Angie's List and Mobile Search for SEO - Internet Marketing Podcast - Number 91

Welcome to SEO Podcast. The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Boom! Boom! Starting off the year right. 2001, we got the title to our podcast right on the first try. That's what's up, man. Welcome back, everybody. I hope everybody had a happy holiday in 2010. Happy New Year. Welcome back to another fun-filled year. Wow, podcast, what, like 100, 200? We're at 91, podcast 91, starting off 11. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, sales manager of eWebStyle.com. We are excited that you guys have tuned in. All sorts of things. Most of this podcast is going to be kind of interacting with our audience because we've got so much feedback. I think a lot of people had a lot of free time. Yeah. So they were, you know, doing some geeky stuff. Giving us work to do. Giving us work to do. And we've got to be honest, we did not do all the work that you gave us because we were on vacation as well. But we've got time. We've got the full year to cover a lot of this stuff. We've got some great topics that were suggested last year. You know, I am excited because I lived through a snow hurricane. A snow-a-cane. A snow-a-cane. I like that. Yeah. Somebody here is thinking, like, cocaine. Yeah. Back in the 80s, that had a whole different meaning. Now it actually refers to snow on the ground. It was two feet deep snow. I know you hate the snow. Yes, I do. Yes, all two feet of it. That sucks. Yeah. No, it was pretty cool. The only thing is my wife, myself, and our twins were a little ill, so we didn't get to go out and really enjoy it. But, you know, that was cool. Hey, as with every podcast, we want to talk a little bit about what we talked about our last podcast. Actually, last time we were recording podcasts, we did two because we did the 2010 year in review. You can actually find that

on our Ustream page, which you can get to from our page. Go to e-webstyle.com slash Ustream. It'll actually take two to one of our pages. In fact, you can watch this now if you go to that page, and it'll take you to our Ustream page to show some of our archives. Also, it'll be up on iTunes soon. When we did the 2010 year in review, we actually did part one and part two, two 30-minute podcasts. Actually, I think there were two 40-minute podcasts. And the tip from podcast number 80, you know, I think I should just do 90 because I think probably I did 89 and 90. And the tip from podcast number 90 was, I'd almost have you make a beat for this. Oh, that's tough. Places is the place to be. That's Google Places, A through G. That's the tip for number 90. That's what's up. You guys forgot we did that, didn't you? Yes. Yes, I completely forgot we did that. You were hoping to erase it. I was thinking that the last podcast was the Back to Basics, you know. I think that's like three podcasts before that. Four podcasts, yeah. I forgot we did the year in review. By the way, Back to Basics was a hit. We got two or three comments directly on that. You know, it really was. It really was a hit. And thanks for everyone that sent us messages on Facebook about, hey, it was a great podcast. Yeah, a lot of them referred to the Back to Basics, and so that's pretty awesome. Maybe we should do Back to Basics every week. We should do that maybe like, uh, every week. Okay, yeah. We should do it like every, like, once a year or twice a year, just kind of go back to Basics because we do tend to veer off. And get on. Speaking of veering off, news. Look over there. Look at that. Things that are looked up. Facebook is, looks like it's probably going to be going public in 2012. I

kind of saw that they're talking about full disclosure. Sure, and I see when people have to talk about financial disclosures, too, because they're going to start selling some stock or somewhere. Yep. And I actually, over the holiday, my brother-in-law is a big kind of financial guy. And so we were watching lots of financial stuff. And it turns out, you can actually, like, buy Facebook on the off-market, you know, because there's lots of people who own stock on Facebook. If you saw the movie, there's at least three. So you can buy from them? Yeah, because those, I mean, the only way to monetize, if you, say you own 50% of Facebook right now, you may have a high net worth, but how do you turn that into cold hard cash so you can disappear for, you know, a year. We were talking about that yesterday. The only way to do it is to sell that stock, and there's, like, an off-market where you can do that. Apparently, they're going to go legit. Okay. I thought this was cool. P. Diddy rented an $850,000 a week SuperJot controlled by an iPad. Wow. That's kind of cool. That is, he bought or rented? He rented. Okay. Yeah, because it says a week. I'm sure it was diamond encrusted. Yeah. It better have been for a million a week. Shit. Yeah. This is cool. Apparently, at CES, they previewed the tablet-optimized Android OS Honeycomb, which, so it's optimized for, it's the same OS. Okay. It's optimized for tablet, and I'm assuming it's actually optimized both for the current phone devices and the tablet, which is pretty amazing because we have access to the Galaxy and the Samsung Galaxy, and it's banging. I think it's cool. I'd like it to be bigger, though. I'd like it to be the size of an iPad. Yeah. That's the only problem. But the OS is doing a really good job already. It's phenomenal. So, if they have actually optimized it for, they have, did you know Google bought Android? No. Like, I always

