Optimizing Page Titles for Algorithm Changes - #seopodast 171

Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your Internet Marketing Specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. This is podcast number 171. You are listening to the most popular Internet Marketing Podcast that's also about SEO and Internet Marketing and websites and how you deal with people who end up at your websites on iTunes. Yeah, well, you say it. As always, we have a tip from a previous podcast. First, please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers where our mantra is... Don't be a deuce. Like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't be a deuce. Tweet now if you can, if you have a device, if you're at a computer, if you have a tablet. Go ahead and tweet. What you want to tweet for us, please, is... Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 171. Make sure you tag us at eWebStyle. That way we can link up, we can network, and we can kick it. As always, there is a tip from a previous podcast. That was podcast number 170. And the tip is make sure your on-page optimization strategy is... Strategy. Strategy is up to date. Is up to date with the latest algorithm changes. Yeah, you want to make sure that whatever tactics, whatever strategy you are using for your on-page optimization, make sure that you're up to date on the latest algo. You know, don't be using exact match keywords in your anchor text. It's not a good look. Don't, you know, in your content, you know, make sure you're kind of theming your content around your target keywords and not just spamming keyword stuffing, right? And so, and title tags and things like that. It's a lot you can do in regards to your on-page optimization. You want to make sure that you're following what Google has kind of put out as a standard. Yep. And make sure you go back and listen to the previous podcast so you can get a few more details about that whole process. And, you know, talking about

keeping your website up to date for algorithm here. So if you're watching the video, you can actually see the text message that is going out. A little too much glare there. Yeah, probably so. And that brings us to our segment, the Algorithm Cataclysm. Oh, you got to see that special effect there. Yeah, so today's Algorithm Cataclysm is another Panda update. Panda update 21. Wow. Yeah, so they've counted 21 Panda updates over the past year and a half. By the way, one of our listeners sent us a video of Panda noises. I know. I saw it. I didn't see the video yet, but I saw the message. Yeah, so they actually do make noises. Not just during sex. I remember we talked about that. Yeah. But yeah, Panda 21, it happened last week. And it's basically just a Panda refresh. They said it only affected 1.1% of our online searches. Now, what's interesting, speaking of searches and stats, remember when they went to protecting the keyword data, and so it was only going to show 3% of, not provided, would be like 3-5% of all searches? Yeah. I read an article this morning that said it's 39% across the board. That sounds about right, and actually, that could even be a little low. Yeah, yeah. That could even be a little low, because from what we're seeing, it's more like 50%, you know, half of them will have, for example, 150 visits to a site, and 75 of them have keyword data, and the other 75 are not provided. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and that number may have changed. Maybe the original estimate, the original estimate was fairly accurate. It just changed quickly, because people are adopting Gmail, people are making a Gmail account, and people are staying, or Google does a good job of keeping you signed in on your Gmail account. So that's maybe why that percentage has gone up, because now more people are searching after they've been signed in. That's just a short time, though. It seems like we just made

that estimate, and, you know, six months later, to jump from 5% to 40%? Well, I just think the emphasis now is on a G-plus account, right? And so there's so many avenues where you really need to have a Google account, and it's so easy to sign into it and remain signed in for a day or a week. Yeah. You know, it doesn't auto-sign you out of your Google account, you know, in 10 minutes. Mm-hmm. You know, we got... Well, that, and then the fact that, you know, with the browser deal with Chrome, sign in the browser, and so now, and I do that everywhere. Yeah. Like, I'll go to your house and sign in to Chrome. Your Chrome sign in, yeah, because I have all my stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And so that's effective, because now I'm at different locations, and I'm still signed in. All the time. So, yeah, it's, I can see that. Very true. Well, you noticed that there was no tear tattoo on my eye. That's because we have some reviews. These were posted on iTunes. If you want to help us out, if you get any good information from this podcast, and if our reviews are any indication, apparently, that is occurring, then go ahead and, three simple steps, go on to iTunes, create an account, write a review. If you choose to, go ahead and send us an email, podcast at... E-websstyle.com. And let us know that you submitted a review, and we'll give you some link love. This first review is the title, Best SEO Podcast Out There. Thank you. Appreciate it. Five stars. This is Gray's, by Gray's on Barber. Who? Gray's on Barber. Okay. Barber. Grayson Barber. Thank you. SEO, come on, let's get straight to the review here. We don't need to quibble over who's right or who's wrong. Just because Grayson Barber makes sense. SEO is a very boring subject, this is the review. But somehow these guys keep me listening. Yes, they do talk about some random stuff in the beginning, but there

