Internet Marketing What is Internet Marketing/SEO? - Unknown Secrets to SEO E-Webstyle Number 1

All right, welcome to the eWebStyle SEO podcast. My name is Chris Burris. I'm sitting here with Paul Hansen. Paul, introduce yourself. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining the podcast. I'm the sales manager here at eWebStyle. And we're going to talk about SEO. Are we going to talk about what is SEO or why SEO? Well, let's introduce SEO. So, yeah, let's talk about SEO first. My name is Chris Burris. I'm one of the owners of eWebStyle. We've been in business since 2000. We started off designing websites. And as anybody who designs websites knows, we quickly transitioned to also doing search engine optimization. It's an incredibly valuable service that all of our customers want. So we provide it. That's what we do. We're in the business of providing solutions. The problem is how do we get great traffic? The solution is search engine optimization. All right, let's talk. What is SEO? And we went to the most credible source in the history of mankind, also known as Wikipedia. I hope you know that I'm joking. And Wikipedia says that search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural search results. Okay. What is that? Can you put, oh, you want me to put that in? I was going to ask you. What is that? That's, that's, you know, anyone can read that off of a piece of paper. But what exactly is that? First off, I have to, are you, are you implying that Wikipedia is not the greatest source known to mankind? Because I thought I was. That's the next podcast. Oh, just because everyone can write in it. So, oh, wow. We'll just go with that. So my submissions are the best. They're always right. So it is, it is the process of improving the traffic, both quality and volume to your website. We talk about often natural or organic search engine placement. For those of you who aren't familiar, organic and natural search engine placement is the area. And

we'll talk about Google almost all the time when we're talking about search engine optimization, because Google is such a dominant search engine in the marketplace. So natural search engine placement on Google, anyone who's visited Google knows that there's sections off to the right and sometimes sections across the top that are called sponsored ads. We are not talking about sponsored ads when we're talking about natural search engine placement or organic. We are actually talking about those other results. And these are the results that end users typically assume to be more valuable, more relevant, and actually more trustworthy. There's a, there's some research out there that, that suggests that end users believe natural search engine placement is more trustworthy. So hopefully that's a little breakdown of what you've read so far. And, and I guess you're going to, yeah, that's perfect. And you're basically talking about the middle results, the middle of the page. I know that's where I usually click if I'm searching for some, for anything, I'm going to trust the results in the middle of the page more than I will trust the results on the, the, the paid, the sponsor results or the, or the paid results. Okay. Um, I know what my preference is, or I know when I do this, I was just going to ask you, Paul, um, do you ever use click on the sponsored or the pay-per-click areas? No, no, I just, that's just the way that I search. I don't, I've, you know, I, I have, okay, I have clicked in the, every so often I will. Um, but I just, is there a, is there a pattern to that? You know, I, when, the reason I don't is because I have clicked something in the paid results and it wasn't what I was looking for. And that the, that company decided to pay to place that ad there. And it may have been foolishly. Yeah. It may have been somewhat related to what I was looking for, but most of the time it's not related. And

so after relevance is what I'm looking for. And if it's not relevant to what I'm looking for, I just said, Hey, more often than not, the paid results weren't what I'm looking for. I'm going to stop clicking there. Well, that's a great lesson. So if you're going to bother to do pay-per-click, understand that there are end users like Paul, who, if you put, if you display your ad for something that's not related to what the client, what the end user searched for, uh, and they click there, they, they may never click. They're certainly not going to go to your site again. Uh, and they may never click the sponsored ad. So, um, so, so be careful because Google's trying to make money off of that. And, and, uh, if you're showing things that aren't related, then you're ruining Google's business. And we, Lord knows that Google doesn't have enough money yet. So what's involved? Well, I wonder, before we moved on, I wanted to throw in my, uh, two cents about when do I use pay-per-click? Um, if I'm looking for a particular product, I will use the sponsored ads or the pay-per-click. And my logic there is, is I'm looking to buy something. I know the people who, uh, show up on the sponsored sections are spending money. So they're probably in the business of selling something relevant to what I'm looking for. Uh, so if I'm actually looking to buy something, I, I'll certainly check out some of the pay-per-clicks. Uh, if I'm just doing research on a product or if I'm, uh, you know, just trying to, not even a product, just doing research in general, I, I will stay, steer clear. Um, probably not as vehemently as you, Paul, but I will still clear of the pay-per-clicks. So, um, and part of that, part of what I said is important because when I'm doing research for a product, I look in the organic section. So at that phase, when a customer is interested in actually learning about the product, that's when