thought, like, they just created it, like, in-house, some dude, some smart dude. It makes sense, because I know that Microsoft buys, like, everything. Nothing. Nothing comes from Microsoft. They buy everything and slap their logo on it. Yep. So, I guess that makes sense, and they have the money to buy, stuff like that. One more thing we've got to put out there. We talk about, regularly, if you're lucky and you become a customer, we will punch you in the face. And we're serious. Yes. We will punch you in the face. Chuck, did you put that up? Yeah. So, we've got a video. Go to our Facebook page, and you will show, we will show you. What we do to some clients. What we do to clients, yeah. The smoking client was, I like the client dripped in water. That was, all the water. The little paper rings was cool, too. That was, because they were still shooting it out as her face was on the other side of the screen. Yeah. Go to our Facebook page and check that out. It's a pretty cool link. It is pretty awesome. You guys can follow us, twitter.com slash eWebStyle, facebook.com slash eWebStyle. We have a place to put reviews on our Facebook page. We love it when you go onto iTunes, create an account, and then put a review about us. If you want to find us on iTunes, you actually go into the iTunes Marketplace, type SEO, hit all SEO podcasts, and we're like number five there. We are the most popular SEO podcast, even though we're not up first on the list. I don't know why. And we still try to record podcasts weekly. The ones that are ahead of us have poorer reviews or no longer submit podcasts. Yeah. And so we think that's a fair criteria for being the most popular podcast on iTunes, even though we're not the first. So go out there and do that. Is there anything else, any other way they should? YouTube, youtube.com slash eWebStyle. And, you know, we

still have, in fact, we're getting a backlog. One of the comments today that we may or may not be reading is that somebody submitted a request for an analysis twice. So we have a little bit of a backlog right now. If you don't want to get at the end of a very long backlog, make sure you get your requests in quickly. And everyone that has submitted a request, you will get one. We just got to get to them. Yeah. And the holiday was, you know, it was Christmas. Awesome. Your holiday was good? It was good. It was really good. Banging? Cool. No $850,000 a week yacht? Not this week, but, you know, there's still, I still have a long, there's a lot of year. The week's not done yet. Yeah. There's a lot of year left for me to go ahead and get that. Start with the lotto. What do you got? You want to pop in? I got kind of a listener question we can start with before we get into the main topic. I received a call yesterday from Andy Bauman at Bauman Photography. B-A-U-M-A-N. Man, he's persistent. That's good because he sent, I saw he sent a request. Yes. He sent a question. And then I spoke to him yesterday. By the way, you can call us. Yes, you can. Yeah, just like Andy Bauman did. Thank you, Andy. And you can call us at 713-592-6724. You've got it. And his website is Bauman Photography, B-A-U-M-A-N hyphen photography dot com. He called in yesterday. He says, hey, listen to the podcast. Thanks for all the info. I have a question about Google Places and a little bit about URL.org. Universal, I don't remember. It's Universal List, whatever. I think it was, not URL. That was, yeah, UL, yeah. It's in our links. Yeah, it's in one of our links. I can't remember. The listing service. So, and basically what it kind of boiled down to is I said, yes, he had asked about the listing service. Hey, do you got, you know,

how do you do this? Do you, you know, do you check, do you fill this out and then go back and check all of them and make sure they're all accurate? Do you do your own search engine ones or do you let them, the listing services do all of them? And it basically boiled down. So I said, we do our own listings for the three major, major search engines, which all of you should do. Do those yourself. And if you do decide to sign up for a listing service that will list you on 150, 300, whatever directories, which is, I feel like a great idea. It's a great price, like 30 bucks a month. I gave two examples of them. That was a year. I mean, yeah, 30 bucks a year. Yeah, 30 bucks a year. I have two examples of them. You want to do your own listings for the major search engines and then sign up for the listing service. And then you want to, you don't want to double check 250 different directories. Go to the ones that you know people search for. Go to Yelp. Go to CitySearch. Go to AOL. You know, go to the Yahoo directory and check that. Make sure that those are accurate. I'd say Angie's List, but I don't think that they cover Angie's List. Yeah. So I'm not saying Angie's List. Yeah. So you definitely want to do that. And he also asked about Google Places. And, you know, what would you recommend if you are looking to market in, he is in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, looking to market in Tulsa. Gave him a couple tips there. And, you know, if you are in a small city, I really like to think, you know, we have a lot of listings for eWebStyle. And, yeah, I noticed that he had a couple different listings. And I said, you know, if you want to market to Tulsa, Oklahoma, you know, here's what you want and could do. So we've told clients this before, you can get a

