Know Thy Enemy: Local SEO & The Art of War by Marcus Miller #294

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of E-Web Results. I am Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 294. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip can be found right here. That tip is, use paid social media marketing to increase post engagement. Yeah, use paid social media marketing. And what that really means is spend money, right? Especially when you write a post and you put some time into that post where you have great content, maybe some videos, some supporting images, some bullet points, some outbound links, and all type of things that's necessary for a good post. You want it to go viral and maybe you lack the audience. Right. Pay for it. Sponsored tweets, boosted posts, sponsored IG posts, and things like that to help really drive some traction for that article. Absolutely. So that is our tip from podcast number 293. I think we went over our 15-second target. Yeah, probably did. That time. Yeah, I didn't tell myself this time. Yeah, we're working on making sure that that tip can get put onto Instagram, right, which has a 15-second limit. So this is kind of exciting. You guys can follow along with us as we get better at that. Please remember, we are broadcasting from Houston, Texas, and we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. And our mantra is- Don't be a deuce. Today we have an article we're talking about- Yeah, yeah. We have a great article. What we're talking about today. Man, so I want to give a quick punch in the face to Marcus Miller. He posted an article on Search Engine Land. Know thy enemy, right? Local SEO and the art of war. Kind of cool. It took the book of the art of war, took five concepts out of there, compared it to local SEO. Right. So great article. We'll dive into that in a minute. Okay,

excellent. Hey, if you're in a position to have some sort of electronic device, go ahead and tweet now. Chuck, what should they tweet? Well, first make sure you tweet us at eWebResults, at BestSEOPodcast, and tweet us using hashtag SEOPodcast. This is number 294, and that way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. All right, you may be noticing something different, because I am- That picture quality is pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah, you can see that blemish that I have here, the little- Yeah. Yeah, so you've got to get used to that. We're actually, instead of broadcasting using Ustream, we're broadcasting using Google Hangouts Live. Yeah. So it's pretty exciting. That goes directly into YouTube. It goes, we were moving in this direction forever in a day. So give us some feedback. Yeah. Those who happen to watch this one, SEO Podcast 294, whenever you get to 294, which will probably be in a week sometime, Right. Hit us up if you watched it, and tell us what you think. We are getting caught up. Like, we've been saying we're getting caught up for over a year. We actually have staff members and, you know, punch in the face to David, David Arms. He's our results manager, and he's getting things done. So punch in the face to him. Hey, normally, hey, if you've listened to this podcast never before, howdy. Come on. If you've listened to the podcast never before. So it's going down a path, and then I decided to change it, and the word never caused the diversion in the past. Let's start that again. I'm like, man, that's awesome. Who's doing that? Hey, if you've never listened to this. I've been back for the first time. Yeah, exactly. Hey, if this is the first time you've ever listened to this podcast, you may be a little bit confused. But let us just say, howdy, welcome to the podcast. If you've listened to this podcast before. You already know what's up. You know what's up. Hey, you see

the tattoo, the tear tattoo, we did not get a review. And we're running a, whatever, a fun little game that if we get a review and we get more than 10 likes, follows, shares, whatever, although we're not really tracking shares, on any one of our social platforms, then we'll skip this next section. You noticed the tear tattoo because we didn't get a review, so we're not skipping that section. We're going to ask you, if you've listened to this podcast before or if you're enjoying it, to do one of a couple of things. Yeah. Very simply to leave us a review. You can leave us a review. And the first and foremost, leave it at G+, G+, local, actually, which is Google My Business now. And we've made it really easy for you to get to that page. To get to that page, all you need to do is go to ewebresults.com slash Google Plus. Or slash Google Plus. Or slash G+. Or slash G+. All of those will take you to our Google My Business page. Take you to our Google local page. Two things there they should do. First off, put us in a circle. Right? That way you can share some content with us. We can share some content with you. More importantly, leave us a review. Yeah. Hopefully that review is five stars. And that way we will so appreciate it and give you a punch in the face live on the air. And we will actually, yeah, read your review on the air. The next has three simple steps. Go on to iTunes. Create an account. Write a review. If you choose to, send us an email. Podcast at e- Oh, Lord. Boom! ewebresults.com We should have like a quarter jar just, you know, for over the next couple of months. Yeah. We did just change our name from eWebStyle to eWebResults because nothing matters except... eWebResults. Exactly. Next, you can leave us a review on our Facebook page. We have a new Facebook page. It's Facebook.com slash... eWebResults. And if

