Algorithm Building Links and Article Spinning - #seopodcast 153

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Charles Little Show, Internet Marketing Specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. This is podcast number 153. I got it just in time. As usual, we have a tip from our previous podcast, which was, of course, 152. That tip is make sure your link-building strategies have adjusted to recent algorithm changes. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Make sure that what you're doing to build links this time is consistent with the changes Google is making. No more link forms, no spinning articles, and all the kind of things of yesteryear that worked. Yeah, don't do those right now. They're already a little suspect, and now Google has put things in place to prevent them from even working. So, update your link strategy. If you want to find out more about that whole discussion that we had on that last podcast, do go back and listen to podcast number 152. Do remember that we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is... Don't be a deuce. Let's see what else we got. If you are in some sort of electric device, go ahead, tweet now, Facebook now, Foursquare. You should be able to check into our podcast, right? Like, there should be some way to check into our podcast. Go ahead and do that now. Hashtag... Hashtag SEOpodcast153. Tag us at it, at ewebstyle, and we'll retweet you. We'll check it out and everything. So, yeah, do that right now. All right. We got some reviews. Actually, right now. We'll wait. No, we won't. We got some reviews, and I mentioned last time that we got a review, a Danish review, still making me hungry. It says, hi, guys. He sent us an email. Just wanted to let you know that you have a five-star review in the Danish iTunes from me. I don't know when we'll be able to see it. Last time I checked, which was a week ago, I didn't see it.

So, here it is. While other SEO podcasts might be more technical and in-depth... Ooh. Chris and Charles make their podcasts one of the most entertaining podcasts I've listened to. I do have a huge list of podcasts that I listen to driving the Danish roads daily. But unknown secrets of internet marketing is always the first thing coming out of the speakers. Punch in the face for the show in general and for your sound quality getting better and better. And this is from MagnusUpdateIdea.com. Magnus? But if... Kinda. Yeah, it's like a... You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm a little suspect about it. Appreciate the listening and thank you for the compliments. But, you know, I thought that we were pretty in-depth with the content. Technically, yeah. You know? So, our other reviews certainly point out that we have great content and we actually were like the Red Bull of SEO podcasts. Here's another one. So, I don't even know what to do with this. I don't know if I add a tear, if I chop off an arm. Here it is. Yeah, two stars. Jim Morton, get to the point. So, there's no time I'm going to leave it. That's the title. A lot of people seem to like these, so maybe there's some good stuff here. But, honestly, but I honestly didn't hear it. After ten minutes of the host chatting with their guests about the day's news, I turned it off. Well, maybe that was a fluke, I thought. So, I listened to the second one. It lasted five minutes this time. If I'm going to devote time to a podcast, I want one that talks about the subject at hand. And not the host's feelings about the president. Not my cup of tea. And, uh... Can we talk about the president? Probably. Yeah, I'm sure we have. At least the president of us. Yeah, something. Whoever that was that day. Um, I think, uh, what I find really, first off, two stars? Like, you, there was nothing, you found nothing of value in

our podcast and still gave us two stars. Like, that's a little crazy. Second, it made me think, back when, uh, back when I was in college, we had this drink. And it was called an ass kicker. And basically, it was a little tiny shot shaped on the top and then a bigger, uh, container area. And you'd have a shot and a chaser. So, like, rum and coke. Right? And invariably, and this is no offense to girls, maybe it was just the girls that I was hanging out with at the time, you would give them that shot, they would take the shot, and stop. And all, all the chaser was at the bottom. So, the, the, the, the, the process of the glass is, drink the whole thing, and all you taste is the chaser. And invariably, they would stop at the shot. He didn't get the chaser. He stopped at the shot. Not once, but twice. Like, why would you listen to ten minutes of a podcast and then switch to the next podcast? You need to listen, it was just bizarre. Well, I mean, he said, you know, he's looking for meat. Yeah. He's not, he's not evictable inside this person. He wants the entree. Yeah. I like appetizers. Yeah. Then an entree. He just, he just took the shot. Yeah. And quit. And then complained about it. With two stars, which I don't get. Anyway, thanks, Jim, for, uh, for giving us feedback. Uh, we're aware of you. Uh, infotainment. Uh, informertainment with an occasional punch in the face. This is from P.A. House Link. Thank you out there. P.A. House Link. It's Bill. What's up, Bill? Yeah. These guys are an, are as entertaining as they are informative. It's like they specialize in informertainment and SEO. We got another word we got to add to our. Informertainment. Informertainment. It just makes me think. Informer. I don't know if the rest of that is. Yeah. That's all I know too. The rest of the year is matter though. It's just that little. Reggae,

