How Your Website Redesign Can Sabotage Your Paid Search PPC Efforts by Pauline Jakober #398

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. My name is Matt Burcham, the rebel. The rebel. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 398. We really appreciate you guys tuning in. As always, we do have a tip from our previous podcast. And hold on, we've got to make sure the video is up and running. We'll get a thumbs up once it's up and running. Turn the screen, thumb is up. And the tip is definitely use the countdown timer on Google AdWords. Use the countdown timer on Google AdWords because you want to create scarcity. A sense of urgency. And I am not doing this, so this is a tip I need to follow and test out. And I think Chris made this tip for a reason. So that he will do it. He really needs me to do it in front of 15,000 people. You can see a 28% increase in conversions with the countdown timer. So make sure you use it. Subscribe, follow, boom! All right. So please remember, we are filmed live here in Houston, Texas. Yes, sir. And we actually have a review from somebody in Sugar Land, Texas, just around the corner. We had a good conversation with him. His name is Mac B. His review is, of course, five stars. It says, I discovered eWebResults podcast while traveling, technology, and more specifically, the internet and social media seemed to dominate the consumer's attention. I began a journey of self-education on the... I feel like this should be more flowing. Oh, this is storytelling, right? Yeah. Of self-education on the subject of SEO. And I found eWebResults to be both useful and easy to follow, even for a newbie like me. I've owned a website for many years, but have never had it generate leads for me. And that is my short-term goal. So I now subscribe and listen to eWebResults via podcast on his iPhone. Punch in the face to you, Mac B.

Thank you for that review. We really appreciate you. I had a great conversation with you. So punch in the face to you. Listen, you're probably here for some information. You probably might want a tip or two. You can go get five online marketing mistakes that could tank your business. And all you need to do is go to eWebResults.com slash SEO tips. You can stop the video now. And we got a great article today, right? We do. Yes. Yes. It's all about PPC. It's taking over. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Right up your neck in the woods. And we got a big announcement here. Yeah, we have a big announcement. So you special podcast listeners, stay tuned for another two minutes. Yeah. And you guys who are tuned in, you've got a good treat. All right. Here is what we're going to cover today. How your website redesign could sabotage your page search efforts. This is by Pauline Jacober. And you can reach her. Her Twitter handle is at GRP27 spelled out. T-W-E-N-T-Y-S-E-V-E-N GRP27. And so punch in the face to you, Pauline. If you guys are in a position to have an electronic device, what we'd like you to do right now is tweet hashtag SEO podcast and tag us in it at bestSEOPodcast at eWebResults. And also tweet Pauline to make sure that she knows we're covering her article today. All right. So we run a contest, and that contest we run every single week. And the way the contest works is that the way the contest works is if we get five shikos. What is a shiko? A share, a like, and a follow. If we get five shikos and we get one, excuse me, ten shikos and one review, we'll skip this section. And we actually got the review, and we actually got the shikos. So we're going to skip this section. Woo! Save it to the end. Thank you. We will say that if you want a website analysis, go to our website, eWebResults.com. And so you guys noticed that there's

somebody else here. There's a third person. There's a third person here. In the picture here. And we're not speaking in the third person. There's actually a third person. And so we've really kind of put together a really nice deal for our customers. And ultimately, actually, it's certainly going to impact the information that's coming out on the podcast. We've already talked about that. So this gentleman standing next to us, he is the preeminent SEO consultant in the city of Houston. How big is the city of Houston, Matt? It's... Fourth biggest city in the country. Fourth biggest city in the country. Probably third. So one of the nation's best SEO consultants, and we've just started working together. So you just go to Google. If you're in Houston, type in SEO Houston, and it's... Just check for someone that's three times on the first page. Three times. Three times on the first page. That's him. He's standing right here. And his name, if you do that, you'll know who it is. If not, just check out the press release next week. So... Yeah. So thank you for coming by. I appreciate it. All right. All right. That is some exciting news. All right. So I want to stay really focused on our news today. And we're actually going to do something that's... This is some seriousness. That's pretty important. We usually don't get that this serious, I think. The audio is too low. The audio is too low. I can make a quick adjustment. Let's do that. Intermission. Intermission. Intermission. Intermission. That should be better. We'll make sure that's better. All right. So we want to talk about net neutrality. So if you go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash eWebResults, you will find a recent tweet that talks about five calls, like making five calls for net neutrality. They're working by December 14th. They're going to have a vote and try and repeal the existing net neutrality rules. This is not a good thing. We don't believe this is a good thing. So a little bit farther