P.O. box in that city and list your address there. You could just pick a random address. You could run into, you could be stealing someone else's address if you did that. Or, you know, you could. One of the challenges with that is potentially sometimes Google won't allow you to do a phone confirmation that it's you. And if they do, then they send a postcard. And if you're just using a bogus address. And it goes to that address. And you don't want a bogus address because it's your place's listing. So people, you know, we actually, it's kind of funny, even before we felt like we were getting any results from Google Places, we were actually getting people searching for how to get to us. Yeah. So I'm in a networking group. People were probably, you know, Googling eWebStyle and then figuring out how to map to us. And so you don't want them mapping to your, so there's some drawbacks of that. But there's some value. Yeah. And there's definitely some value. And he has two listings, one in his hometown and one in Tulsa. Gave him a couple tips. Kind of, we went over, like, going on tips for optimizing your Google Places listing. We did a whole podcast on that. You definitely want to take advantage of this. I can't kick this dead horse enough. The local pack or the map pack, whatever, the seven. Seven pack. Yeah, seven pack. A through G. A through G is where you want to be. That is what I believe is going to become, you know, the one of, if not the most important part of the search engine results page. The first thing everybody sees, you want to make sure your listing is optimized. Have videos, photos, keywords in it. And we did a whole podcast on it, so go back. So, Andy, thanks a lot for the questions. Great talk to you. Any other questions, feel free to give us a call. And any listener question? No, I just had this, it was Dean Calhoun

put a link on our Facebook page about help save South by Southwest from marketer douchebaggery. And you made a great point. Maybe they listened to our podcast because, you know, one of our mantras is don't be, we are the friendly local top physician snatchers. And one of our mantras is don't be a douche. And so, apparently, a lot of marketers are douches and... They get their douchebag on? Yeah, they get their douchebag on. Apparently, they have been accused of douchebaggery. And so, there's a talk, I don't even know what this is, you know, South by Southwest. But they're talking about, you know, how marketers are taking over and it's becoming douchey. And, hey, you know, we should do... You know, to me, that makes a lot of sense because as more, you know, the web is creating more and more opportunities to market. You know, banner ads wasn't even something I thought of five years ago. And now there are banner ads. And there's always... And now Google is, you know, Google is now marketing to you with their marketing in the seven pack. They have sponsored listings. So, the search engines and then ad companies are finding new ways to market to you. So, I think that as these new ways to market increase, there's going to be more and more... And they're kind of technical. And so, you can kind of see how maybe marketers who really don't have that much tech savvy are kind of migrating to these kind of South by Southwest. I think that's what the major complaint is, is that there's a lot of marketers who don't... You know, for instance, we have a marketing partner who, until recently, was telling her customers that SEO was voodoo and you really didn't want to mess with it. And she was just saying that because she didn't really know how to handle her clients when they were saying, hey, I think I might be interested in SEO. Now that she's partnered with us, of course, she's like, oh, SEO is wonderful.

And it gets you on the first page of Google and it brings clients. And then we know how to optimize it so that those clients who come, they can actually convert into leads and customers. And so, her whole song has changed. But, you know, before her really partnering with us, you wouldn't really want her at a South by Southwest conference on, you know, search engine optimization. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I have something that we're going to get into today is mobile marketing. And this is a special thank you to Dean Calhoun, who is our production manager today. We pretty much supplied all of the content for today's podcast. And Dean's with? Affigility Solutions. He is their CEO, podcast man, traveler. So, this guy's dudes all over the place. We're friends on Facebook. And I'm like, you're in Denver one day, Miami the next day. You know, these guys is everywhere. And podcasting. Skiing and skiing. Yeah, this guy's all over the place. So, he had asked some questions last year about, on our discussion board, about mobile marketing and how do you feel about mobile and everything is going mobile. Did a little research. And we're going to cover more on this, but I just kind of want to touch base with it today. I'm not going to rub it in. Yeah. This device right here, this is the Evo. Is HTC Evo he's looking at? HTC Evo is absolutely phenomenal. Yes. In fact, my niece, while we were on holiday, she was like, how many skyscrapers are in New York? And I just pressed the button and I'm like, how many skyscrapers in New York City? Because we were heading into Manhattan. Voice searched it. It took me a little while to kind of find the right link. It was a Wikipedia link, of course. Like 460 buildings over 500 feet. Is there anything else you need to know? So, later, her dad comes to me. He's like, she's really impressed by your device. She was asking me, I wonder if Chris's phone

