Google Authorship Tips - Internet Marketing Podcast Number 204

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, so internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition. This is podcast number 204. You can look on the wall right behind us, and while we're looking at the wall right behind us, notice that there is a hashtag SEO podcast. Why is that there, Chuck? Well, hashtag SEO podcast is what you should be tweeting or Facebooking right now, because we've told you before, that's us. We want to claim that. We want to own SEO podcast, and you can help us doing that by hashtag SEO podcast. Be sure to tag us in it, at eWebStyle. That way we can link up and do all of our social stuff. Man, I feel like I'm ahead. No, you're doing good. Yeah, yeah. We're right on track. As always, there is a tip from a previous podcast. Maybe that's why we didn't do the tip first. This tip says, user experience is extremely important as it relates to on-page optimization. Yes, we were talking SEO last week and things you can do about your on-page optimization, and one of the things to keep in mind is the experience that whoever's visiting your site is going to have. Definitely keep that experience in mind when optimizing your site. What pages are they going to look at? How prominent is this phone number? What action do you want them to take? How easy will they be able to navigate? Those sort of things you must definitely keep in mind when optimizing your site. User experience is definitely important. Absolutely. It also is interrelated with what we call SIVO, search engine visitor optimization. If you enjoyed this podcast, if you appreciate that we've got better sound now than we did three weeks ago, certainly than a couple months ago, please do us one of two favors. In fact, you should do us both favors, or you could even do three. It seems like we're adding more and more favors. One

of the favors has only three steps. Let's go on to iTunes, create an account, and write a review. If you write a review, especially if you're in another country, please go ahead and send us an email. They said send us an email to podcast at e-webstyle.com. It just feels weird to say send us an email at podcast at e-webstyle.com. And we'll give you a punch in the face. I actually have a couple reviews, both iTunes and G+. We actually got three G+, local reviews. That's the other thing you can do for us. You can get onto our G+, local account and write a review. We've made it incredibly easy. First off, if you have a Webmaster Tools account, you have a G+, account. If you have a Gmail account, you have a G+, account. I think you kind of have to activate it, but that's a couple clicks. If you have a YouTube account, guess what? You have a G+, account. So, if you have any one of those, the easiest way to get to our G+, local page is to go to e-webstyle.com slash G+, or Google+, and there's one more. There you go. All of those will get you to our G+, local page where you can write us a review. Since we're there already, let's go ahead and... Oh, by the way, don't forget, we do have a referral program. If you have some SEO customers and you're not ready to handle them, send them our direction. You'll get paid. In fact, that addresses one of the issues here. So, here we have a G+, local review. Let's read them in order that we received them. This one's from Jonathan Brown. Five stars. Five stars. Great podcast. I always learn something from each podcast. There have been some audio issues. They have been resolved. But I can get past that for the great content. Plus, they are fun and entertaining. Remember, we are the Red Bull of SEO podcasts. It is actually safe to drive and listen to our SEO podcast. Oh,

I always thought you were going to say something along the lines of, we give you wings. We give you wings. We give you wings so that you can fly your website from position 10 to position 1. That's if you use our service, not just... Actually, people have said that that happens when they listen to our podcast. I promise you it's not osmosis. They're actually putting forth some effort and listening and doing what we're saying. It takes action. Here's another one. This is from a long-time listener, good friend, Dean Calhoun. What's up, Dean? Yeah, Dean. Thank you, man. We haven't punched you in the face in a while. Thank you so much. He's always interacting with us on our Facebook page. Which, by the way, you can interact with us on our Facebook page. The easiest way to get to it is facebook.com slash... E-Web Style. You can also interact with us on our Twitter account, twitter.com slash... E-Web Style. We have videos on our YouTube account, and that is youtube.com slash... E-Web Style. And you can always send us an email, podcast at... E-Web Style.com. Dean, who was five stars, says, awesome podcast, down to earth, guys. Sound has gotten ten times better. And I still don't think he's heard the new mic, so... Yeah, it's going to be like a hundred thousand million times better. That's a number. I think that number is actually called a Google. Yeah. Keep up the great work. Thank you, Punch in the Face, to Dean Calhoun. Next, let's just keep breezing through these. Rob Wool. Five stars! He says, have a listen, look to, at these guys. What? Yeah, so you can listen to or look at these guys. That's really... He's got a whole diagram in one sentence. A great help if you are interested in promoting your website in the search results. A patiff, thank you, for the in-depth answer. And we gave that answer to... It was... We'll put webdesign-engine.co.uk. We gave a good answer to him a while back. Go face and post to