you would most like to present your company as an option, not just as an option to purchase it, but as a, as a resource for information about that. Cause we all understand that if, um, if we've got a comparison of the same product at the same price at two locations, we want to deal with the company that is an expert in what they do. Of course. So, uh, so I think, you know, I think we've kind of covered that. Um, so why, why, let's talk about why should we do, why should any company do SEO? What, or, or what is the value of SEO to any company out there? Why, why would you do SEO? I'm, I'm Joe the plumber and why? Not Joe the plumber again. I thought the election was over. I'm bringing Joe back. Why? I'm, I'm Joe the plumber. I have a plumbing business. I just built a website. And so why I hear SEO all over the place. Why should I do search engine optimization for my local plumbing website? I only do business in my local area. Why, why, Chris, why should I do that? That's a great, that's a great question. Um, and, and the way I answer that question with any client who gives us a call and is looking for search engine optimization or websites in general, cause you know, we do websites, we create, uh, amazingly beautiful websites and you can find those, uh, at our website at e dash web style.com. And, uh, so people call on their initial questions are regarding websites. And, and I'll be honest, there are times when we turn people away, we won't even bother to do a website cause they're not ready for it or their business isn't there or they don't have some sort of marketing model to follow it up. We're not the kind of company that just any, any Joe plumber who walks in the door and wants a website will give it to them. We really want to understand that business, understand what they're

trying to accomplish with the website, uh, and take it just a little bit deeper. The people who work here at e web style are incredibly talented entrepreneurs and they bring that entrepreneurship to every client that comes in the door. So Joe, the plumber comes in, he wants a website. He's convinced me that he needs one and it's going to work well. Uh, we make him a beautiful website. You can even picture what a beautiful website that is. A website with dripping water and sounds and everything Joe, the plumber could have possibly imagined turning and everything and everything and more. And, and then he turns around and he says, okay, great. How do I get good search engine placement? Well, that doesn't really answer your question. So let's take that a step back. Okay. I'm going to pitch him now and say, look, here's the service that we offer. Let me explain why you need it. And probably the easiest for a company such as plumbing, a service oriented company that, that services business to final consumers. That's B2C, uh, B2C is the, is the acronym. Um, the important thing for them to recognize, well, where did they get their business before? Before the internet existed, where did those people typically get their business? Of course there's, you know, hit the pavement advertising where they're handing out flyers. Anytime they're in a new neighborhood, they're handing out flyers and some, uh, kind of simple businesses, if you will, I'm sure I'll, I'll get emails about that, you know, like tree trimming and yard work and just kind of simple businesses still do it that way. And we'll always do it that way. Um, the yellow page, some people do the yellow pages. And that's it. That's, that's the, well, you're familiar with the yellow pages, right? My background was in yellow pages advertising. And then that was the best way back in the day. That was a, a great way to advertise. Um, everyone understands now that the yellow pages is losing its momentum. They're losing