would know this. I wonder if Chris's phone would know that. It knows everything. Imagine how our kids are, I mean, they're going to grow up with like, okay, I need information. I have it at the touch of my fingers. And that's cool, though. I definitely want one. I had like five friends buy an Evo and show me. And taunt you over the holiday break. And I was like, okay, thanks. Bye. That's good. You're holding out. You're holding out for that. I'm still waiting for it to become available to me on my spread account. But everyone knows mobile search is increasing. Smartphones, hell, everybody I know has a smartphone. I don't know anyone with a flip phone anymore. By the way, if we have any listeners who would like to donate an Evo to Paul, you know, the address is on the website. The address is on the website. There you go. So he had asked, hey, let's talk a little bit more about mobile and how it's going to take effect. And I found a great, he sent me a great article that I do want to talk about, about QR codes. And I also just want to talk about mobile and where it's going. I found this article on Search Engine Land by Bryson, M-E-U-N-I-E-R. I'm not even going to attempt to go there with Bryson, but he posted it. M-E-U-N-E-R. Yeah, M-E-U-N-E-R. It was actually just posted yesterday about, you guys said, here's two mobile SEO tips for 2011. But here's how he starts his talk. He talks about how every year since 2005, people have kind of thrown out there, this is the year of mobile. And I think I probably said that at the end of last year. Oh, you know, mobile is going to become big this year. And this is kind of what he, before he gets into the meat of his article. Hey, Rob. What's up, Rob? Oh, thanks, Rob. He talks about how every year is the year of mobile. And every year they talk about mobile

is going to take off this year. And even though that mobile searching is growing, I think, four times what PC searching is, it's still not a major, major, major, major player. I think that what he listed was is currently mobile search accounts for 10% of Google search volume or more. Now, that is a pretty significant number, but 10% as compared to 100% is, I'm still not changing my strategy, my marketing strategy. I'm preparing for it, which is kind of a great timing for Dean Hellman's question. Yes, of course. So what he says is people have been saying this over and over, and kind of here's a couple things that I found that he was saying that the mobile experience is kind of, it will taper off. Well, this was not in his article. It was in his article. He didn't say it. The guy who said it was Rand Fishkin, who I don't know who Rand Fishkin is. But he says that mobile is really going to have a negligible effect on SEO in 2011, and slowly, with more smartphones like the Evo, the way you search, they're going to merge the web, the PC web, and the mobile web. So they're kind of one and the same. But what he did, what Bryson gave us some great topics or some great things on what you should do. He basically said, you know, you don't want to ignore mobile keywords. The Google Keyword Selector tool does give you mobile keywords in that search. You don't want to ignore those because if you do, you are ignoring, and I have this highlight, you're ignoring 10% of Google's total search volume. Some recent data from Performix, the current growth rate is expected to see mobile queries account for 16% of total clicks by September of 2011. That's in nine months. So that's from 10% to 16% in nine months. I don't know if I believe that, but, I mean, that's a huge, huge number. Well, I've got to be honest. I do because, you know, Android's now

outselling iPhone. iPhone used to be, in terms of mobile searches, the largest search or searching device. That was just because it was so user-friendly. And now Android is outselling the iPhone. So it's not one particular, it's not like the Evo, but it's Android in general. And Android in general is significantly better than a lot of other smartphones at doing search. Not only that, you've got 4G on Sprint. You've got 4G on Verizon. On Verizon, on Verizon. So, you know, now your internet speeds are actually, you know, an office used to run on the internet speeds that you can now get on your phone. On yourself. Like an entire office, you know, like 20 people would run on a T1, which is a 1.5 MIP connection. Of course, video wasn't draining as much bandwidth at the time. But now you've got more than that on a 4G phone. So people are just going to, you're going to use it more and more and more. Okay. And, you know, that makes sense. And here's another topic that Bryson, a piece of data, he said, I'm going to quote this. He says, however, mobile searches, feature phone and smartphone, had a click-through rate of 29.9% overall. When you look at brand loyal searches, their most relevant category, the click-through ratio for mobile searches was as high as 52% compared to 9% brand loyalty for desktop searches in the same category. So, and then he also says that overall desktop search click-through ratio was 6.58% for brand loyal. Basically, click-through ratios on mobile devices are much, much higher than desktop. And I was like, wow, that's, I mean, that's huge. That's a, that's a huge piece of data now to also remember that clicks are much lower, but the click-through ratio is higher. So to me, this says, yes, mobile is a, it's, it is going to, it is the future, not even the future. It is now, it is today. It is something that needs to be taken a good look at. However, just because of the sheer

