SEO Mistakes to Avoid - Internt Marketing Podcast Number 202

Welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. Our tip from our last podcast. We'll address that a little later. Douche, douche. We'll get that sorted out. Our tip from our last podcast. By the way, our last podcast was 201. You can see from the sign conveniently located right there that we are on podcast number 202. Our tip is all businesses should have social media accounts and use them. Yes. Most businesses tend to, you know, rush and go set up Twitter profiles and Facebook profiles and LinkedIn pages and things like that, but then they don't use them. All businesses. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, yeah. There you go. All businesses should create those pages, but more importantly, use them. Tweet about day-to-day things that's going on with your office. Tweet about, you know, things that can help your potential clients. Facebook those things. Share employment opportunities on LinkedIn and things like that. The nuts and bolts of it is set up those profiles and use them. Be social. Be social. If you have one of those electronic devices that enables you to do some sort of twit-like behavior, you should do that now. And what you should tweet is... It's right there. Hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 202. Be sure to tag us in it at eWebStyle. We should probably put that up there. Yep. So, that way we can link up and follow you and do all of our social networking stuff that we were just talking about. And since you're out there tweeting anyway, why don't you follow us on Twitter? Twitter.com slash... eWebStyle. Follow us on Facebook. Facebook.com slash... eWebStyle. We have videos available at YouTube.com slash... eWebStyle. And you can always send us an email. Podcast at... e-WebStyle.com Remember, we do... You can do us two favors. One

favor takes three steps. That first favor is go on to iTunes, create an account, write a review. If you choose to, and specifically if you're in a country other than the U.S., please send us an email. Podcast at... e-WebStyle.com And make sure we know that there is a review out there. We just read a 2010 review that I found in Spain, because we don't look in Spain very often. And had he sent us an email, then we would have looked in Spain and read that review a lot sooner. The other thing that you can do is you can go to our G Plus account. It's very easy to get to our G Plus account. You, you know, and by the way, let's go old school, do the pluses. You can find our website at e-webstahl.com slash... G Plus. And... G Plus. And... Google Plus. And... Google Plus. Those are all... All of these are different ways you can get to our G Plus page. That plus is plus spelled out, or the plus symbol, Google is Google spelled out, or simply use a G. We've tried to make it extremely convenient for you guys to leave us a review. We do have a referral program. The way it works, you send us a client, we do SEO for that client, you get paid. That's kind of a sweet deal. All right. We do, this evening, have an algorithm cataclysm. Love that special thing. It's got to figure out a sound. Well, I'll just maybe just keep doing the explosion. I think that's good. Yeah. Okay. So, this cataclysm isn't necessarily regards to something affecting the search engine results page directly. However, Google has released some more updates to the Webmaster Tools. And for all my people who do SEO out there, then you should be getting familiar with Google WMT, if we call it, Webmaster Tools. This is key. You know, they're already, with the addition of authorship, they are trying to clean up bad content on the site. And so, what they've done in

Webmaster Tools is created an easier way to do that. Now, I will say that they're being a lot more aggressive in how they're targeting sites. So, if you have a site and let's say you lose your ranking and you don't know why, Google has put something in place to tell you why. If you log into Webmaster Tools and you go under the search traffic section, it's right there on the left side, you'll see a new tab called Manual Actions. Manual Actions. And what they'll tell you in that tab is why your site is not ranking anymore. They'll call it a manual spam action. And that action could include a number of things. They'll tell you if maybe you have user-generated comments that are spamming everybody. And you can get a manual spam action for that and get removed from the SERP. Or they'll tell you that you have thin content and it's not valuable. It's not bringing any value to the SERP. You can get a spam action for that and they can remove you from the SERP. Or if you have even unnatural inbound links occurring, you can get a spam action and they remove you from the SERP. So the good thing is now they're telling you why so you don't have to go and guess and try to figure out what's wrong with my site. Why did I lose my ranking? They've told you what you need to do to fix it. So take advantage of that. If you're not in Webmaster Tools, go set it up. It's super easy and you should be doing it. I like WMT. WMT? Yeah, wait, no. G-W-M-T. Even though the M is part of the same word, I still like G-W-M-T. So we were just debating this before and it's one of the first times Google has been pretty upfront about why you're not doing well and that's unique. That's kind of exciting. It's certainly a cataclysm, although in a very positive way. And it always seemed to me that it was a good idea