their, their readership. Um, and you know, people are leaving the yellow pages going to different forms of media. Uh, people used to do what? No, newspaper was another prime example. Um, so a lot of these companies used to do yellow pages. Now they're, they're going online, which is why they come to us to help them bring them, bring their company online to help get that exposure that the yellow pages and newspaper and radio used to bring. That's, that's, that's exactly right. And so that's the next thing. So I'm talking to Joe the plumber and I say, so I know where you used to get your business cause it's, it's pretty standard. You used to get it from the yellow pages. Do you have this, um, this anticipation that the yellow pages, the usage of the yellow pages are, is dwindling like it's going away. At times I've lived in apartment complexes and, and at apartment complexes, they deliver the yellow pages in a stack right by the, right by the mail, right, right, right, right by where people receive the mail. And you can be six months, nine months, a year, even after the yellow pages were delivered and they're still sitting there, a stack of them. And I promise you they're no longer delivering one for each apartment because people aren't even using them. So, um, so I, I, I talk with Joe the plumber and, and, and, and that regard and say, so what is the, the end user, your target customer? How are they going to find you now? And, and certainly with Joe the plumber, you want to do, uh, if you have a truck and if you're in a position to actually put logos on your truck, you want to do that. That's, that's a great way to generate business. Now that Joe the plumber has this amazing website, he better have his website, his website URL, you know, www.joetheplumber.com needs to be, uh, on every flyer he hands out. It needs to be in his business card and it

needs to be on his truck. But I only hand out so many, I can only hand out so many business cards. I can only drive so many miles for people to see my website and I can only tell so many people about my, my website. How am I going to get somebody there? Well, that's a great question, Joe. And I was just about to answer that. So the, the way that you do that, and again, this is a process that you want to walk Joe the plumber through. How do you think people are searching for plumbing services these days? The younger generation, the generation that can use a mouse before they can walk, right? And we've all seen the kids who are just rock stars on the computer and, you know, can't do anything else. Well, those people, when they go and try and find information, they use search engines. Joe the plumber, have you ever used a search engine? I use... Joe, do you know what a search engine is? No. I just wanted to throw that in there. I don't know, can it make me money? That's probably what I'm concerned about if I'm Joe. Can a search engine make me money? So a search engine is, Joe, that, that place that this younger, technologically savvy generation goes to to find information on the World Wide Web. And assuming Joe the plumber has heard of the World Wide Web, which I think we can assume at this point, then he's going to, his ears are going to peak up, peak, because I've piqued his interest, and he's going to be interested in understanding, okay, so how do I get displayed in that search engine? And that's what we do. Search engine optimization is the process of getting Joe the plumber's website onto the first page of Google, Yahoo, MSN, the major search engines. So, did that answer your question so far? Okay. So now, now I should do some SEO to get on a search engine. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's take a step back.

I'm looking at our notes here. We've gotten way off track, which I think is going to be a normal thing, so that's good. You want to start the first one like we're going to end. Internet marketing in general, like where does search engine optimization fit in the grand scheme of things? Every business, and I mentioned earlier that we'll actually turn some businesses away. Tell me if you believe this. I get calls from people, and there was one particular lady I remember, it was probably like six years ago, called me and she goes, I want to get a website because I want to be making money 24 hours a day. Of course. Who wouldn't? That's a great, great reason to have a website. And my answer to her was, well, if it were that easy, I would never build a website for anyone else. Thank you. Good point. Because if it's just a matter of building a website and putting it online, and if you build it, they will come, then why would I build anybody else's website? It's not that simple. It's a cog in the wheel of a business. And one cog, grand cog in the wheel of business is marketing in general. Yellow pages, even though it's dying, I would still recommend you have a small ad in yellow pages. Print, if that's your choice, can be very expensive and sporadic. And one aspect of marketing is internet marketing in general. And you can really break down internet marketing into the efforts that you would make that aren't related to search engines. That might be contacting other websites, getting your business linked on those websites. That might be getting banners linked on other websites. There are so many other things that you can do that aren't related to search engines. And then you have what's called SEM, search engine marketing. Now, we're throwing a lot of letters on there. What was that? Let's repeat that for the audience. S-E-M. So that's search engine marketing. Now, search engine marketing is comprised of, really, we