you go there, there's a review thing and you can write a review and hopefully you'll make that five stars. Next, we'll talk about that. And then finally, we'd really love it. Actually, I should have started it with this one. Go to our Stitcher page. We still need a little boost there. We got a little bad press in the beginning because the feed wasn't working. It was our fault. It just wasn't indicative of the quality of our podcast. The best way to get to our Stitcher page... It's indicative. Yeah. The best way to get to our Stitcher page is actually go to our website, eWebResults.com. And then I think they have to go into one more page, right? Click any link and it's in the sidebar. And that one, hopefully, you can leave us a fast review. All right. Say, hey, if you're a PHP guru, a genius with WordPress... WordPress... WordPress... WordPress... Yeah, that's the... WordPress is... WordPress is the religious version of WordPress. So I once... It's interesting. There's a... I just made me think of this. There's a company that I know of. I won't even say what city they're in because it might be too... It divulged too much information who created a new content management system and their goal was to become the WordPress for not-for-profits. And when this was described to me, I immediately said, well, isn't WordPress the WordPress for not-for-profits? It's free. Yeah. Like, you can't beat, you know... Free. So, anyway. So it's not WordPress. It's WordPress. If you're a WordPress genius, PHP guru, give us a call. We're probably looking for you. 713-510-7846. Leave an audio resume. We have... I did check that number, so that is working. We do have a free website analysis, and you can get it on our homepage, ewebresults.com. And now, time for the favorite segment of the podcast, The Algorithm Cataclysm. I think that worked better in YouTube Live. You think so? Yeah. Possibly. It's silly. Well, there's more detail, so yeah. Yeah. We think there's more detail. So, man,

huge cataclysm today. Huge cataclysm today. So, first off, two things. Okay. One, Google confirmed that the real-time penguin algorithm is coming soon. They said this version of the penguin algorithm will be real-time, at least that's the goal. This means that as soon as Google discovers that a link is removed or disavowed, the penguin algorithm will process it in real-time. Wow. Which means you should be able to recover from this penalty pretty quickly. Yep. It also means, ironically, you can get penalized pretty quickly. Yes. That's huge. Yeah. Bro, so, I mean, literally, right now, if you want to disavow links, you got to submit the long form and go through the process and then wait. Yep. And then wait for a refresh or something like that for that to be actually approved. So, now they're talking about doing it in real-time. That's awesome. That's pretty big. Second one. Two. It will likely affect most of the WordPress sites, I'm assuming, is a new algorithm change. Brand new one. Not Penguin, not Panda, not MobileGator, not any of that. Aggressively targeting hacked spam. Hacked spam is the name of this one. They say it may impact 5% of queries. You know what that means? It means probably one now, but in about a year, 100%. So, hack spam. Hack spam. So, sites that have hacked content that's showing up in search results. Yep. They're adjusting their algorithm to go and remove all of that kind of stuff. So, I think that's good and bad, right? Good from a perspective that, yeah, clean up the search results. Get all that hacked stuff out of there. The bad part is going to be for those sites who don't know they're hacked. Yeah. Right? Traffic. Traffic going to go down some. And so, you know, check your webmaster tools if you've been hacked and clean your site up. And that's my algo catch. That's the algorithm cataclysm. All right. I have a little bit of news here. Or did you want to do a patif? I got a patif. Let's

