genius. I knew that's what you meant. Why your business should be on social media? Because all your clients are. All your competitors are. And at the end of the day, you have to be. Whether you do it. Well, I'm not going to say whether you do it or

not. Because if you're not doing it, then frankly, you shouldn't be on there. But you should be on there. So that means you need to do it. Yeah, it's a little, yeah. It's a catch-22. Don't bother to do it unless you're going to do it. And you have to do it. So do it. Or pay us to do it. We'll do it for you. Yeah. And the last one was what shouldn't or shouldn't be on your social media account for your business. Right? So this is your business account. That's not the place to really promote your political beliefs or your religious beliefs. Or it's not a picture to show the newest dog trick. Things like that. Say that for your personal page where you can do all of the vending and all the stuff you want. Unless, of course, you own a dog training business. And then that might be extra relevant. Yeah, exactly. But save your business page to promote your business, to promote your products, to maybe shout out to clients or potential clients even. But keep your business page focused on the business, not your personal attributes. All right. So podcast number 202, SEO mistakes to avoid. We continued a little bit talking about social media accounts in relation to business. Just remember, and I'm sure we talked about this, talking about LinkedIn. And if you're business to business or doing industrial networking, you definitely need to be on LinkedIn and need to be active on LinkedIn. Actually, I've got a good article in some magazine around here that talks about five weeks of doing LinkedIn successfully. And it's about joining groups and then connecting with other people and then endorsing them and things like that. And we talked about how wonky the endorsement is. Some SEO mistakes to avoid. There are a ton of them. I actually recently got a LinkedIn endorsement from a bad builder client. Really? Wow. That's cool. Yeah. Like, thank you. I needed this point of contact. Yeah. Because now you owe us money. You know, it's

just a couple of things off the top of my head that you should not be doing if you were ever doing keyword stuffing. What used to be good and is now questionable, you've got to do it in a more balanced approach, which is all of your inbound links that you're generating. Anchor text. Anchor text. The anchor text should not be the exact same thing. Yeah, you don't want to, well, exact match is what you're referring to, whether it's anchor text, whether it's domain names. You know, these are things that have kind of changed. Right. The only time an exact match domain name is really going to work for you is if that's, at the end of the day, the name of your business. Yeah. You know, if your business isn't whatever that domain name is, then you're not going to get much credit or much value for that exact match domain name. Yeah. And so there's a ton of others. Go ahead and listen to podcast number 202. Now, we talked about creating synergy in your SEO structure, and I don't remember exactly what we're referring to. Well, we're referring to the message, the message that's being conveyed from the search, an SEO search, to what's happening on your site. So, for example, if your clients tend to speak a certain language and they search a certain way, then when they land on your site, that message should be communicated to them in that same voice. Right. You don't want to be warm in first person in all your promo, and then you get to your site, and it's cold in third person. Third person, yeah. Right. Then you lose that synergy. You lose the client's focus. You lose them. And so you want it to be synergy from marketing, from social, from whatever other promo you're doing, all to what's happening on your site. You need that consistency. And that was podcast number 202. So in number 203, we talked about on-page optimization tips. We did go into Google Webmaster Tools some, and one

of the things that Webmaster Tools will also show you is HTML improvements. So if you go to that tab in Webmaster Tools, they'll say, hey, you have 10 pages with duplicate titles or these pages missing meta descriptions. That's great information. Take that information and fix it. We also talked about some other on-page optimization tips. Chris brought up, you know, not using exact match anchor tags and keyword stuff and things like that. But some of the things you do want to do, like headers still work. Page titles, keep them under 70 characters. That sort of thing. You know, unique meta descriptions for each page. Multimedia, photos, videos when you can. Yeah, rich media. You need to have this on all pages. If you can have pages of content, break that up into bullet points, add videos, add, you know, images, add audio files, add PDFs, add external links. All of these are on-page deals that really help. And lastly, making sure your site is built for sharing, right? You want to make sure that if people do find your content and they absorb it, that they can share it. Yep. Right? Last thing you want to do is don't allow them the ability to share your content. In fact, we would say make sure that the last paragraph in a really good article is say, hey, if you enjoyed this, please share it. Click one of the links below. You know, people tend to do what... Follow instructions. Yeah, tend to follow instructions. So that was 203. I was 203. 204, Google Authorship Tips was the title. We talked about user experience in relation to on-page optimization. Yeah. And we talk about continuity. We talk about how if you're giving a good experience to the Google user, then you're going to do well. This is really about conversion and continuity. So if somebody types in, I don't know, we'll do drywall Houston and they see an ad, pay-per-click or organic. So your title, your meta description has drywall Houston, right? And then they click that and

