SEO - Getting Penalized by Panda - #seopdocast 176

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Hi, I'm Charles Lewis, your Internet Marketing Specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. You have tuned in to the most popular Internet Marketing Podcast and SEO Podcast on iTunes. Also, the face of the known planet. As opposed to the face of the unknown planet. That one's up. Pluto. Oh, that's been demoted. That's not even a planet. Poor Pluto. You are tuning in to podcast number 176, and we have a tip from our previous podcast. The tip says, and we actually touted this and put it on our Facebook page. If you don't know what tout is, go check it out. Go listen to our last podcast. And the tip is, set marketing goals for 2013. Start with the review of your website addressing algorithm updates from 2012. Yeah, you definitely, I mean, most companies at this day, at this time, brand new year, they tend to go in and re-evaluate what they're doing for marketing, specifically online. And so if that involves redesigning a site, maybe making content changes, which we'll talk about later today, or any other thing that happens on the web, make sure you first refer back to what happened last year. Look at all the algorithm updates. Look at how SEO has been changing, and make sure you don't imply or use old techniques that really don't work, or frankly, things that may have worked, but now you can be penalized for it. So be sure to evaluate what happened last year and have a strong plan moving forward. Absolutely. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers, where our mantra is Don't be a deuce. If you're in a position to have a device to, please tweet now, and you're going to tweet hashtag SEO podcast. Yeah, hashtag SEO podcast. This is podcast 176. Make sure you tag us in it at eWebStyle. That way we can link up and network and kick it with you. And we're going

to give you some information at the end of the podcast about what you can do to help us if you get anything good out of this podcast, and we know you will. Let's see, and let me mention this. We do have a referral program. A lot of our listeners are SEO experts. If you get clients that are outside of your realm of expertise or you don't want to handle, send them to us. We have a referral program where we can continue to pay you, and we take care of the actual customer. Can you just sprinkle this in? As long as they're good business. Yeah, yeah. All right, there you are. Well, you make a very good point. All right, so we've got a couple of reviews. I'm going to start with the bad one. This one is from... One star. Yeah. This one is Eric11155. It is one star. It says, sound quality is a deal breaker. I listened to this show for the first time on my iPhone. Sound quality is the worst of any podcast I've heard in recent memory. Wow. In addition, the ratio of fluff to quality is way too high, and there is very little quality. Wow, Eric. This was new. This was yesterday. Yeah, so my guess is that he's listening to just one of the ones that are bad. We know that we have a couple bad ones. We also know that we're improving significantly on the audio quality. You know, we've been kind of riding, I'd say, a river, but a river is smooth compared to how ours has been. And certainly if you walked in with bad audio, and you... You already had a negative reaction. Yeah, it probably did something like other listeners who have given us low ratings, which is listen to the Gino time limit and then give up, and you're not going to get any quality. So let's quickly move on to a positive review here. This is from Rob Biddle, who actually sent us an email to let us know he

sent in this review. He is from Australia, and five stars must listen to LIST. These guys are the place to go for all who want to be SEO experts. Yes, it's entertaining, and the content is always fresh. The podcast keeps me informed on how to keep my website on the first page of Google, which translates to money. We've got to do that together. Translates to money. We'll do dollars. Translates to dollars. Oh, that was good. I would highly recommend all SEO-minded business owners to put this on their must-listen-to list. Thank you. I appreciate that. Punch in the face to you. Punch in the face to Mother God with the sound quality. If you happen to check it out again, listen to the whole thing. And then hit us back. Podcast Addie Web Style. Tell us if the quality improved, if you actually got something this time, or frankly what you would change. Can you hear that from me? Some of you may know, some of you may not know, we actually do have another podcast. It's a specifically video podcast. It's called The Unknown Secrets of SIVO Website Analysis. We did a bunch of them yesterday and the day before. And so we'll be updating that. You can go find that on iTunes. And I mention that because we actually did a SIVO website analysis. Remember, SIVO stands for Search Engine Visitor Optimization. And we did that analysis for a Greg Took with Best Bloody Mary. I also believe that Greg is, he posted twice on our Facebook page, tonsillectomy resources. So here's what he posted on our Facebook page. Tonsillectomy resources, I mean Bloody Mary. Yeah. All right. Maybe a Bloody Mary is a good tonsillectomy resource. You know, numb it up, whatever works. I always thought it was ice cream. Yeah. That would be a great ice cream company name, tonsillectomy resources. All right. Not really, but yeah. Guys, I'm shopping for a keyword tool. I've tested Raven, WordTracker, WebCEO, and Majestic. It seems like each is missing one part. I want, one,

