Chris: Hi and welcome to the SEO Podcast: Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burres owner of eWebResults.
Matt: My name is Matt Bertram.
Chris: Also one of the owners of eWebResults and the SEO King. If you’re watching on video, punch in the face to our Youtube watchers out there.
Matt: He said it not me guys. He said it not me.
Chris: SEO King. It says it right– it’s clearly defined on the shirt that you’re wearing–
Matt: Ah. Oh, is that what that is? Okay. Alright.
Chris: And you have assumed a very royal position in terms of height.
Matt: I’m standing on a chair guys.
Chris: I don’t even– I don’t think I have the– I do have the– Alright. This is Podcast #437. As always we do have a tip from our previous podcast or padcast.
Matt: You don’t even know what it is, you weren’t on it.
Chris: I have no idea.
Matt: You weren’t on it.
Chris: I wasn’t on it.
Matt: Use influencer marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy.
Chris: I believe I was actually on that podcast.
Matt: You were on that one?
Chris: Yeah, I was on that one!
Matt: Okay.
Chris: Okay, so influencer marketing is a really powerful way to market your business.
Matt: You were.
Chris: You want to make sure that you’re using it, incorporate it into your marketing strategy because it’s incredibly powerful. Subscribe. Follow.
Chris & Matt: Boom!
Matt: And if you are in influencer marketing– if you are an influencer marketer, please reach out to us and let’s talk. We want some influencer marketing.
Chris: We would like to be influenced.
Matt: We want to buy your services.
Chris: We would like to be influenced.
Matt: We want to be influentialsole–
Chris: Influential through your influenceness.
Matt: We want to be part of your– I don’t know.
Chris: Group, crowd.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: The elite– okay.
Matt: I don’t know.
Chris: Alright.
Matt: Alright.
Chris: You get the point.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: If you’re an influencer, contact us.
Matt: Yes, that’s the point.
Chris: Alright. So hey, I wanted to jump into this– well, first: we are broadcasting live here from Houston, Texas and Matt and I, we are your–
Chris & Matt: Results Rebels!
Matt: You can tell it’s live because we don’t edit it.
Chris: There is zero editing, yes. Are you suggesting there’s some portion of the podcast already that should be–
Matt: Actually Chris, I am glad that you said that because I did hire an editor this week.
Chris: Oh! You did?
Matt: I hired a few people actually.
Chris: That’s the one person you didn’t tell me about. So that makes–
Matt: Well he’s the videographer too.
Chris: Oh, okay okay.
Matt: Okay.
Chris: Very cool. Is he going to work on the podcast?
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Oh wow.
Matt: No that’s the person I’m hiring next week.
Chris: We are moving at a rapid pace here at eWebResults. I really can’t keep track of who’s hiring. Well, I know who’s hiring, I just don’t know whom and how many, and it’s exciting for me and everyone on the team and maybe even more so Matt. Speaking of Matt, I have a review from Matt Williams, who Matt spoke with.
Matt: Yeah!
Chris: Matt on the phone. It is of course–
Chris & Matt: 5 stars!
Chris: And it says, “Recently I had a great website analysis call with Matt. I really appreciate his candor and feedback on our project. I felt no pressure for a sale, just lots of great information. I would not hesitate to hire them or recommend them to others.” Punch in the face to you Matt, and to you Matt for–
Matt: Ahh!
Chris: Punched all the round!
Matt: Thanks Matt, it’s good. Hit me up!
Chris: By the way, punch in the face is a good thing. Hey, if you’re–
Matt: Oh! Punch in the face.
Chris: PITF.
Matt: PITF.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Alright. So, punch in the face– punch in the face–
Chris: Are you hiring somebody to run around and punch people in the face? Is that what–?
Matt: Oh, well sort of, no.
Chris: Damn, I gave him an idea.
Matt: So we’ve designed the mascot logo.
Chris: Okay, yeah?
Matt: And it’s platypus with boxing gloves.
Chris: I like it.
Matt: So we have that, we’ll get it on the t-shirts at eWebResults.shlag–
Chris: .com/web yeah.
Matt: Whatever you type it, you’ll find it.
Chris: Yup.
Matt: But–
Chris: By the way, that page loads painfully slow.
Matt: Yes, it does.
Chris: It’s not our fault, it’s not our fault.
Matt: It’s Shopify, it’s– yeah.
Chris: And I was talking to the guy who helped us put that together, and we’ll figure out a way to fix that because it’s important to fix that.
Matt: Yeah. I don’t really remember what I was about to say.
Chris: Platypus?
Matt: Right before that.
Chris: And then swag.
Matt: Oh, the punch in the face.
Chris: The punch in the face, yes.
Matt: Yeah, the box goes, “Punch in the face.”
Chris: You do realize that platypie have like little poisonous barbs that they–
Matt: Well okay, okay. So hold on. Has anybody out there heard of Perry the Platypus?
Chris: Perry the Platypus, yeah.
Matt: Okay, so Joshua Cummins at Dan Cummins – buy your new and used cars from him, he’s awesome if you’re in Kentucky – referred me to the intro video of Perry the Platypus, which I had never seen before, and it was awesome!
Chris: Phenomenal. It was Phenomenal, yeah.