volume is so low, you know, we're not changing our strategy just yet. But like Chris said, it is something that we are going to prepare for, going to talk more about. What is this? You need to be aware of it. You need to be on top of it. No, I think that's Rob's phone. I'm trying to get him to close his door. Your pocket is talking to me. So I thought that was awesome. So a couple good tips. You do have a, the, the, you don't want to ignore your mobile keywords, okay? The keyword select your tool does give you mobile words. You want to be able to use it. You want to, you know, and then this is, this is when analysis comes in. So you really need to be able to, you know, have an analyst on your team or, you know, at your company or your, your SEO company needs to be able to do that kind of analysis for you. So they can, you know, look at the terms and say, okay, well, this is, you know, this is good for PC search. This is good for mobile search. And also, another, another great tip is that present mobile users with mobile formatted content. Everybody has seen, everybody's been somewhere on a, on a mobile device and has went to a website where you had to scroll and do this. So basically you're saying, have your site built in a mobile form, a format for a mobile phone, which I think is kind of pretty much, pretty much obvious. And the Google SEO starter guy talks about that a little bit. I also want to get into QR codes. Dean sent a great, now QR codes, for those who don't know what a QR code is, I don't have a picture yet. What is a QR code? I have no idea. It's a barcode. A QR code is a barcode. And if you're looking, I can show you a picture of this on the, it's this little thing. Right here. Oh,

that's good. You did good on the video there. Well done. That was awesome. It's a, a QR code is like a barcode. It's a two-dimensional barcode that looks like a bunch of dots and squares. It's, I'd say, about an inch by, well, you can, they're coming all different sizes. And basically what you need is a, a program on your, a QR reader, a QR code reader on your phone, and you can take a, barcode scanner, thanks Chuck, on your phone, you take a picture of it. I think Google Goggles also would work. There you go. Google Goggles would be, yeah. Which is free. I just took that off my phone, actually, because I never used it. I tried to use it. I forget what. Didn't work? Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, basically, uh, it's a black and white dot pattern and, uh, it gives you information about something. So, uh, if you have, if you're one of the people that, uh, Google places sent out the little, um, we are at Google places thing, like a little card you can stick in your window, uh, it had adhesive on it. And it says, we are listed in Google places, had a QR code. If you scanned it on your phone, it would send you to the Google places listing. Yeah. Your Google places listing. And you see them everywhere. And Dean sent me a great article how the South by South by Southwest conference last year was using them everywhere. They were in your badge. They were in people's, um, business cards. That's a great idea in the badge, because then you can just snap a photo of that. A guy walked around with a T, uh, a T-shirt with a QR code on it. Oh, wow. And it linked to his website or Twitter feed or something like that. Super nerd. Yeah. Here I come to save the day. To save the code. Um, and so it basically, the article, it was a great article, it talked about how QR codes are everywhere. Uh, you

know, you aim your smartphone at it, you take a picture of it, and it gives you all kinds of information. Uh, they're putting these codes on flyers. I've seen them in magazine ads. I see them in website magazine. You want to know what's crazy? At least eight years ago, uh, Popular Science, uh, was trying out something along these lines where you would, where they would put, put that in their, uh, in their magazine, and then you would actually have to show it to your web, uh, cam. Okay. And then it would take you to their website. And I was like, this is, this is not, you know, it didn't go anywhere because the, you know, there wasn't convenient enough. It's too much work involved. I don't know how, I don't know if I'm going to use it, but like, you know, if I'm at a store, I don't really want to see the Google places ad because I probably saw their Google places ad and the research of getting to their store. True. True. You know, but now they're starting to link them to your website, your Twitter feed, your Facebook. So at a conference, it makes sense. Yeah. But on your front door, I'm not convinced, right? If I'm going to the gap, I don't really want to see the Google, the gap places ad or, or even if it's a boutique store, I went there because I'm in, you know, I know what's there. I'm there. And maybe there are other people out there who are, you know, just like to shop and walk around. And we've got a place in Houston called West U where you can walk around, have a coffee and maybe you're, you know, traipsing by a store and you're like, Oh, a QR code of an interesting store. Let me pull up their Google places ad and find out about them. This is not going to happen with me. True. Or how about this? I walk past the store. Oh, there's a chiropractor. I need to go to

the, or a massage therapist. Let me, uh, scan their QR code, save it. Save it. Yeah. When I get home, I'll go back to it. Yeah. Uh, I've read an article about how, you know, they put them on artwork. You know, you go to art museums, you get art, you get information about artists. Now they get detailed. That's cool. And, uh. So the, the, the, the kind of conference museum environment makes a lot of sense. Yes. Hey, I'd like more information about this. If Google goggles can't recognize the Mona Lisa, at least it can recognize the QR code. Yeah. The QR code. QR code. Uh, that's right there next to it. And then pull up more information about it. One thing this article, this article was written by Mark Sullivan. Uh, says the title is South by Southwest Notes. QR codes are everywhere. Uh, it says that QR codes are just a simple bridge from the internet to the outer net. A concept seems to be, uh, many people's minds. They allow you to get the internet content about something that you are close to or looking at in the real world. I saw a Ted, uh, Ted is, Ted, there's something that Chris actually introduced me to. A Ted. Yeah. Just super cool. A Ted article. I mean, uh, a video about this guy was saying the future of the internet is going to become how to get the, basically the link, the internet and the outer net. So how you can merge your real world experience with the, and I think I may have sent this to you where this guy had this, um, real camera and a projector and a projector and he was watching that he could project the internet basically on a wall in front of him and move and click things. Uh, it was just, it was nuts. He had like a projector and a camera on a baseball cap, I think. Well, he could project onto his hand a, a dial pad and then dial from his hand,

