Google Places Optimization - #seopodcast 143

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. We know that there's some people watching live. Thank you guys for watching live. Thank you for your patience. And as you can see, we are exactly on time. Yeah, that's what I was laughing at. Right as you said that Bill tweeted back, he said, it's always your fault. Listening live and commenting. Thank you guys. You are listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because of you and you over there. Right there. You ducking under your desk. I see you right there. Yeah, don't do that. It's cobwebs and your cords are tangled. And bubble gum. The reason we're the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes is because you guys listen and because you guys write reviews. If you have not written a review. In fact, before we even talk about writing reviews, if you're in front of some sort of electronic device that has the ability to tweet, Facebook, plus one, stumble, dig it, trip it. Trip it. Trip it. Trip it. Trip it. We could have a cross between Cheech and Chong and Bob and Doug McKenzie. Trip it. Trip it, man. Anyway, get onto iTunes. That was your Cheech impression? Yeah. Okay. I was actually in basically a drugged out skit last Saturday on stage. It was really good. It was maybe a little inappropriate because I was like a stoned, like way stoned six-year-old. Oh, wow. But it was like, you know, anyway, therapeutic drugs. Unfortunately, no. Anyway. So, go onto iTunes, create an account, post a review, and then send us an email. And you can send us an email, podcast at e-wolfstyle.com. Send us that email. Let us know that you submitted a review, and we'll read your review on air. We'll give you a punch in the face. We actually have a sound effect with a punch based on this review. This is

kind of cool. Oh, I realized that you weren't tatted up today. Yeah. I even took one off. I just felt like it was getting overdone. You're running out of room. Ten is enough. First one is actually from iTunes. Start looking like little Wayne. Yeah. I just need it, like, head to toe. Tats on the neck have to, like, hurt. I have to think that it hurts really bad. What a great tool for helping grow a website. This is by StiversLegal.com. It reads, what a great podcast. I started a new website to expand my law practice, and these guys gave me all the tips I need to start seeing my traffic grow along with my client base. Exciting and educational. And you'll be touching base with him today, right? Yeah, I'll be touching base with him today. He says, man, Chuck, I watched the podcast. You guys are doing great. I guess I should go do a review. Yep. So, appreciate that. Punch in the face to you. Adam, yeah, I'll reach out to you a little bit later. Let's get, I'm going to skip that. I've got some more reviews to read, but I'm going to jump into news real quick. Okay. And before we get into news, do not forget, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yeah, we'll go get that. And we have a mantra. Don't be a deuce. Don't be a douche. In news, I saw Best Buy. The comment of the article was, is Best Buy destined to go the way of Circuit City? And I'll tell you what, this is something, I don't, it was probably about eight years ago, somebody mentioned this. I heard it on the radio, and I started thinking about it, and this person on the radio was incredibly preachy about what you should and shouldn't do. And they said, is she, I think it was Dr. Laura or something, she said, if you go to a store and preview a device and then go online and buy it, you're actually doing something

wrong. Yeah. Because, and if you think about it, we need Best Buy. Where are we going to go to play with our electronic gadgets and go check out TVs? So, you know, it may be great that you're saving money by going to Best Buy and finding the right TV and then using your Amazon Prime and having it delivered the next day. But, if you keep doing that, yes, that's going to push them to keep their prices low, but there's only, there's some level where they can't compete. You know, if you're, all you're doing is saving taxes, then you're penalizing a local company that is providing a legitimate service to you, the ability to see the TV, and you're ripping them off. Well, I understand logic, but at the same time, as a consumer, it's not my problem. You know what I'm saying? It's not my issue. So, what do we do when Best Buy goes away? Go to Fry's. I mean, but seriously, speaking of Fry's, maybe that's something Best Buy should consider. I think one of the reasons they're in that situation now is due to so many locations. I think, as a matter of fact, I read the article. They're sitting some of them down to come up with smaller mobile-type centers. And so, I think that they should, uh... I wouldn't think smaller mobile would help, right? The concept is just to have one location and, well, so if that trend continues, though, then people go to Fry's and see the TV and then buy it from Amazon. I mean, obviously, it seems like Fry's business model is working, so maybe that's not too big a deal. But, you know, I think it's something that I had never thought about until I heard it, and it was, frankly, true about most things. Like life. And it kind of opened my eyes, like, wow, you know, they are providing a service, and if the service they're providing is access to see the equipment, and they don't get paid when you access to see