Matt: We are going to have to somehow get rights and include that in stuff. He’s basically a secret agent. Agent P I think it is.
Chris: Agent P, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or was it Mr. P? It was one or the other. Yeah, Perry the Platypus could potentially be the mascot. I guess we could have–
Matt: I feel like they’re buddies.
Chris: Conceptually.
Matt: I feel like– well we don’t– yeah. He’s not the same, they don’t look exactly the same.
Chris: Right.
Matt: Because I came with the logo–
Chris: That would be a problem.
Matt: Yeah, we came with the logo before and then I was like, “Oh my gosh, he’s got a friend that’s a badass too.”
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: And I was like, “Yes.”
Chris: Agent P.
Matt: Agent P and we got to– yeah.
Chris: Yeah, and Agent E.
Matt: Copromote. He’s our influencer.
Chris: If you are returning to this podcast, you are wondering, “What the hell is going on?”
Matt: This is true.
Chris: Who is Perry the Platypus, and why are these guys talking about it? That and not internet marketing? That’s a very good question. If you’re back though, you’re probably interested in some tips, maybe something like, “5 Online Marketing Mistakes That Can Tank Your Business,” and yes, you can get there by going to eWebResults.com/
Matt: Mini/guides.
Chris: And SEOtips. SEOtips will take you to the mini/guide page.
Matt: Ah, okay.
Chris: I tested it today. You did not know that, did you?
Matt: No, I knew that. I knew that. I did it, I did it.
Chris: It’s too easy, yeah I knew that. My eight year old kid does that to me! You didn’t know that, yeah I did.
Matt: Well, I’ll tell you though, there’s more resources there but–
Chris: A lot more mini– yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt: There’s more than the negatives ones, but the negative ones actually work better.
Chris: That’s what the statistics say.
Matt: That’s an SEO tip!
Chris: Alright, so we are covering– it’s not an article today, it’s a first. This is an absolute first for the podcast. Podcast #437. By the way, if you’re near some sort of electronic device and you can do some– tweet something or other and get on Facebook.
Matt: #Google.
Chris: Yeah. Hopefully they’ll connect with us. #SEOPodcast this is Podcast #437. Tag us @BestSEOPodcast, @eWebResults, @MattBertramLive, @eWebChrisBurres.
Matt: Wrong.
Chris: @ChrisBurresEweb.
Matt: Yes.
Chris: Somebody has to know something or other.
Matt: No, I’m telling you, the article you got to give a shout-out to Google.
Chris: Because we’re actually covering a page that is in the Google documentation. If you’ve ever spent any time kind of perusing Google documentation, normally trying to solve a problem that you ultimately don’t solve by reading the literature, and end up going and ironically–
Matt: Hey, that’s not nice to Google.
Chris: Googling to find the answer–
Matt: Someone that wrote the article that explains it better.
Chris: Already and explains it better, yeah.
Matt: Or a Youtube video, yup.
Chris: So we’re doing this podcast, “Best Practices for Mobile-First Indexing.”
Matt: Very true.
Chris: If you’re in the SEO industry, you’re probably seeing in search console that there’s lots of people who are now being mobile-first indexed, right? And so Google’s giving you a notification for each of the domains where that switch is happening, so the switch is really on right now.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: There’s all sorts of posts about, “Hey, 47 of my clients got switched over again.”
Matt: Boom! Booom!
Chris: And so we thought it would be a good time to review, “The Best Practices for Mobile-first Indexing,” and–
Matt: How to take your basis.
Chris: Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Matt: Okay, fair enough. I like it.
Chris: Straight from the horse’s mouth at Google.com, that’s what we’re going to be covering here shortly.
Matt: I bet they’ve done a logo, you know how the change the logos all the time?
Chris: Oh yeah, yeah.
Matt: Well Google has a horse.
Chris: Google as a horse.
Matt: And we could get that as like the thumbnail for this one.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: That would be cool. I don’t know, or the platypus.
Chris: Horse’s mouth, that would be the open mouth and then–
Matt: I don’t know. The platypus is better, nevermind.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Scratch that.
Chris: Yeah, platypus. I like the platypus. I can picture the platypus with it’s big flat tail–
Matt: Platypuses, if you look it up we’re going to add to it the ten–
Chris: I think it’s platypie.
Matt: Is it? I don’t know.
Chris: I think it is.
Matt: The ten– like there was this article, it was like, “The Ten Badass Things About Platypuses,” someone sent me. And they can do all kinds of cool stuff!
Chris: Yeah, like the have poisonous barbs.
Matt: That’s one, give me two.
Chris: Yeah, that’s great and they have a tail that can smack you.
Matt: That’s awesome. Alright, let’s get into this.
Chris: I think they’re also marsupial or something like that.
Matt: People are trying to fast forward and rewind to get to the real information.
Chris: If this is the first time you’ve been to the podcast–
Matt: We’re sorry.
Chris: We apologize and we say: howdy.
Matt: Howdy.
Chris: As we always do.
Matt: Because [00:08:59] [Indiscernible] howdy.
Chris: We run a contest each and every week. And the way the contest works is if we get a review – which we just read.
Matt: Whoo!
