Above the Fold SEO - #seopodcast 134

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Is that good? I think that's right. That worked. My name's Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. Hopefully, we have some special guests that we met last night. Hopefully, they're turning in. Give a shout out to, excuse me, a punch in the face to Matt. If he actually tuned in, met him at a nice, actually a really good event, Design at Work. Design at Work. It's a local PR advertising firm. They just expanded their facilities. They had a great party. Actually, the owner and some of his key staff were playing in a band, and it was a great event last night. Phenomenal office. I mean, phenomenal layout from the design to the layout to the employees working there. Just great company. They're doing some big things over there. And I appreciate the invite for y'all even letting us come check y'all out. That was awesome. Hey, as always, a little bit of news and a tip from the previous podcast. The tip from the previous podcast is help your SEO efforts with a properly managed social media campaign. Yep. Done with that. Remember, if you're near some sort of electronic device, tweet, Facebook, do something right now. He always has the recipe. Yeah, yeah. Get on your device. He's got the new device. Yeah, you see my shameless plug for my new Google Nexus phone. But, yeah, get on your phone or whatever device you're on and tweet us, man. Tweet us at eWebStyle and tag this one. Hashtag SEOPodcast134. We're getting a lot more people are doing that. That's pretty exciting to see that happening. That's great. Yeah, punch in the face to Your World Pro. You're watching right now. Andy checked it out last week. I'm going to take this time to punch in the face to our regulars. It's AT, I know you're watching. So, just thank you, Darren, and all you guys. Really appreciate the support. Remember, we

are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers where our mantra is, Don't be a douche. Don't be a douche. It's not a good look. And don't finish your podcast with douche. Douche. Our transcriber of our podcast, I'm reading the last line of it. I'm like, douche is. Man, Charles is going after. I don't remember Charles going after somebody, calling him a bunch of douches. And then I realized it was deuces. Deuces. We're out. Deuces. Hey, we have a review on iTunes. Look at this. I'm actually using the iPad to view the reviews on iTunes. That's about right. Yeah. And frankly, it's only because my computer was acting up this morning. This one was a great podcast. It's the title, seattleorthodontist.com. This podcast is not only informative, but entertaining. I especially like the video format and the website reviews. I think they're actually talking about our- Seattle Ortho. Yeah. We did a web analysis of them. That's our other podcast, The Unknown Secrets of Sevo Website Analysis. I have improved my website using a number of pearls I gained from this podcast. Unlike this podcast, most of the other SEO podcasts out there are out of date, which makes them a limited utility in terms of current SEO. I added the word current. I hope these guys keep working on this podcast. Hey, punch in the face to you at Seattle Orthodontist. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. Um, and hopefully you take some of our advice from your web now and incorporate it and hit us back with, uh, wow, you know, like the stat we have from the one guy, we gave him one comment. You said, I increased- Central Park, dude. Central Park. I increased the video views by 70%. Yeah. Do this favor for me, uh, because I'm very in analytics. Uh, won't you track the date that you made those changes, those pearls you spoke about, and, um, and track it for the rest of the month. And then hit us up and let us know, you know, what changes

did you see? What kind of improvements, what, what things didn't work, frankly? And, uh, just let us know. Cool. Uh, another punch in the face for Paul Shaw. He's actually in Sydney, Australia. Boom. Uh, he called up, actually, like, Tuesday evening. I was just about to leave home, and we had a good, long conversation. Uh, he's, uh, he actually does karaoke machines. Okay. Uh, and we did a CVO website analysis of one of his sites. He actually submitted two, and the other one was more important, so we're actually going to do that today. And we had just had a really good conversation, and, uh, a big punch in the face to you, uh, Paul. Um, hey, a little bit of news. The Senate, uh, actually postponed the vote on the PIPA legislature's legislature, legislature, uh, bill. I think it's bill. Uh, so the legislature was pushing through a bill, and they postponed that vote. Yeah, they paused it. They stopped it. People protesting, PIPA and SOPA. Yeah, um, something I thought was really interesting. Google announced that they slowed down their crawlers to try and ensure that those people who black out their website, like Wikipedia or whatever, were not, were less likely to get crawled and less likely to get penalized, um, you know, by this particular issue. So out there, you know, man, uh, cheers, tip of the hat, punch in the face to Google for, uh, supporting, um, this community, uh, the, the web community and their effort to, to protest what is clearly, uh, a problematic, uh, bill. Um, uh, it, it was interesting because Google actually, they didn't block their website. They just put the block out of their Google, um, uh, logo. Uh, nothing happened on Yahoo and nothing happened on Bing. Uh, they didn't make any changes. And, and basically, uh, Yahoo's co-founder resigned this week, so maybe they were preoccupied with that. Uh, we're going to delay our blackout. And, and as much as they've been selling off and getting rid of and, and everything else, uh,