down in our Facebook feed, you'll actually see an article that gives you kind of five things that you can do. So not just those five calls that came from that list, but five things that you can do to impact net neutrality and have an impact on the people who are voting on net neutrality. This is a big deal. This is a big deal. This is going to affect everyone's business that's in a online marketing space across the board. Yep. So, so this is not a good thing. This is not a good thing. So as an example, so you may be wondering like, what is net neutrality? And all of these political things tend to get like double negatives to understand what it means. And, and really what it means is keeping the net equal and equal playing field for all players, uh, as an example. So, and I think we talked about this in the last podcast, just wanted to cover it a little bit more. Let's say, uh, I'm a, I'm a big, um, I'm a big fat cat and I own a media company and I'm delivering video over through the internet. So ISPs get involved, right? That's why I'm against the empire and he's against the empire. Yeah. And he wants to deliver, uh, media through that same internet. Uh, if that media, if, if, um, the ISPs, internet service providers have the option of selling me bandwidth, then because I'm a fat cat, just because not because I'm better, uh, but only because I have money, I'm able to do things that, uh, Mr. Rebel here can't do. Uh, and so it no longer levels the, the, the field is no longer level. Uh, it favors people with money. It's not skill money. All right. Not saying that people with money don't have skill. I'm just saying in this case, it, it's a pure cash favorability. So we want to avoid this. Some examples where net neutrality has been where they fought for the little guy, uh, AT&T at one time

was forcing Apple to block Skype on the iPhones. I don't know if you know that. Uh, and, and, and this is like AT&T just trying to remove the apps so that, uh, so that people have to use their network instead of using the internet in that situation. Monopolize. This is really interesting. So Verizon, and I, and I, this is a little bit, a little bit longer, not that long. During oral arguments in Verizon versus the FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content, or sites over others. If the court overruled the agency's existing open internet rules, that's net neutrality. Verizon, uh, their counsel, uh, Helgi Walker had to say this, and I quote, I'm authorized to state from my client today that both of these rules would, uh, that, but for these rules. So unless these words were in place, uh, we would be exploring those types of arrangements. So they would be favoring the fat cats and trying to generate extra cash. I don't begrudge them that. What I do begrudge is where that cash starts to impact the opportunities for the little business. Um, so go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash facebook.com slash e-results. There's a lot of stuff on Facebook. Sometimes, sometimes the rebel, you know, has to catch up and, and go there. And, and the, one of our first links right now is five calls. It gives you like the number you can call to have an impact. Uh, and we, we recommend that you do that. And by the way, punch in the face to, to, to Mike Simon, he's with my shipley donuts.com. He kind of reached out to me and said, Hey, I kind of think you guys should discuss it. And he was absolutely right. So punch in the face to you, uh, Mr. Simon. He's one of our clients. Yes. One of our, one of our great, wonderful clients. Uh, that is all the news that I have for today. So, uh, that represents the end of

the potatoes. And it's a big deal. It's a big deal. So please take action. Yeah. Go out and vote. And it is now time to get into the meat of the podcast. Yes. All right. Who else is it? We've got some, Stephen. Thanks for tuning in. Uh, punch in the face to you. Again, here's our article. How your website redesign can sabotage your paid search efforts by Pauline and Jacober. Jack, Jacober. I'm probably mispronouncing that. All right. So here's what Pauline had to say. She said, uh, uh, Pauline, uh, PPC agencies, uh, she, her own PPC agency. So she's the owner of an agency almost declined a project because the website that they were making the proposal to was so bad. Has this ever happened to us? No, because we build landing pages and we don't need to use your website. Yeah. If your website's that bad, we'll still take the work. We'll just, and we find landing pages work better anyway. Um, but I get it. Right. Cause there was a time in, in, in the agency quite a while back where we really, um, we really wouldn't drive traffic to a particular website and, and we still won't. We just make the landing page so that we can drive traffic and generate value really quickly. Right. Um, see, so when they announced that they're, they were going to do a website redesign, they said, okay, great. They're going to actually take that account and talked about, is it good news if you're doing a redesign for your website for your paid search efforts? And the answer is maybe, you got to be careful, uh, about how you do it and, and Google, uh, make sure you fully build out what you want to do before you throw it up. Don't continue to make changes. Uh, it confuses Google. They don't like it. Yep. So, uh, she gave five and actually listed the six, but, uh, in some, some follow-up text, I felt the six was worth mentioning. Uh, so we're going to go