keyword suggestions, two, keyword traffic and competition, and three, keyword tracking. How am I doing with my current keywords? Any suggestions? Thanks, guys. You don't have to punch me in the face or nothing. You want to take that? You didn't mention Google's keyword tool. Yeah. I mean, those are good. Raven is great. I mean, I've tried it before. They do a lot of Facebook promo. Everybody likes Raven marketing. You see that right there. WordTracker, I haven't used it for some years, actually. Right now, I'm primarily using Google's keyword tool in association with SEOquake for some backend information about keywords. Oh, and Webmaster Tools. Yeah. That's a great way to log in. I mean, they've been improving it, and so now they're showing not only impressions, but keywords and where you're ranked at for those phrases. So I take those phrases, search them in Google's keyword tool, and get a whole new set of phrases, and now I have a good base to work from. Yeah. I'm also going to throw in SEMrush. SEMrush is a great tool. And they just added keyword tracking. That's number three. So they have number one, number two, and they add number three. They also do competitive analysis. SEMrush is a great tool. Yeah, absolutely. Their layout's really smooth and easy to use. And what's the other one we do for our position tracking? Oh, advanced web ranking. Advanced web ranking we use for our reporting right now. So check those out. Your first two are covered just by Google's tool, Google's keyword tool. And then he follows up with another, guys, love the podcast, just discovered you on iTunes. I listen to several SEO casts, and yours is hand down my favorite. I won't drop names, but others I listen to beat me over the head with ads. God, if I hear e-brands, again, I'll puke. Anyway, I manage SEO for a few sites. I think tonsillectomy resources is one of them. I wonder about the Google Webmaster Tools settings geographic target. One of my sites is geared to tax

professionals in the U.S. Will adjusting the setting in the Webmaster Tool help the site in U.S. searches? What does it really do? Thanks, I owe you a drink. That's cute, Bloody Mary. Yeah, we want the one with bacon. So somebody else asked us a similar question about geographic location in Webmaster Tools a few weeks ago. And, Greg, I'll give you the same answer we told them. It's cool where they set those purposes there. But I think more of your effort should be directed towards Google Local Plus and making sure that profile is set up, making sure that it's linked with your site and all your local information is there. Because I think that has a stronger value and more influence in regards to your position and where you display over Webmaster Tools. More SEO impact. Definitely. That's impact is the word I'm looking for. Excellent. All right. So now we have the opportunity for our segment, Algorithm Cataclysm. I don't know if you go out of shot when I lean into the camera like that. You've got to check out that special effect. It's only on video. A lot of our podcasts and soon to be all of our podcasts will be on our YouTube page. That's YouTube.com. And you can always follow us, harass us, track us, see what's going on with us. Facebook.com. Twitter.com. And email us. Podcast at E-WebStyle.com. All right. With regards to our cataclysm, over this past break, Christmas break, Happy New Year to you guys, Google did release another Panda update. This is Panda update 23. Wow. And same usual mumbo jumbo. It only affects 1% of searches. So, you know, we'll see. But luckily, this is the 23rd. Does that mean 23 updates affecting 23% of searches? What I want to say is this. By now, we're at update number 23. And so, if you were affected when Panda first happened, like last year sometime, you should have come back from that by now. If you haven't, then change your strategy. Because these smaller updates, they're just data

refreshes. And so, as long as you made the corrections, updated your content, and moving things forward, then these updates shouldn't hurt you. They should help by weeding out some of the other competition who may not be doing right. So, yeah, if you're still being affected by Panda updates, check your content. Okay, do you have any blank stare? I've got one that I could use or use in news. So, we'll do blank stare after? All right, we'll save that. Then the one little piece of news I got, which I just thought was kind of relevant. HTC, this is right, the cell phone manufacturer. I think they manufacture other stuff. They're blaming their troubles on lack of marketing. Well, we're a marketing company. I just thought we should throw that out. A lot of people believe, so you know the difference, and I've talked about this a couple of times, the difference between an expense and an investment, right? An expense is cash that goes out. An investment is cash that goes out and provides a return. And as long as you're tracking that return, it's an investment. Marketing is an investment. So, HTC did not invest properly. That's really all I wanted to add to that. Well, you step your phones up. Like, the Evo was good. When you hit the market, it was good. Evo Shift was okay. But then it's just kind of been a decline ever since then. Meanwhile, Samsung has been spitting out great phones. And so, it's not the marketing. It's a device. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, because they have some really cool commercials with the Evo where the Symfony or whatever. Yeah, it's the device. You know what I'm saying? The GS3 right now is the only thing that's leading the market and compatible, in my opinion, better than the iPhone 5. And so, if your device isn't at least, you know, in that ballpark, then it's not your marketing. Yep. Oh, I did want to add this. I thought this was super cool. I used it.

