Don’t be Sucked in by #SEO Lies by Lucinda Honeycutt #313

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. I am Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is Podcast 313. Boom. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast. And today, our tip is double opt-ins have a significantly higher open rate. Look, if they double opt-in, that means they're really interested and they'll likely open it when you send it. Boom. Higher open rate. All right, so please remember, we are filming live from Houston, Texas, and we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. That was a little painful. I heard you kind of stretching it. Do not be a deuce. Do not be a deuce. That's our mantra, and it is not a good look. It is a horrible look. We're going to be talking don't be sucked in by hashtag SEO lies. Man, so punch in the face to Lucinda Watrous posted that article on Search Engine Journal. Don't be sucked in by SEO lies. So we'll dig into that a little bit later. We'll get right into that. We're going to do a little bit of potato work here. And if you can, if you have some sort of device, we ask you to tweet. Some device like this or maybe one like that. By the way, we don't get that many people to tweet. So maybe there's this misunderstanding that if you're listening to a recording of this, yes, we still want you to tweet. If you're watching a video recording of this, we still want you to tweet, and this is what you should tweet. Yeah, tweet us. Make sure this is hashtag SEO podcast. Use that. Tag the number, 313, so we'll know which one you're listening to or watching. Tag us in it, at eWebResults, at bestSEOPodcast. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. And we can shike you. Yeah, we can shike-o. Shike-o, shike-o. Yeah, shike-o. Yeah, shike-o.

Share a like and a follow. Share a like follow. If this is the first time you've listened to this podcast, howdy. Welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you. We're in Texas. Appreciate you coming. We do say howdy. You say stuff like appreciate having y'all. Y'all. Y'all have a good time now, you hear? So the, that's, I don't know what else. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out. Y'all come back now. I'll save that for the end. And so, if you've listened to this podcast before, you know what we're about to skip. And the way we skip, normally we would tell you how to leave us a review. If we give about 10, if we get 10 shike-os on any one of our platforms and we get a review, then we don't tell you that. We skip that. The segment usually takes about three minutes. Yeah. So we just skip it. We just skip it all together. What we do do, though, is advise you where you can connect with us. If you want to shike-o us, we've got to give you ways to do that. And those ways are facebook.com slash eWebResults, instagram.com slash eWebResults, twitter.com slash eWebResults, youtube.com slash eWebResults. And I think there's one more, which is linkedin.com slash company slash eWebResults. All of those will allow you to shike-o us. Yeah, we probably could have threw in Periscope. I just don't know if they have a profile like that. If it's separate or if it's a Twitter one. Yeah. We are actually Periscoping real time. Like right now, right now. And that's connected to our best SEO podcast Twitter account. Let's see. Hey, if you're a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, we're probably looking for you. Give us a call. Give us an audio resume by calling 713-510-7846. If you would like a free, comprehensive website rank analysis. Keyword comprehensive. Yes. You can get that. All you need to do is go to eWebResults.com. You will find the form. You will fill it out. And we will get to you. If

you're in a rush, please go ahead and give us a call. Hit us up. Do we have any AlgoCat today? I do have some AlgoCat today. It's time for the favorite segment of the show, the AlgoRhythm Cataclysm. Yeah. So, I do have some Cataclysm. And so, this Cataclysm is in regards to the paid ads and the changes that Google's been making. All right. Remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about Cataclysm was that they were removing side paid ads, right? It's gone. It's out of there. It's out of there, right? And then that area is really going to be featured for PLAs or product listing ads, right? But the debate was, well, how many paid ads are they going to show at the top? Is it going to be one? Is it going to be three? Sometimes four? Well, over the last two weeks, it's been default four. Every search I've done has four. I read it on their site today that 46% of the most recent searches all displayed four. And so, the trend is that there are going to be four paid ads at the top, three paid ads at the bottom. That's seven paid ads on the first page of Google that you've got to compete for. Yeah. Work on their quality score. Work on those landing pages. Work on your ads because competition is going up. Competition is going up. Hey, I've got a little bit of news. Okay. I've got some news, too. Google's auto drive car had their first accident caused by them. So, they've had a number of accidents. This was the first one caused by them. Apparently, it made a bad decision about pulling out in front of a bus. Assumed the bus would slow down. So, they're adjusting the algorithm so that... It knows how fast the bus is going? No. It knew how fast. It made assumptions about whether it's going to slow down or not. And so, larger vehicles don't slow down as much. So, they... They... They... Bit of... Yeah. Tear front end