through these six things and these are how your website redesign can sabotage your paid search efforts. All right. There's paper flying all over the place. Number one is your phone number. Matt, where should your phone number be on your website? All over it. All over it. No, up in the upper right-hand corner, I think it's a good place to be for it. On the workstation? Yeah. On the workstation, uh, maybe further down, uh, on the page. Right. Like when they're looking to, to click on it. If it's on mobile, if it's mobile friendly, um, Right up at the top. Yeah. Right, right up at the top or every two scrolls. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what can happen when you're doing the redesign is the new designer, and we bump into this every time, every now and then, where the designers are very aesthetic and not very, uh, results focused, they remove the phone number. So that's something that you should do. What we like to say is, uh, for our clients, there should never be an extra step, right? So if they land on your page and you want them to make a phone call, don't make them scroll. Don't make them click the contact us page. Give them the phone number right there. I, yeah. I mean, I think that that's a debate internally is the, the aesthetics versus the conversions. I think that there's a, a good balance. Um, but also you want to make the page familiar. Right. Okay. So high converting landing pages is a good to follow that model because people know where to go to find stuff. Cause you got to think about, uh, anybody that's landing on a landing page through PPC, uh, or SEO or something like that. They've never hit your page before. It's like dropping somebody out of a parachute in a foreign land. And you got to give them kind of directions on where you want them to go. Yep. Well, you kind of don't want when they land on your website for it

to feel like being dropped in a foreign land with a parachute. Well, at least if there's signs. Yeah. And you want it friendly. Actually. Yeah. So that's a good point. You want the, the ads, uh, anything that they're looking for in the ads or the offer, you need to have that on the landing page or the website where you take them to. That's the continuity. Yeah. The continuity. That continuity you talk about. Like if somebody searches for something and they need to see an ad with that something in it and probably an offer. And then when they land on the page, they need to see that search phrase and that offer right away. Yeah. It's really, really important for bounce rates. Number two is trust symbols. So you might ask, what is a trust symbol? We had a debate right before this podcast. Um, some examples are BBB, uh, Avvo, if you're an attorney, uh, review badges, uh, testimonials are trust symbols, right? Um, and we went a little crazy with trust symbols, uh, with our developer and we have them all over our page right now, uh, on the right hand side at the top of every page, uh, at the bottom of some of the pages. Um, but it's great, right? It shows off our expertise. People understand what it is, hasn't heard our conversions at all. We've actually gotten, uh, some bumps from it, but, uh, trust symbols, uh, need to be in your repertoire. So, so on what pages should trust symbols be? Wherever anybody's going to land. Yeah. Yeah. If they're going to land there and you want to build trust, then you should have. And, and, you know, like either above the fold or right below the fold or in the header, it just depends, uh, on your situation. Intersperse some, uh, testimonials throughout the content. On every page. It'd be great to have a testimonial. That's the answer I was looking for. Every page. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Next is number three, uh, tracking codes. This is how

your website redesign can sabotage your page search efforts. Have we ever experienced tracking codes like disappearing and data disappearing? Have we experienced that? They've gone awry a few times. Yeah. So as a PPKC kind of expert who like puts on the, the data hat and digs in, and then you see that the data is all wrong. How does that feel? Well, you know, you have incomplete data to make a, the best decision. Right. And, and, you know, we use call rail and, uh, it's fantastic. You can tie the keyword, uh, to the time when they called and, um, you can better know what you're doing. You can record your calls. The customers love it. Um, you know, they didn't ask me to say that, but they're, they're a really good service. Yeah, call rail is good. Uh, so she says that there's, uh, the codes that she's most concerned about and us, we agree, uh, Google analytics code, remarketing code, website call metrics code, right? So that's the call rail code. And then the AdWords conversion code. She missed one. Okay. Facebook pixel. Well, of course you need Facebook pixel. LinkedIn, uh, is always good if you're doing account based selling. Um, I was actually, the thing that was most interesting to me was, where was it? You had a highlight on your page. Uh, when we were talking about, uh, the remarketing, I think you need to, I think we, we actually talk about that a little bit. We had a little internal debate there. Right. So, uh, one of the things as we're looking at a website, we'll use the Google tag, uh, plugin or add in for Chrome. And it'll tell us if it's got analytics or the remarketing code or not. And, and Matt was like, well, you know, I'm actually driving remarketing ads from the analytics, from the, from the audiences I'm building in analytics. I don't actually need the AdWords code insurance or like we had a little debate. It was like, I don't know if that's possible. I