the equipment, you know, frankly, that's a business model that's going to go away. So, I just thought that was worth mentioning. Google Drive is about to be launched, or it has been in beta or something. And similar to Dropbox, they're thinking that Google Drive is going to be free up to 5 gigs. Dropbox is free up to 2 gigs. Yeah. And I was checking, I actually have a paid Dropbox account. It's at 6, so I could probably trim that out a little bit and switch over to Google Drive. And the HTC The One is coming out. I literally bought my new phone not too long ago and had debated waiting for it. I think, you know, it's still going to be a while before it's on Sprint, but it did get launched, and they were comparing the phone on the HTC to the phone on the iPhone. The camera. Not the phone. The camera on the HTC. Yeah. Wow. I will take a sip of coffee now. And it will be quick because I have to read a couple reviews. Yeah. Go ahead. All right. Go Cloud Communications. This is on our Facebook page. By the way, you can find us on facebook.com slash eWebstyle. Or twitter.com slash eWebstyle. Or youtube.com slash eWebstyle. And this one is on our Facebook page. It says, I listen to your podcast every week. I find you funny and informative and not necessarily in that order. Yeah. I read that one. You've given me a lot of good ideas for the various sites and online presence properties I manage. Thanks, guys. A big punch in the face to you. Boom. Back at you, Mr. Goat Cloud. Goat Cloud. Yeah. Go check them out. Goat Cloud. I'm assuming he's at GoatCloudCommunications.com or something. And the next one is from Rhythm Passport Kia. First off, Kia, thanks for the CD. It's awesome. I've been listening to it. Oh, best CD. Okay, yeah. It's really good. I've got a lot of money and child. Kind of international, yeah. Yeah, very mellow. It'd

be really good as background music for Trip It. A big shout out to you both and a big, right there, P-I-T-F. Punch in the face. Okay. Oh, that's not the way. I thought you were spitting. You really shouldn't spit on camera. Yeah, like this kind of rude trick. All the way from the UK. Okay, yeah. I've been listening to your podcast on SEO. They are great, informative, and funny. Only discovering them about a week ago, but listened to about 10 already. Awesome. I submitted my site. Yeah, we're on 143. RhythmPassport.com. Actually, I spoke with him after he wrote this. I had a good long one-hour conversation with him. And it was great. He's a guy who's got a passion about what he's doing, about his website. And that's always great to see. And I love international music, and so that's something that he's doing. Basically, it's a site where you can, if there's an international band playing in the London area, you can actually find out where they're playing on his website. He even breaks it down. So if you want to find a Senegalese artist who you may not even know the name of the artist, but you just want to hear some music from Senegal, you could pull up Senegal, and if there's an artist playing in London from Senegal, he'll have it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool. And I think that's got opportunity to expand into the cities that could support it. I think Houston probably could support it. Yeah, huge international situation here in Houston. Yeah. You know, of course, so the first four largest cities in the U.S., you've got London, Paris, I'm sure. So it would be a pretty niche little product, and so it was exciting to chat with him for about an hour, and he paid me with a CD, which was really, really cool, and really great music. I'm a fan of Manu Chow anyway, so that was great. All right, that's it. We have reached our Gino time limit. Okay, so I've

got a punch in the face to one of our, I think that's it. Okay, I got it. Well, since I'm talking Twitter, first off, if you're in front of Twitter right now, or G+, or Facebook, or anything like that, go ahead and tag us at E-WebStyle. Let us know that you're watching this, hashtag SEOpodcast143, and then tag us at E-WebStyle. That way we can retweet you or whatever you want to do. The reason I use hashtags in G+, and in Facebook, even though they're not kind of supported, because I think eventually they will. So, I mean, and if you would, I've realized that if I use a hashtag in a Facebook post or comment, and then I turn around and search, well, not in Facebook, I haven't noticed it there, but I have noticed it in G+. If I turn around and search for that hashtag. Like Google search for it? Google search for it, those results will show. Yeah, makes sense. So, yeah, hashtag SEOpodcast143. Talking Twitter, punch in the face to at Justin Romant. So, he hit me up, and he asked a couple questions, and so we'll answer those briefly. One of them was about places. How do you get your places page to rank for certain key phrases? And I'll go ahead and address that. First things first, complete your profile. 100%. 100%. Probably 110, because add a little bit extra. Even when it says 100%, there's probably, I think, space for another image, space for another video, a little more text. So, but at a minimum, it's got to be what Google considers 100% complete. Now, and part two of that question was for certain key phrases. So, what you do is, first off, make sure you use the categories that Google Places page already lists for your industries. Then, they give you an option to add more categories, custom categories. Those custom categories should be keyword-friendly and relative to what you offer. Right. And then, yeah, so do that, and yes, fill out everything, and frankly, make sure your