they land on the page. And what do they see prominently? You want to make sure they see prominently drywall Houston. Typically, a drywaller will paint and mud and do all sorts of things. But if they search drywall Houston, you don't want to drown out drywall Houston with paint and mud. And floating and taping. Exactly. And stilts because it's just cool the way they put those things up on stilts. So that continuity continues. And then, you know, call for your drywall quote. Call for whatever. So that's really important and that's really related to user experience. We talked about Google authorship tips and compared, like, should you use a persona versus your real name? And we had a client, we have a client who's actually like, I want to use a persona. And we're like, we don't really recommend it. So we're kind of playing around with that because we didn't have a choice. So we are using a persona. In general, you should create your voice and create your persona. People like to interact with people. I think the bigger deal here is that you have to be you and you have to be willing to put yourself out there. Because the only way Google authorship is going to, eventually they will know. Right. And that's what the debate came down to. And not only will they know, but if you're not using it, one of the tips we didn't talk about then was because it was an algorithm change later. Yeah. Was the fact that if you do set up authorship and you're not using it, then it won't work for you. Now when he says it, what he really means is if you're not using your G Plus page, which is the author of that content. If you're not using that page, if you're not being actively involved in that page. Creating posts, making shares, putting people in your circles, getting put in circles, getting plus one, publishing content, syncing it with your site, that kind of activity. So here's an activity you could

do right now. Go on to your G Plus page and plus one, eWebStyle, and Chris Burris, and Charles Lewis. And then we'll turn around and circle you back. And it's that sort of activity, let's say if you have authorship set up with your authorship, right? Most of us ran and set up authorship so we could have our pictures show in the search results. And it worked. If you set it up correctly, your pictures started showing almost a week later. But if you notice as of recently, maybe in the last 60 days, yeah, Google, they decreased it. They said only 15% of all authorship are even showing because those users are active. And so if you're not being active, if you're not, you know, being on G Plus like you are on, let's say, Twitter or Facebook, then your avatar isn't going to show. And so you need to get active in G Plus. Yep. And that was podcast number 204. Podcast number 205, we talked about learning and implementing some internet marketing basics. And then continuing from that previous week was configuring the Google authorship. Easy setup. Log in to G Plus. I often say Google and G at the same time. Ended up with G-G. G-gle. G-G. So log in to Google Plus, right? We're close. We just, G-G. When you edit your About page, you'll see a contributor section. In that contributor section, put a link to your website, right? That's step one. Step two, on your site, whether it's that post that you want the authorship to sew up for, link back to the Google Plus page. And inside that link, use the tag rel equals author. Once you do that, then you're done. And that's set up. You just need to make sure your G Plus profile has the right size image and it's completely filled out and then your authorship will be set up. So that's how you set that. That's how you configure authorship. The other thing we talked about was correctly learning and implementing it. And we're talking

about internet marketing basics, right? And so things like correctly implementing a PPC campaign. These are basics. Change your keywords. Manage your budget, right? Make sure you're not overextending yourself. Same thing with SEO. Find niche keywords, something kind of long tail. I think you used drywall installed earlier. You're not going to rank for drywall. Just drywall, yeah. You don't even want to, probably. Exactly. Do you sell drywall? No, we install it. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Or do you have free drywall? And so you really want to take some time, do your research, and optimize for words that generate the right kind of clicks and conversions that you want. And lastly, internet marketing basics, keep your link building natural. Yeah, so. Stuffing, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You don't want a natural link building. Create good content, and people will link to it. Yep. Absolutely. All right. Number 206, content marketing tips. Create good content, and now market it. We talked about structuring your site with both users and conversions in mind related to social, and threw in the word social media. So there's a number of things. Again, when you're writing content on your website, yes, you want to appease the Google R, pirate or monster, depending on your interpretation. You also, and first and foremost, if you have the option of writing for the search engines and keeping your readers in mind versus writing for your readers and keeping the search engines in mind, you should do the latter. And that is write for your readers and keep the search engines in mind. Definitely. Because that content is going to do better. You're more likely going to get plus ones and Facebook likes and links on other sites, social networks, or whatever. So make sure that you're doing that. And specifically, those links on social media push, drive people towards social media. We talked about importance in regards to content marketing, importances. So that title is lame. Well, I think one of the things we were focused on that is different types of content marketing, right? So