the question. Yep. All right, well, that's what's up. That is what's up. Patiff to Mr. Rob Wool. And finally, an iTunes review. The title is Awesome. Oh, that's a great description. And it is five stars! And this is from MITDRX. MITDRX. Mitrix. Mitrix. For some reason, it makes me think of Max Headroom. Or Matrix. Yeah, that's probably better. Don't let the audio quality deter you. This is an awesome podcast with great content. By the way, that's a big punch in the face. When you're like, look, the audio sucks, but the content is so good, you should listen to it anyway. Yeah. And by the way, we fixed the audio. And finally, we have a question. Let's do a little bit of news, and then we'll get to the question. So I thought there was some cool stuff on news. There was a guy who fixed a bug on Facebook, right? Facebook does have a Fix Our Bug remuneration program, where you can actually get paid for fixing their bugs, or making them aware of the bug. I guess he didn't fix it. He just made them aware of it. What was the bug? I don't know. But it turns out he violated Facebook's terms of service, and so they didn't want to pay him. Right? But apparently the bug was significant enough. Somebody, they were on MSNBC or something, and they're like, look, if Facebook's not going to pay this guy, I'll pay this guy. Right? Because he's fixing bugs and protecting my privacy. I appreciate it. It actually ended up in one of those crowdsource funding things. Really, Facebook? Yeah. He got 12K. Crowdsource funding. So people were like, yeah, dude, I'll give you 10 bucks for making sure my stuff doesn't get stolen. So I thought that was pretty good. Facebook, that's really, really bad. That's lame. Yeah. That's like, that's doucheous. I have to believe that Mark doesn't really know about this and isn't keeping an eye on this, because he's a programmer. And if you catch a bug, that can be

a lot of effort to catch the bug and then to document it properly so that you can express it to Facebook so they can fix it. That's time. And, you know. They did that. By the way, how much staff time would it have cost, right, to find that bug? Anyway, Google is adding WAZ data to Maps. So I couldn't remember who bought them, I think, the last podcast. It turns out it was Google. And they're actually incorporating the WAZ data into Maps. W-A-Z-E dot com. It's kind of cool. I enjoy it. Steve Ballmer's retiring. Did you know that? Yeah. And announced it today. Obviously, CEO of Microsoft. He's not retiring today. When are you going to retire? This next year. And they're in the process. Bill Gates and other board members are going to be involved in figuring out how to replace him. Yeah. Yeah. And they asked him what his worst, what his biggest regret was. And he said, Vista. That's awesome. I think that's awesome. That's awesomely honest, and I concur, along with probably Windows NE, Windows 2000 Business Pro, and another one that. I would have to. And Windows 8. I know. I would argue that for obvious reasons, he couldn't say Windows 8. On our Facebook page, there's a cool slogan, there is no crying in SEO. Yeah. And then I like this one. There's a picture of Liam Nielsen, right, from. From Taker, not Taker. Taken. Taken. Yeah. You know where he's on the phone, right? And he's like, I don't know who you are or where you are, but when I find you, I'm going to ask you to remove those links. Yeah, because, and, you know, it takes an SEO to get that, man, especially if you're dealing with a situation where you need to, you know, a manual spam penalty or whatnot, and you're trying to remove links, it's difficult. It's difficult to find people who are linked, not difficult to find them, it's difficult to contact them and actually have them remove the links. We're getting

more and more questions about, from potential clients and existing clients, like what's going on with these links, these, you know, actually we're getting websites that are coming to us that have been flagged by Google, and then we're like, okay, yeah, we can fix that. It's not an easy process. It's not a fun process. We're going to have to hire Liam Nielsen to make it happen. So, yeah, it actually resonated with us, with things that have been going on here recently. And finally, a question from Facebook, Danielle Stewart, I have been listening to your podcast. I am really enjoying them. Love your approach and content. I am really interested in starting to market myself to help build websites, run social media marketing campaigns, and manage online brand management. What is the best way for me to get started? I have a lot of experience and have provided very good results in the past for various jobs and campaigns. I just don't know how to get started, any advice you can give me, and how I know how much to charge people to the best way to get new clients, et cetera, all those details. So you want to do everything we currently do. Yeah, right. So basically you want us to tell you how to be a competitor to us. Yeah. Are you local? I like to fill out the application. Yeah, be local. Fill out an application, and then, you know, and then we can take it from there. All right. So, and I'll give you some advice. The first thing you should do is make your own website and put your own website on the first page of Google for terms that people are searching for relevant to internet marketing. That's the first thing you should do. If you're not there, don't waste your time with anything else because, you know, clients are going to ask. Yep. At the end of the day, every time we give somebody a proposal, our prices aren't necessarily cheap, if you will. When people, you know, we can