break it down and, you know, I'm going to have to reference the world's best source again of information, Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it's not your blog, your entry, so we might not actually trust this according to this groundbreaking information that you gave me today. But search engine marketing is really comprised of three things. And that is, first, pay per click, that's the sponsored ads when you're looking at Google. Next, it's pay for inclusion, which is just where there are some search engines where you pay money so you can be included in their search results. And it doesn't, that isn't necessarily related to where you're included. That's just typically a flat fee where you pay, you're included in the results. And, you know. You could be included in the pay, the 10th page. Yeah. And it depends on the word, right? You know, if, if somebody were, one would assume that if you type Joe the Plumber, and Joe the Plumber is the one whose, whose website we paid to have included that, you know, Joe the Plumber is going to show up pretty, pretty high in the ranking. But there's no guarantee of that. Okay. If you want guarantees, you go more towards pay per click. And then the last component of search engine marketing is search engine optimization. There's a lot of different aspects of search engine optimization and we'll, we'll certainly get to that at some point. I'm, I'm not sure that that's going to happen today. But, but the, but those are the three main things for search engine marketing. And again, though, that covers internet marketing. You've got social bookmarking as one aspect of it. Uh, that's where you might be doing digs. Um, you might be working with Facebook. You might be working with MySpace. Uh, any one of those, uh, would be a form of internet marketing that is not related to a search engine. Although some of those can actually help you in your search engine placement. I'm sure in one of these podcasts we'll be covering that. Uh, that's

related to link building. So, um. I think that's a good segue into what's, what is involved in SEO? What is, uh, okay, I'm Joe the plumber. I come to you. You're going to, I want to, now I want to do some SEO, but what exactly are you going to do during your, my search engine optimization campaign? That's a great question. And what I'm actually going to do, because I work with eWebStyle, I'm going to get you on page one of Google. Awesome. That's what I'm going to do. Tomorrow. Yesterday. You're already there. As soon as you walked in the door, miraculously, your website was on page one. Uh, again, that's the goal. And there's a lot of, um, a lot of ways to achieve that goal. Um, it is a time-consuming process. Uh, it's not an incredibly, um, challenging process. And what I mean by that is it's not rocket science. You know, uh, Google is, is, and, and, and with all the information out available on the internet, you're actually able to piece together what it takes to get your website onto page one of Google. Uh, for all of those out there who are listening, who, uh, own their own website, really don't have a budget, uh, that they can allocate towards search engine optimization and are going to do this themselves. Uh, believe me, you can do it. Uh, it's time-consuming. I, I come from a programming background and one of the beauties of programming is you do something, you change a line of code, you test it, and it works immediately, which is usually how it works for me. Or it fails and you try again and you make another change to the code and, and you've got this immediate sense of gratification. Uh, search engine optimization, uh, is, is not something that gives you that immediate sense of gratification. In fact, I postpone, uh, the company moving into the direction of providing search engine optimization because it wasn't something that, uh, that, uh, appealed to my sense of immediate gratification.

Probably making me sound a little needy or something. The guy's only focused on immediate gratification. Um, at the end of the day, we're focused on what's best for the customer. Uh, I always got people asking, Hey, where can I get search engine optimization? Uh, I knew the processes. I was doing them for some of my own pet process or projects and, uh, and ultimately decided this was just, you know, it was too important to our clients to no longer provide that service. So, um, so we decided providing that. Now, given all of that, what is involved in SEO? And again, what is involved in SEO is understanding as best we can the, the things that Google takes into consideration. Again, we're talking about Google, but this can apply to MSN and Yahoo. The things that Google takes into consideration when determining who shows up on the front page. Now, if we had access to Google's code, this would be really easy. Oh yeah. Right. Because then we just set it on our desktop. This is where my instant gratification would love it. We set it on our desktop. We change the results. We change what's on the website. We see how Google's software, how its code interacts with that and it displays it immediately. We make those changes. We know how it works. Boom. That's done. Unfortunately, we do not have access to Google's code. Of course, Google keeps that very, very closely held. But they do give a lot of insights into kind of the fundamentals of what they're looking for. And in reality, Google has a constant struggle. Really, all they're trying to do is give you great search results. So, their constant tweaks to the algorithms, which we'll talk about, because they are constantly tweaking that algorithm, those constant tweaks to the algorithm, they're constantly doing that to try and optimize and make sure that they're showing the best results. And then there are us out there who are legitimate, what are called white hat search engine optimizations. And the white hat