reggae, reggae, reggae, reggae. Watermelon, watermelon. Exactly. Uh, I think I found them on podcast 101. Listened to a few. They had to download. Then. Boom, boom, see, boom. Something said. There. And then you can boom, boom down. Yeah. Uh, he listened to a few and then had to download and listen to all the previous episodes. Do it. It'll help you understand all the inside references. Now we tune in every Friday at 915. No, no, no, wait. 930. Well, okay. 945. Okay, 9 or 10-ish hour to get them live. Okay, because you just call us it like it is. Hey, that's extremely awesome and honest. Yes. Uh, seriously though, they do need to be commended for giving up their time and information for free so we can help ourselves rank better. Uh, I'd say more, but I don't want to run over the Gino time limit episode 20-ish. Good. Now we have the reference because I don't remember what episode that was. And that is from Bill. Thank you, Bill. Bill, that's up. Thank you so much. P-A-Houselink.com. Go check him out. Uh, he's always there for us. Um, and usually tuning in. So, cool. He's probably even in right now. Hello, Bill. Now we have our algorithm cataclysm. Panda 3.7. So, I got this off of, uh, I can't remember, SEO, News, Watch, SEO, I can't remember which one. Um, Panda 3.7. I'll get it right on the next one. Uh, came out June 8th. Uh, and Panda in general is where they're re-evaluating links and local search and Charles, since it's... Yeah, so, I mean, what they did was, um, they had, they didn't make a change to Panda, but what they wrote out was called a, a data refresh update. And so, I think what they did was, um, all of these sites and everyone who was affected by the previous Panda updates, um, they kind of cleaned it up some and ran it again. And that was done, um, last week. So, um, if, if something happens, let us know. This is

how your site ranks if you, if you increase or decrease in rankings. I think that once again they said 1% change in searches, both U.S. and nationally. Yeah, I don't, um, I don't listen to that anymore because 1% to them is, you know, billions. Billions. Yeah. And it seems like it's always my clients. Yeah. Because, well, not in regards to ranking this time, but more importantly, I think about... Not available. Yeah, well, I forgot which, which update that was, the, the, um, when they made the changes to protect user data, keyword data. And so, all of my accounts that are in analytics, their most search phrases are, are, are not provided. Yeah. And so, and, and according to Google, that was only going to affect 3% of people, and that's clearly not the case. Yeah, clearly not the case. Uh, and also with them rolling out G+, and putting more emphasis on G+, which will, you know, as people engage with it, will require more G, Gmail accounts. Boom. All data gone. Um, I, I saw this in the news. Is Apple going thermonuclear with iOS 6? I don't know if you've seen this in the news, uh, from Steve Jobs' book, his biography, uh, that he talked about going thermonuclear on Google. Uh, it was specifically in reference to, uh, mobile devices. Mm-hmm. Because he felt that, uh, Google was taking, uh, a lot of the technology that Apple had created, and not just Apple, Apple and, and others had created. Um, and there are two big changes. Uh, this article talked, I thought was pretty interesting. Uh, you know, one of the things, even as Steve Jobs is saying that, he's also saying, and we're going to continue to use their search. Uh, because their search is the best. Uh, and one, you know, everyone's aware of Siri, and one thing I hadn't thought about is, Siri is actually now kind of a layer between, on an iPhone, between, uh, the user and Google. So, it's a way, not all Siri searches end

up on a Google search, especially anything related to your phone. What's my schedule on Thursday? Yeah, that's all just, yeah. That's internal. Um, and the latest version, uh, of iOS 6 took away Maps. Now they're using their own Maps. And actually, they're using their Maps with Yelp. Uh, Yelp results, Yelp information on it. So, those are kind of two big things, because Google always had locked in Maps. The Maps here. Yeah. So, uh, so that's, they're saying, yeah, it's not thermonuclear, and it really is moving in a particular direction away from Google. Uh, and speaking of Yelp, uh, Bing is using Yelp results for local content. And we were talking just kind of briefly before the podcast that, uh, you know, it's a, it's probably really smart. Because Bing has a challenge, and it's challenging in general to get people to write reviews about stuff. It's a, you know, it's an extra step. It's, doesn't, there's almost no benefit for the user. And then with Bing, not only that, but their, their share of the market is, is so small in comparison to Google, that it's going to take even that much longer to build up the sort of, uh, user base that, that, that people can, um, actually leave a review. Yeah. Um, for a couple reasons. One, Google has accounts. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. There is no Bing mail. Right. You see what I'm saying? And, uh, and so, you don't have a, a, a Bing account per se. So, you don't, you know, how is their verification process in regards to using or creating a review? Right. They have to import or purchase or partner with someone like Yelp. I'll say partner. They didn't purchase them. Um, but partner with Yelp because Yelp brings in a ton of already reviews and a ton of users, uh, of, of infrastructure, um, layout and then the whole nine yards. Yeah. So, um, I think that was a good chess move to them. Um, kind of catches them up. I also think