up. Scrape off a Google bumper. I thought this was interesting. I didn't realize this. The large airplane... Imagine the bus driver. Like, man, there's nobody driving their car. Yeah. Who's... There was a... There was an occupant in the right spot. Well, the occupant should have hit the manual overriding, but buses don't slow down, though. Yeah. I know what you're thinking, and it's wrong. Yeah. So, the A350, which is a large aircraft... Okay. A thousand of the parts on that plane are printed. You know, the 3D printing parts? Really? Yeah. How cool is that? I mean, what parts? Like the... Handles. Okay. Yeah. Not the engines. Like the seatbelt holder? Like, okay. Like, first, I'm concerned about safety. Yeah. Second, hopefully it saves them money. So, I thought that was pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. I could see everything. Anything plastic handles, trays, all that other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Why not save money and print it yourself? Yeah. Yeah. And apparently, it was born out of they were having delivery challenges. We're just going to print them. We'll print them on ourselves. Like, cancel the order. That's what's up. And then Google is actually... Push in the face to technology. That's pretty cool, right? For solving problems. Yeah. You guys can't get your act together. Can't give us a measly 10,000 handles. Yeah. We just want to print them. Jane, in the printing department. We need 10,000 handles by tomorrow, please. So, Google is now geolocating the right to be forgotten links. So, this is out of the UK. They've decided you have the right to be forgotten. So, if something happened to you a long time ago or it's kind of irrelevant information and then there was one other category. So, what Google had implemented is the right to be forgotten. So, they would kind of obfuscate the link. Yep. Remove it from the search results. Right. They were only doing that on .co.uk and one other. And so, the workaround was if you were in the UK and you went directly to google.com, that didn't

exist. You still see the content. So, they finally started geolocating. So, if you're in the UK, then that's right. So, now it don't matter where you're at. They're basically removing that content. Well, it doesn't matter which Google version you use. If you're in the UK, it's going to be gone. So, you know, whatever. I just thought that was neat. Yeah. I just, frankly, Google, you should just make it global. I mean, I get it. Yeah. You know, like, you know, you may not want to remove those results from the search index for everybody. But, I mean, if they want to be forgotten and they have that right, then. And so, the issue is they have that right in the UK. They haven't made that determination here and some other places. So, kind of interesting. Did you have any news before I hopped into. A little bit of news. A little bit of news so we can stick to the news. According to search engine links, I almost could have been AlgoCat 2. So, Google added the ability to search for animal noises. Okay. Cool. And it's actually pretty cool. So, if you go to Google and you do a desktop or a mobile search, you can listen to the sounds of 19 different animals. Including monkeys, cats, cows, ducks, elephants, horses, lions, mooses, owls, pigs, raccoons, coosters, sheeps, tigers, turkeys, turtles, a whale, humpback whale, and the bowhead whale. By the way, they're two different things, obviously. The wolf and the zebra. I almost attempted to do it in here. But, it's cool. You go to, and I looked it up, it actually looks kind of cool. You search animal noises, they give you a carousel. Oh, that's kind of cool. With icons of each of the animals, you click on it and it plays the noise. Where was that at when I was in school? This is like a Google version of the pudding pin. Yeah, yeah, the pink, yeah, the farmer. Yeah, exactly. Some other news. By the way, I was unaware that