just means you're doing it the right way. There's a term called black hat, which means you're actually doing it the wrong way. So, there's white hat SEO guys like us. There's black hat SEO guys who are out there trying to figure out how they can get sometimes an unrelated website to the top first page or top position on an unrelated term. And they do that because they want lots of traffic because somehow they're generating revenue from lots of traffic. Can that work, black hat? Well, black hat can work. And in fact, you want to be leery if you're out there searching for search engine optimization services for your company. You want to be really careful because anyone who's using black hat techniques, they may get you to the top of Google. And that may be a but. And there's a big but here. But if they get caught, and when I say they, what I really mean is if your website gets caught, you could potentially be banned by Google. So, you clearly, and let me state this again, you do not want to work with somebody who uses black hat techniques because eventually you will get caught and eventually you will be banned or relegated to the bottom 10,000 or end of the search results if your SEO guy is using black hat techniques or if you are using black hat techniques on your website. Was that easy to say? And I know I think that it would even be good for you to ask. If you decide to outsource your SEO to a professional company, I would ask, hey, what kind of techniques do you use? Are you using white hat techniques? I mean, one, it makes you sound more educated, like you know exactly what you're doing. And you want to know that kind of stuff. Because if they're using black hat techniques, you could get banned. And that's, you know, that's the end of it for you. Yeah, then your options are very limited. You're, in fact, you're really, your only

option is to, you can make appeals to Google. Google may give you another chance. That's just not, that's just not a situation you want to put yourself in. Because the other option is that you start over with a new domain. And you really don't want to do that either. That's, that's just not, just don't do it. Right. We covered black hat. That sound makes sense. So we got white hat. Yes. Black hat. No. All right. Good. We got that out of the way. So, so the reason we got talking about white hat and black hat is because Google is constantly changing their algorithm because they don't want black, they don't even want black hat techniques to work. Um, and they're, again, just trying to optimize their results. They're also doing other things like, uh, as they've kind of brought products online, like, like that guy calling. Yeah. Ah, it's late. Um, I don't even know how to make that go away. Sorry. This is a real business. We work all the time. And 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's eight o'clock. That's crazy. Uh, that's all right. Anyway. So, uh, welcome to eWebStyle, the way we do business. It is, by the way, we don't just ignore customer phone calls. It's eight o'clock on a Friday. We're in the middle of this podcast and, um, and, and apparently we'll call you back. We'll call you back at nine when we're first. Um, so, so Google is constantly adjusting it. They, they come out with different products every now and then. And one of them is, uh, Google local is a, is a fairly recent, uh, addition. And so they'll, they'll end up tweaking their codes to accommodate the, the new products that they're coming out, the new targets that they may be doing. And as they make those changes, that actually affects the results. And when it affects the results, it actually affects what we have to do. That's why the service that we sell is actually a

monthly service. Um, so we're constantly monitoring those algorithms, monitoring the effects that those algorithms have on websites. And when, when those, when those things do happen, uh, we're, we're already taking care of, um, of monitoring it and then making the appropriate changes to your websites, to the inbound links, to everything that we do. Oh, I mentioned inbound links, didn't I? Inbound, what is an inbound? Well, I think, I think I finally mentioned one thing, which was an answer to your question. After all of that. Let's start. Um, some of the things, and we're going to cover this real quickly. We're going to keep our blog at, uh, at 30 minutes each time, uh, not blog, our podcast at 30 minutes each time. Uh, so we'll, we will definitely be covering each of these probably in significant detail, probably in ad nauseum detail, probably more than you really want to know unless you're actually doing the SEO on your own website or you are an SEO provider. Um, just to cover some of them that we do with Google, we do link building. Uh, we work on meta tags. So there's, there, meta tags are little hidden tags. Actually, if you go to a website and you right click on the website, this is at least how you do it in IE, and you click view source. Wait, wait, what's IE? Oh, yeah. What's IE? Woof. Almost got away from you there. I was, I was moving fast. Um, IE is Internet Explorer. So on a typical, uh, XP is the most prevalent, uh, operating system right now, or, and or Vista, uh, the new version, uh, on both of those, the default web browser is IE. So if you, you're looking at a website in, in IE and you right click anywhere where there's text on the website, you'll, you'll get a pop-up menu and if you click view source, uh, you should see the source code and that's the actual HTML code for that webpage. When you're viewing that, excuse me, when you're viewing