was like, I'm doing it. I am doing it right now. I know it works. People are like, no, you can't, you can't run remarketing without remarketing tech. So just know that there's different ways to do things, um, and, uh, not to say any one of them's right or wrong. I mean, there's best practices, uh, and what you should do is just standardize whatever you're doing internally. And we would recommend to use Google tag manager too, to really manage those, right? That's a nice, a nice, easy way to do that. Um, all right. So number four is thank you pages. Yes. And we've got three kind of reasons to have thank you pages. Really important. So that's, well, that's the, the, like the very specificity. Yeah. Lost opportunity. So what they'll say, and this is, this has happened with some of the plugins that go in, into WordPress, somebody will redesign our website. And now when you submit a form, instead of the form kind of landing on a thank you page or doing anything useful, it'll just say a small little text in a green box. And we probably all have seen this or not seen it is kind of the point is, uh, thank you for submitting your form. And it really needs to go to a landing page for three reasons. You're going to say something. Well, I was just going to say that's a good opportunity to, um, you know, the, the fear of loss or whatever it is after someone buys something, right? They, they, the fear of the regret of the buyer's remorse, the buyer's remorse. That's what I was looking for. And so like you really, it's a good way to communicate with your audience and let them know something that's going on or give them a free gift or use this opportunity to sell. But the, the thing that I was going to say is I've seen some recent pages of people using templates and not updating the, the, the thank you page. Right. So it's just like

random, no, it's just random texts. Like, you know, it's not those words or whatever. Laura Mepsen. Yeah. And it's like, so, so it's a, well, it's a really important piece of the process that you, you don't want to overlook because. It's actually a conversion. Right. And someone, the, the, the conversation's not over when they buy or when they sign up, it just got started. It may be just a good time to say, Hey, like us on Facebook, Facebook, right? Yeah. Or something simple. Yeah. Absolutely. Do something with your thank you page. So her three points were, uh, it may leave visitors wondering, right? So I mentioned that that text sitting there, maybe they don't even notice it. And you're like, okay, you get, if you're getting multiple submissions on a form, it may be that they don't know they've submitted. Yeah. The thank you page doesn't come up. Yep. Yeah. Next is it's a lost opportunity. We just talked about that. And finally, thank you pages are a great place to put tracking code. We would actually, so you may have different thank you pages for different, um, uh, uh, CTAs for your website. If you have different thank you pages, um, you can use those to remarket very specifically to somebody. So micro goal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll finish that. That was, you were, I'm sorry. I, you were on a roll. I was, I was, I'm sorry to say anything. So, so, so let's say they're, they're, you know, we know that they submitted the, the form from the PPC page. Then you can remarket PPC in our case, like remarket PPC. We do PPC. I don't know. Everybody knows that. We do PPC. Yeah. Um, we do website design. So search engine, search engine optimization. We do social media marketing. You can actually guide the ads that you're going to show them based on the thank you page they landed on. Right. So that's really powerful. In fact, you could have a general remarketing, uh, campaign and have it be, have

the general campaign overridden by the thank you page. Think about email marketing. I know we do email marketing too. FYI, we're HubSpot certified. Um, but, uh, remarketing you can use as like a drip campaign for someone that you don't even have their contact information for. Right. That's how you should think about remarketing. You can change what you hit them with. Like it's, it's a really, really powerful tool. Saves you a lot of money if you're, uh, wanting to spend a tight ad budget and really get a lot of value. It's how you maximize the traffic that you're currently getting. Absolutely. All right. So number five, this is how your website redesign could sabotage your paid search efforts is forms. Um, so sometimes people get rid of forms like when she was, or too many fields, this doesn't, this doesn't happen much. And what she mentioned is that somebody will replace a form with a link to the email address. Right. Oh man. Okay. Yeah. I've seen a lot of that. Um, and, uh, we've done it before, but here's the thing is when they go from a button to another page, you potentially can lose that conversion. Your conversion rate goes down. Yeah. You want to capture all the information. Uh, so a light box or, you know, just having the form or both people like to fill out stuff differently. That email, if it's just the email link, will actually open up another software often and that's an opportunity to lose the page, uh, to, to lose the visitor. Um, and then, yeah, you were right with forms. If they decide to add more fields or, or if they make the form physically bigger, know that the size, the physical size on the page of the form can impact how many people fill it out. You can have a three field form and it can cover a whole huge page and people are like, that's too much information. So, so another kind of little service that I've used before is type form. Okay. Right.

