How to Get the Most From Your Mobile Site - #seopodcast 164

Hi, welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I made it. I almost didn't pull that one out. It was like diving. There's market somewhere. You are watching and or listening to the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of all of you. Thank you guys for making us. You're right there. You're right there. You who just now logged on, thanks for tuning in. Thank you so much for tuning in. We have a blast here. You're going to learn a little bit about SEO. You're going to learn a little bit about internet marketing. I actually was going to throw a little bit of physics at you because it's just kind of cool today. I didn't have that much news. As always, we cover a little bit of our previous podcast with a tip. The tip from the previous podcast is you should audit your website from time to time with a proper checklist to make sure you are maximizing your SEO efforts. Definitely want to make sure that whatever SEO efforts or campaigns that you're applying to your site, that they're up to date with the latest algorithm changes with the latest things that are going on to keep your site ranked. For example, if last time you've done some SEO on your site and did an audit was a couple years ago, then you've probably been affected by a Pandora Penguin update. Maybe your social is not good enough and G Plus is probably not active. If you're doing an audit at least quarterly or twice a year even, then you can make sure that your site is up to date with the latest trends, techniques, and things necessary for proper SEO. One of the things that often happens is you're making changes to your website, you're changing the structure, and you get 404, pages that aren't found. Definitely. Two things about that. One, make sure you have a custom 404 page. We tend to write a 404 page that fires off an email to someone here in the

office so that we're aware of it. And you'd be surprised how many of those happen. It's just crazy. And the other thing is to run a link checker software. We use Xenu, Z-X-E-N-U. And use that. Phone on? Yeah, apparently my phone is on. And blank. There are some blank stare news for you. Yeah, I had him right there. So have your link checker go through and find all the missing links. That's one of the things you can do. Please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is, Don't be a deuce. And if you're in any position to do so right now, go ahead and tweet. And you can tweet. Hashtag SEO podcast space 164. Make sure you tag us at ewebstyle. That way we can link up with you, network, and do all of that social stuff that we love doing. All right, so I have literally one piece of news, and we actually have an algorithm cataclysm. Yeah. We have an algorithm cataclysm. All right. The algorithm cataclysm is, as you know, the new iPhone is out. As you, if you even opened up a web browser and it's not, it's homepage, it's not your home, it's not your website's page. That doesn't even make any sense. If your homepage is not your own business's page, if it's actually a news source, then you also know that the new iPhone has some limitations in maps. Yeah. Because Apple has decided not to use Google Maps. They're actually using Apple Maps, we'll call it. Apple Maps, yeah. And I think they're doing something with Tom and. Yeah, TomTom is the actual street provider. Local Ease and Axiom are the local providers. So the reason this is an algorithm cataclysm, in the past, we only had to focus on Google Local Places, which became Google Plus Local. Now you also need to focus on Local Ease, and that's E-Z-E, and Axiom, which is A-C-X-I-O-M. Make sure that the businesses you're working with or your business is listed in those

so that you can make sure that it's in Apple Maps. That you can be listed on an app on an iPhone. By the way, remember, there are 5 million of those devices out there already. Not to mention anybody who's upgrading their iOS is ending up with Apple Maps. Yeah. So, that's definitely an algorithm cataclysm. It's another thing that we have to do. Little piece of news. California law stops companies from demanding usernames and passwords for social. So, I don't, like, first off, why would they do that, and how do they think that that's acceptable? Like, I don't get it. Yeah, I think it's one thing as an employer or, you know, someone whose job it may be to hire someone. Okay, yes, I will look at your social profiles and kind of see what I can find. But, I think demanding your login credentials is a little bit much. So, you think it was done in the hiring process, typically, or maybe in follow-up processes so that they know what's going on? I just think that's bizarre. Yeah. I don't understand how a company could think that's appropriate. Now, I certainly think using your Facebook page, anything that you have public on your Facebook page, to make decisions about whether to hire you is only reasonable. Yeah. If you're on your Facebook page and, yeah. And you're doing dumb stuff, yeah, then you're not going to get a job. Can't have you representing the company. That's for sure. Hey, no tears. I saw that. I was happy for you. I said, man, you've been spending a lot of time at the tattoo shop. We are just overloaded here. We've got actually five reviews. I wanted to get to those just in a second. This is actually pretty interesting. It's relevant to GPS, so bear with me as I go through this. I'm listening to A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. He's the incredible physicist who's in the wheelchair. Oh, he's the physicist Simon. Yeah. I don't know if you know him. Oh, I