that, you can actually see meta tags. And meta tags are meta descriptions. There's mega, meta keywords. Um, those are the things, those are some of the things that, that search engines utilize, uh, and that we work with on your site. Uh, we actually also do site maps. This is a, a, a concentrated file that, that has specific, let's, let's just call it shortcuts to each of the pages on your website. Um. Keywords. We talk keywords. We didn't mention keywords. You're going out of order, man. You're trying to throw my whole game off here. Everybody should know what a keyword is. If you don't know what a keyword is, you're in trouble. If you don't know what a keyword is, call eWebStyle. We'll help you out. eWebStyle, 713-592-6724. Uh, if you don't know what a keyword, if you don't realize, and, and let's, this is a point worth belaboring, the most valuable thing that your search engine optimization company can do for you is understand your business, understand your business model, understand where your profit comes from, understand where most of your sales come from, because that's not necessarily the same thing, and work with you to understand what keywords, and to help you understand what keywords are the most valuable for your business. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's a big word there. That's one of the most important things. You have to understand your keywords. Um, you know, and keywords can even be, if you don't understand what a keyword, if you're a dentist, I search for keywords. I typically don't search for products. I search for dentist. I search for the plumber, painter, shoes, whatever. Those are, those are keywords. You, that's how most, that's how a lot of people search. I don't want to say most people, but that's how I search. That's, no, that is how most people search, via keywords. So that's very, very important. And there's a statistic how keyword utilization has changed recently, uh, over time since the inception of the web, where, uh, when it was

first available to the general public, keywords were single keywords. So when we say keyword or keywords, it can actually be a phrase like you might use, um, a cosmetic dentist, Houston, because you're looking for a cosmetic dentist in Houston. We all know that we'll do that now when, uh, the web first was available to the general public. People would just type in dentist or cosmetic dentist. I, I used to, I remember that. I used to do that. Like I'm not looking for a dentist in Connecticut. I'm in Houston. It's not worth the drive. They're not that bad. So even, even the local, would you say even the local terms would be considered a keyword like Houston? Yes. Texas. Yep. Okay. So, and that's a great, let's enumerate that. So, uh, cosmetic dentist, Houston is a different keyword than cosmetic dentist, Dallas. And, uh, and so if the business had multiple locations, they might be interested in both or they might be interested. And by the way, uh, eWebSales in Houston, Houston, Texas, we got a, we got a bust out our Southern accent. Yeah. You can't see my cowboy boots and my hat right now. And your spurs. Your old Bessie out back. She's, uh, she's looking a little thin. You might want to give her a couple more oats. All right. On that, uh, Texas note, I think we are going to sign off of, uh, of this podcast. Well, thank you for listening. We, we really hope that we're able to, um, educate you, maybe give you some information that you had something you've never heard before. Hopefully we can help you in your SEO, uh, if you're going to do it on your own and just, just give you something that you could learn about. We want to give back to the SEO community because they've given so much to us. Thank you for listening. We will, we definitely appreciate it. We're going to try to do this, uh, weekly, weekly. We're going to try to do this every week to help

you out. You know, we help you, you help us. And, uh, and we're all, it's a big, big, happy, merry internet. Yeehaw. Yeehaw. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.