are a few nuggets in there, and it's nice to laugh once in a while. I am pleased to say that they have helped me get my wife's site, littlesprouts.co. We did a webinar on that one to get it to the first page of Google with the search phrase Organic Preschool San Diego. I still have a long way to go, but I am confident that with this information, with the information that they share, I will get to the first page for Preschool San Diego. Keep it going, guys. You guys, you rock, and God bless. Man, Grayson, man, appreciate the review, punch the face to you, man, the competitive phrase, good luck on the other one, Preschool San Diego, that just sounds competitive, sounds extremely, it's also very niche, so you should be able to do that. I think we did do an analysis on that site. I think so, or we may have done one, littlesprouts.co.uk, which was a soccer website. It's something in there, anyway. All right, we do have another podcast, we haven't contributed to that podcast in some time, but there are videos up of our website analysis. If you want a website analysis, you can actually go to our website, e-webstyle.com. What would you do there, if you wanted a webinar? You would subscribe. You would request a webinar. Ooh, caught him off guard. Yeah, that was all new. Yeah, go to the website. On the side, there's a free website analysis form. Just leave that. But that will put you on our newsletter, and that way you can keep all this content coming to your email. Next review, fantastic for do-yourself SEOs. Five stars. This is by Quince79. I consider the podcast an invaluable tool that is really paying off in terms of my company's visibility. The fact that it is also entertaining is just an added bonus. Keep up the good work. Guys, thank you so much. I appreciate it, dude. Thank you for tuning in. The other thing you could do, if you get any value from our podcast,

is you could go to e-webstyle.com slash... G+. Yes, G+, or Google+, or Google+, or G+. Then get out. And that'll take you to our G+, page, and you can write a review there. Leave us a review. Tell us what you think about it. We so appreciate it. Little bit of news. This is cool. Kansas, so Google has been working on this high fiber, huge fiber network in a neighborhood in Kansas City. It's finally opened. They're getting one gigabit per second for 70 bucks a month. Wow. Yeah. It's like crazy. Wow. You know what else Kansas City is known for? Like, this is totally random. My brother used to live there. Barbecue. They're also known for the city in the world with the second largest quantity of fountains. Really? Outdoor fountains, yeah. They're like fountains. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a fountain. I don't know why anyone ever swings dead cat, but they do it all the time. And they hit stuff. Like fountains, probably. In Kansas City, it'd be fountains. Here, it would be cars and traffic. Steve Wozniak has said that he thinks Microsoft may be more creative than Apple. He also says that Steve did not have to be so much of a bastard. That was quote, unquote. Yeah. Good timing to make that point. I disagree with both of those statements. I agree. I mean, I agree that. That you disagree. I'm going to move on. Yeah. The new Wii. Microsoft will never be more creative than Apple. Yeah. Like, come on. And Steve had to be that way. Yeah. That's why Apple is the way it is now. Absolutely. I agree with that. You know, the Wii. Have you seen the new Wii? No. So, there's a new Wii, and it's actually like a whole PS, oversized PS3, and the console. Right? So, you've got a screen, and you're, anyway, it seems overblown to me. They're saying that it's probably going to be sold out for the first six months, like when the Wii originally came out. And