Chris: And we get 10 shikos.
Matt: Shikos! A share, a like, or follow.
Chris: And a shiko, when you give us a shiko, in your head, in the back of your head, you should just hear the sound as you’re clicking that like button, you should hear: Shikow!
Matt: Shikow!
Chris: That’s what shiko really sounds like.
Matt: We actually made a t-shirt about that actually.
Chris: A t-shirt that you can–
Matt: And we have logos about that because it’s so important. Trademark, just saying.
Chris: So the way it works: if we get 10 shikos and we get a review, then we skip the section where we tell you how to connect with us and give us a review. So we’re going to skip that.
Matt: I think we just move straight to t-shirts. No more–
Chris: T-shirts are available: eWebResults.com/
Matt: No! We’re going to–
Chris: Swag.
Matt: The contest for t-shirts! Not like–
Chris: Oh, that’s right! There’s a contest for t-shirts.
Matt: Like that you actually get something when you win the contest.
Chris: That’s true. Yeah.
Matt: Because moving it to the end, whooo. If you type in eWebResults, you can find us everywhere.
Chris: So we’re still doing this, right? So we’ve extended it so the next five people who submit for–
Matt: Because we haven’t got our shipment of t-shirts yet at all.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: We ordered a bunch.
Chris: We ordered a whole bunch. So we’ll send you a t-shirt – one of our t-shirts: you kind of select the t-shirt – if you’re one of the next five who submits for a website analysis. And you also–
Matt: And you’re a podcast listener, you got to mention it.
Chris: Yup, and you do also get a website analysis in that process.
Matt: You do. They’re actually really good.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: You might even get a book if I’m feeling generous.
Chris: And if you want that website analysis just by itself–
Matt: Oh! Oh! Oh! Sorry, sorry! I got to self-promote here.
Chris: Self-promote.
Matt: Next Thursday.
Chris: Thursday.
Matt: Okay, what’s next Thursday?
Chris: Next Thursday is–
Matt: What’s the date?
Chris: I have no idea. So today is the 21st I think. So if you add 7 and subtract 1.
Matt: 27th! 27th!
Chris: 26!
Matt: Oh.
Chris: Is it 26?
Matt: I think it’s 27th. Anyways, I am running a free promotion on Amazon, okay? We’re doing a review drive. We’ll call it a review drive.
Chris: Yup.
Matt: Because my reviews on Amazon are sad.
Chris: Yes.
Matt: Chris still hasn’t left a review.
Chris: He comes in and as he’s hiring people, he has a tear in his eye because no one– well, not no one, but not enough people have written reviews for his book.
Matt: I think people are just still reading it.
Chris: I swear I wrote a review. I did, it was there and then I had to close my browser.
Matt: So bottom line, on Kindle okay? On Kindle, on Thursday, it’s free. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it’s also free. And then I’ll have the Audible version.
Chris: Yeah, that’s big news.
Matt: And like in two weeks because people are like, “Hey, like I don’t–”
Chris: “I’ve given your book out to a couple people.” And you’re like, “Thank you.”
Matt: “I don’t read, that’s why I listen to your podcast.”
Chris: And they’re sticking it away and they’re saying, “Let me know when it’s going to be on Audible.” I’m like, “Well, give me the book back. Like you’re not going to read it.”
Matt: Yeah, but everybody out there that’s buying the book, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I guess you’re just reading it before you leave the review. That’s okay, Amazon won’t let me get your email address so I can email you to say, “Leave a review.” So I’m telling you now. Please do it.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: That’s it, that’s all I’m saying.
Chris: Alright, so let’s jump into this, “Best Practices for Mobile-First Indexing.” So if you’re not aware, Google’s been talking about this for quite some time. Historically it has indexed primarily on the desktop version of your website and now they’re changing to the mobile version.
Matt: Yeah, so a lot of times people have put a bunch of words on their desktop version because they could fit them in based on screen size.
Chris: There’s lots of space and layouts easy, yeah.
Matt: And then their mobile, they wouldn’t keep all the words and they would kind of hide them away, tuck them away, and it would be a really thinned down version.
Chris: Right.
Matt: So the people that have done that, unless you go in and add all those words back and re- kind of design it.
Chris: You need to Ctrl-Z, you need to undo that.
Matt: Yeah, your website’s going to– your mobile version’s going to tank.
Chris: Well your ranking is going tank.
Matt: Yeah, your ranking’s going to tank.
Chris: Because previously Google was based off the desktop version–
Matt: Now it’s going to be mobile.
Chris: Mobile, yeah. So Google has always– so people have asked, “Maybe you could have two indexes,” right? Where one index is if somebody is on a desktop version and you’re showing them that content, the other’s mobile, they continue and will continue to use only one index.
Matt: Well think about it, double indexes for the whole world?
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: That’s a lot.
Chris: Google could do it.
Matt: They could.
Chris: Look at what they’re already doing. It’s like: okay, times two. I believe in a line of code that’s like the star symbol and then the number two (*2).
Matt: That’s true, that’s true, that’s true.