know who you're talking about. I think I've seen. Okay. Yeah, he has to talk through a talking device. It really, we could go a whole other path about quality of life discussions because that is a brilliant example of making the most out of not being given too much. Although his mind is brilliant. So I'm listening to his book, and he talks about the fact, you know, there's a time difference. If you take two twins, stick one twin in a spacecraft and send him off for, let's say, a year close to the speed of light, when he gets back, the other twin will be significantly older, will have aged significantly. This isn't theory, this has actually been proven, right? And it's related to at least the speed you're traveling. I think it also has to do with your proximity to gravity. So here's where the GPS thing that's interesting. The satellites are outside orbiting at high speeds around the Earth. They are experiencing time slower than us. Okay. So there are actually calculations in the GPS process to account for the time difference between that actually exists in the experience time of the satellites and our experience time. So apply that same logic to, let's say, navigation on your phone. So what is the impact? Well, because GPS is related to a number of things, actually, I don't know the answer to this one. Okay. So why is it important that there's a time difference, an experiential time difference on high-speed satellites versus the Earth? What does that really have to do with GPS? I'm not exactly sure. I just, they're involved in the actual calculations. And that comes from Einstein's theory of relativity and has been literally proven out. They put highly accurate clocks on the surface of Earth and on water towers. And there's a delta in experience time. So one hour later, the other one says one hour and one minute. That's an extreme, that's way too much. But that is actually happening. It's just bizarre. Anyway, that's physics. Go look it up.

Go listen to Brief History of Time. It's actually pretty interesting. I mean, it is interesting, though. Yeah. I appreciate that nugget. Yeah. Yeah, that was in place of news. Maybe Geno wouldn't be happy with it, but, you know, he's not listening anymore. Some of the reviews we'll get next week, we'll talk about that. Exactly. All right, so I'm not going to cover all of these because we literally have five reviews here. I'm going to cover, I'm going to do this one. I'm going to start from the end. This is from Knuckles, which sounds familiar. We may have read one, read this before, so I'll breeze through it. I've been part of many SEO forums, Black Hat and White Hat. This is by far one of the best put together SEO podcasts on iTunes. Keep up the good work. Thank you very much. Awesome. This one's from William Bennett. Extremely helpful. Both of these are five stars. As a self-employed photographer, I love listening to this podcast while traveling. That's a recurring theme in our reviews, right? I have learned so much and saved so much time learning from these guys. I appreciate their practical approach, optimized for user experience and Googlebot. I have learned hundreds of tips as I listen to their archives. Thank you for sharing your world-class expertise. This is from Drew Bennett. The punch in the face is BennettPortraits.com. I'm just going to read one more. I love these guys. This is from Mr. Nick Ninja. I like that. That's good. Nick Ninja. That sounds like it almost could be superhero. Superhero, yeah. Sidekick. Sidekick. Ooh. Let's face it. For most of us, SEO is an incredibly boring subject. Somehow these guys make it fun. Thank you, E-WebStyle, and a powerful punch in the face to you both. Appreciate it. So that was much to Nick Ninja, Drew Bennett, and Knuckles. Yep. Thank y'all for tuning in. Thanks for the support. Appreciate it. Punch in the face to you guys, and yeah, hit us up. Cool. I've got a couple punches in

the face. Punch in the face to GeeksOnCall. They hit us up on Twitter. This is at Geeks underscore OnCall. He says he's watching, hashtag SEO podcast. Appreciate that. At E-WebStyle, thanks for the great SEO tips. Keep up the good work, guys. Another one was Dinesh Shalat. That's at Dinesh Shalat. I listen to the podcast all the time. E-WebStyle, internet marketing podcast is a particular favorite of mine. Hashtag SEO pub. So thank you guys for following and tweeting and participating with us. We really appreciate it. Punch in the face. P-tiff. All right. So was that the Gino time limit bill? Yeah. We'll call it that. I'm about to turn this ringer up. All right. So I did find some content, though. I was searching on one of my favorite sites, Search Engine Land. And I came across an article by Adam Riff called 10 Simple Tips for Effective Mobile SEO. All right. Mobile. All right. Mobile. Wanted to talk about mobile. So mainly because of really the shift, you know, the shift in regards to search in particular has been a shift towards local. But mobile is really included in that shift because more and more searches are happening from mobile devices. Yeah. Well, I read a stat that said I think 85 percent, this is interesting about mobile searches, 85 percent of mobile searches are either A, looking for a product or service in their immediate vicinity. Right. Or B, something to entertain them. Yeah. Not surprising. So one of the tips in here is to, you know, make sure your content is, if it can be, entertaining at least when you're talking about your product or service. I did see the title of an interesting article. It said something like, has the smartphone eliminated boredom? Right. Almost. Yeah. Almost. Almost. Because you can, you have access to anything. You can play a game. You can research. You can learn, listen to the brief history of time. Like, there's just anything. So, number, it was 10 tips for effective mobile SEO. The first one was