turtles make noise. Yeah, it's probably worth doing it just for that. What noise does a turtle make other than like the shell scraping on the ground as it tries to move slowly? And, I just keep getting, just picturing the tortoise in the hair race how slowly he talks. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, my other news. It's probably a bunch of bunny voice out of the turtle. So, our Algo cat was about to remove a lot of those paid ads. Right. And, so, Google kind of released a statement about what they thought about that. Right. So, dig this. They said, ultimately, and this is from Searching the Journal, quoting Google. They said, ultimately, we are making this update to improve the user experience on Google Search and to make that experience consistent across desktop tabs and in mobile. In fact, majority of our searches happen on mobile these days, which has no right-hand side ads. Hmm. Okay. I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. Makes sense. That was kind of obvious, though. Google, I was looking for the real answer. Like, we want to drive up costs and increase the competition so we can charge more per click. But, they just want to come out and say this. Well, the beauty is, is they don't even have to say, we can charge more per click because it's an open bidding system, so you guys can cause each other to charge more per click. Yeah. Exactly. So, simple law of supply and demand. Exactly. I'm really glad we had Algo Cat today because of this next review, or this review. This is from Sarah DeVille. Sarah DeVille. Punch in the face to Sarah DeVille. And this is. You don't punch girls, but punch in the face. Yeah. This one is. Five stars. Wow. I can barely do that. I discovered your podcast several weeks ago. My 10-year-old son and I listened to your podcast on Stitcher, and we're now hooked. I'm a real estate marketing virtual assistant, Tangle Reva, so Triangle, R-E-V-A. I listen to a number

of podcasts to help me stay on top of news and info across real estate and marketing. Your podcast has become my go-to for SEO. Go-to. I know that you will cover the latest SEO news and an interesting, helpful article. This lets me focus on my business and clients instead of reading a seemingly endless number of SEO blog posts every week. Because there's tons of them. Yeah. The podcasts are the perfect length for us to listen to in the car. 30 minutes. And the fast pace keeps us interested. Plus, my son especially loves your Algo Cat segment, Smile Emoticon. Thank you for your awesome SEO podcast. Sarah Davila. Yeah. Punch in the face to you. And to your 10-year-old son, we should punch real or small children. But we're doing it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. What's up? Next is from Melanie. Then we can help you. From Melanie Phillips. And this one is, Fast Us. We have recently found you from the UK loving the podcast. I have a quick question about social media. If you create a blog post, would you paste your content and image from the blog post into Facebook, G+, etc.? Or would you add a link to your blog post along with a line of text on there to make people leave social media to visit your blog? Which is the best way? Charles is uber cool. Keep up the great work. And she must have gotten tired because she didn't say anything about me. You can almost, in that blank space, you can almost see like Chris is good also. Hold on. Just a dab on Melanie for being uber cool right there. So dig that. Punch in the face to you, Melanie. Thanks for tuning in. Awesome question. And we'll get right to the point. No. Do not do that. Instead, make sure you're using, let's say if you're using WordPress, for example, and you created this great blog post that has all this awesome content and it's written well, that featured image, if it's

the correct size or if you're using something like OpenGraph plugin or something like that, will be the image that will show up in Facebook when you post it because it's associated with that link, with that URL. So do it that way. Now, if you want to add to that, I would suggest you summarize your blog in maybe two to three lines and use that as the summary supporting text for your link and image. Or like an attractive question. Exactly. Maybe a question that addresses some of the content you talked about. Maybe even a reworded version of the same title, just in a different way that it still maybe serves as some clickbait or something like that. And then I'd rinse and repeat on Facebook, on Twitter, especially on LinkedIn. Blog posts do well on LinkedIn. And then take this pro tip. Take that same image you're talking about. Put your title on that image. Almost make a meme out of it, if you will. Then use it on Instagram, too. Hopefully that'll work for you. Boom. Great. Punch in the face to you. Thanks for the question. And we did say five stars. That was actually just a question. So it was a five-star question. That's what we're going to say. It was definitely an uber cool five-star answer, though. Yeah. So you're, man. I'm taking it. We keep track. The ticks keep compiling up over here. I got like one or two. I'm probably over the course of 313. I'm killing you right by now. Yeah. I've reconciled myself. That's the wrong word. To second place. Yeah. Good thing there's only two of us. I might be third soon. I don't know. We could do pulse counting. I might even get third. All right. So that is the potatoes of our podcast. It is time to get into the meat. Yeah. And like we said, punch in the face to Lucinda. Lucinda Watros. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. I'm sorry if I'm not. She posted this article in Search Engine Journal. She says, don't