site is optimized well. Because as we talked about on the last podcast, that your Places page can show up with an internal link to your current website. And so, your Places page has to be complete, and your site needs to be optimized fairly well. His second question was, how do you deal with negative publicity? And I'm kind of shortening it up. He gave me a longer explanation. Guy had some bad press about his business. Since then, that's partially false. Right. And, you know, but it's when you search his company, that it comes up. We have a good example. In our Google Places page, one of the reviews says, this service sucks. Yeah, from Moe. Or something like that, from Moe, yeah. Yeah. So, the way you deal with that is you, well, go ahead. You call him, and you say, is Seymour what's there? Moe. Yeah, but, uh, I'll get you. Yeah. No, but what you do is you have to suppress it. I mean, the only way you can get rid of Bad Pub is to get more Good Pub. And so, unfortunately, Bad Pub travels faster than Good Publicity does. But I would pursue better reviews. Write a comment. Yeah. Right, because you are. Yeah, definitely respond to it. Yeah, respond to that bad review. Get links, get other industry people you know, especially people who have maybe an authority in that certain area who have a publication that people tend to read, have them give you positive comments and reviews on it. And those will begin to kind of overshadow the Bad Pub. But make sure you address the Bad Pub. When people do see it, they also need to see your response. That's reputation protection. Yeah. So, hopefully, hopefully that helps. Take it for what it's worth. And let me know how that works out. You know, I forgot to give the tip from last podcast. Poof, poof. Yeah, was that, that wasn't a pfft. No, that was a pfft. Yeah. Which is the sound that you get when you kick

somebody in the shins. The tip was, spend time. I thought you got an ouch. That, too. There's the sound and then the response. Spend time on your relative author tag to improve SERP visibility. Yeah, the author tag. Briefly. We talked about that last week. That is when you search for something and your search engine results pages shows you listings. And next to those listings, you may see an avatar. Avatar is usually pulled from your Google Plus profile. And what Google is doing is saying, well, what has happened is they're showing your avatar because that's proved that you authored that particular article. And so, in order to do that, you have to... Go back and listen to podcasts. What did we call it? We called it the Bermuda... Bermuda Triangle. No, that wasn't it. Well, it started, yeah, no, it started as the Bermuda Triangle of something. What do we call it? The Relative Author Bermuda Triangle. Okay. I wrote it down. Okay. Well, yeah, what he said. But, yeah, so you have to do that. And at the end of the day, it makes your search engine listing a little bit more visible. Yeah, well, you've seen it where, you know, maybe there are a couple of authors with their avatars, and usually their avatars are pictures of the actual author, and those listings stand out. So, take the time to go back and listen to podcast number 142. Figure out, frankly, you can Google it. Figure out how to do relative author tag and make sure it's done properly. There are ways to test it. And then when your results start showing up for those pages that you've actually spent the time to do the relative author tag on, your little avatar or an image of you will show up. And so, I had a few articles here. We're kind of short on time, so we'll just do this one. Okay. This one's pretty cool. I pulled it from a search engine journal from Melissa. How to maintain a good relationship with your SEO

and web firm. Yeah. Pay bill. Step one. Yeah. But she put a few things on here. And one of the things I'd like to highlight is that, first off, make sure that the firm you're dealing with is reputable. Yeah. Make sure that they actually know what they're doing and that it's worth, you know, paying the bill. Yep. You know, do your research. Do your research on any company you deal with, if it's us or whoever. Make sure that you're going to have a happy working relationship and that they know what they're doing. Yep. So, one of the things she says, number one, was show respect. The more, the better. You know, we have skills to create a foundation and you should respect that. I agree. But the one thing I didn't really like about the article was that it was very one-sided. Yeah. It doesn't. Yeah. Because I think you should use Reagan's trust and verify, right? Yeah. I respect you and I also want to see results. Results. Yeah. So, I think that's a, most of these should be a two-way street. You know, we should respect the client. Yeah. Right? You know, because that's all. They're a business owner. They're coming to us. And so, we are mutually helping each other. A good way to deal with clients, I, in the book, The E-Myth, it says, the client is not always right. And it is our job to make sure the client feels like he's right. Right? So, that pulls out, because everyone's like, you know what? The client isn't always right. And people keep this mantra of, oh, the client's always right. No, they're not. Yeah. And you should make them feel like they are right. And that resolves all conflict. I think that's a great way to approach it. Number two is don't be condescending. When you behave in a condescending manner, you're doing the relationship. I agree with this. I haven't experienced it here. I think it's more likely to go the other way, right? I see, like, an SEO