it makes me wonder, so Apple does a really good job of having a ton of phones, right? Two million of them or something on the first day. Yeah, they choose a good sellout number. I mean, you do that in restaurants, right? I got a friend who owns a barbecue restaurant, and one of his things is, you know, I'm looking to sell out today. You know what I'm saying? And so, he has a certain number of food that he needs to sell in order to hit his happy spot and make sure everybody's paid, all the bills are paid. Then he has another number to make sure they hit profit. Right. And another number higher than that, good day. Which is a good day. Shoot for that number. Yeah. And if it sells out right then, we're out. Yeah. So, yeah, Apple does that well. We need to have five million phones on day one. Yeah. At the stores. At the stores. Like we said, one of our podcasts is kind of amazing that they can have five million phones in stores, and no one has seen them, and they don't take pictures beforehand, and, you know, they've got a lot of incredible confidentiality. Probably you lose your right leg and left arm if you reveal an iPhone. Lift pinky toe and right thumb. Yeah. That's a bad combination. One other thing, the new HTC, I can't remember what it's called, Droid DNA, which, by the way, is just a really cool name, has built into it the wireless charging, which is kind of cool. Now, wireless charging has a couple drawbacks, I was reading. One of them I knew, which is inductive charging, is significantly less efficient. Yeah. Battery probably went down super fast. Well, it's not just the battery, it's the process of charging it. So, it uses more electricity, and it takes forever. The other thing is, is when your phone's dead and you still need to use it, you plug it in, and you can still use it. If your charging method is

to leave it on a pad, then you're like. Or a speakerphone, one of the two? It's one or the other. Both of us are, like, dipping our head down. Yeah, that's how you use the phone in that case. So, that is the potatoes. Now, time to get to the meat. By the way, you can follow us on Facebook, facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Or on Twitter, twitter.com slash eWebStyle. Or on YouTube, youtube.com slash eWebStyle. And there's one more. You can send us an email, podcast at e-webStyle.com. Now, I did get, somebody has said that our support at e-webStyle isn't working. I am pretty sure I tested that one. I think I tested that one, and it was working. And we've got to report that podcast at e-webStyle wasn't working. And I definitely tested that one, and it's working. So, give us some feedback if you're having some problem getting a hold of us. Podcast at e-webStyle.com is working. A couple Twitter punches and faces before we jump into the content. Punching the face to Gary Miller. He is at Gary Troy Miller. Says the podcast is the best ever. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in. Is that the We See You, Gary? I think it's the We See You, Gary. From Romper Room? Oh, maybe. It probably is. I think it is. It probably is, yeah. And then another one, Kyle Proctor from at the Web Authority. I said he was watching 162 at the time. Oh, cool. So, thank you guys for tuning in, and I appreciate it. And it was a bill. Sorry about your meeting and that you couldn't catch the podcast today. Yeah. You know, it is what it is. I couldn't catch it live. You'll catch it later. So, today, I got an SEO checklist. Pulled it from SEO Moz. And it was pretty cool because every agency, every firm has this launch process, several things you do before you launch a site or either right after you launch a site. And so, this one was a deployment of an SEO checklist.

Love SEO checklists. Everyone has one. Most of them are 80% the same and 20% different. So, this one had a few things, and we'll run through them. So, in regards to on-site optimization, first, you want to check if page titles exist and are correct. This is a must. You know, I was thinking about this the other day. With all of the algorithm changes and things Google has been doing, page title is still top of the list in regards to things you have to have correct. Yeah. You know. What are the two mistakes people make with page titles? They stuff them. There's too many keywords in there, and therefore, it's diluted. It doesn't really have the power it could have, or they tend to brand their company name instead of their target phrase. And so, instead of having, you know, bathroom remodeling as the page title, they have... Plumbers are us. Exactly. So, there's three, actually. Not doing them. Yeah. Right? Or duplicate. There's a whole bunch of pastes. Yeah. Not doing them. Branding the company instead of the target phrase, and then stuffing. Mm-hmm. Don't do those three things. So, you want to not do those three things, and you also want to make sure that all of your page titles are different. Yeah. Don't want to have duplicate page titles. Well, I'm going to sprinkle this in since we're in the kitchen and cooking. You also don't want to have duplicate meta information, descriptions, keywords, things like that. They should be unique for each page. Number two, ones exist and are correct. I'm going to adjust this and say headers exist and are correct because we usually end up with at least one H1, two H2s, and possibly some H3s or 4s depending on how much content we have. So, make sure your headers exist and are correct. Make sure you have your... The header is that one place on the page where it's, you should have that exact match keyword. You know, and the content, okay, theme it, make it different. But in