be sucked in by SEO lies. Hmm. You know, definitely clickbait title. Made me click. And then the reason I'm presenting it to you guys today is because everybody has an opinion. Yeah. And this is her opinion on what SEO lies are, more importantly, from an agency. And so it kind of really affected us because we're an agency. And so I want to dive in. I will say that I did post a comment disagreeing with a couple of these points. And so let's get started. She starts off by number one. She says, we don't need experience in your industry. And this is an SEO lie that she says people say, agencies say that we don't need experience. We don't need experience in your industry. She goes on to say, look for a company that specializes in helping companies like yours. You can use an agency that doesn't have much of a clue about the kind of work you do or what your audience wants to hear. And they can do a good job based on your guidance and research, but it won't have quite the same oomph to it. Maybe. Right. And I get what you're saying, Lucinda, but I disagree only because SEO takes time. SEO takes months. If SEO was a really quick deal where you could do it once instead of then forget it, then yeah, you probably should use somebody who focuses on what you do. But for the simple fact that SEO could take anywhere from three, six, nine, 12 months or longer, depending on your industry or how old your site is or how new your company is and all sorts of other things. Then working with an agency that just has a level of expertise about SEO, who knows the rights and the wrongs, the pros and the cons, then that could actually be better. Why is that? As long as we keep an open, flow of communication, we talk every week, we talk every month, we constantly email each other, then it only takes me a good 90

days to understand your industry. And what we need to focus on for your industry. Exactly. And we can generate optimal results because it's an agency, because we had the resources, we had the extra support, we have the things to get things done a little bit faster and a little bit more effective. So, so don't buy into the need to be a specialist in your industry. I get it. Right. Because there's some industries where, yeah, you definitely want a specialist handling this. I don't know if SEO is one of those. I think, I think like if restaurant, SEO for restaurant, right? Because it's so lean in terms of what you can do. I think there's value in using somebody who's, but does SEO or internet marketing in general and specifically restaurants. Because there's a lot of nuances, a lot of platforms that are specific to them. Number two. Two. She says, we rank, we guarantee number one rank in Google as a lie. Yeah. And I agree with her. Anybody who says that, run. Yeah. She says, matter of fact, a 2013 study showed that 91.5% of our traffic goes to page one. 4.8% of traffic goes to page two and 1.1% goes to page three. She says, if someone guarantees a number one ranking, Google, run fast in the other direction. No SEO company can promise this to any client. She's right. Yeah. She's absolutely right. You can't Google control the search rankings. You can't guarantee a number one ranking. And so we don't. Yeah. We do guarantee results though. Absolutely. And it's probably worth us taking some time to kind of explain the difference. So you guys on runoff and say, they just said they can guarantee number one ranking. Because we can't. No. We can't control how fast you get there. We can't control when you get there. We can control, however, what we do. And we've proven that what we do tends to generate great results. Yeah. We also know that if you get a certain set of traffic already and then

we implement what we do, then you will get some results. Better results. So I guarantee is that you will get calls, that you will get form submissions, that you will get engagement. And better placement. Yeah. And better placement. Yeah. Because that's what we're working for. But guaranteeing you first page, no, you can't do it because nobody can. Yeah. Except for Google. Except for Google. And they don't do what we do. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Number three. Number three. She says, we can fix your SEO in a month. The SEO company tells you that. Run. Like number two, run the other direction. Don't run. Extremely fast. Yeah. Call us. Or walk away and give them the James Harden look. Like really. But she says, SEO requires ongoing monitoring and adjustments to strategy based off of, based on what you see happening. She says, Google is constantly updating the algorithms to better improve services for their customers. As we've seen in the past with Penguin Panda and various updates. And again, she's correct again. SEO takes time. Takes way longer than one month. Kind of like I was saying earlier. If you're a brand new industry or brand new site into a very competitive industry, prepare for the long haul. You're in something white collar, like I don't know, accounting or lawyer or something like that, yeah, bring your sleeping bag. It's going to take some time. You know, maybe you're a new service, a service provider, but you're in a place like Houston where it gets really, really hot and you do AC. And guess what? It's just going to take some time. It's a ton of competition. So depending on your level of competition, how new your industry is, how old your site is, you got a brand new domain name. Yeah. It's just going to take some time. It will never take just one month. Now, let me say this. Similar to that guarantee, you can get results in one month. You know, if you're already getting traffic, you're already getting the consistent flow of