Chris: That’s so easy for me. “Google primarily crawls and indexes pages with their smart phone agent,” right? So that’s basically saying that it’s mobile-first index. Here’s again, from the horse’s mouth, “As we said, we transition sites slowly to ensure a good experience for site owners and users. We evaluate each site individually on it’s readiness for mobile first indexing, based on the best practices and transition the site when the site is ready.”
Matt: Yeah, I mean this is basically like a– what is it called? A tension announcement? Or what is it, a customer service announcement? I feel like there’s the rhetoric– a public service! This is a public service announcement.
Chris: Is a bomb threat a public service announcement? I feel like it’s a–
Matt: I don’t know, but this is a public service announcement that you need to check your site and make sure your mobile version lines up with your desktop or you’re going to lose some serious rankings and all the work you did.
Chris: It’s like, “Warning!”
Matt: Yeah, this is a warning.
Chris: “Site about to tank!”
Matt: Yes.
Chris: “Warning! Ranking’s tanking.”
Matt: That is basically this whole podcast.
Chris: Yup. Alright, so let’s cover what’s changing, alright?
Matt: Yes.
Chris: Alright, again this is directly from this and it says– we’re going to talk about the different types of websites from the indexing perspective.
Matt: Alright, let’s do it.
Chris: So what if you have a desktop-only website, right? And the implication here– because the next line item is responsive web design. The implication is that the desktop-only is not responsive, and what it really says is that you don’t have to worry, you’re going to be indexed exactly the same.
Matt: That’s true.
Chris: What I would argue is you need to worry a lot because you have the same version, and the same version isn’t going to interact with the user the same way on your workstation, or on your iPad, or on your mobile device, or on whatever, whatever you’re going to be on.
Matt: You got to test it. Also, I’ve actually seen two different size screens that are mobile responsive, it’ll move some of the navigation bars into like a funky–
Chris: The wrong space.
Matt: A funky space.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Also if you’re using like unbounce out there, there’s the mobile-friendly version that doesn’t have the words. If you’re running a landing page, don’t worry about it, but if you’re running a website or you’re trying to rank text-wise, there’s definitely some things you need to look out for.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. That’s the desktop version, the next is “Responsive.” So just so you know, responsive really means that the content that is on the page gets adjusted based on what the size of the device that you’re on. And so if you’ve ever kind of messed around with this, you can get really granular and you can say, “Okay, so if it’s this size device–” We tend to throw things in classes: if it’s a mobile device, if it’s a table device, and if it’s a workstation device. In both of these cases, whether you’ve got a desktop that is responsive, that isn’t responsive or you got a website that is responsive, there’s really no change.
Matt: So also, there’s a little Chrome extension where you can kind of see different phones and what it’ll look like on different desktop.
Chris: Oh yeah, it’s actually built into Chrome, it’s not even an extension. Yeah.
Matt: Oh, okay. Well, yeah.
Chris: It’s a piece of Chrome.
Matt: I use it, so–
Chris: You assumed I installed it for you? This is really geeky, Chris knows to put this here.
Matt: I was like, “This thing’s awesome! Where is this?” Click click click.
Chris: So if you right-click anywhere in the space of a website and you go down to Inspect, right? That’ll open up a screen. I think that the default.
Matt: No, that’s not what I’m talking about.
Chris: Oh, you’re talking about something else?
Matt: I’m talking about there’s a little icon that you can pick the different phone device. You don’t have to do it the old school way.
Chris: Oh, that is an extension.
Matt: See?
Chris: I’m doing it the geeky way.
Matt: You’re doing it the old school way. I’m like: click a button, pick what phone or whatever I want.
Chris: You do realize that that extension is selling your data, right?
Matt: What–? Guys you already have all my data, I got a bunch of free apps on my phone.
Chris: So if you wanted to do it with the native Chrome: you right click, you hit inspect. It’ll actually pull up– I think the default is it pulls up the right, like a right sidebar, and then there’s a button somewhere that looks like a mobile device
Matt: You can do that and it does help, if you want to get geeky.
Chris: Or you search “Extensions Chrome Mobile Emulation,” probably.
Matt: Yes! It’s a generational thing.
Chris: Yeah. I’m cool with that. By the way this is saying that there’s no change with desktop, right?
Matt: Yes! Yeah.
Chris: If you’ve got a nonresponsive or responsive site, in terms of what you need to do. One thing to note though, if you’ve got competitors out there who have mobile and desktop versions, and their mobile version suck, then you’re probably going to see an increase in your ranking, right?
Matt: Yeah, yeah. If you lose rankings it takes a lot to crawl back up.
Chris: Yeah, and in this case think about it: if their mobile sucks and your mobile and desktop are the same, as their ranking tanks–
Matt: YEah, you’re going to move up.
Chris: You could move up.
Matt: For sure, that’s going to happen a lot. There’s going to be a shift.
Chris: But don’t count on that.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Let’s just do the right things, make sure that you’re responsive, alright?
Matt: Yeah, don’t optimize for their keywords on your site.
Chris: Punch in the face to Troy Prescott for joining us on Facebook Live.
Matt: Yeah, hey Troy!
Chris: Wohoo! Thank you. Alright, so next is “Canonical AMP.” All your pages are created in AMP HTML.
Matt: I don’t even know what that means.
Chris: I don’t many that are doing that.