which was kind of, and I think that basically what his talk was about is bringing the internet to your real world. And to me, this is, yeah, this is exactly what it is. The QR codes is the way to, to bring the internet to the, to the, your real world into the internet right here with you. Um, and since we don't have the internet everywhere we go, mobile devices are the closest thing that we have. Um, so I, I thought that was a great article. I want to get more into learning more about mobile, uh, search and how it's going to affect. Let me find this, uh, this exact line that I read in here and, and here's what it is. It says, um, perhaps that Rand Fishkin was just making a bold prediction for the sake of generating controversy or for links, but he basically said that the mobile and normal web browsing experiences will continue to merge toward a single experience, thus negating much need for the mobile specific sites and SEO. Um, that's where this is not, this is again coming from Rand Fishkin. This is the article that, uh, was written by the other guy. Um, Bryson Muner, he, this is, he was quoting Rand and saying that they're going to merge the, the experience. So mobile doesn't need to be a big part of SEO or it doesn't need to be a big part of your plan. I don't know how, how I see his point, but I still think that mobile, there's always going to be a Delta. There's always going to be a difference between those, uh, those two things. So, um, yeah, I think there's always going to be that difference. Yeah. I still think it's a, uh, a good strategy. I think you still should take mobile into your strategy. If you have the opportunity to do QR codes, to link to your website, Facebook, I'd still recommend that, uh, that everyone do it or, you know, at least look into it because, you know, mobile

is, is here. It's, I wouldn't even say the future is now it is what's happening now. I search more on my cell phone than anywhere. Yeah, me too. Hey, uh, I think now is a perfect time to bring out, uh, bring out another view, uh, on mobile in the direction that things are going. Let's bring out the, uh, the top position snatcher, Mr. Mr. Mobile, Mr. Mobile. Mr. Mobile. Mr. Mobile. So SEO. Charles Lewis coming out here, Charles. Chuck, I say Chuck's Mr. Mobile. Cause when I first met Chuck, Chuck was on this thing called Twitter, right? Chuck has the name Chuck. He asked on Twitter and I was like, Twitter, what's that? Why would anyone do that? We did our first podcast. He was just tweeting and tweeting and tweeting. I was like, man, what is that? So he was, uh, he was on his phone just going hard on his, uh, on his Twitter. So Mr. Mobile, tell me about mobile. How do you feel about mobile search? How do you feel about this guys? First, happy new year to you. Oh, happy new year. Happy new year to all y'all watching. Can I get some quick shout outs real quick? I'm going to answer your question. Shout out to, uh, Rigg76. I'm trying to get your name. Um, he didn't post his name. So, uh, in my mind, I picture you as Rigg from Lethal Weapon. A little crazy. A little off balance. Shout out to my boy Sal. Sal, what's up, man? Sal is watching, man. Y'all need to check out his video blog. Dude is crazy. Okay. YouTube.com slash MayhemJedi. Like, what? MayhemJedi? Yeah. Whoa. Isn't that the dark side? No, no. Sal's real cool, man. Like, and, um, and shout out to Tierney. Got your questions. I'm going to try to answer those briefly before we close. Are you watching as well? Cool. All right. Mobile. Okay. How do you, do you feel like, uh, this, this quote, do you feel that the, the, the PC and the mobile