people to your site, then maybe you just had a wrong page ranking or maybe that content on that page isn't worded right. Or maybe the CTAs and the other elements on that page aren't setting the place to convert. And so. They don't exist or aren't in the right spot. Exactly. So we can get you some results in one month. Yeah. But we won't necessarily optimize your site and get your ranking better in one month. Yeah. Just ain't going to happen. Number four, she says lie number four, that SEO lies that people tell, outreach is the answer. She's talking about outreach like if you're a local business and you're dealing with like a national business. Matter of fact, she says a kitchen and bath design company operating in a small local area, it doesn't make sense for a national outreach. Right. She says what good would it do to feature a business that can't possibly have a national reach on a major niche site like HGTV? Ooh. I disagree, Lucinda. I disagree wholeheartedly. And the main reason is because, well, first off, from SEO perspective. That's a great backlink. That's an awesome backlink. By the way, I'm going to throw this out, Lucinda. If you have access to HGTV backlinks, let us know. We'll gladly take advantage of those for clients. Yeah, so if you can get a relevant backlink from any major national company like that, especially if this is relevant to what you do on a local level, hop on it, jump on it, take full advantage of it. Secondly, maybe you do do kitchen and bath designs, but maybe all of my clients love watching HGTV. Then if they see my ad there, they see my little guest blog post on their site. They see my expertness went up a whole new level. My ability to close that conversion went up to the whole next level because I'm being referenced on this national brand that they trust, that they watch, that they follow. So I'm going to disagree with that. I think local

companies can definitely benefit from a national outreach, especially in the service-providing situation. Now, having said that, should you spend that much time on national outreach? Oh, absolutely not. Some, maybe, little, whatever. It depends on how hard that link is to get. If it's a minor use of resources, go after it. Do it. Don't disregard it just because you're local. And that's probably what she was addressing, but man, I would say you should keep that in saying his SEO budget is better spent on other strategies. Yeah, yeah. Maybe. Like, it just depends. I don't know. It may be worth pursuing that HGTV link if you do bathroom remodels. Yep. I'm just saying. Yep. Number five. Five. She says your best content belongs on your website. Hmm. That's another interesting one. She says. She's saying that's a lie. Yep. She's saying that's a lie that your best content belongs on your website. I know. That's called the side eye right there. But sometimes it's a good idea, she says, but sometimes it's a good idea to use that stellar content on a niche website that would draw traffic. I guess that's kind of like putting your bathroom remodel content on HGTV, right? Just saying. Yeah. And I get the point. That's what she's saying. Sometimes you should do that. It would have to be your best content. It would have to be your best content. And so what I think, what I would say here is it depends on your company. It depends on the agency you're dealing with. How fast can you create great content? If creating great content isn't an issue, then yeah, post some of that content on some other sites. But if you struggle to come up with content, like it, use all of your resources to come up with this video, to come up with this blog post, put it on your domain and then share it. And so kind of gauge where you're at as a company to determine where you're going to place that content in. Number six. Six. She