do a patif. Punch in the face. Punch in the face goes to man Wallace Bailey. Wallace Bailey. Hit us up on Twitter. He's at Gator Family BJJ. He has hashtag punch in the face at E-Wiffed Out Podcast. Hilarious content filled show. Hashtag SEO. Boom. That's what Mr. Bailey punched in the face. Thank you for tuning in. I'm going to have half of this tattoo removed just because of that. Just because that's come up with a Twitter review kind of? That's a Twitter review. Yeah. I should have done that before I got the tattoo added. A triv-real? A triv-real. A triv-real. A triv-real. Too close to trivia, right? Yeah. Because we are not trivial. Yo. All right. So, this one was interesting. Facebook is testing reactions. Remember, it was like three podcasts ago, they were going to come with the dislike button, right? And you were like, no, you should not give me that power, right? Yeah. So, now they're giving you a broader range of power. So, it's a little bit of emoticons that you can put next to it and like angry. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they're animated. Yeah. Yeah. And they're testing that in Spain and Ireland right now. The next piece of news, this is pretty cool. I actually got to broadcast as a follow-up broadcast to the Microsoft. They made a whole bunch of huge announcements on Tuesday. The broadcast feed that they had was coming live out of New York. We watched it and then we got on air and started interviewing people in the Woodlands Mall, which is a mall that's up north. And so, we got the follow-up on that Microsoft event. It was pretty entertaining because my co-host actually headed down to the Apple store, grabbed some kids who were coming out of the Apple store, Hugo and Chelsea, and came back to the Microsoft store. And we told them, well, first they shared with us that their iPhone's not working and there was a three-hour wait. And then we shared them all the announcements. The new,

what is it called? The Surface Book, right? So, MacBook Surface Book. Pretty phenomenal device. It looks pretty awesome. Yeah. I would like to have one of those. And it was a great event. You can actually go check that out at Up Social Live. You can see that feed there. A 3D printed heart helps a surgery of, I think it was a five-year-old. And when I first read this, it was like, are they already printing? Because you know the goal is to be able to print organic tissue that can be replaced, right? So, print a new heart and stick heart in. Same, you know, genetic material. Like, that's the goal. I was like, are they doing that already? No. What they did is they printed the heart and by having a physical model of this particular child's heart, they were able to realize that they should get to the damage, the surgical area, a different way. And they said it saved them like two hours because they actually had the mock-up of the heart. So, that was pretty cool. And this is really big news for me. My mom actually wants a smartphone. She called yesterday, left a message. She was like, so I need to talk to you about phones. And I'm like, she's been on literally a pay-per-year package for the last 10 years. She's like, I get 40 minutes a year. Somehow, I have 400 minutes. No, she gets 400 minutes a year. I have 4,000 minutes. I don't know how long I've had the phone. She hadn't thought about it, right? That's 10 years. The math is pretty easy. So, she hasn't even used it. That's not what she has stored up. But she said she was in the doctor's office. She was all mad. They don't even have magazines in there. For what? So, everybody's on their smartphone. What kind of smartphone should I get? And frankly, I'm probably going to send her to Apple just because, yeah, we'll see. Android is definitely going to have an easier learning curve. Yeah.

Apple, you mean. Or Android. You think Android has an easier learning curve? Yeah? Okay. Well, I'll make convince her. I don't know. Some other people have convinced her. Apple. You know, it's when you really start digging into the changes that you can do on the Android that you realize it can be more complex. But you will never do any of that. Yeah. Very good for me. Normally, this is the part where I scroll down and I read a review. But there's like no review. All right. What you got? The only news I have was that Google for the first time announced that it was seeing more search activity on mobile than desktop. Wow. Globally. Wow. That's big. That's huge. That's big. And we know it's still very industry specific. I was just chatting with one of our guys today and he was like, I was like, so how much of their search is mobile? And he's like, oh, like 50%. I was like, I didn't think so. I forget what client it was. And so I pulled it up and it was like, it was a quarter was mobile and three quarters was desktop. But I'm imagining like restaurant search. Yeah. Well, you think about all local searches are 50% mobile. Yeah. Right. There you go. So that's that's enough of it right there. Yeah. Just local searches. And so it's not surprising statistic at all. Yeah. Kind of expected. Cool. That is the potatoes of our podcast. It is now time to get into the meat of the podcast. Awesome. And so, again, punching the face to Marcus Miller and the good folks over at Search Engine Land. He posted this article. Know thy enemy, local SEO and the art of war. Really just, you know, taking the art of war. Famous book by, oh, I forgot the guy's name. Shu. Ting. Su. Zen. Su. Zen. That sounds good. Sounds good. Famous author. Anyway, the book talks about, you know, just different methods of military general and war. And so Marcus pulled five different