it's a reason that Google dropped them. So, you know, one man's trash, another man's treasure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and we were talking, you really, you, you came out with the, the, the ultimate answer. Uh, I, I, I postulated, is Bing going to do the same thing? Are they going to use Yelp? Because remember, Google was displaying Yelp results on Google Local Places pages. And then there was this hoopla about whether they could display it or not. Google said, okay, we'll just pull all of your stuff off. And Google was able, because of its user base, and because they have users, you're right. Bing doesn't necessarily have signed in users. They may have a lot of users, a lot of people who use Bing search. Which, frankly, most of them are because you buy a new Windows machine, you open up IE, and the default search engine is Bing. That's probably where 90% of their searches come from. Uh, it's, it's actually kind of amazing that Google's still so high. Because what it means is somebody actually has to go to Google.com. Because a lot of people don't know how to change the default search. They actually have to go to Google.com and then do a search. Instead of just typing right there in the main bar, probably another mistake, um, in IE. I hadn't thought of that. Well, that and, well, I, you know, you can give credit to the browser. Because, uh, Chrome became the leading browser. Yeah. And so, you know, that default search is Google. Yeah. That's true. And so, you know, I log on to IE with my brand new computer. I use my Bing search one time. To find Chrome. To find Chrome. Download Chrome. Done. And so, yeah. And by the way, here we use a lot of browsers for a number, for a multitude of reasons. One of them is we need to check search results when we're not being, um, manipulated. Logged in. Yeah, logged in or, or, yeah, tracked. Well, that and then, you know,

we like to make sure that sites display the right way in different browsers. Yeah. But, you know, oh, man, there's blanks there. We'll get to that later. Okay. Um, speaking of tracked, you guys can track us. You can find us at facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Or twitter.com slash eWebStyle. Or youtube.com slash eWebStyle. And you can email us at podcast at e-webstyle.com. All right. Again, we are the most popular SEO internet marketing podcast because of you. Uh, we've got 7,000 downloads on a weekly basis and, and 64 countries. That's, uh, that's our current count. And shout out to, uh, man, we are at, like, 12 minutes. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So, this is where you're supposed to start listening. Okay, you're- Let's skip forward next time. The shot is over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you're, now you're going, ugh, oh, that's so strong. Ugh, you should have had your chaser. Here it is. Um, today we're going to talk about, uh, top 10 tips to a great webpage. You know, we're, we're not just straight up, how do we get traffic to a website? Because if you send a ton of traffic to a website and it doesn't convert and it only creates bounces and we'll call them negative bounces. Yeah. Uh, because we actually believe some bounces are good. Um, then, you know, what's the use? What's the use of all your effort? What's the use of spending your money, your time? Uh, this is an article by Jennifer Kiernan. And that's K-Y-R-N-I-N. And it's actually on about.com and it is titled Top 10 Tips to a Great Web Page. Well, and one of the things to keep in mind is that, you know, usually, probably 85, 90% of the time, your website is the basis, is the foundation of your internet marketing campaign. Um, your SEO is optimizing that site. Your PPC may land pages on that site. Your social has links coming back to that site. If you're blogging, all of your posts are on that site. And so, that website is the basis.