says, lie number six, SEO is all you need. Boo. She says, good agencies would go beyond the basics of SEO-funded keywords, meta descriptions and tags to help you develop a full-fledged strategy that could include a unique blend of pay-per-click, content marketing, social media and other tactics. And she's right. Check. I totally agree with this one. Co-sign. Correct-a-mundo. Yeah. We totally believe that it takes all of that holistic approach to internet marketing. SEO is just kind of the foundation. SEO is what, you have to be optimized. Our smallest package is SEO and PPC and we're considering dropping it, right? So that you're taking advantage of other components. Yeah, because the next package has like SEO, PPC, social newsletters and things like that. But we realized that it really takes all of that. Matter of fact, what I added was that SEO and PPC work well together. People tend to get a higher click-through on their organic ads just because they see a paid ad. Twice. It definitely helps with branding. Here's another one. Content marketing and social media kind of go together. You know, if you're creating this great blog content like we talked about earlier, you have to share it. You have to tweet it. You have to Facebook it. And so, all of these things go together. So, any company telling you SEO is all you need, run the other direction. Yeah. Because that would not be accurate. Lie number seven. This is the last one. She says, you can't do it yourself. And now she's talking to the individual who may be talking to an agency and the agency has told a lie and told them you can't do it yourself. She says, yes, you can. It may take you a bit longer and you may not get the results of quality agency can provide. But just by landing here at SEJ, you're on the right track to learning the skills that help you on your SEO journey. I agree with that. Kind of, but not really. Change SEJ with this podcast. The

SEO podcast. Kind of, but not really. Right? And I say that because we had a client who frequented the SEO boss, the SEO journal, search engine watch, search engine round table. She went to everything and always flooded me with articles, which by the way, I had already reviewed because I do this weekly and wanted to more importantly implement every single thing that she read that she perceived was value or the correct. And a lot of times that just won't work. What works for one industry may not work for your industry. What works for one locality may not work for your locality. What works for them may not necessarily work for you. And if you don't have the expertise, the experience, the know-how, the database of clients to try these things on, then you could be setting yourself up for an algorithm penalty. You could be doing all sorts of things because you just don't know. Worst case scenario, you get hit with an over-optimization penalty because you've tried everything. And so I think it's key to have someone who can hold you accountable. Like, hey, we've tried that. That didn't work for this type of industry. Yeah. Experience. And here's why. It will work great over here. And here's why. Or, matter of fact, here are the things we've already done, which is kind of enough. We don't want to do much more because we don't want to get penalized. And so I would definitely say don't forsake the experience that comes with all that knowledge. Yes, you can go out and find all kind of articles and all kind of content about doing SEO yourself. If you listen to 313 podcasts, you will be an expert. But, if you haven't done it on several websites over the course of some years, then you may not have the experience to qualify your expertness. Hear that word again. There we go. So, I would say be literally trying to do it yourself. At least consult with some experts first. Yeah, you know, that certainly applies if

you are in a very non-competitive industry. Yeah, you're not competitive. If it's your personal site and maybe, you know, you have low competition and things like that, then absolutely do it yourself. And you probably do well. But, if it's competitive, you're going to suck. So, Lucinda, great article. Punching the face to Lucinda. I commented. I appreciate your comments. If you watch this and you read my comments on your post, hit me back. Let me know what you think about number one and number four and number seven in particular. Punching the face to you, though. Very cool. All right, do we have any what? Do I have any what? I don't think so. Nope. We do not have any blanks there or what news. So, hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, that's somebody who's interested in any aspect of internet marketing. That would be website design, social media. SEO, paper click, email marketing. Send them to us. They pay their bill. We pay you. We've got a great structure in place for our referral program. Please remember, we were filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas 77092. A transcript and video of this podcast are available on our website. Didn't we add something? And then I apparently forgot. A transcript. A video. A video are available on our website, eWebResults.com. We'll figure it out maybe. If there's something there. There's something that's supposed to be there. Oh, and the audio. And the audio can be found at eWebResults.com. Thank you guys for making us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of all of you all. Y'all. Y'all. In lieu of rodeo season. So, until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burras. I'm Charles Lewis. Y'all come back now. Are you here? Yeah, there you go. Check, sound check. Sound check, sound check. 3-1-3. It's your podcast, 3-13. The best

internet marketing at the earth scene. Sometimes I get my hands dirty, but my shirt clean. And I don't even really know what that means. Yeah. It's your podcast, 3-13. 3-13. 3-13.