kind of points out of that book and compared it to how you could do your local SEO. It was a stretch. Now, he made it work and I liked it. So let's dig in. Here we go. Number one, he says the strategy, right? He goes on to say that ensure your strategy is clearly defined, right? Are you a low cost and defiance of by price or do you differentiate in some other way so that customers will pay a premium for your offering? He also says that being there is not enough. Be different or have a better offer. And what he's saying is make sure you understand what your strategy is. How do you intend to market? What is your selling point? You must understand that. What I wanted to add is that your strategy should complement your sales funnel. And so depending on your sales process, right? Do you need to send people a form first? And then after they fill out the form, then you kind of generate some numbers and then you contact them. And then there's a quote and then there's a proposal and then a signed agreement or whatever your sales funnel is. Your strategy should complement that. Your strategy should also, I added this also, your strategy should also be understood by all parties on your team, right? So from your customer service team to your sales team, to whoever is doing your technical support, to your C-level execs, to even the people you got on the ground. Like, everyone should have a somewhat fair understanding of what the strategy is. So that way, in case they're ever positioned with any sort of information, they're in the right position to act accordingly. And they stay on the same playing field with the rest of the team. Last thing you want is some rogue employee out tweeting or doing some other stuff that's really not part of the strategy. And so make sure everybody on the team understands the strategy and more importantly, make sure your strategy makes sense for your

sales process, for your company. Number two, two, after strategy, he says tactics. He goes on to say that tactics are what we must be most careful as marketers. He says it's too easy to follow a checklist of supposed best practices and believe that you're doing all you can. He's absolutely right. After you strategize, you must have the right tactics. What I said about tactics is really understand the tools that are necessary in order to accomplish that strategy. That's where your tactics come in. So maybe your tools, if this is in their marketing, we're talking local SEO. So your tools are things like Google My Business, like Bing Places, like Yelp, like City Search. Understand your tools. More important about those tools, understand the experience with them. Are you familiar with those tools? Have you set up a Google My Business before? Have you operated in AdWords, right? So understand what those tools are for your tactics, but be experienced with them. When you're in the art of war, right, this isn't practice. Right, right. This is war. So this is literally, I don't have time to put a rookie out there, right? You need to either hire an agency, hire someone internally, or take the steps so that your tactics can be executed the right way. Right. This isn't the time for mistakes at all. Number three. Three. He says, check the battlefield, right? He says, I like this one. He says, did you notice the recent shift from a seven-pack to a three-pack? We talked about that in some Algo Cat not too long ago. Yeah, yeah. He says, did you notice the removal and replacement, and then the removal again of phone numbers from the local results? And the replacement again. And the replacement again. I did. Busy did. And so that's the battlefield. Our battlefield is the search engine results page. And so you should be familiar with your battlefield. Right. Whatever it is, your battlefield may not necessarily be the search engine results page. Your battlefield could be a Facebook wall.