that header, go for your target type. Exact match. Okay. Number three, meta descriptions exist and are correct. Yeah. We just talked about that. And remember, those are really important because those potentially, depending on the phrase and what the Google algorithm has done, that potentially is the description that ends up on the search engine result page right below the link to your website. So, the description is your first opportunity for CIVO, search engine visitor optimization. That's with somebody after they come from a search. Right there, you've got that opportunity to sell yourself and convince them that they should click through. Definitely. And speaking about that, and we were just talking page titles, let me sprinkle this in. You familiar with the rule of 60? So, the rule of 60 is that in the search engine results page, your page title that shows, Google is only going to show the first 60 characters of that before they end up showing your meta description, which would in turn be your search result kind of description. So, in the first 60 characters of your page title, be sure to include exactly what you do. Yeah. Make sure your phrase is there. Take this opportunity to brand. We talked about this last week. If you're not providing, let's say, a product or a service and you're really just trying to get some name exposure, then take advantage of those 60 characters to highlight your company, maybe what you're known for, what you're trademarked for. If you're providing a service, then use that to specifically, I would take it a step further and give an offer for your service. You know, that title could say, you know, again, bathroom remodeling, free bathroom remodeling is a great page title if that's what you do. It's a great CTA for searching the results page and it's likely to generate a click. And so, make sure that those first 60 characters identify your company and give an offer using your target phrase, if you can. Alt text. Yeah, alt text is targeted. Duh. You

know. Also, exact match opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, so Google did the overall optimization penalty and they've been targeting exact match in a couple different ways. First, they targeted an anchor text. Right. Now, they're targeting domain names. But, page titles, alt text, these are still great places where you can list your exact match phrases. So, take advantage of that. Content exists and is correct. Yeah. If you don't have enough content, then that page shouldn't be there. How much content is enough? Enough that makes sense. I'll say that. You know, I'll kind of get away from the word count per se because I think that's losing value. Right. But, I do think that if that content is there and it's optimized well and it's quality, that's the word I was looking for, quality and relevant to the search phrase, then that's enough content. Now, I will say you should make sure your content includes at least an image, a video, things like that, just to make the rich media experience more effective. Let's see here. Correct version of the site being shown to the search engines, if you do that sort of thing. Yeah, don't do that. You know what I'm saying? Whatever site you put up, show the search engines and the users the same site. You'll get nailed and taken off of the index. Yeah. Accessibility. Yeah, make sure your site's accessible. You know, especially if you provide a service that people use in, like, emergencies, like roofers and things like that, especially down in the Gulf Coast. You want to make sure it's accessible to, like, mobile devices because people whose roof is leaking are going to find the first device they can to stop that leak. And it's usually a smartphone. Yeah. And if they can't get your website, they'll go back and try the next one. Exactly. And so, because it's usually an emergency. One thing to realize about mobile searches, people who search on a mobile are 50% more likely to take an action. Yeah. For the simple

fact that they're searching on a mobile because it's... It's a little more inconvenient to search on a mobile. Yeah, I don't want to have to go... I don't want to do five bounces. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I need the first result to be the one I need. Yeah. And so, because unfortunately, I'm probably driving. But anyway... So, you know, make sure your site's accessible. The next one, meta robots are correct. Yes. We're the people who, unfortunately, other firms have, you know, blocked. The entire site. Yeah. Because of some code they put on the robots file. So, make sure your robots.txt file is correct. Tracking. Analytics code on every page. Yeah. Duh. Duh. E-commerce tracking is set up. I'll take that a step further and say, yeah, make sure your goals... Yeah. Because we ran into this. Yeah. You know, I had this issue happen with me, like, two weeks ago. You know, new paid search client. We sent a lot of traffic. Spent a good budget. CTR looked good. Clicks looked good. But I just failed to set up conversion tracking. And so, I couldn't... Quantify the amount of customers or in-game actions that happened. It sucks. It sucks when you're monitoring it. And then when it's time to make a decision, you don't have the data you need. So, definitely set up tracking. Make sure that... And you're using it. Doing that kind of sounds like throwing money against the wall and seeing if it sticks. Yeah, exactly. As opposed to knowing that you've got a plan of action and following through on it. Yeah. I mean, luckily, we were able to see, you know, increasing sales and other things. So, we could still see that our efforts worked. Had an impact. Yeah. But it would have been great to just look at the numbers right in front of you. Technical. Make sure your canonical tag is correct. Yeah, make sure all your redirects are right. Make sure you're forwarding any, you know, pages that don't exist over to a new page.