web experience are going to merge? Or is it, do you still feel like it's going to, they are going to be separate? You know, should somebody, how should, should someone incorporate it into their strategy? How? Um, well, I think both. Okay. I think right now you have to incorporate it into your strategy to take advantage of that 10% you were speaking about. Okay. But with the growing of, um, of, uh, tablets and pads, right, that, which are just technically mobile, right, um, operating on 4G, like you said earlier, um, there's really no need for a mobile version per se. Yeah. Because on your phone, does your, on the HTC Evo, does it display mobile sites or does it display? On my Android phone, it pulls up our site as, just like we have it on the web. If there is a, a site that has mobile, right? So it has a mobile version. It'll display that version. It will migrate. I don't like it because the, the, the, the screen is big enough on, on the Evo. And I think even on, on a lot of headphones, on the galaxy, certainly on the tablets. Yeah. That you don't really need to be taken to the mobile device, the mobile version of the website. That's probably kind of a leftover. So in that sense, yeah, I think he's going to be, he's right. You don't, you're not going to need to create two versions. You need to design mindful, right? So there are things that you may do on a big screen that you really might want to pull out of your web design so that it really works well on both. But so far, like our website, we did not design our website for mobile. It looks great on, on the Android. And so, you know, and on everything except for an Apple product. Boom. Yeah. Apple product. You should try, um, I looked at the site, iPhone tester.com or, uh. Yeah. We had to use that. And yeah, kind of put in your URL

and it'll show you how your site looks on an iPhone. Although we don't, we don't have much flash on ours right now, right? Well, no, just the, just the, uh, uh. Oh, those blocks. Three blocks. Three blocks. Yeah, just quite a bit. It sucks for, for, for, for Apple because, you know, you can't see my flash. Yeah. Yeah. So we spent all this time on it. The Android. Which we're outselling Apple. So, I mean, the iPhone. So, I think the general consensus is you, you still, uh, you don't want to miss out on that 10%. Do you want to change your business strategy to go after mobile first? No. But mobile is growing and it is something that you do need to take into consideration for the future. If you have the opportunity to build a mobile site or do a QR code, you know, relatively inexpensively, quickly, yes, you should definitely do it. What's up out here? Okay. Yeah. And what else? You got a couple of questions? Yeah, I got questions, uh, tyranny, man, I feel like I'm killing your name. If I am, I apologize. Um, we posted a couple of questions, um, via our contact form and so I wanted to kind of address those quick and I figured, uh, we can blank stare news on a letter. We got a letter from Google. We got a letter from Google. Oh, open it on air. I think you'll be the perfect person to open it. Darn it. But see, we thought about that. Yeah. We thought, we said, we use Google apps. We promote AdWords. This should be a check. It shouldn't be a check. It shouldn't be. Good thing that didn't handle it because it would have been a fight. Oh, let's see. You don't, you don't subscribe to the, don't persecute the messenger. Oh, no. Take this back to Google. Put you in the face. Uh, first question, um, uh, how does a high bounce rate hurt your site as far as Google rankings? To be honest, I'm not

exactly sure what you mean by this question, uh, but I do know that a high bounce rate won't necessarily hurt if the reason they're bouncing off is due to a conversion, right? Okay. If they got to your site, they filled out a form and they left, your bounce rate, uh, could probably go high, but that's a good deal for you, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, so I wouldn't really focus too much on how to bounce rate to fix your rankings. Instead, focus on why they're bouncing. Yeah. If they're bouncing because they converted, great. They're bouncing with no conversions, then that's a problem. Yeah. Um, I do think that it would, I think that if you have a high bounce rate, someone, there's a possibility that someone else with a lower bounce rate could jump ahead. It might be one of the 200 factors. Yeah. Right. Now, I don't think that it's, if you have a high bounce rate, are you going to drop? No. If your bounce rate just shot up, all of a sudden you're going to drop and you're there? Eh. And, and depending on how, you know, I don't even know exactly how Google defines the bounce rate. Is it, you know, five seconds on page? I think it's 30 seconds. It's 30 seconds? I've heard three to six. I've heard 30. I've heard 15. Certainly like a three second bounce rate. Okay. Like if maybe they, maybe what they display in analytics is one thing and what they actually record and utilize is different. So if there's a, which I know they do. If there's a, it sucks. Right. Yeah. Cause with page rank, I know they display one thing to you and they have a real page rank that no one knows about except for Google. So that very well could be the case. So, so they may be saying, look, if it's a three second bounce rate, it's a useless page. If it's a 30 second bounce rate, Hey, potentially they got everything they needed from that 30 seconds. You

know, there's 465 buildings over 500 feet in New York city. Boom. I'm out. You know, it doesn't take me 30 seconds to do that. It's a bounce, but it's okay. It's not a three second. It's a 30 second. Yeah. I'm going to co-sign with Chuck and say, you know, figure out on why they're bouncing should probably be the very first thing that I would focus on. Why are they bouncing? And then, you know, lower it. And if you figure out why they're bouncing and fix it, it'll lower your bounce rate. Yeah. It'll lower your bounce rate, but you'll get more conversions because you're not bouncing, which is the ultimate goal. So here, the second question I had was also regarding your last podcast. You talked about inbound links. That was our back to basics podcast, right? That's cool. Can you guys get some tips on how to get good inbound links? Do you suggest emailing other site owners to ask for their links? Try that. It's been rough. What about programs like SEO PowerSuite, Internet Business Promoter? Do you suggest sending out links using programs like that? SEO PowerSuite, I'm really not into programs that kind of do everything for you, right? I'm more of a control freak. I prefer to do it myself. At least that way I know what's done. And there's a reason that we go after organic SEO, organically. So not to talk down on those programs, I just prefer to get in there and do it myself. And it's rough. It's very rough. I think there's three key techniques. There's the begging, the borrowing, and the pleading to get inbound links. Really great content. I mean, you know, let's talk about back to the basics. Article bathing. Yeah. Great content. You know, if you put something out there that people want and that they deem valuable, then they'll link to it. You know, so do that, right? Have a great product. If your product sucks, then nobody's going to link to it. Yeah. Focus on what we say regularly. If