And so, um, the reason we went to this article here is because, um, uh, a lot of people still come to us looking for marketing and their websites, you know, suck, they're under par. And so, um, if you won't let us redo your site, we can give you some tips. Yeah, get, yeah. Do it, do it, at least do it yourself and do it well. Um, so first one is, we've got to blow through this, uh, keep your focus on fast pages. Um, I, that's true. I think it's certainly less true than it used to be when we were on dial-up. And I don't know what the, what is the date on this article? Uh, when we were on dial-up, it was paramount. Um, because you, I think you have about three seconds before people will hit the back button and try another page. Um, now you just want to, you know, make sure you've got decent practices. Make sure that you're not taking images from your phone or from your camera and putting them directly on a web page. Make sure you're, you're reducing those. And when you're talking about page optimization, um, that's included. It's more than just on-page SEO type stuff. But, but, you know, optimizing images, optimizing your, your code, if you will, to make sure that your site, your pages load up extremely quick. Um, the last thing you want to see is a placeholder where an image should be. And there's the slow image loading, uh, because, because you just went directly from your camera to your, to your, to your WordPress page. And, and, and just so you know, if you take that image and you bring it into any sort of web editor and you grab a corner and shrink it, you are not shrinking the size of that image in terms of how much upload spaces, how much space is needed to upload it. Keep your pages short, but not too short. Uh, writing for the web is different from writing for print. Um, I, it

depends. I think it depends on the industry. You know, um, we have a client who does, um, um, human capital consulting, um, very informative, research heavy, um, sort of, um, industry. And so their pages are long, the content's long, but it is necessary for the conversion of their clients. And we have a different client who, who sells, you know, office products very short, right to the point, brief description, order now. And so I think it really depends on, on the industry and, and, and what you actually offer. Yeah, I think, um, the, the other thing is really, it just has to be written relevant. For instance, you know, we've talked about an AC page can be a one page close, can be a kind of a quarter page close. Uh, somebody is looking for AC work. You, you, you know, boom here where you got, you got a unique selling proposition. You got a call to action. Boom. You can close it. You, you, another example we've given is we've got a, a home exciting, uh, company. That's not a, it may be, it could be a one page close. It is definitely not a, a, a quarter sheet close. A one page close for them will, will generate a, a bad lead. Yeah. You know, someone who actually goes through that long page, all of the content, looks at the images, reads about the James Hardy products, things like that. Um, more informed person. So when they do get to the form, they, they, they will probably be a bit better and easier conversion. Yep. Number three says, uh, good navigation on your website is critical. Check. Yeah. Um, not too much to say about that. Yeah. I will say this though. Um, in regards to your navigation, make sure that, um, you still follow kind of traditional link sculpting rules. Make sure you have the most important links in the navigation. Navigation is links. Yeah. Make sure you have the most important links in the navigation, uh, first. Yep. Keep in mind that

most information that's in the footer, links to service, property policy, things like that, um, usually have low value. So don't bother optimizing down there. All right. I, I thought this one was good. Uh, keep images small and use sprites whenever possible. Uh, first off, I don't do the CSS coding around here. So I was like, what's a sprite? Sounds light and airy. Lemon limony. Oh yeah. Lemon limony. Um, okay. We already touched on, uh, keeping images small. There's a thing in CSS called sprites and what it enables you to do, if you've got an image that shows up on every single one of your web pages by using a CSS sprite, you can actually download that image once and then every time you go to the next page, it doesn't have to re-download that page. Which, by the way, is what typically happens as you go from page to page, even though it's the same image, same logo, same whatever. Yeah, usually it's the header, sidebar, and probably footer. If those areas contain data and or images, then, um, the information is usually the same. Yeah. And it's the main body area that tends to change. Um, number five, use appropriate colors. Um, that's a no-brainer. Um, I think if you're designing a website yourself, um, you know, show it around to some people who you don't know. Yeah. Before you, um, go ahead and launch it. Make sure you can get an honest opinion. And don't take it personally when they tell you it's ugly. Yeah. Because there are just, everything is positive input on that situation, in that case. Um, right, I, this one I disagree with. And it says, write as globally as you can. I kind of agree and disagree with. Um, I think really it should say, write for your specific target market. Yeah. Um, and I don't think it should be globally as you can. I mean, we can write an article about plumbing and it wouldn't be related necessarily to Houston. And you're, you know, from an SEO