I don't think they're in a position for whatever costs it would be, uh, to, to blackout their website. Yeah. Uh, Yahoo kind of reminds me of the Titanic. I mean, and it's now, the almost, the captain is just about to jump ship. Um, yeah. And then, yeah. That was one of the founders that, yeah, the founder and, and, uh, uh, was he CEO? What is he? He's a co-founder and one of the principals in the, in the management team. So he's, uh, he's out of there. Well, uh, moving on to bigger and more things moving, things that aren't sinking. Cause it's a sinking ship. All right. Is that, is that all I got? I think that's, um, that's all I got. Oh, uh, we have a Facebook contest and by speaking of Facebook, there is a way to actually get ahold of us. There's a few ways. Um, you could follow us on Facebook, facebook.com slash ewebstyle. You can also hit us on Twitter, twitter.com slash ewebstyle. Left up the slash there. Yeah, yeah. Changing it up. You can't get me. YouTube.com slash ewebstyle. Podcast at e-webstyle.com. That last one is just if you want to send us an email. We are running a Facebook contest. It's a caption contest right now. If you're listening to this on audio on iTunes, the contest is probably over and that means there's probably a new contest. So go hit our Facebook page again, facebook.com slash ewebstyle. Getting that contest. Whoever's winning the contest, uh, is getting a $10 something. I know, uh, Darren Bowie specifically requested a $10 Amazon card. He didn't really want the best buy card. So, you know, we're open to, you know, whatever it is that, that you guys need. Um, and, and, uh, so. Yeah, I'll check it on Facebook. Pregnant pothers are always, always fun. So remember, uh, the algorithm update. Um, uh, I think it came out yesterday. They call it the Google page layout algorithm update. And so this, um, algorithm, um, is, is really, uh, uh, indicator of

how Google is taking and to affect more, uh, issues in regards to design and layout. They're really trying to present the, again, the best content and the best experience for the Google user. And this is another way of doing that. So what they're trying to do is really the article I read basically said that they're trying to prevent, um, frustration, right? How many people go to a website and then you automatically hit with articles or not articles, but you hit with ads, banner ads, banner ads, or square ads, or display ads, or, or, or frankly content or rotating images that don't necessarily, um, um, have an effect on what you're searching for, right? We deal with that a lot. Um, especially with these newer sites, they all tend to have the rotating banner, a really big rotating, which is fine if it's, uh, if it's relative to the search on that page that it's useful. Yeah. And so, um, so they're trying to remove those. Anybody who doesn't have, um, relative content to the search phrase above the fold and instead they have tons of ads and images, um, is going to hurt their ranking. I think that's awesome. All these blog sites with, you know, the banner at the top and then another banner here and then a small text ad here. And all of this is above the fold, uh, you have to consider a redesign. Yeah. And, and I appreciate it because I don't like it. And so how many, you know, I think I take a kind of an inventory of websites that I go to and I, I, I don't see that many pages. I know there's a ton out there. I just don't see that many pages that are overwhelmed where, where the ads are overwhelming on the top. Um, how about you? Like what's your experience? A lot, but I think, I think we kind of search differently in regards to maybe the content we're viewing. Right. I look at a lot of, um, of sports. You look

at a lot of sports, a lot of urban content. And so what I find out is these sites that, that have frequent visitors, that have frequent content changes and new posts that, you know, they make their money off ads. Right. And the ad dollars go up with the more visitors they have and you get the more visitors by. And the more ads that are up on top. Yeah. Exactly. So I think it's those sites that are, that'll feel the pain the most. So really niche sites that, you know, somebody's out there, frankly, it's, it may even be a hobby that they're doing and they're just trying to get as much value out of that hobby or, or just kind of a new, new business. And so they're putting a lot of ads up top above the fold so that they can generate as much revenue as possible. Yeah. I think, um, our, our, our small to medium sized businesses who we usually target, um, who, who may, you know, frankly, content won't change that often. Houston, uh, may be okay. If you're, you know, a plumber in Houston, um, you probably don't have ads. And if we did the site, you definitely don't have ads. No, no, no. By the way, our, our litmus test for whether you should have ads on your site or not is if you sell and make money somehow, you should not have ads. Uh, because ads are just a way to drag people away from your site. Um, you know, we've had, uh, I was talking with a moving company that had Google AdWords at the bottom of their website. And I'm like, what are these here? They had essence at the bottom. Yeah. AdSense. And, and not only that, it was ads for other moving companies. They're like, not only are you driving traffic away from you, you're driving it to your competition. Um, you know, you, we're literally, if you can make money doing what you're promoting on your website, you should not have ads, uh, on