Matt: I don’t even– AMP?
Chris: I don’t know many– in fact in this case it doesn’t matter, there’s no change. Now if you have separate URLs, right? So this is called the MDOT. And the reason it’s called MDOT is because you might have a subdomain where your regular domain is www or non subdomain, and then your mobile version is m. your domain.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: In this case Google’s going to switch from indexing your workstation desktop version– your workstation version and it’s going to switch to the mobile version. So Google now prefers the mobile URL for indexing and you need to read the best practices which we are about to cover.
Matt: Yes! Well, the one thing that I’ll say here: that was a pretty standard practice about 5+ years ago.
Chris: Yes.
Matt: Okay?
Chris: Yup.
Matt: So if you haven’t updated your website in say five years, this will affect you.
Chris: Call us.
Matt: Call us, we’ll help you redesign your website. We’re seeing a lot of that.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Okay?
Chris: We can take your old website and just turn it into a responsive website that’s in a nice platform – I don’t know – like WordPress.
Matt: But just like mattresses that study.
Chris: Yeah, the study that’s out there.
Matt: The commercial.
Chris: That your mom had. Like she read that stuff.
Matt: My mom read the study and told me, “You need a new bed because I read this study.” I was like, “You mean the ad on the radio?” She was like, “Oh, was that what it was?” But no, in all reality probably about–
Chris: It’s kind of like people reading your book, right? More will read it once the audio–
Matt: They listen to it, yeah.
Chris: Once the audiobook comes out.
Matt: Yeah. Well, bottom line is five years and back this is going to affect you. You probably need a new website anyway. A lot of our clients, three to five years is kind of the window – just so you know – for new websites. If you’re out there past then, you need to look at this. Also if you have a lot of traffic or leads coming from your website, you need to take a look at this, it’s important.
Chris: Make sure it’s right, right?
Matt: Right.
Chris: So we can do an evaluation for you.
Matt: For free.
Chris: So that’s separate URLs, next is “Dynamic Serving.” So there’s a way where when you request a page, you’re actually sending information to a server. And in that information that you’re sending to the server – in addition to the page that you would like – is the fact that you’re on a mobile device or you’re on a workstation, and so then the server can decide to send you a different page, right?
Matt: Awesome.
Chris: Interesting, super geeky. Just know that if you created those pages differently.
Matt: Uh-oh.
Chris: Right? Then you could suffer severe consequences. Meaning if the mobile version that your server decides to send–
Matt: He got the book.
Chris: He got the book?
Matt: He got the book.
Chris: He got the book?
Matt: Thank you!
Chris: Punch in the face! Punch in the face to you Tony– no Troy for getting the book. So if the pages are different, again know that Google’s going to stop indexing your desktop version and it’s going to start indexing your mobile version. And finally, “AMP & Non-AMP,” because you can have multiple types of pages, in fact it’s very typical for a news outlet to have non-AMP pages for workstations and then AMP pages for mobile devices. Just know that Google’s going to prefer the non-AMP URL for indexing.
Matt: And I will say this: we’re really good at a lot of things, but AMP websites are not one of them.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: So if you need an–
Chris: You’re in desperate need of an AMP–
Matt: AMP website, do not call us. We cannot help.
Chris: No.
Matt: We have not got on that train. We’ve had problems with it, we got off it, haven’t got back on.
Chris: We’ve turned it off on some sites because it was problematic.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. So you need somebody else.
Chris: So we might be able to help you there. Alright so a couple of these may apply to you, so we’re going to jump into the best practices for dynamically serving pages, separate URLs. So if your site has separate desktop and mobile content.
Matt: Yes.
Chris: So this could be MDOT or if your server is sending it, here’s things that you need to be aware of: “Your mobile site should contain the same content as your desktop.”
Matt: Yes.
Chris: And it’s interesting how Google very politically correct says, “You could consider updating your mobile site.” No. You should update your mobile site. You should not consider updating your mobile site. There’s no part of this process, if you want to maintain your rankings, that says you should consider it. You should update your mobile site so that its primary content is equivalent to your desktop. And that’s not just content, we’re not just talking about the text on the page, we’re talking about the image, the alt attributes, the videos, all of those need to be on the mobile version as well.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, you gotta do it. Like it’s all about user experience, right? So videos, pictures, text, and the same information that’s valuable for a desktop user, Google believes should be valuable for a mobile user.
Chris: Yup.
Matt: Now I do think that people search differently on desktop and mobile.
Chris: The definitely do. I do.
Matt: So really there’s some strategy in how you want to do it, but for SEO purposes, if you lose that content you will lose your rankings. Bottom line.
Chris: Next, “Structured data should be present on both versions of your site.” So you may not have taken the time to make sure you got– you know, if you got two separate sites. “Oh, we really need schema, this is really going to help push our search engine optimization.” So you take the time to put schema, proper schema code on your desktop version, and then you never got around to mobile, you’re going to pay a price.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Also you can use the data highlighter, make sure you do the data highlighter. So that’s a search engine– I mean it’s a search console tool.
Matt: So Chris, I think that this is a really good nugget. Why don’t you teach the audience here about the Data Highlighter and how awesome it is.