And so, uh, how many fields is super important. Right. Right. But also, um, they're starting to be a lot of testing on like when someone lands on a form page, they're just afraid of filling it out. Right. And so there's newer services coming out that basically, uh, ask you one question and then go to the next question. And now you're 50% done. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that, that really helps. And it just, the style of it, of how it impacts it increases conversion. So there's a lot of cool stuff, uh, on that, uh, front coming out. So, and then, then Pauline, she went into this, uh, this piece about how websites could get worse. And one of the things that she mentioned that I think is worth being one of her how your website redesign can, can sabotage your paid efforts is HTTPS. Right. So if you're on my gosh, that's like number one, everything's got to be secure. Yeah. If you're on HTTPS and you redesign and they drop the ball and now you're no longer on HTTPS. That's a problem. Well, you know, the, the, the thing that can tank big, the biggest thing to tank. Yeah. So, well, no, so the biggest thing to tank, uh, uh, uh, the HTTPS, TP, TP, TP, HTTPS is where that little box to pop up. Right. Right. That little box to pop up and, uh, for it to say warning when you go to this page, like, like I can tell you, even when that happens for me, I have to go, whoa, whoa, like, you know, like, okay, this is okay. Cause it's scary. Yeah. So, um, And our, and our SEO, uh, consulting guru is mentioning AMP and HTML. So we're gonna have to bring him onto the podcast. Come on, come on, come on. Give your tip. He was wanting to give his tip. Sorry for those instructions. Talk into Matt's chest. Yeah. There you go. All right. All right. Okay. So, so, so I was dying here a little bit because

they were mentioning things that could, uh, uh, tank your, your rankings. If you, uh, you redesign your site. Yeah, there we go. That's where I feel like I'm kissing you. So basically, um, if you have, if the site previously has AMP HTML, uh, when you redesign the site, you could potentially lose a lot of traffic. Uh, if you break the AMP, if you, well, if they don't implement the AMP or if they don't implement it properly. Right. And now two tips on implementing AMP properly is make sure you have canonical links on every single page, every AMP page, and then also make sure that the proper structure data is on the, uh, is on each page. And, uh, actually there is a third tip. And the last one is read the guidelines for AMP HTML, all about JavaScript and the proper type of CSS that's allowed to be on AMP HTML pages. That's what I'll get. And he drops the mic and walks off the stage. Boom. Boom. Boom. All right. So that was number seven. Make sure you implement your AMP pages and your redesign properly. All right. So that, that wraps up the, the meat of the podcast. Drop the mic. So if you like this podcast, we're going to ask you to share this podcast, to shiko this podcast. We are currently in pursuit of Yelp reviews. Yelp reviews. Please. You guys have already helped us. In fact, uh, Mark put, excuse me, Mac put his on Yelp. So we really appreciate that. Uh, we've made it easy to get to our Yelp profile. All you need to do is go to ewebresults.com slash Yelp, and that will make sure that you get to our Yelp profile. Please leave us a review and make it five stars. All right. So, um, please remember we're filmed here in Houston, Texas. Hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet call you have results for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is

713-592-6724. We do have a referral program. We do all the services that we mentioned in this podcast, every one of them. And even Matt is going to add the countdown timer to the PPC. So all of them. Um, so if you have a customer who's interested in those services, you send them to us, they pay their bill and then we pay you. Also, we help, uh, other agencies, uh, over like double check that white label check, check their stuff. So if you have a smaller agency out there and you're working in a particular niche and you just want, uh, some, some access to some experts to help you look at it. Um, we've done that for a number of different niches and, uh, we can help you out too. If you're a growing agency out there, don't we're friends. We love you. Yep. So we can work together. Yes. So we were filmed live here at 5999 West 34th street suite 106 Houston, Texas 77092. Um, if you want an audio video or transcript of the podcast, you can get it at ewebresults.com. We are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because you, you, you, you, you, all of y'all. Thank you so much for tuning in until the next podcast. My name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.