your site. Um, that's just interesting to me is Matt cuts. When he talked about the algo update, he mentioned that, you know, in typical fashion, um, this won't have a huge effect. It's going to affect one 10th of 1% of it. Yeah. And, and I, I want to encourage people to be leery of that because, um, Google also said the same thing about protecting the keyword data. Yep. And, and I said it would be less than two digit percentage and we're not provided those not this 12, 13% up to 17%. And so, uh, matter of fact, we'll get into something a little later. I believe that'll say this year, it'll probably be closer to 25% because of Google plus and more people using Android. And so, um, yeah, yeah, I just, I saw this on search engine land that AdWords is getting more granular with new mobile targeting options. I thought that was pretty cool. Um, you can actually, uh, drill down to the particular operating system, right? So, uh, you could show different ads to somebody who's on, you know, iOS, obviously Apple product or, uh, Android or web OS, which is, uh, I'm guessing what is web OS? That was Palm. Palm. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I mean, yeah, I saw that, you know, I'm in AdWords all the time. Yeah. And so it's pretty cool, but you know, I think, I don't really know why I'd want to show a different ad to like your phone in an Apple, an iPhone. Like, I think it depends on what the ad is targeting. Yeah. If I'm, if I'm targeting, if I got a, uh, Android based ad, maybe for a new Android phone or something like that. Or a new Android app. Yeah. Yeah. Then, um, you know, I don't need to show that ad to, to iPhone users. No, that's, that's, that's very true. So there's, there are certainly some places where that's, that's going to happen. Um, so, uh, what else we got? If you see an ad for, for Google

Nexus, right. Um, I like to show this one. Yeah. Like this one right here. Then, um, then yeah, I don't need to show that ad to anybody using, um, Apple's OS. Right. Absolutely. Um, we got this here. Um, I'll pull some predictions that, uh, Rand, Rand, uh, Fishkin, he, he released a few predictions of what he thinks is going to happen, um, with, with, with SEO in 2012. And so I figured I'd run these by you. We'll kind of see if we agree or disagree. All right. Um, I didn't get all of them, but I printed the ones that I, that I thought were kind of cool. Um, SEO without social media will become a relic of the past. Depends on industry. I think, um. I think it depends on industry. I think, um, I think that social and its interaction with, uh, with SEO is, is not, it's not going to get that maturity level this year. I mean, we're still getting clients who, who aren't doing SEO and aren't doing social. And so that implies that we're going to start getting clients where everyone were, our new client, everyone we're competing against is doing SEO and social. The real, I just don't, I don't think plumbers are going to be doing SEO and social. We're pitching it. And we're closing it. And we're closing it. So I mean, which is the point I was going to make is that you're right. We get new clients who, who aren't doing them, but when we offer it and we explain the benefits, they like it, they like it and it makes sense. And so I think that's, I think, I think I kind of believe them. I believe that what you're talking about is really, uh, inexperienced and maybe undereducated client. Right. In regards to search. Right. But as they become more educated, um, they'll understand the need to do both. I guess, I guess my quip is with, uh, uh, relic, right? Because the reality is, is a plumbers could come into our office

this year and we could just do SEO and we could do really well with SEO and not need social. Um, and plumbers, you know, whatever, reasonably competitive in a target area, niche players don't need social to succeed in SEO just flat out. And they're not going to need it by the end of this year. They're probably not going to need it by the end of next year. Um, that's not necessary for success in niche and markets. For instance, we will never need a social page for blue one arm widgets ever. So you, I don't think you can call it relic if it's still, it's still valuable. I mean, it's almost like saying, um, meta keywords is a relic. Well, it is for Google, but it's not for being in Yahoo. So I think that's a little strong term. I think, I think it's a good prediction though. I think, yeah, it's, you know, probably not a relic, but what I do believe is that you must, um, you must include some sort of social may not be necessary, but do it anyway, because especially we were just talking about the not provided stuff. And so that's, that really is for people who are logged into Google when they search. And now using Google plus, if you're logged into Google, when you search, what do you see? You see your results change because due to how many people you have in your circles and what they've plus, if they plus one did. And so your search is going to be totally different from my search, even with the same query. And so, um, if you know, that's a reason to be on Google plus to be social. Yeah. Definitely. Same thing with, with Facebook likes. I just, I think those will come back somehow because, um, Google's like in a lawsuit right now saying they're favoring their own products instead of, uh, instead of displaying others in regards to the search plus your world. Does somebody have to sue them? Yeah. I just don't, I just