you're providing a great experience to the Google user, then you're going to do well. Because, you know, those great articles, those great things are actually going to draw in more links. And eventually, it's going to take a while. It's organic. And it's going to succeed better and hold longer, stronger, faster, nimbler, quicker. One cheat that I would, not even a cheat that we talked about earlier in the podcast to kind of get links would be to use the, what is the thing? UBL.org. That's a way to, I kind of cheat the system a little bit. You know, it was UBL and something else. UBL, that goes into that whole category of directory submissions. Yes, that's a directory submission. Submit to some directories, you know, watch which ones you do use. But that's a great way to get some good links. Great way for link juice. Dean Calhoun actually sent us, and I haven't actually gone through it about, he sent us an email on getting a link from a PR8. I haven't, I need to go back and read it, but I will share that. It's TED's. When you have a profile on TED.com, they're follow links. You're allowed to have three of them, and you can control the anchor text. Really? Okay, TED, he said, okay. That's a free game right now. There you go. That's from Dean Calhoun. That's PR8. At Affiduity Solutions. That's a PR8 site. You get a TED profile, link it back, control your own anchor text. Bang. I can't, I mean, you can't ask for anything, I mean, wow, a PR8? Yeah. Ted, well, I hope I helped you. You know, I hope that helped. If not, check one of our other podcasts. I'm pretty sure we've done one on link building. Yeah. Out of our 91 podcast. We may have mentioned it once or twice. Yeah. Well, I mean, we had some great articles. I'm going to go back to these article titles. And thanks again from Dean Calhoun. South by Southwest Notes. QR codes are everywhere. Written

by Mark Sullivan. That was directed from Dean. And two new mobile SEO tips for 2011 by Bryson Muner. You have to have your own street. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. We're going to open our letter. This is an Android app. Yeah. It's Amplitheater Parkway instead of, like, Google Plex. Yeah. Instead of a 123 Google Drive. This is our blank standard. At the Google Dome. You got any takers on what this is? I bet it's a letter to Paul that says, stop hating on Google Places. Yeah. Oh, we will find you. We have returned your links. We found your links and returned them. Okay. It was, you are kicked out of Google Places. Don't ever come back. Try Google Apps. We use Google Apps. Yeah, we're using Google Apps. Did we get this because we just signed up? No, we've been, let's see. You didn't give me no AdWords credit? What's up with that? Yeah, I know. That's, that's. Okay, Google. Yeah. Y'all were whack. Yeah. We need something a little more personal. Like, you know. Handwritten note from somebody. Yeah, Matt Cutts. Says one awesome. Matt Cutts. Say, hit us up. Say, yeah. We can promote y'all's products. Like, we work there. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah, we were expecting a check. All we get is try Google Apps free for three days. We're already using it. Yeah. By the way, did you know there's a free version of Google Apps? We are trying it. We're using it for free. Of course, they don't mention that. Yeah. Yeah, of course not. Try Google Apps free. But it's always free. It's always free. Yeah. Up to 50 users. It's a good product, by the way. And eventually, we will outgrow that small product and be using Google Apps because it's reasonably priced and very well done. Oh, I forgot to turn off my fancy Evo. All right. So, this is the end of podcast number 91. We appreciate you guys for listening. You guys for watching. Again, you can find and watch this podcast. We were quite late today,

kind of catching up from the new year. Usually, it's about 915 Central Standard Time on Friday mornings. This has been the first podcast of the new year. We'll be doing this every week. Go ahead and tune in. It looks like we're getting some more kind of interaction in the first 20 minutes of the podcast. So, if you want a question immediately answered live on the podcast, you've got to tune in at 915-ish Central Standard Time and, you know, get a question in early so that we can get it, you know, into the... Into the queue. Into the queue. Yeah. I was going to get it to the personalities. Get it to the top position snatchers so it can be answered on air. Thank you guys for listening. My name is Chris Burris. All handsome. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.