Chris: Okay. So it’s pretty awesome. It’s an alternative to actually getting proper schema code onto your particular site, and what you can do. So the best example that I can think of is: let’s say you’ve got some table, you have events —
Matt: A calendar.
Chris: A calendar, right?
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: And so you want to go– you go into Google, you go into this highlighter, what is it called? The Data Highlighter, which is in the Search Console, and then you grab pieces of data and tell Google exactly what that information is. You’re like, “Well here’s the date of the event, here’s the time of the event, here’s the cost of the event, and here’s the location.” And so now, the next time Google comes back and indexes that page, it knows what to look for in order to identify that information as the date, time, cost, and location.
Matt: It will look for it on all your pages too.
Chris: Yeah, on all your pages.
Matt: On all your pages. And so you think about those searches that you see where there was events below it and more information. More information is better, higher likelihood of people clicking and knowing what they’re looking for. So schema’s powerful, a lot of people aren’t doing it. We should probably do a podcast on Schema, all the different kinds, the reviews–
Chris: I’m also thinking of publishing events on our home page of when the podcast are, that people can tie into.
Matt: Oh, we’re on Eventbrite, we need to be on Schema.
Chris: Yup, or we can use the Data Highlighter.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Although we have a coder, so we just– Hey Jay, make this happen. “Meta data should be present on both versions of the site.” So I was interested in which pieces of data they mention because we kind of know titles and meta descriptions are the important ones and that’s the only ones that they mention. And so you want to make sure that your titles are proper.
Matt: Yes, titles super important.
Chris: If you fixed your titles on your desktop versions and never got around to it on your mobile version because it didn’t really seem to matter – because it didn’t – now it’s going to matter.
Matt: Uh-oh.
Chris: So make sure you get that right. And then additional best practices for separate URLs. Again this is theMDOT type URLs. “Verify both versions of your site in Search Console.”
Matt: Yes.
Chris: So you know that you can put in the actual URL and if it’s true that m.eWebResults.com is different than eWebResults.com, then you want both of those in the Search Console, and you’ll get feedback from Google on those.
Matt: So this is the kind of update that was like the SSL certificate update.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: Like this is a big update, guys. That’s why we’re spending and belabering this because this is so important, it’s going to affect a lot of people. Remember when SSL hit and you’re non-secure and the big pop-up and like, it was bad.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: It was bad. So get on top of this.
Chris: Yup.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Next. So that’s “Verify both versions in Search Console,” check. “Your Hreflang Links,” right? So this is your language links. So this is where you can actually say, “Hey, if the current browser is in Spanish, then I want them to go to say, m.example.com/es.” And what it’s saying is if they’re on a mobile version, make sure that your Hreflang– it’d be very easy to just put one hreflang or to not code that properly. And so if they’re in say, a mobile version, your Hreflang is sending them to the desktop version, you want to make sure you’re not doing that. Take the time to get that right. “Ensure your servers have enough capacity.” So think about this: often there were services in the past that would actually make a mobile version of your site for you. And they’re kind of now slowly going out of business because so many people are going to responsive and maybe not dedicating enough server resources to where your mobile page is. And Google’s now indexing that page and not the other server. Just be mindful that you might want to consolidate that. Just be aware of that, could be a problem. You also want to verify that your robot.txt– excuse me robots.txt files are relevant to both the mobile and the desktop version.
Matt: Chris, why don’t you talk a little bit about that as well as the sitemap?
Chris: Right.
Matt: I’m seeing a lot of websites coming in and people are not having a sitemap, they’re not having a robots.txt file. Why is that important? Why do you do it? Just kind of educate the audience out there.
Chris: So can you get away without a robots.txt file? Absolutely, you can get away with it.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: You usually want to do it. So say on a WordPress site, you want to keep people– in general keep the bots– although you got to be careful about this because there’s–
Matt: You want to box some bots.
Chris: Yeah, well–
Matt: But not all the bots.
Chris: Right, because part of generating the page is– and actually I got a little confused with kind of the server-level passwords. With the bots you want to tell them, “Hey, stay out of this area.”
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: “There’s no reason for you to be in the admin section. You don’t need to be on my Shopping Cart pages.” On the product pages: yes, but not on the Shopping Cart pages. So go ahead and let those bots know, “Hey, stay out of this place.” There’s also so many bots out there, that you can get tons of traffic that are just bot-related and you can fix that with your robots.txt file. Now this does presuppose that those robots actually listen to the information that’s in your robots.txt file.
Matt: Yeah, and they just slow down your page.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: So you just say, “Stay away little buggies.”
Chris: Yup.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: And potentially train your server.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: Then the next that we’re talking about is the sitemap.
Matt: Yeah, the sitemap.
Chris: So the sitemap is a really– it’s the right way to very easily submit your entire site to Google and you definitely want– it’s one of those things: when we see a sitemap, maybe somebody’s done some SEO on the site, but when we don’t see a sitemap either it’s been an incredibly inept person who’s been doing SEO on the site or no SEO has been done on the site.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: And we can usually pull up a site. And we’ve got a 15 to 30 minute call that’s free and kind of give you some feedback on, “Hey, your SEO– whoever you’re using for your SEO here’s where they’re going wrong already or here’s where they’re going right.”