don't get that. I mean, uh, they're a big player. I don't know at what point do you regulate that they can sell their own products. I mean, they have the right to put their, they, I mean, it's their page. Like the result page is not community property. It's actually there, there, you know, just like, you know, it's supposed to be the most popular one. Yeah. It's kind of like, uh, um, Yahoo, uh, back or, or directories like emails where they're actually, man, you know, people are going through and filtering them, you know, actually physically looking at the pages, you know, you're going to tell them how it gets so granular and tell them what pages they should or shouldn't include on the first page. That doesn't, I don't, I don't get it. I mean, go ahead and sue. But I don't, I think it would be very sad if they have the right to tell Google what to put on the first page. That's not, you know, let's just open a state run search engine and keep that over there. And that's the most objective, whatever the hell that means. And it's like the NPR of search and just, okay, go ahead. You're, you know, you're not there. You can come here or you can get these results, which people seem to like. That's what, that's the core thing about it. Google is not going to ever put themselves in a position to, to lose market share to this day, matter of fact, to this day, they'll still, we'll have 80% of the search market. And that's, and I don't think they'll do anything to harm that. Yeah. Google will finally take stronger Panda style action against manipulative link spam. Aye. Right. I agree with that. I think they will. I think, matter of fact, this whole page layout update is, is kind of, I think affects that in a way. What they're trying to do is stop people from spamming links. I was reading another article today about anchor text. And so, you know,

one of the things for those who do SEO, right, anchor text is when you have a page of content and you have a link inside the text and the anchor, the text that's in the link is your anchor text. Right. And so what they were talking about was how having multiple anchor links with different anchor text on the same page that links to the same page is stupid and foolish and you shouldn't do it. Oh, yeah. And so, okay. So to have like SEO Houston linking to our homepage and to also have PPC Houston linking to our homepage would be. Well, the example that gave, well, let's say we were on our, um, on our SEO page. Right. And, but then the content on our SEO page, we had text links that link to the same page with. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. A circular linking back to that page. To the same page that y'all already have. I have seen that and thought that, like, if that was getting past Google, I don't know how and it can't last long. Yeah. So, yeah, don't do that. They, they take me stuff to push that back. Um, you ever heard of Pinterest? Pinterest. Yeah. Pinterest is a, is a new social thing. It's in beta right now. They're accepting invites. I'm still waiting on my reply. I actually signed up for it, you know, last week sometime and it was strange because we have a client, um, Lexi, she brought it up yesterday. Oh, wow. And so, uh, but anyway, Google's considering buying them. Pretty cool. Like over a hundred million bucks and what they do is a social platform that, um, allows you to pin things on like, sort of like a pin board that interests you and people can pin stuff to your board that they think that you would like. Yeah. It's kind of like a graphical bookmarking. Or, or like a, uh, like a community, um, a cork board, you know, like at Starbucks or whatever. Yeah. Something like

that. And so, um, you know, uh, his prediction is that they'll break into the mainstream. So apparently they've been active for a while. Um, so we'll see. I signed up. I like to break into the mainstream. So approve my invite, please. And we'll help. Yeah, we'll help. Uh, let's see. Overly aggressive search ads will result in mainstream backlash against Google. I don't quite understand this. Overly aggressive search ads will result in mainstream backlash against Google. Um, I think that, well, I think what he's talking about is, is, uh, aggressive ads where people may be, you know, using multiple domain names and running the same ads and, and taking people to the same site and things like that. And, uh, and Google allowing it to happen. And I think that's where the backlash would come in at. And so, um, I think at the end of the day, Google still wants to provide the best, the best experience for the user. And so I don't think that will become a problem. I think they will, they will cancel that out before, uh, well, I think you also like, what is back, what is backlash, right? So there's one thing for a large or even a vocal group of people to say this is wrong. Um, when the rest of the people are voting with their dollars and actually utilizing those benefits, um, you know, I do, so what does it mainstream backlash mean? The only backlash that is of importance, frankly, is going to be to vote with the dollars and say, I'm not going to use this particular search, uh, and I'm going to be vocal about it. Um, I think you've got to be careful about social movements to, to guide Google into what they should be doing and the reality of the pocketbook, which is. If the pocketbook is, if that's selling and doing well and, uh, uh, and I'm not seeing any financial penalty, then it's not going to change, right? There's, then there is no mainstream backlash. That's the only backlash