Right. And if that's it, then understand the dynamics of it, how fast this grows. A Pinterest. A board. Collection board. Thank you. Just understanding your battlefield, where you're trying to get people at, where you're implementing this strategy at. Not only understand where it is, but get familiar with the usability of it. Right. How do people use this? Do they slide? Right. This is a mobile situation. Do they scroll? Do they click? Do they swipe? Do they watch? Right. Understand the usability and how people act on this battlefield, on your playing field. And so that way, the strategy you come up with, the tactics you use, can support your action on the battlefield. What you don't want to do is, to make this understandable, you don't want to get on Twitter and ask people to subscribe to you. Yeah. Wrong tool, wrong battlefield. Right. Right. That's just like going to YouTube and telling people to follow you. On Twitter. Yeah. Or just follow. Follow. Wrong terminology. Wrong terminology. Exactly. You don't want to get on Instagram and tell people to pin you. Yeah. Right? You just don't want to do that. Have a better understanding. You definitely don't want to say that on Tinder. Exactly. Or you're supposed to say it on Tinder. Yeah. Don't use Tinder. Don't use Tinder. There you go. Yeah. But the point is, is understand what the, what the battlefield is and, and how people act in that specific area. So that way your strategy and your tactics can compliment that. Number four. Four. He says, um, know your enemy. This is an awesome one, Mark. He says, no, you and he says, you must know your own strengths and the weaknesses of those in your competition. He's absolutely right. And we've preached this before and we won't stop now. Uh, competitive analysis still works. Right. And so understand what your competitors are doing. How social are they being? Um, how are their site ranks? Who's linking to them? Right. Uh, what offers are they making? Right. You may want to

look at five or six competitors. And if five of them are offering free shipping, you should probably offer free shipping. You know, we'll pay you to ship or, you know, something, but you have, you have, cause he also said have a better offer. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We'll pay you to ship. Yeah. Who does that? We'll ship it overnight for free. For free. Instead of, yeah. You have to do something. You gotta up your ante. You have to make sure your strategy, right? Your tactics that you're using on the battlefield of your choices is actually working. Are competitive. Yeah. Exactly. Um, so the competitive analysis still works. Know what your enemy is doing. Know what they're successful at. Frankly, know what they're not good at because what they're not good at may be an area you can really highlight in and excel yourself. Number six, six, he says measurement. Um, he goes on to say that we must measure the success of our marketing tactics to review the strength of our strategy and then iterate constantly. We've said it all the time. Uh, you don't want to shoot a shotgun and just fire off marketing dollars and seeing what sticks to the wall that works. No, you need to strategize. You need to implement. You need to test. You need to measure a B testing, everything from landing pages to AdWords, to keywords, to colors, to buttons. And we've got a client right now. We've tested so much. Um, and the key is to mark up your analytics and take notes of what you're testing. So you can actually rinse and repeat when you find out what works. Measurement is key to, to any war. Um, and lastly, he says the, the supreme art of war. Um, he says, uh, win the war without fighting, meaning you should craft marketing that does not feel like you're marketing. He's absolutely right. How do you do that? Uh, be the expert. Um, I wrote, be consistent, be informative, be relevant. So that way when people are searching and

they find you, they easily find what they're looking for. The experience they had is phenomenal. The information is relevant. And that way you've kind of won the war. You actually marketing to them by just having the right information and being in the right position. That's the easiest way to win. That's the kind of the key to inbound marketing. Get people to come to you because you provided a great situation, a great environment and great information. Yep. Man. So, so know thyself. Local SEO and the art of war. Man, punch in the face to you, Marcus Miller. Um, um, great article. We'll post this later. I like the title too. Yeah. Great guy. Great clickbait. Made me click. Yeah. Know thyself. Mm-hmm. All right. Very cool. All right. So do we have, I think we had some what news, right? There was. I had no what. There wasn't any what other than we don't have a review. Yeah. What? All right. So, hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Give us a call at 713-592-6724. We just start with the free consultation and website analysis. If you have a client who is interested in SEO, you don't want to take care of them, or you just know somebody, send them our direction. Let us know you're sending them our direction. When they pay their bill, we will pay you. That's called our referral program. Please remember, we are filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. Go Astros! Go Astros! The transcript and video of this podcast are available on our website. And again, our website is eWebResults.com. You have just listened and watched, potentially, the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. You guys have made us that, the most popular. Thank you all. Thank you guys. Thank you from all across the world. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Verres. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Balance check. One,

two. Balance check. Uh, uh, SEO Podcast 294. Sound check, man. See where we have a store. We talk at SEO. Please pay attention. Turn the volume up, man. Sit back and listen. Nothing matters what results. That's why we change. SEO Podcast. Turn it up, man. Hold up. Boom. 294. Let's get it.