Matt: YEah.
Chris: I mean we get– I’ll be honest, it doesn’t happen very often, but we’ve had clients who are like– or prospects call us, “Hey, I want you to look at the SEO.” And like your SEO’s good. Your probably okay. I mean we’ve got other marketing strategies that could probably help enhance the number of leads you have. But the reason you came in our door was SEO, and that may be good.
Matt: Well, we can really help take you to the next level.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: There’s a lot of new things that are happening that you got to stay on top of what’s going on. There’s a lot of things you do with Google My Business, there’s hyper local SEO.
Chris: Right.
Matt: There’s a lot of stuff that keeps changing and a lot of people are doing SEO the way it used to work three years ago, okay? Same thing with social. Something that I’m seeing with social, I think you laughed or something when I was talking to somebody about social, and I was like, “If you don’t understand how your social’s making money–”
Chris: Making you money.
Matt: “It’s probably not.”
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: And I heard Chris start laughing after I said that. I was like, “A lot of people are selling social services and you’re like, ‘I know I–’”
Chris: More likes, more engagement.
Matt: “‘I know I need to do this but I don’t see it hitting the bottom line, bringing revenue.’ If you don’t know how it’s doing it, it’s probably not.” So one of the changes that happened in March, and a lot of companies haven’t changed this, is it’s the three–
Chris: Adjusted to it, yeah. A lot of companies–
Matt: Right, like adjusted to it is the three posts a week, on multiple platforms.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: I think is really good for Google’s social signals.
Chris: Right.
Matt: Okay? It’s really good for–
Chris: Speak to Google, right.
Matt: To speak to Google for SEO, right? To drive business ro referral business, Facebook said, “No, you got to pay money.”
Chris: Yup.
Matt: Right? If you’re a business, you got to pay money. So what you want to do is you want to–
Chris: Pay to play.
Matt: You want to start taking maybe one of those three posts, maybe limit it to one or keep all three of them, but pick the best one and maybe put $5, $10, $15, $20 behind it, every time just boost it, and that’s where you’re going to continue to get your visibility.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: So, same things are working just costing a little more money, having to do it a little bit different but if you didn’t know that, you know, you’re getting hit.
Chris: Yeah, and if your SEO service that you’re paying for or you’re doing yourself, is not including a paid strategy behind it, then it’s probably more of a waste of time.
Matt: And it’s really not that much money, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: To put $20 a month behind Facebook–
Chris: Can get you some traction for sure.
Matt: It can get you some traction. For Facebook think about 20 times X number of businesses.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: It’s crazy. But for the individual business, it is a little more pay to play, but I mean the internet is free, right? And people are learning how to kind of wall up the gardens, you know?
Chris: And then finally– so this is– we’re covering best practices for mobile-first indexing, and these are the best practices–
Matt: Miguel hello!
Chris: “Make sure you have the correct relative canonical and relative alternate link elements between your mobile and desktop versions.”
Matt: So canonical’s really important when you’re doing like location pages. I don’t know if you want to kind of speak to Canonical tag and what that means, Chris?
Chris: So canonical is like a taxonomy phrase which says we’re using this term to point to the originator of the content, right? So because we’re switching to mobile-first, we really probably want our mobile version of the site– assuming you have two different versions.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: You want that mobile version to be the first originator of the content, right?
Matt: The author, right.
Chris: And so your workstation version or your desktop version, you want a real canonical tag that points to your mobile version so that that’s the originator.
Matt: And that’s the pro tip of today.
Chris: Pro tip of today. And so you want to use that in a couple of places. You probably should have 301 redirects, but if you don’t, make sure you have canonical for things like the non www version of your website. The www version of the website. The www.com/index.php version because with and without the index.php Google sees that as different content. You really should have a 301 redirect but if you don’t, have a canonical tag. And so that’s– make sure they’re pointing to the right place, and the right place is now, your mobile version.
Matt: Yes!
Chris: Especially if you’ve got– your website’s been turned on for mobile version indexing or whatever the phrase is. I can’t remember what the phrase of this thing you do is. So punch in the face to you Google for changing everything again.
Matt: Or kick in the shins? Nah.
Chris: Kick in the shins or I don’t know. It’s the right move.
Matt: YEah.
Chris: You know, the search volume on mobile devices is just outstripping, yeah.
Matt: On solid climb climb climb, yeah.
Chris: And we are still seeing, actually, that most conversions are happening on desktop. So even though–
Matt: Depending on the business.
Chris: Yeah, it does depend.
Matt: Depending on Business.
Chris: In general, most are. So we’ll still see lots of traffic. In some cases it’s pretty extreme. We’ll see 75% of traffic on the mobile device. So this is overall traffic. 70% on the mobile device, and we’ll see 65% of conversions on the workstation.
Matt: So this is where some Google training actually is really helpful. They’re wanting you to optimize for micro moments, okay?
Chris: Okay, yeah, yeah.