as you're writing these content, and let's say you're writing content for a blog post, I don't know, about drywall installing. Yep. Maybe you want to share this content in places where other installers are using it, maybe different carpenters or people who are building homes and things like that. These are great forums and guest blog opportunities to share your content that you wrote about drywalling, right? So that's a good way to do some content marketing. Or you may want to, I don't know, go and post comments in different forums with links back to your articles. You may want to repurpose your article. If you wrote an article about drywall installing, maybe you do a video about drywall installing. And then you do a series of pictures or an infographic about drywall installing, all based on the same content, all linking to the same content that's online. And then you share it in multiple places. These are different ways you can market your content. Yeah. So, you know, the first thing that pops into my mind for the video is to show like disasters where, you know, DIYs, do-it-yourselfers have gone and, you know, totally screwed up the floating process. And then you get called in to save the day and show the work afterwards. And that was podcast number 206. I mean, podcast 207, we also kind of recapped the previous week, talked about training. Well, it was Google AdWords do's and don'ts. And then we recapped. We talked about training your social media reps. I think this is key. If you have internal people managing your social media, make sure that they understand the message that the company is putting out. Make sure that those reps understand the language in which to use representing the company. What you don't want is to have your internal social media rep, you know, bad-mouthing people or just acting emotional and responding quickly. Somebody just got fired recently, right, for the AIDS comment going to Africa. Like, I was, like, I heard the news and I was hoping, okay,

maybe it was, you know, excusable and easily misinterpreted. This was just ignorant. I mean, it's like, did you, in what planet do you live that that's in the, it was bizarre. And so, you don't want that to happen, right? Get proper training. Train your people just so at least they can understand the message. And not just that, so they can understand what's, you know, your social media person should be in tune with your marketing, right? If you have a new series of products, a new whatever that you guys are promoting, then your social media person needs to be aware of that so they can implement that correctly. Okay, that was number 205. So, no, 207. Yeah. We talked about the Google AdWords do's and don'ts and we were talking training your social media reps. Another Google AdWords do and don't is write targeted ads, right? Using our drywall example, you don't want to write an ad that says, we install drywall and that's it, right? Targeted to, we install residential drywall, right, or commercial drywall. We float and tape it and then be sure to target it. Professional licensed staff, whatever, yeah. Exactly, right? Targeted ads that, let's say somebody who needs a drywall installed or would be specifically looking for, include those in your ads. Be sure to take advantage of the targeting and make sure that your geo is right. Maybe you don't install drywall across the state of Texas. You only do it in Houston. You know, make sure you take advantage of that. And then lastly, you can't target every single user, right? It would be great to target the drywall or to target the carpenter, to target the roofer, to target all of these people. And if your budget persists and you had a staff and resources to do it, then go after it. We'll help you. Exactly. By the way, we'll help you by telling you don't waste your money on those other things, but we will help you. Exactly. You want to target it. You want to focus.

And first off, that's just an easy way to manage your budget and to get the most value for your clicks. So, yeah, you can't target every single user. Best rule of thumb, I would say, is to figure out what pays you the most or what makes you the happiest, maybe, and target that and spend your money there. All right. Podcast number 207. That was 207. Podcast number 208, Enhancing Your Reviews on G+. What a great subject. I mean, that was the subject of the entire podcast. We finished with a wrap-up of AdWords and determining what phrases to optimize, kind of following up on the previous podcast. Now, let's talk about reviews. Reviews, powerful, really, you know, like how many times have you purchased stuff and looked at the reviews and kind of interpreted what the reviews are saying, spend a little time on the negatives and the positives. And now those reviews are more prominent. When you do a local search, you've got five stars right there, you've got two stars, one star, you've got a number of stars, and you're basing your decisions right there. The value of getting a G-plus local review is significant. Yeah. I mean, not even. And getting more so. Yeah. We talked about G-plus reviews on that one, but just reviews in general. What was it? The Yelp reviews could one star? 15%. Yeah. To increase you by one star on Yelp could increase your business between five and 15%. Who would like to have five or 15% and all you're doing is encouraging people to write their reviews. By the way, make them legitimate. I'm sure we covered in that podcast. If not that one, it was that podcast. Yeah, it was that one. Where we talked about some company got a $74,000 fine from the government because they were creating their own reviews. That's called, I think it probably fell under the false advertising laws of that. I think they were federal even. You know, my soapbox for a second. Yeah. And Yelp, you need to fix