Things like that. Make sure all internal links are followed. Make sure URLs are absolute or there are no problems with relative URLs. So, this is kind of interesting. I think internal links on the site, you don't need absolute URLs. Right. I think external links, well, you have to have it for an external. Right, right. But internal links, I don't think it's necessary to have an absolute. That's kind of up in the air. This is my personal. Well, now, so just for you who don't know or maybe know that there's a difference and don't know what it's called, an absolute URL is one that includes the whole HTTP colon slash slash potentially dub dub dub. Yeah. And then a relative link is, say, I'm in a particular folder looking at the index page and I've got an about us page. I don't put HTTP colon colon, I just put about us dot com slash about us dot html or dot asp or dot php. Whatever it is. Or just maybe his WordPress is probably just slash about us. Yeah. And so, yeah, those are absolute, would have the whole URL and the other ones wouldn't. Let's see here. Da-da-da-da. Make sure your response codes are, if you're doing any coding, right, and I've seen this problem. So what happens is, let's say you have some existing material, let's say QR code. It's a response code. So a quick response code is on there and then you go and maybe alter that page on the site, use some other optimization. And so now that URL that the QR code was designed to go to doesn't exist anymore. Keep in mind that you may have other marketing materials out there when you make changes to your site. Yeah, exactly. So, you know. And monitor, actually, your 404s because if you pull down a page and you monitor your 404, then you can know that, oh, somebody's trying to get this page. We'll often put a 404 page that we'll send email to the webmaster, to somebody on staff

here, to track that. So another issue that they may be referring to with respect to response codes is, are you doing a 301 or a 302? 301 is a permanent redirect. 302 is a temporary redirect. And if you intended to do a 301 and you do a 302 and then eventually pull that page down, then Google the link juice, you're going to lose your link juice. So make sure you're using the right response code for that. Definitely. And the last one on the list is the sharing functionality exists. Make sure that, especially if you're blogging, right, make sure that people can share your content, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Digit, Reddit, whatever it is, make sure that it's accessible, make sure that the feature is there and easy to use. So that's our checklist. And not our checklist, but the SEO Moz checklist, similar to ours, similar to ours. Some of these, most of these things kind of apply depending on what kind of agreement we have, right? If you're not doing social, then we won't push your social. Right. So. Different things. Exactly. And we promised last podcast to talk about relative author tags, this podcast, right? Okay. Go. Author tag. Maybe everyone's seen it. You know, you go and search for something and you get your Google search results and you see the little image right there. That's the author tag. Google is highlighting the author. How do you do that? Pretty simple. One, make sure your Google Plus page is set up. Right. On that Google Plus page, check your avatar. Make sure you got a nice smiling image, you know, friendly face that people can see and recognize. More importantly, because the author tag whole process is all about really branding and creating imports. Let me get this side note to say, the more people have you in circles, increases the impact of your author tag result. Right. Because it'll say, yeah, you know, it has 400 people in the circle or things like that. Or 400 people have him in circles