that actually really matters. So, um, I think with something like that, you've got to, you really have to get a huge grassroots organization to, to create what you're calling mainstream backlash. It would have to be gigantic in order to have enough people motivated because I'm looking at some of the screenshots he has. I don't use that search. I don't know what search he's doing. It's very particular. And so, you know, I could be, I could join him. Yes, Rand, I don't do what I never did before and that will not affect Google, right? There, there, there, there'll be like, so yeah, good. Don't do what you weren't doing before. Um, so yeah. And then the fact that, um, Google at this point, I won't say doesn't care about the money in the sense, because frankly, they did release their earnings and their earnings were lower than had, they had been projected. But even with the page layout, they're moving sites that have ads, which usually come from Google display advertising or AdSense, you know, they're, they're decreasing their rank. And so by default, that's going to reduce the amount of revenue that they receive. And so, um, I don't think that it's more of a, I don't think it's a budget issue or a money thing. I think it's just, um, uh, what is the right experience? Exactly. What's the right thing to do? Um, that's it for that. Um, I do got blank stare. All right. That was good. All the way blank. Like you could almost see through. That was Zen blank. Zen blank. So this blank stare goes to our federal government who, who, who, who shut down mega upload. Wow. And you know, to their defense, mega upload is one of the biggest file sharing sites out there. And yes, there is a lot of pirate content on there, but more than half of the users who use mega upload are legitimate and use it for storage. Use it for storage, use it for transferring files. I can't email anything over

20 megs, but I can upload to mega upload, which only takes, you know, three minutes and send you a two gig file. Right. You know, for free on top of that. Right. And so, um, and so there's a lot of people doing that. And what I think they didn't, they didn't think about was, um, the effect it was going to have on the whole internet. And there are a lot of broken links out there now and people who, who post directions on how to use mega upload to do this, that, and the other. And now none of all these sites will have broken links. That's that you're blank stare worthy. Oh, wait. Yeah. So get it together. Y'all should have did a little bit more research and figured out a better way to handle it. You need some better staff. You need to hire some Google employees to let you know what the impact of what you're doing is actually going to be on the internet. Um, all right. Is that it? That's it. That's all I have. You have been listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because of you. You. You. You. You over there. We know that there seems to be some challenge in creating iTunes reviews. At least Paul Shaw had some challenge getting one to us. He posted one a while back. Hasn't seen it yet. Um, keep trying, keep doing it. Just go to iTunes, create an account, submit a review, and hit us up, uh, on our, on our email, podcast at e-webstyle.com. Let us know that you've submitted a review. We'll give you a punch in the face. Uh, uh, kicking lizard. We actually finished your salsa this week. Mmm. Yeah. It was good. Very tasty. Very tasty. I'm going to be greedy right now. If you have a red one. Or a red salsa. Or maybe it's too red. You sent too green. Maybe you can send too red. Yeah. So, I do red salsa. Oh, in regards to the reviews, let

me give you this alternative. Oh, yeah. If for some reason you do have an iTunes problem, um, um, hit us up on Google Places. Yep. You know, and give us a review there. The best way to find our Google Places ad is just go to e-webstyle.com slash SEO podcast. So, that's where people often watch our podcast. And in there, right when it starts talking about the bios and has links, there's a link to our Google Places page. So, you can click that and be right on our Google Places page and submit a review there. That would be great. And if you're, you know, if you're using G Plus, Plus One. Yes. Yeah. Plus One. Plus One Me. Plus One Chris. Chris. Everyone. His album. Yeah. Yeah. A couple people recognized him at the event last night. They're like, you, look, I've seen a video with you. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I try to play low-key, man. They see a rapper who's in the building. And, you know, no hat, no, didn't recognize me. But people give you that look like, you should be dressed different. You need a hat. Yeah. So, that was kind of cool. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for making us the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Until next week, bye-bye for now.