We had a New Year's party at my house. And I used this. Google has built into G+. Here's the process. Create an event. Invite people to the event. During the event, when they get on their G+, so there's a G+, app, if you're on Android. And this only works on Android, by the way. The iPhone doesn't have one of the options. So, you go to the event. You say you're going to go, yes, that I'm going to attend the event. And then there's a little checkbox which says, photo stream or photo something. So, you can't miss it. You check it. Any photo you take or video you take, it's automatically uploaded to the event page. And then, what I ended up doing was I had a small laptop that I had connected to my big screen TV downstairs. And I was streaming the event photo gallery. So, as I'm walking around, because not many people had even G+, or even use it really. So, I actually had about five G+, users on New Year's Eve. I go at them. They check that box. And then, as they're taking photos the rest of the night, that photo stream keeps recycling. And it gets longer as everybody adds photos. It was super cool. So, yeah, go check that out. Play around with that. And give us some feedback. So, we've got a question and some Twitter punches. So, we're going to have a Twitter first. Punch in the face to Paul. He was at MBUK Social. Appreciate you tuning in and following us. I followed you back. Punch in the face to Mark. He's at HelpVid, at H-E-L-P-V-I-D. Kudos to you, man. He's doing some cool stuff with videos. And so, we're going to check that out. Punch in the face to Chicago South SEO. This is, his is at Chicago Web Biz. Said, love the podcast. I'm glad to see another brother doing SEO. Oh, yeah. I saw that. Yeah. Appreciate it. It's a lot of us, man. I'll pull rank. Shout out to Mike and

a whole bunch of other people. Not many rap, though. Let's be real. Well, I'll pull rank raps. Oh, okay. He's actually pretty good. Oh, wow. So, two of the ones we've now mentioned, they all rap. Let's be realistic. Then, Bill Jelwick. And he's at Bill Jelwick. So, just punch in the face to you guys. Thanks for the support. Thanks for tuning in. And keep your tweets coming. Yep. With that, we got an email. What's up, Harvey? We got an email at podcast at edswebstyle.com from Beetlebox, Glenn. Glenn says, and I'll read the entire thing. Yo, what up, fellas? Love the show. You guys are gurus of SEO. Here's the deal. I run a small biz, have a website up and running, just launched a new one. Check it out. Tell them what you think. It's beetlebox.com.au. Since listening to you guys, I've been climbing the rankings for my keywords, but recently had more people out the blue contacting me to get to the first page of Google. We can help you with that if you need some help. Yep. I know, whatever, I never believed them. Okay. Had a few contacts from the other side of the world that wanted to exchange blog articles with embedded links. One group supplied an article with two backlinks. They asked me to post to my blog. In exchange, I can write an article about whatever I want that's relevant. They will post it to one of their sites and link back to me. The obvious idea is to get some link love from a relevant industry site. I'm suspicious since there are so many shifty characters in the SEO space. What do you think? Is it going to help or hurt my site if I swap blog posts with guys like that? Great question, Glenn. And so I think, and this is my honest opinion, do your research, right? It may not be a bad thing if indeed it's relevant, right? But what you want to make sure is that the site that they're posting it on, because

according to the email, they didn't identify which site it was going to go on. They just said one of their sites. And so they have a little advantage because they know which site you're going to put it on. You don't know which site they're going to put it on. So I would at least find that out and then research that site. Check the IP address. Maybe treat it like a competitor. Figure out who they're linking to, who's linking to them. If it's a shared server, who else is hosted there, you know, and see if it's a decent environment to even have a link to your site on. And if everything looks great, then go ahead and do it. I will say this, in that content in the blog you write, be aware of previous algorithm changes, right? So don't overdo it with exact match anchor text and things like that. And don't keyword stuff it. You know, make it a nice, decent article and put a link or two in there and go from there. I'm going to add, because he included a sample of somebody requesting exactly what he outlined in his email, and they're here in the States. So one of my concerns would be is how much value does Google give to a, and we checked out your website. By the way, if I recall correctly, your website is a really nice website. It's really simple, really easy to navigate. They sell boxes or they, I think they sell or rent boxes that you can reuse. We'll go with that. We'll check it out and correct that later. But I do remember that the website looked really good. So if you're in Australia doing that particular thing and you're trying to get links from the U.S., Google knows where you're at. And so there may not be that much value. I think I'd spend, I think they have an adverse effect from there, the fact that they're not even, not have a reasonable link to you. Now, if