firm is more likely. You know, you get a really talented SEO guy, you know, who just really is all his ducks in a row. He knows how to just knock it out of the park. And he might sit with somebody who doesn't know much. It's more likely he's going to be condescending to the client. Well, what I've noticed, I haven't experienced that here. But at previous firms I worked at, clients who have some familiarity with SEO, like they've done it before, and frankly, they think they know it. Right. They'll talk to you like, you know, I know more than you. Yeah. I'm paying you to do this. Go do it. Blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, don't do that because it won't work. Remember, you have responsibilities too. Yes, if you're a client and you come to us, I need your pictures. I need your content. I need to know, I need you to have this conversation with me about your business. I need to know your target audience. I need to know your demographic. I need to know what you want to accomplish, you know, throughout the term of this contract and the next three or four years after that. You know, I need to know these things. So, participate. It's your responsibility to give that information to your firm. Number four, don't be an email or texting bully. People who, I get those, you know, but I'm quick to place a phone call immediately. Right. Yeah. You know, don't email me, beat me up, and then when I call you. Be nice to me, yeah. You know, how was your day, Chuck? Yeah. You know, no, don't do that. It's not a good look. I don't do it, don't do it. Yeah. Man up. Let's see here. Don't expect hand-holding in unlimited time. Yeah. You know, I agree with this one, but I think it's based on the client. If we get a lot of business owners who, frankly, aren't experienced with internet marketing. And so, even though it's more time-consuming, even though

the amount of time spent may not be equal to what we're charging them, frankly, it's still worth doing that hand-holding, you know, just for the sake of educating the client and really it's building that relationship. Well, and the goal is you do that in the beginning and you educate the client a little bit more and, you know, that kind of tapers off as that relationship continues. Yeah. Don't treat your SEO or web marketing person like an employee. It's a vendor. I think you should look at it as a vendor. You pay UPS to ship your stuff. You know, you pay Comcast for your internet services. You pay your web people for your marketing. And so, you know. Was this comment relative to, like, asking them to do other things? Like, can you make me coffee also? Well, you won't have unrealistic expectations, you know, doing stuff that's not agreed upon. We're not your employee. We work for ourselves, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so, we don't have to reply to a phone card email immediately. Right, right. Right, so that sort of thing. You should get a response. You know, we try to respond to everything, you know, pretty quickly. Right. You know, but, yeah, if you email me at 9.59, I may not email you back at 10. Right. You know, maybe 11. You know what I mean? But you'll get it. And that's PM. He's really dedicated. Yeah. You know, he's interesting because I'll be up. You know, I'll be up. If I'm up and I get your email, I'll respond. So, excuse, take this time to say excuse all typos and things like that. Short messages. Yeah. But I will respond. Keep in mind, you're not the only client. Yeah. Yeah. Listen. Listen. Open your mind. I think this is a good one because some clients come in, business owners come in with this kind of preconceived notion of how it's going to work, what they should do, this is what you need to do, and I'm just paying y'all to do

it. Right. When actually, I'm an expert. Chris is an expert. Like, we know what to do and why it's going to work. And what not to do. And what not to do. Yeah. And so, what'd you say? We'll give our recommendation and then we'll do what you ask. Yeah. And we will vehemently support what we recommend and then we'll do what the client wants. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll, you know, tell you you shouldn't put a picture of you and your dog on there. But if you demand it, then there will be a picture of you and your dog on there. Yeah. And then we'll change it after the month two when you realize you shouldn't have a picture of you and your dog on there. That's the hand-holding part where we can brainwash them slowly. No dog. No picture of you and your dog. Mm-hmm. Number ten, don't expect advice for free. I disagree with that one. Yeah, look at our podcast. I know. It's fundamentally different than how we think. I think giving it, especially to a business owner. I mean, I think it's worth giving that advice. I think it's worth sharing tips and information that could help them. I mean, frankly, that's how we get referrals. You know, if you help people, then they'll respect that. They'll honor that and, you know, compliment you with, here's my friend who runs this business and he needs help with his Google stuff. Right. That's how they tend to say it. And so, um... And in my networking group, I'm the Google guy, so I get the Google stuff. So, yeah, we give advice for free, man. You know, this podcast is advice, frankly. If you like it, tweet about it. This one was kind of interesting. Don't ask your friends what they think about what we are doing. And so, but I think this is more web design related. You know, our web design is aimed at meeting the needs of your target markets, not to please you or your friends. And so, I