next to the post. Right. So keep that in mind. But once you set up that plus page, go to your about page, click edit, and whatever sites that the content is on that you're posting, make yourself a contributor. Not editor, not editor. You'll see one section for websites, then you'll see another section for contributors. Right. This is on the about page, about profile page on your Google Plus page. Yep. Put the links to the sites in the contributor section. Google Plus page is set up. Links to your websites and the contributor page is set up. Two steps done. Now go back to your website. Go back to your website, and there's two ways you can do this. If you're on WordPress, download the Yoast plugin, it'll do it all for you. Done, simple, gone. If you're not, then make sure at the bottom of each post that you indicate who was written by, and that name written by Charles Lewis should be the anchor text and the link to guess what? My Google Plus page. And that way Google, okay, he wrote this page, and he's a contributor on this page. Okay, yeah, his circle is complete. So when they show results for that particular page, my, my, uh, author picture would show. Now, that G Plus account has to be an email with the same domain, have to be an email with the same domain as a target domain. So that's important to you. Well, yes and no. Okay. The easiest way to do it is, is yes, if, if the G Plus account, the, the email is used that is on the same domain name as the site, then it happens faster. Google does have a verification process where you can skip that if you're using a different email address. And so they'll kind of send you an email, confirm, and they verify it. And then all of a sudden that other email also accesses your Google page. So, a few more steps. Cool. Remember, picture's good. Picture of you that you've selected

better. You're going to get, you're going to get more clicks. We don't have any statistics on that. We're working. Actually, we've got one of our clients who gets a, who gets a significant amount of traffic, who blogs regularly, and he just got relative author tags. So we flag that. We'll be looking at the numbers, I don't know, in another two months. Well, he's talking about stats, so it's easy. So Danny Sullivan put out an article yesterday where he was saying that Google is now releasing stats for author tag usage. And so on your Google Plus page at the bottom, and it's only for select users, like, I don't have it yet, Google. Yeah, what's up with that? What's up? But anyway, at the bottom of the Plus page, on the bottom right side, you will see a link to check your, check your author tag analytics is what they're calling it. And it'll show you how many pages you have that actually use your author tag and how many times they've been viewed in comparison to when you didn't have author tags set up. So I haven't seen it yet because I don't have it active, but I did see the screenshots, and it looks pretty cool. So get ready for that. Great way to show stats. I was going to, on iTunes, on my iPad, I, there's no reviews. Right? Remember I showed you this? So it says that there's 600 reviews, but then when you click through and try and view those reviews, I'm just flipping through it here now. It comes up. Here we go. Refresh those. Only six. But we know we have like a hundred and something. No, it's not a hundred. Yeah, we couldn't determine if that was a, well, we figured it's an iTunes issue. It's not a device issue. It's a software issue. Yeah, some crazy issue. Any blanks there? No, not really. I mean, I will just, a moment of silence for everything that's going on overseas. It's what's interesting, though, is to see how social

and technology is being incorporated in a war. Right. Like, it's one thing to have video and people tweeting about what's happening. It's another thing to have both forces, both forces tweeting and Facebooking their moves. Wow. I mean, you saw the video where they're literally about to blow up this, this, this, this train of cars, and they tweeted it. And, and shot videos showing them doing it and then played the message. And now they're, that's, you know, I bet when, when they developed Twitter years ago, you know, they had to. That was, that was not on their mind. Yeah, like, you know. You know what's going to happen? They're in the middle of a war. They're going to tweet, and then they're going to actually attack. Yeah, that's, so just, it's kind of cool, right? Can you, can you, is there like a four square bag for checking out a war? Not to make light of the situation over there. We're really talking about the fact that social is being incorporated here. But everybody out there be safe, man, praying for you. And hopefully, you know, this situation will dissolve itself. But, but yeah, it's cool that technology and social is being used. Instantaneous. All right. It, it has been exactly 30 minutes. You guys have been tuning in to the most popular internet and SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because of you. 7,000 downloads per week of our 30-minute audio podcast. And we've been downloaded in 76 different countries. Thank you, guys. You can help us. Go to e-webstyle.com slash G plus or Google plus. That'll take you to our G plus page. Write a review. We will really appreciate it. Give you a little tooth, punch, and face. That's a good thing. And nothing else. Until the very next podcast, my name is Chris Burroughs. Bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up. Eyebrow hiding my way. Set me free.