perspective, you're missing the opportunity for plumbing Houston. Oh, yeah. Right. Um, and, and why, why are we writing about, you know, worldwide plumbing? You know, they have different toilets in Japan. Okay. So, um, I think it really does need to say, write for your target market. Number seven says, check your spelling and grammar. Um, yeah. Check your spelling and grammar. Yeah. Check your spelling and grammar. And if the green line pops up, then it's probably something you should right click on and consider revising, like it may say. Yeah. Yeah. Um, keep links current. Um, definitely keep your links current. Broken links, the first line here says, broken links are another sign for many readers and search engines that the site is not maintained. Yeah. I totally concur. If you have links that go to, to four or four pages or go to page can't be displayed or, or go to non-existent stuff or, or worse, go to somewhere else that's been changed, but using that same address, uh, yeah. Fix your links, um, it's good to kind of go through, um, at least monthly. Um, as we, what I tend to do here is, um, when I'm reviewing reports and analytics and things like that, going through the site, I click. Yeah. Click here, click there, click this, click that, just to make sure everything is, um, still function. Uh, there's a software called Xenu, X-E-N-U, uh, go check it out. It's, I, I think it's freemium or freeware or, or, or freeware or whatever. Um, it's really good piece of software. Also, when you use it, go ahead and pay the guy because he put together a nice piece of software. What do we got next? Number nine says, annotate your links. Um, annotating your links means you should write links to explain where your reader is going to go. Um, that's cool. Um, what I usually do in, in place of that is, uh, just give my links a title. Um, so that way that hovers and it'll tell them where they're going.

Uh, and more importantly, um, if it's inside the text, then my, my anchor text is a clear identifier of where this link is going to go. I've never, I, I, I gotta be honest. I've never clicked or not clicked a link because I didn't know where it was going. Like if it, it, if it was, I don't know, uh, Houston car repair, I knew I was going to Houston car. Like, I don't, I'm not sure. I think maybe a better thing than annotate your links. Um, cause it feels as it's described, it feels like I am now going to send you to Houston auto care company and you can get there by clicking here. Whereas you could say Houston auto care and that's just, just make sure that you're not, you know, in the middle randomly you say, click here. Right. Without some extra, you know, without that being descriptive of where it's going. Contacts clues. Number, last one, number 10, put contact information on your pages unless that, yeah, that kind of goes without saying if you, if you want to be contacted, you know, if you don't want to be contacted, then I would actually go one step further, further and say, put the contact information you want prominently on your page. So if you want a phone call and we've got clients who don't, if you want a phone call, your phone number needs to be up there with a call to action, call for a free assessment, call for whatever it may be. And it needs to be prominent. If you don't want somebody to call you, no phone number or maybe a phone number on the bottom, have your form, your short, we recommend a short form clearly visible above the fold so that you can, uh, get, get your visitor to engage with you with that form. Uh, I, it's not just enough to have contact information. You really need to have a, really, that should be have a CTA. Yeah, have a CTA. Yeah. Which is call to

action, uh, so that you're driving the, the visitor to do something. So, excellent. That was a really good article. Again, the article is on about.com. Top 10 tips to a great webpage. If you Google that, you'll certainly find it by, uh, Jennifer Karnin, Karnin, K-Y-R-N-I-N. Yeah. We'll call her Jenny. Jenny from about. I got blank stare real quick. We'll wrap up. This is hand on the chin. Oh, yeah. Like rubbing the beard blank stare. Like I can't believe I'm having to do blank stare on this blank stare. Yeah, yeah. This blank stare goes to Apple. And I'm a, I'm a Mac user. And so, uh, we're a little disappointed in this. So, so the new MacBook Pro does not come with the, uh, LAN port. What? No LAN port. No. That's only wireless. Oh, wow. Only wireless. No LAN port. Uh, which in most instances it'll be okay. I mean, cause I'll use my wireless here. I use my wireless at home. Um, Starbucks and wireless. But, there are some instances when I would like to plug in. And, and get a gig transfer right now. Exactly. A gig is, like you work on, okay, this is interesting, right? Because Macs are graphics, right? Mm-hmm. People do graphics. Graphics are large. They're heavy. So, if I want to get, you know, if I, if my company's server has all of our graphics. Or working video. Oh. That seems, well, granted, you can get a LAN port. You have to use, like, an adapter with a thingamajiggy. That gives you the ability to get an adapter. Yeah. You got to add the, whatchamacallit, to the thingamajiggy. And then you plug it in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's. That would have, a LAN port. Yeah. Blankster. One gig LAN port. Yeah. At that. We understand getting rid of the CD and DVD, cause that's just where it's gonna go. Because it's being replaced by the LAN port. Alright. You have been listening to the most popular SEO and internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That's because of

you, you, you, you. We're actually pointing if you're listening. And if you're just listening, you should be watching. There's a couple ways you can watch. You can actually go to Ustream. In fact, go to e-webstyle.com slash SEO podcast. And you can scroll down. You'll see a couple of the video links or video embedded videos. And find the archive link for our Ustream. So you can watch these. Again, my name is Chris Burris. Charles Lewis. Bye bye for now.