be a psychologist. And, you know, I like this one here because basically what he's saying is understand how mobile users search. A mobile search is nine times out of ten different from a desktop search or a laptop search. A mobile search usually includes abbreviations. So the thing to being a great psychologist would be to familiarize yourself with Google's auto finish. Yeah. So for, I mean, most searches from a mobile device happen because of that. Yeah. If I'm not going to search compact disc, I'll search CD. Right. That sort of deal. I won't type in drive. I'll type in DR. And so, you know, if your business is heavily influenced by mobile, then you want to make sure that your site maybe uses these sorts of phrases in your optimization and not the standard ones that people will usually type. From a desktop. Yeah. Exactly. Number two is think social first, mobile second. I think this is a great tip. He goes on to say mobile users tend to want to be entertained. And so what I think, he's kind of mixing entertainment with social, which I understand the logic behind that. But I think the whole point is everyone's on their mobile device doing something social. And this is usually all day. You know, my Facebook on my Android phone is updating all day. Every time I log into that app, I have these latest updates. And so keep that in mind as you are building your site to be mobile friendly. Your pages should be easy to share socially. Usually with the one or two clicks because it's likely going to happen from something using touchscreen technology. Yeah. Yeah. So keep social in mind when you're mobile strategy. We were just talking about our website the other day and I was thinking in terms of hovering and you made the point that hovering is not an option because this is going to happen from a mobile device. So those are things that impact. Consider if you're having a drop down nav on your site

and now you're going to use this for a mobile site, you may want to reconsider how you present that navigation just because of the difficulty and or limitations based on device. If they're on an iPad or a tablet or something, then the hover may be okay. There's ways to do that. Tap it once. But on the phone, you know, smaller device, smaller screen space, just, yeah, not that intuitive. Number three, know where mobile searches are going. This is when optimizing webpages for mobile, ensure the user agent for both searches and for the search engine bot goes to the same version of the webpage. Don't inadvertently get a site flagged. Yes, definitely. If you're working on a site and you're doing a mobile version, what you don't want to do is have one link goes to one page from the site but on the mobile version goes to something totally different and you get into this whole link scheming deal and it could be interpreted wrong. It could be done with high integrity but just not processed right and interpreted wrong. Size matters. Mobile devices typically have touchscreens. We're just talking about this. Pressing a navigation link can be cumbersome. It's important to streamline navigation and focus on the most important pages of your site. Great example. We had a client who had a huge site, tons of pages. I think it was like 40, 50 pages. And they wanted a mobile version. Originally they wanted an app first. They wanted an app first. Yeah, but they only needed a mobile version. And so they were like, okay, we'll do the mobile version. We need every page on here to be mobilized. I forgot what word they said. But yeah, that's not necessary. I mean, think about who's ever accessing your site from a mobile device. Why would they be accessed? Then make just the most important. Those in the navigation and then make sure that those pages are the ones that are accessible. Easily. Easily. And then always include, this may be in there, always