they're in the U.S. and they're entirely a moving kind of blog information resource, and that could happen with a moving company who's got an aggressive internet marketing campaign, then it's possible that, you know, you guys offer a unique solution, even though you're over the pond, who cares? Google's going to see that relevance. Information's similar and relevant. But if they're like a short 10-page, you know, moving website and they link over to you and they're not recognized as a content authority, then I think it's going to have little or no value for you. Better for you to find moving companies in Australia, in your city, or in surrounding areas and try and hook up with them. Do the same thing, but just do it with people in your area. Yeah, a little bit more restricted geographic area. And he finishes this off with a great job keeping the topics light, but extremely relevant. If only someone could do the same figuring out taxes. Yeah, we're not going to start that podcast. Double kick to the nuts with a steel toe boot. Booyah. Ow. Yeah. Ow. Ow. It's a good time to apply some correction. Yeah. Yeah, so the kick in the shin is a bad thing. Bad thing. Anything kick is bad. Kick is bad, yeah. Yeah, punch is good. Especially steel toe, double, two. Yeah, to the kahoon, yeah. I might also recommend an anger therapist. No, I'm just kidding. Really, Glenn, thank you so much for sending that email. And hit us up again. Again, his website is beetlebox.com.au. Let's get to some meat. More meat. Actually, this has been pretty meatful. Mm-hmm. Meatful. So I got an article today from Jenny. I pulled it off of Search Engine Land. It's a couple months old. But I thought it was pretty good for where we're at right now. This is 11 things to ask yourself when optimizing content. I looked at the content. And these are developing redo. Maybe you got penalized by the panda. No, what is it? It's the panda. Pooped on

by a panda. Pooped on by a panda. Yeah. If you got pooped on by the panda, then you need to refresh your content and make some changes. And here's a good starting point for you. So ask yourself some questions. First question. What is this page about? If you're going to develop this content page, whether it's a blog post, whether it's a web page for, let's say, some services that your company offers, or if it's just some information, what is this page going to be about? List those things out. The things you want to cover on that page. Next question is, what is the purpose of this page? Is it a news? Is it a press release? Is it a blog post? Is it an educational piece? You know, what are your goals for this page? Right? Is it to provide information? Is it to generate a conversion? Is it, you know, what is the goal of this page? Do you want it to rank and just help with branding? Or are you trying to educate someone? You know, figure out all this before you even start writing. I like this one. Consider the content timing. How long will this content remain relevant? Right? Is it on a topic that hardly ever changes, and so this page will always be useful? Is it for an educational piece that will always be useful? Here's a good one. Is it a product explanation that will be relevant until the next version comes up? Right. Good question to ask. Is it news that will always be interesting? Or is it an event, a reoccurring event? I mean, these are things that you need to know to consider how you time publishing your content. Now we finally get to, you know, optimizing the content. And so then you ask these questions. You know, what are the relevant keywords to use? List those out. Then you should, you know, start thinking about SEO stuff. Like, should you include links to other content? If you include those links, then you'll be good

to go. What should the title and descriptions and the headings say? Make sure you outline what all of that information is before you start writing the content. That way you will have a great outline of everything your page is going to be about. So once you start writing, all of your resources are there. You've already found your links. You've already found whatever videos you want to embed. You've located the images you want to use. And so now creating that content and publishing that post is a whole lot easier and it makes a lot more sense. So 11 quick questions to ask yourself when working on new content. Short but powerful. Short but powerful. All right. Let's finish off with our blank stare news. And this is pretty bad, but get pretty blank on this. All right. So, yeah. I was just. With a smirk. I was just. Really? So, kid. He's out. He's drunk driving. He hits two cars. The next day he gets on Facebook. Drunk driving. What up? Sorry about the cars I hit. His good friends. And I really actually appreciate this a lot. Let the police know. The police knew that two cars had been hit. They had no idea who to go after. Boom. Here's this confession on Facebook. Really? First off, there's nothing to be proud of. Right? Drunk driving in general. What else did drunk Facebook post, though? It sounded like it was in the morning. Okay. Right? Which could have still been drunk. Of course. But, you know, drunk driving is nothing to be proud of. And then hitting cars. Really? There wasn't nobody in those cars. Yeah. That's it. That was. He had parked cars. Yeah. It was wasted. Yeah. I can't believe he made it home, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's just wrong. Glad you got caught. All right. That is the end of our podcast. Now, if you guys get any value out of our podcast, remember that you can do us a small favor. There's a couple ways to do this small favor. Go

to e-webstyle.com slash g plus or g plus or Google plus or Google. Any iteration of G plus or Google plus. Plus. You ain't caught on yet. We're playing out the different versions of plus. We just want to make sure that everyone can get to our G plus page and write a review there. Especially if you have a Google account. That'll be really easy for you. You're probably logged into it all the time anyway. And the other thing that you can do, three simple things. Go to iTunes, create an account, write a review. And if you choose to, send us an email, podcast at e-webstyle.com. And let us know that you wrote a review. We'll give you a punch in the face. And do us that little favor if you're getting any content. Remember, we are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of all you all. Right there. And we really appreciate that. Make sure that you tune in to our next podcast. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burris. I'm Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now.