this situation. Well, we have clients who have significant and legit positive reviews on Yelp, but they're only promoting the one negative review because the person who wrote the negative review has left other reviews. Yeah, he's got a history. He's got a history. He's a master user or whatever. A master Yelp user, whatever it is. But even though the positive reviews are from real people, real clients who've had a positive experience, they ain't left a review. But since they're not Yelp power users, their reviews don't get posted. That sucks. Yeah. And so, man, that should be addressed. Yeah. I think, you know, you, anyway. Yeah. They've addressed it. Pay them and those reviews will show up. The importance of reviews and decision-making process we talked about. I mean, just in general, reviews are really powerful. We actually do have a program here. It's called CSSR, Customer Service Survey and Reviews. Real briefly, what we'll do is we'll contact you give us or your client or our client gives us 10 of their clients that they want us to contact. We do a short survey, kind of a three-question survey. Would you recommend our service? Would you recommend it to a friend? And then we notice if they have a Gmail account, we'll push them towards a G-plus local review. We'll get their permission, send the directions how to do it. If they don't, then maybe we'll send them to Yelp or if they have an Angie List account. So, we're out there proactively getting positive and legit reviews for your business. And what this does, I mean, just understand this. If we talk to a client and they maybe didn't have a good experience, then this allows us to gather that feedback and bring it to you, the client, prior to them posting it. Yeah. That interaction may be enough for them not to post a negative review. A negative review. And that was Podcast 208. 208. In Podcast 209, we talked about online marketing and SEO trends. One of those was including G-plus in your

web marketing strategy. Most people tend to already automatically include kind of Facebook and Twitter, whether they use it or not. It's a different story. But they tend to include it. G-plus must be included in there. There's no ifs, ands, buts. It's not an option. It's mandatory. Frankly, almost more important than Twitter than Facebook. No, it was an option, and now it's not. Now it's not. We also talked about online marketing and SEO trends. And so, that's the actual title. I'll see how we did that now. You want to make sure that you're doing those things, using G-plus, right? That's kind of a trend. Making your stuff socially available and shareable, kind of a trend. Another trend these days is making your site responsive, right? Making it accessible across all platforms. These are things that you have to do. And the last one would have been video production and on G-plus. Google-plus is a great platform for videos. You can upload more. It syncs in and integrates with YouTube. And so, if you have, like, your own YouTube channel and your G-plus is set up and they're synced, then those videos will show in both places. Even if you start doing live hangouts on your G-plus page, they'll show up on your YouTube page as well. Like, make sure you have your video with YouTube set up with G-plus because it works extremely well. And at the end of the day, we're under the belief that since YouTube is a Google product, any videos that are there tend to rank higher and better than others. And I know this is a fact because any time I do a search on Google for any kind of video, I only get YouTube results. I don't get Vimeo. I don't get TwitVid. I don't get Instagram video. I don't get any other video results but YouTube. Yep. Same here. That was 210. Podcast number 211, making your Google search results stand out. No, I skipped 210. That was, Chuck just did 209. This is 210. SIBO optimization trends. SIBO

stands for Search Engine Visitor Optimization. That's what do you do with a visitor after they arrive from the search engine. And we talked about things that you could do with those. You know, the basics are a CTA, a call to action. They are USP, Unique Selling Proposition. And we just added client C and B, isn't it? Oh, client in builders? In business. Business credibility. Something. Yeah, I think BSC. I don't know. So business credibility. Because it may not be a USP, right? A Unique Selling Proposition. But a BBB may not be unique but it's a reason to do business with them. 50 Years in Business is kind of a USP but it's really about business credibility. So make sure that you have those three components on there. Yeah, Unique Selling Proposition being, you know, only ones in Houston to offer blah. Yeah. That's unique, right? You know, the orange trucks, you know, that you see everywhere or whatever kind of marketing, branding that you've done. And that really makes you very unique. Credibility is a different issue. It isn't necessarily about being unique. It's about being credible. Because at the end of the day, if somebody types in drywall, you want decent reviews, right? And you want to know they've been in business a while. You want these credibility things identified. Credibility reviews. That's good. You don't necessarily need a unique drywall installer, right? You may want a unique, whatever, ophthalmologist or a LASIK surgeon who's got specific skill sets and experience, you know, has done 10,000 surgeries. It's credibility. It's also unique that might drive them. I think credibility actually is a better word than, yeah, Unique Selling Proposition. And finally, make sure your website stands out. And we talked about this from the perspective of images. Remember, if you're going to put images on your website, don't worry. They can be stock images. Just make some changes to them. Make sure you own the rights. Don't ever try and cut a small piece of a copyrighted image out and use it. You will