justify the cost because if you go and search for SEO Houston or PPC Houston or online marketing Houston and several other phrases. SEO podcast. Yeah, we show. Not only do we show, but we show on the first page and most of the time above the fold. And that speaks volumes in regards to the service and the level of service we can provide. So, what was the name? Michelle, I think. No, Danielle. Danielle. So, yeah, work on your site first. Yep. Getting your site in the right position, getting your social going, your PR going because you, to familiarize yourself with it so you can, you know, be confident doing it for anybody else. Secondly, we're on podcast number 204. So, why don't you listen to, like, zero through, well, probably not that old because most of that stuff probably doesn't work anymore. Like, zero through 100. But maybe start at 120 and catch up. And that will be plenty of information about social and SEO and paid search and everything else. Yeah, if you're looking for any guidance, you know, just listen to all of our podcasts. And, like I said, get your own website. Get on your own. Make sure it kills it. Your website should kill it. You know, ours doesn't kill it right now. And guess what? Not yet. We're working on it. Yeah. Because we need to. There was a time when we weren't on the first page for Google. And we would, we'd actually, people would ask for references and we'd actually have to give them references. We no longer do that. We now say, Google SEO Houston. You will probably see us on two spots. One pay-per-click and one position three. I think SEO Houston. Google PPC Houston. And you'll probably see us in two positions. One PPC Houston, first position. So, we don't give references anymore. We just don't need to. And you know what? That is the potatoes. It is time to get into the meat of our podcast. So, I was on Search Engine Watch today, haven't

been there in a while. And I got an article from Jennifer. She says, seven tips from Google on using Google authorship. And I thought this was pretty cool because we had a client where we were doing some things with. And I needed to change up the authorship markup. And so, you know, we knew what to do. But when I came across the article, I thought we reviewed it. We shared it. A couple things, of course, I disagree with. And we'll take it from there. You're so disagreeable, Chuck. Read an article. As you're reading an article, do you now hear that in your head? Yep. I don't see it. I hear it, though. So, number one. Now, most of the article is actually pretty correct. Number one, she says, authorship is for articles and content by one author. This is key. You've got to understand that Google set that up so people who want to read and absorb content, they want to know who is the author of this content, who generated it, who wrote it, who published it. How can I find more by that person? By that person, exactly. So authorship and the whole avatar being shown helps to show that. But it's, like she said, it's for articles and content by one author. So if you have a post that I wrote and that Chris wrote, then if I don't want to relinquish my credit to all him, then there isn't a way we can put authorship on that page. It's for one person. Right. So keep that in mind. As an example, we get our podcast transcribed. It gets split into three pieces. And effectively, we put one piece by me, one piece by Chuck, one piece by me, and rotate that through so that, I mean, Chuck is as much an author of these podcasts as I am. So that's kind of a way that we've figured out to do that. Definitely. The other one I would recommend either a paintball tournament or arm wrestling if you both wrote an article.

Yeah, and see who gets it. Yeah. Or even make that arrangement prior to, you know, understanding that eventually we'll publish this article and authorship needs to be set up. I, you know, as long as you make that arrangement up front, then it is what it is. Maybe a part one, part two. Exactly. Good way. So number two, authorship isn't for product description pages or property listings. This is key. So if you think about, let's say, like an MLS page, for example, you don't really want authorship set up there if the content on that page is being pulled from several sources. And you have this page with just listings. That's not what Google is looking for. You can't be the author of that, if you will. Same thing with, like, let's say, an e-commerce site. Like, you may click on the category page or whatnot, and on that category page, there are several categories of products. That's not the place to be setting up authorship because, again, that's not a page of content. That's more of a listing of resources and products. And so you don't want to do that. It's definitely, speaking of e-commerce, this isn't even on the list, but I'll say that. But you definitely don't want to set up authorship on a product description page, and that description is duped content from the manufacturer or something like that because it's clear at that point that you're not the author. You didn't write it. So don't set that up. Number three. Wow, that's kind of bad. Number three was authorship doesn't work for multiple authors. They put yet here. So I'm curious to see how there may be some sort of markup that will come that will allow you to tag which content you actually wrote. I think it's a while before we get to that. Number four. Authorship is for real people, not personas. Now, I would love and can't wait until Google allows it to be, and I won't say for personas because that sounds kind of fake, like a fake.