Matt: So people are making a decision, they’re taking some kind of action. What are they doing if they’re on the go? They’re sitting at the doctor’s office, like what can they do quickly? Can they book something? Can they download something? What it is? Are they going to buy something? And so Google’s put out some really, really good training on micro moments, and if you optimize for micro moments and answering those questions and selling products into those spaces, you’re really going to– Google’s going to help you. Just like when Facebook Live came out and they just blasted it everywhere, and it’s kind of died down since then. But there’s certain things that are happening that if you do it, it’s going to carry it more. Like Instagram, right? the 10 minute– what is it called? Instagram stories?
Chris: Stories, yeah.
Matt: Right, the 10-minute version. They are trying to push that hard. So you need to get on that if you’re not. Again influencers out there, call us.
Chris: Call us. We have a story for you. Alright so that was a really good piece of information. We wanted to get that out to everyone as this is really coming to fruition. If you like this podcast, we’ll ask you to tell three people about the podcast. You can do that right now, we will not be offended if you get slightly distracted.
Matt: We’ll just wait, let’s just wait. You can do it right now, we’ll wait.
Chris: We’ll just– go ahead.
Matt: Have you done it?
Chris: Twitter… do it.
Matt: Alright, cool.
Chris: Good.
Matt: Alright, thanks. Appreciate it.
Chris: If you are looking to grow your business with the largest simplest marketing tool on the planet–
Matt: The internet!
Chris: Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, so that’s somebody– and it’s important that we say this every now and then, because every now and then we get these phone calls that are like, “Do you guys do websites?” Yes! “Do you guys do PPC?” Yes! And which PPC? Are you talking Facebook PPC? Are you talking Instagram PPC? Are you talking about Google PPC?
Matt: We are starting an education company. We are moving to the new building, so don’t worry we’ll be doing that too.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: But we have an agency, we’re running the agency, we’re killing it for our clients.
Chris: Yup.
Matt: We do full service from geofencing to html coding.
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: Boom.
Chris: That’s a good– yeah, what he said.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: I’m going with that. So send that referral to us. When they pay their bill, we’ll pay you.
Matt: Yeah, and on the little– it’s like the– I don’t know, I don’t like our hamburgers, but we got two hamburgers.
Chris: Hamburger menu.
Matt: Yeah, the hamburger menu on the right side– right side?
Chris: Yeah.
Matt: There’s a referral option. You go to the referral option.
Chris: Fill out the form.
Matt: Fill out the form and it’s basically you’re putting in your information, you put in the referral’s information. If we close the deal we pay you 5% for life if they’re with us that long. But we do have some clients that are 8 years, some 4 years. A lot of 2 and 3 year clients. So let you know–
Chris: It could be a good stream of income.
Matt: It’s a great stream of income. We have some people that are doing really well. So if you’re a web designer out there and you’re not doing the SEO, send them our way; PPC, social media, etcetera.
Chris: Alright, let’s see.
Matt: And that’s it. That’s all I got.
Chris: So you can connect with us– where did–?
Matt: A lot of ways. I feel like I’ve just sold too much.
Chris: Remember–
Matt: Too much.
Chris: Remember to please a review for Matt’s book.
Matt: Too much. Yes! Okay, Yes, yes! I’ll take that.
Chris: So that’s BuildYourBrandMania.com
Matt: BuildYourBrandMania.com when you click on the button, it’ll now take you to Amazon because to be part of Amazon Select, you cannot sell your book anywhere else to be part of Amazon Select.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Matt: So I had to direct everything to them.
Chris: To Amazon.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: And then leave a review there.
Matt: Please! Please, please, please.
Chris: That would be really nice. We’ll leave it with that.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: We do have a Pinterest account: pinterest.com/
Matt: Pinterest!
Chris: eWeb–
Matt: just kidding!
Chris: eWebResults. Alright, we’ll leave it at–
Matt: We need to get those. Pinterest.com/Pinterest.
Chris: Pinterest, yeah. We’ll leave those as they are. Please remember, we were filmed live here at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas 77092. You can get a transcript, video, and audio of this podcast by going to eWebResults.com and clicking the little podcast link, and then you can find it and it’s all there.
Matt: Yay!
Chris: We are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes, that is because of all of you all.
Matt: Thank you.
Chris: All of you all.
Matt: Thank you, thank you.
Chris: Thank you very much for being loyal listeners.
Matt: And we’re going to have a new thumbnail. So if you’re looking for it, it’s going to change next week.
Chris: Oh yeah, the thumbnail for the podcast is changing.
Matt: Yeah, so you’re not going to see–
Chris: Did you hire somebody to make that change?
Matt: You’re not going to see our pretty faces anymore.
Chris: Aww.
Matt: Yeah.
Chris: That’s so sad!
Matt: We’re going to get a little more professional up in here, yeah.
Chris: I could’ve–
Matt: Okay, so we had two, right? One is the caricatures, right?
Chris: Yeah. The bobbleheads?
Matt: Yeah, so let’s hold the bobbleheads up. So don’t look for us anymore, later look for these guys or look for “SEO Podcast” real big.
Chris: Right.
Matt: Yeah, but these guys, we might do this one. We have two options, we’re AB testing it. Woohoo! Yeah.
Chris: Very cool. Alright, thank you guys. Until the next podcast my name is Chris Burres.
Matt: Matt Bertram.
Chris & Matt: Bye bye for now.