include. Yeah, I think I know about eight or something. So I won't say that. What I will say, though, is that particular client had a challenge because they wanted to show information for investors as much as they wanted to show it for their users. And so they had to balance, you know. And companies that are growing have that challenge, right? I need to make my investors happy, and I also need to grow the cash flow. And investors give you cash or loan you cash. They don't create cash flow. Customers create cash flow. And so we had to work with them to try and figure out, you know, what is it that you really need to accomplish in this mobile version? Will your investors really be looking at your site on their phone? Mm-hmm. I mean, you know, let's, you know. So anyway, number five, develop the scale on scale. I think great. If indeed your business is mobile-driven, then yes, you should develop to scale. Understand how the site will be presented on a mobile device and design it that way instead of designing it regularly and then trying to make it work on a mobile device. No design for the mobile device. Number six, link location matters. Each mobile-friendly web page should have a link to the main desktop site, which is what you was going to. Clearly marked, so access to the full site is not limited. I think this is extremely important. A lot of mobile sites don't do that. They tend to, or they'll have it way at the bottom, extremely small, and you can't find it. You have to search for it to get it. Or buried in a menu. I think Facebook says buried in a menu somewhere. I actually like it way at the bottom, because that's where it tends to be, but, you know. Yeah. At the bottom, it's okay if you can see it. Sometimes it's extremely small. Yeah. Hidden. But I think from a mobile presentation, I think the visit full site is almost as

powerful as a CTA, you know, because you may have a lot of other things on your site that's not on a mobile, that if they're willing to spend that much time to look at, then give it to them. Then take them there. So, yeah, spend some time making sure that people can get to the full version of the site. I tell you, I don't, you know, on an eBay or an Amazon, I don't like the apps, and I don't like the mobile version. I like, I, just give me the full version of the site. I've got, I've got an Android, it's a smartphone, it's got good real estate, screen real estate. I'm happy to surf and zoom in if I have to. If I have to. But, yeah, I don't like to. I'm happy to slide in there for a right to see more. I don't, yeah. Yeah, and I wonder, it'd be interesting to know what the statistics on that are. And we can find what percentage of people will do click full version when it's provided as an option. Yeah, we'll look that up. If you know that information, hit us up, let us know what numbers you find, and a link to what we can, we can check that out. And share it, yeah. Number seven, don't forget to click to call. Oh, yeah. Don't forget to click to call. I'll do it one more time. Don't forget to click to call. We're talking about people doing a mobile search, and so, yeah, the phone is in their hand. I was just going to say, what are they holding in their hand? Yeah, the phone is in their hand. So what might a good call, I can't think of a really good call to action. I don't know, maybe we should, maybe we should have it print. Yeah, don't forget to click to call. Number eight, use rich content sparingly. Rich content is, you know, video, images, graphics, things like that. And so, I think, sparingly, is the word he used, I

would say size it right. You know, don't have, you know, huge images on your mobile device, because, well, on your mobile page. Make sure the images load fast, that they optimize well, that they look good small, because it's not a computer, it's a mobile device. And make sure that they load quick. And then take advantage of that. If the images show well, then they're easy to share. Matter of fact, they're most likely to be shared. So, he says use rich content sparingly. I'll say use it correctly. Yeah. Just make sure that it's sized right. And here's what we were talking about earlier. Apps versus mobile friendly site. The intent matters. This is key. Because, first off, apps cost. Especially for a decent app, you're going to pay a pretty penny for it. And so, it may not be your wisest investment, if that, indeed, is not what you need. I think it's best to determine what the user coming to the site is coming for. Right. Figure out what they're coming for, what you have to offer, and how you want to get them to that path. And then, if an app is necessary, then so be it. Yeah. But, usually, you can probably accomplish it with just a mobile version, a mobile friendly site. And so, really consider that. You know, if your objective, for example, is to get them to go download something, let's say it's a music person or whatever, then the app may not be necessary. Right. If they can download it from the site. But, if you want to push the music to them, where they don't have to download it, where it's already there, then you may want to consider an app. Yeah. Think about that. That's really the only value I see in an app, is the ability to push information to people. Yeah. If you want to push an MP3, or a new post, or a new event, or whatever it is, then yes, get the app. Well, number 10, last one. Embrace search engine crawlers. I