kind of concur, but I do feel like the client should be happy with what the final product did. And frankly, the client's significant other should also be happy. Yeah, I kind of, I kind of, you know what, you can say it. Like, you can put that on your list and every client will show it to their friends. Exactly. I think that's not even worth including in the list because what are they going to do? Hey, look at my new website. Friend. Yeah. You look at my new website. And what's the friend going to do? I mean, we tend to look for flaws and things when we see them. And we're like, oh, they could fix this and this and this. So, that's just going to happen. I mean, don't put it, take it off. Scratch that off the list. Scratch that off the list. There's my virtual finger stylus. Scratch. So, that was that list. So, it was pretty cool. I think, you know, I wanted to go through that because we're a firm. And we deal with clients, lots of clients. And I was impressed by the list. Well, reading the list kind of impressed me about us. That make sense here? Yeah, yeah. Reading the list kind of impressed me about us because we don't follow that mode. Right. We give advice for free. We'll hold hand clients. We'll, you know, I mean. Based on salary alone, you know, hold handing a client and walking them through a process, we'll probably lose money, frankly. Right. You know, but if it's worth doing that for that business owner to understand, then it's worth doing. Well, and our business model is the long-term relationship with our clients. And so, you know, that hand-holding is what fosters that value that, you know, convinces the client to sign the next contract. And, you know, in four years' time, we may lose money in the first six months because we're doing so much hand-holding. And in four years, you know, it makes us a really profitable company with

a really solid customer base. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I've got blanks there. All right. Mm-hmm. This is posed blank. I think it's live land on my eyeball. Wow. Okay. So this blank stare is interesting because, remember, a few podcasts ago, blank stare was about Blackberry and how the CEO got in and he said that he didn't think they needed to change. We're good. We don't need to change it. What are you talking about? We're good. Have you looked at the chart? Is the chart you're looking at turning 90 degrees? It's reversed. You know, something that's going down is not going up. But so anyway, so their new CMO, new CEO and everybody came in. So they released their last quarter numbers. Right. Wow. It's not good. Revenue dropped $4.2 billion. Wow. Like what percentage? Does it have a percentage on that? 18%. Wow. That's huge. Sales dropped 21%. But the article I read made a decent comment. It said that hopefully they're at the bottom. Meaning, I mean, once you're at the bottom, one thing you do is go up, you know? Isn't that what you should say after any massive loss? Well, hopefully we're at the bottom now. The positive thing was Blackberry Playbook sales went up. Right. So 500,000 of them. Wow. And so the comment, the first comment was hilarious. And the comment dude says, yes, I was a strong Blackberry user. I held on to it as long as I could. My job required me to get an iPhone. So at first, I was the guy walking around with two pistols. Two pistols. One, the six-shooter Blackberry. Right. And two, the ultra-high-speed Glock iPhone. Democulator. He said that over time, he realized he was reaching for the democulator and not the six-shooter. He said, so now, his six-shooter sits on his nightstand and they just have awkward stares at each other. I remember when I used to go with you. The comment below him said, yeah, mine moved from the nightstand until inside the drawer. And I just bust out laughing

because mine is inside the drawer. Right by the nightstand. Right in the nightstand drawer. It's ready to go. It's ready to go. It's loaded. Yeah, it's, yeah. But, yeah, so, poe, Blackberry. Oh, well. And you liked the playbook, right? Like, you were sweet on it. It was okay. I test drove one. Talking about Best Buy stuff, you know. I test drove one. I was a Blackberry fan, you know. So, yeah, I'm an Android tablet now. I'm an Android phone. And probably soon to be. iPad-ing it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's, my phone, the Galaxy S2 Android, I love it. It's an awesome phone. It's faster, thinner. It's an awesome phone. And the pictures are just phenomenal. It's crazy. Yeah, so no longer need a point and shoot. Did we cover, like, all of our, we did our Facebook, we did our Twitter, we, all right. So, you have been listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. This was podcast number 143. And we appreciate you guys tuning in. Make sure there's two places that you can put a review. We covered iTunes. Also, go to e-webstyle.com slash SEO podcast. Just under the videos, you'll see a Google Plus account. Go ahead and go there and submit a review. Only do that if you think you're getting value out of this podcast or if we make you angry and... If your name is not Moe. If your name is not Moe. I will get you. Crank Colin Bart. Actually, our whole network here is about Bart is Simpsons characters. We don't have a Moe. We need a Moe. Do we? No. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. I'm Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now.