get caught. It's too easy. I mean, look how good Google does in terms of searching images. Yeah. So you will get snagged and contacted. And that was podcast number 210. Podcast number 211 was making your Google search results stand out. And so we were remembering about the CVO stuff, right? Another way to make your search engine stand out is to understand your meta information, right? Because that's the first opportunity that you have to sell people, right? Once they search for, I don't know, Houston Drywall Installer, and they get to your site, and they begin seeing those listings. Once they see it on the search engine results page, that listing of yours is your first opportunity. So make it stand out. Make your title catchy and include that key phrase. Make your meta description important around that search phrase. And if possible, include a CTA in that meta description. Absolutely. Nothing better than credibility and phone number. And phone number in the meta description. You know, you will notice a lot of flower deliveries and other businesses and that kind of model, they'll include phone numbers in the title. And so that way that title is that important. It's showing up bold. And so you could very well convert from the SERP without clicking. And so take advantage of that, making your listing stand out. Some other ways to make it stand out would be site links, right? If your site's optimized well and you have the pages that have the right content and you configured your webmaster tools correctly, then you can display site links from an organic or paid ad, frankly. These type of things make you stand out. One thing about ours, your authorship configured correctly. If you're using G+, then your authorship will stand out. One of the things we do is if you search for us, you'll notice our listings have five stars, five stars. And it makes our listings stand out. So do that. Yeah, and that's making your search results stand out. That was podcast number 211. All right.

Last podcast for this discussion, podcast number 212. Getting more out of your conversion confirmation page. Great podcast. Yeah, this is about e-commerce and then conversions or any sort of conversion. Any sort of conversion. See, because a conversion can be a white paper. It can be, you know, give us your information for a video. A quote. It could be anything. So include that CTA in your metal description. That's a little bit of follow-up on what Charles was saying. You can close from the SERP and keep that in mind. What is it? ABC. Always be closing. There's another one with them. What's in it for me, right? So when you're writing content, make sure you're letting the user know what's in it for them. Or really more when you're promoting content, let them know what's in it for them. So getting more out of that confirmation page. So first off, what's the importance of a thank you or confirmation page? Immense. You know, I highly, there's a couple reasons. I highly recommend that you not have them press the button and then have that button disappear and say thank you. One of the big reasons is because by having a separate page, you can actually put Google Analytics on it and know, track that conversion, track that goal. So that's really important. The other is now you've got a page that says thank you. So they clearly understand that they accomplished what they did, right? It's a way to say thank you and promote your business. Maybe a little more about credibility or a little more about unique selling proposition or another offer. You can give them, you know, GoDaddy does it well. After you converted, hey, people who bought that also bought this. Yeah. Right? That's a great place to maybe inquire about some social engagement. Cross-selling. Like us because you just did this. Maybe you send them links to other products that are similar. You can ask for reviews. Like you can do all kinds of stuff on the thank you page. Maybe fill out

four emails and we'll give you a free month of friends that you're going to recommend this business to. Yeah. Like us on Facebook and get a percentage off your next purchase sort of deal. Excellent. So take advantage of the thank you page. Yeah. For those reasons and more. All right. That is it. That is the 2013 Year in Review, the end of the second part of that podcast. Do we have any what? No, not really. All right. Well, first off, Merry Christmas. The day just passed recently and New Year's coming up. Happy New Year to you guys. Happy New Year to all of y'all. Except for those in Asia who do New Year's slightly different. We'll say Happy New Year anyway. Because we're going to have a Happy New Year celebration, 31st and 1st. You guys, this has been a great year. Great year for the podcast. We've got more fans, more followers. You know, 9,000 downloads per week. Still 76 different countries. That's probably gone up by one or two more countries. We really appreciate you. We really hope you tune in for our next year. This next year, we will have our app. That app will make it easier. Apple will be live. The site will be up. Yep. Oh, man. Great year. So, until next year, my name is Chris Burris. So, bye-bye for now.