think this is key for anyone doing regular SEO and using your robots file to tell the bots where to crawl, what not to crawl, what to crawl. If you have a mobile version of your site, and it's on a different domain name, like em.domainname.com, then make sure that's included in that robots file, so the Google bot and the mobile spiders and everyone else knows, hey, there's additional content over here, and that's okay, because it's on the same domain name. It's just a sub-domain. So they know that it may be duplicate, and that's fine, but at least we identify where that content is, and where they can go get it at. So typical scenario is, you come to your first page from a mobile device, your server actually identifies that you're on a mobile device, and then forwards you over to the mobile version of the website. When a Google bot comes, it doesn't appear to be a mobile device, and so it would never get forwarded to the mobile version of the website. So that's where you need to have, in your sitemap, you need to have your mobile pages, and maybe even some link somewhere that allows Google to crawl over to the mobile version. It doesn't, it's not that it gets redirected there, it's that it actually has the opportunity to crawl over there and see it. Definitely. So, bonus tip. This bonus tip is actually kind of rips to what I said earlier. Remember the primary reason consumers use mobile devices. Studies show that approximately 85% use mobile devices to pass time, be amused, or for entertainment reasons. That's, develop mobile versions of your website with these aspects in mind for full engagement value. So, yeah, punch in the face to this guy, okay, yeah, him, who I got the article from, I can't find, Adam. Punch in the face to Adam for the article. I think he had some great tips in, and I think it was something that we could all benefit from. Yeah. Definitely, you know, we talked about

this a few podcasts ago, the Solo Mode. So, it's all about social, local, and mobile. Right. Right now. And so, if you're in the business, and you probably are, that can benefit heavily from mobile use, then make sure you apply those tips. Have a good strategy. Yeah, have a good strategy. Cool. All right, we got some blank stare? I did have blank stare, and I forgot it. I blank stare anyway, it'll come to me. All right, so here we go. We'll be thinking, this may be a long one. Yeah, that was kind of blank. Yeah, blank about the maps. Oh, yeah, yeah. Blank stare at the maps. Apple Maps. Apple Maps. Like, the blank stare is really at Apple because iPhone 5 was a huge release, the iOS 6 is a huge release, and you would think that as important as maps are, we're talking about mobile strategy right now. The maps are paramount. Yeah, like, this is a problem you shouldn't have had to deal with. This should have been resolved. Yeah. You know, um... You know what, and I was saying, even when this came out last week, that, you know, these things didn't happen under Steve Jobs' watch. But you know what? Antenagate did. Steve Jobs was at the helm when he actually said, they're holding the phone wrong. Remember? Yep, I remember that. So, my instinct is to say, you know, hold Steve Jobs up on high and... But still did it. Things, and major, that was major, right? You hold it to your ear a certain way and you lose signal. Um, so, uh, I think that's a little, that's a little more unique of a situation because it is probably, even in a decent size beta test, it's pretty hard to find. Yeah. But a, uh, a map, I mean, this seems like you could beta test the heck out of it. In fact, you could alpha test it without going out on the streets and say, you know, feed on specific GPS things and have people play around

with it and pretend they're on the Golden Gate Bridge, which is not five miles downstream. I mean, it's really bad. Like, it's not, it's not a little bad. It's really bad. I was talking... So, that's what got me, that was the purpose of the blank stare. Like, this isn't just, oh, we need to tweak it. No, this is, we need to scrap it and redo it and bring in some other people because, yeah. Because, apparently... Not a great use experience. I was talking to a girl who lived in Britain for a while and her boyfriend is from a town, like the 600-year-old town, so one of the oldest towns, and it's not on Apple Maps. Like, this just got omitted. I don't know what it looks like. Like, do they have satellite views? A couple things, I don't know if you know this. In turn-by-turn directions with the Apple, when you arrive now on an Android device or when you're using Google Maps, when you arrive, it's switched over to... Street View. Street View. Yeah. Apple doesn't do... I think it's awesome. Yeah. That's for... Is this the place I was like, yes, Google, that is. Thank you. Wow. Check. Exactly. Apple doesn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. So, blank stare to Apple Maps. All right. You have been listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Yes. There are a couple ways you can track us, stalk us, follow us. You can find us at twitter.com slash... E-Webstyle. Facebook.com slash... E-Webstyle. YouTube.com slash... E-Webstyle. And you can email us, podcast at... E-Webstyle.com. Thank you guys for tuning in. Again, the most popular internet marketing and SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because of all of you. We really appreciate you. You can do something really simple for us. Actually go to iTunes, create an account, write a review. And if you want to, send us some information about that review. Actually, I got a couple emails that we'll follow up in the next podcast. I saw, I saw that. Of people who have... Been

emailing. Forwarding the email. Yeah, we got a really long one. We'll have to answer that next one. Go ahead, again, it's podcast at... E-Webstyle.com. And we'll get those questions answered on air. Again, thank you so much. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up eyebrow.