Well, it's the right term. That's the right term. It's like the SEO rapper. It's a persona. That's different than Moe Sirius or a poet and prophet or anything like that. Right. You're absolutely right. And so I can't wait for Google to allow that. Right now, everything I post, whether it's gospel related, whether it's internet marketing related, whether it's food related, I post a lot about different things. They all have to come from Charles Lewis. I actually think it should be author and company, right? Charles Lewis from eWebStyle. Well, and if you were to move on to another company, it would be associated with that because the company should get some credit for that, too. That's what I think. Especially since the company, well, and indirectly, the company is listed, which is the next one. The next one is real versus author versus real versus publisher. And so when you're setting up your author tag, you set up yourself as the author, and then you set up your company as the publisher. The only problem is publisher doesn't work with the author tag. And so meaning. You don't see an icon of, in this case, eWebStyle. Exactly. You don't see that icon right there. You see. You don't even see that on our website. That's how amazing Google is. You only see the author's avatar. And so I think they're working on it. But right now, authorship is not for people. I mean, it's not for personas. It's for people. You need to change that. Because what, you know, my question is, in a situation, let's say we had multiple authors, right, writing content for a specific company. Wouldn't it be okay to just have the company as the author of all of that content? Yep. As a company, I really believe in employees having, getting credit. Mm-hmm. And I should have the option. So maybe if somebody leaves, then I may want to migrate that back to just company content, right? Because what if they leave to go, right, for, I don't know. A competitor.

Or, yeah, somebody else. Some negative site. Yeah, so you want to be able to control your content. So, yeah, author versus publisher. I will be key in saying this. Be careful in setting up authorship because a lot of times people who don't know how to do it, and I've done this before I've learned, you go to Google, you get some instructions. On the instructions, it says it references the publisher link first. And so you'll set it up, and you'll wonder why your avatar isn't showing because you're using real versus publisher instead of real versus author. Right. So be sure to have the correct tag on the inside. Number six, for articles in different languages, link to the same Google Plus profile. Duh. Especially since you can only have one, right, with that email address. So it doesn't matter kind of what we were saying earlier. If I have one site in English, one site in French, and another site that's on a totally different subject matter, they all should link to the same Google Plus profile. For now. And last one, at least number seven. This is the one I disagree with. How to prevent Google from showing authorship. Oh, I'm sorry. That was early. Yeah. I put why. Why would you want to prevent Google from showing authorship? Like, the signs of how click-throughs go up and how people feel more confident clicking it. Like, I can't think of a reason why you would not want to show authorship. Yeah. So there is a way. Don't put authorship. Exactly. I mean. Don't set it up. Don't set it up. Oh, is that what they said? That's what they said. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's why I put a question mark. Like, duh. How else do you not get it? Yeah. Just don't set it up. How do I not get in that house illegally? Don't break in. Don't get into that. Yeah. So, punch in the face to Jennifer. I don't. I think you was reaching on number seven, Jenny. But I got you.

But, yeah. I can't think of any reasons why you wouldn't want to set up authorship. I mean, if you don't want. If you're scared to set up authorship, you don't want people to know you wrote this content. Don't publish it. It just seems weird. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah. It reminds me of all the comments we read. And I'm like, wow, you really shouldn't put your picture next to your comment. Yeah. That's just not smart. Yeah. And not cool. He's being a douche. Hey, we didn't do that. Hey, remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. Do we have any blank stare or anything? Um, yeah. We do got blank stare, actually. I'm sorry. What? Yeah, what's there? Here we go. What? Yeah, so this one goes to Yahoo, actually. They, um. They get a lot of blank stare, don't they? So, in July, they actually topped Google as the most visited search site. Okay. Just for July. Okay. And so, Comscore released the numbers. I don't know what that means. Right? So, some of the comments were, it could have been because they recently purchased Tumblr. And so, that could have had something to do with it. Oh, okay, yeah. They got more site visits. Right? Either that. And I'm chunking it up to the fact that football season's starting. Also. I'm in two fantasy football leagues with Yahoo. Both on Yahoo. Yeah. I think that's. You use Yahoo once a year, right? Yeah, for football season. Yeah. And then, that's it. Wow. Would you migrate to another fantasy football? Yeah? If there was a decent one out there? Yahoo is great. Like, I like that one better than NFL.com. Right. So. So, maybe there's a little project. Yeah, I would. To answer your question. As long as it was good enough, as it was Google, or I don't know, it was sponsored by E. It would be like, you know, I could see how Google would do it now. Introducing fantasy football, and we

can import your Yahoo stuff. We import your Yahoo stuff, and then we actually have cameras that follow the football players that you have selected for your team around. Yeah, we have player street view or something. Exactly. I wonder what he's seeing right now. Oh, I didn't want to see that. Yeah. He's not starting this week. Not going to make it. Yeah. I can dig it, Google. Make that happen. Now, you can beta test it on me. Yeah, maybe that WAZ data will help you. All right. You have tuned in to the most popular internet marketing and SEO podcast in the country, in the U.S., in the world, in the universe, across the plains of your... Something. Thank you guys for tuning in. We are the most popular because of you. Again, go ahead and write an iTunes review for us if you can. Go on to our G Plus account and write a review if you can. We really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Verres. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up eyebrow.