not to tell people specifically what they're doing. I mean, it's really giving them more insight into the algorithm than ever before or at least what part of the algorithm is penalizing you. I think it's focused on content and so that's what makes me think it's okay. It'd be different if they were like, oh, you don't have enough links or you're not being social enough. Right. Then that's a little different. But the fact that they're saying your content sucks is not valuable, I think that's impowerful. I think at the end of the day that's going to help the internet. Yeah. And the reality is if those people are penalized already, it's good to know how to get your information back. And if they don't really care, then they don't care. They're not logging into GWT anyway. So it's just interesting. It's an interesting new algorithm cataclysm. All right, so we got a little bit of feedback. Actually, we got a lot of feedback here. I'm going to jump into this one because I thought it was a little bit more fun. This is from Matthew Rings. He says, I left a review for you on iTunes with the title, SEO Sucks. Hope you like it. It draws in readers because it says something negative, but I gave you five stars so people are confused and more likely to read it. I looked for it. I haven't seen it yet. That's awesome. It's kind of cool, right? Yeah. The more I think about it, that's awesome. So here's a couple of things he says. Number one, is your catchphrase, don't be a douche or don't be a deuce? If it's number one, I can see why people would get their panties in a wad. Pun intended, yeah. Ha, ha, ha. By using the term so loosely. If it is, don't be a deuce, referring to going number two, a.k.a. turd, then meh. As a marketing genius, I will now give you a spin on how to keep your catchphrase and not offend anyone as if it matters.

But actually give you a better catchphrase because of the meaning. Since I'm new to your podcast, I would hear you use the phrase, don't be a deuce, and thought that that was funny because I don't know what it meant to be a deuce until your last podcast where you explained it. What I thought you meant was that you should go with it and use the catchphrase, don't be a deuce, meaning nobody wants to be the first loser in a Google search result, which is spot number two, a.k.a. deuce. Since you are the friendly neighborhood number one spot stealers. It's cool. Number one spot, top position snatcher. Just top position snatcher, correct? Come on, all right. And so this is the next one. We don't steal, we snatch. Yeah, we snatch. So, or place, specifically. So when I thought you said don't be number two, I thought to myself, I'm going to fight and claw to the top spot in my categories that I'm no longer a, he's at five this week, but I don't want to fight my way, but he's going to fight my way to number one, his way to number one. I think being number two in a business where we claim to have knowledge of SEO is more of an insult than product inserted down under for the ladies, which would be the don't be a dude. So this is interesting because I actually did a presentation this week, and one of the things we did, it took a screenshot, SEO Houston, and we're position three. One of the things that we recognize is going to be really challenging, if even possible, to get into the first spot is the fact that Google recognizes seohouston.com as the business name and gets confused if somebody is looking for SEO Houston, the business. It actually has a pin and a map. So they're saying, it's like if you type in eWebStyle, it'll come up with a pin and the map. In your case, your business is dbl07.co, 007.co. If you type that in,

Google's going to say, oh, well, you're looking for those people. Not only am I going to show them in the first position, I'm actually going to show you a map of where they're located. I'm going to show you a local listing as well. So it's clear that Google is seeing SEO Houston as a business name, not as just the phrase somebody's looking for some sort of service in Houston. So, yeah, yes, you want to be number one. Your goal is to be number one. We're number one, PPC Houston, SEO Podcast, other things like that. And there are going to be situations where it's probably just not going to happen. I mean, it's just not going to happen. At the end of the day, we strive for a first page listing above the fold. Obviously, we're targeting number one position. But, you know, in some cases like this, SEO Houston, there's just no way we, I won't say no way because they may leave or something. But it's going to be extremely difficult to top that listing. Yep, absolutely. He also did give us two podcast topics. He's going to write blogs about them, so I'm not going to read those topics. But those are something that we, you want to cover any one of these right now? Or we may end up just bringing this up as another subject later. How about you do this? After you post your blog, send this to us, and then we'll discuss it. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. We'll get you a little bit more punch in the face. So, Matthew Rings with 007.co, punch in the face. I just see this guy as like a really hyper, you know, those like hyper business guys are always talking. Yeah, with titles in all caps. Yeah, it's like, I think it'd be cool to hang out with that guy. There's another one that I'll read because we've got so much content here. I'm just going to give a little bit. And we've got good. A lot. Okay. So, this

one is, this is from UK Review on iTunes. Title is A Great Listen, Funny and Informative. Five stars. I'll take it. This is by Timer81. Okay. Yeah? I was going to give him a punch in the face. He shouted at us on Twitter. Oh, cool. I'm a fairly new listener to this podcast, so I'm catching up on previous episodes. The podcast itself is great, extremely informative, both for people running their own website, but also professionals. A big patoof to you guys. Keep up the good work. And when in the UK, a few beers is in order, as I think you guys would be awesome on a night out. You know. In the UK? That's what's up. Yeah. Punch in the face to you, Tim. Appreciate you tuning in. Man, if you ever get a chance or you need something, something's wrong with your computer, need some data investigation, have that first response. There in the UK, they do great work. Yep. All right. Let's do one more. This is from the US. Well, let's get Greg's question, too. Oh, you want to get Greg's question, too. Okay. So, we'll do this review and Greg's question. Title review. Thanks, guys, for taking the time for so long. Five stars. And what that means is we're doing this for so long, taking our time out for three years, 202 episodes. Hey, guys, you have a really entertaining podcast with some great meat to it. I've been listening to you guys for the past year or so on my iPhone at work. I'm a carpenter. I'm trying to get out of the construction trade and join you in the internet world with a website I'm building right now. Great content and definitely a fun and learning podcast. Highly recommended. Going to be using a lot of your strategies while building my site. Good. That's the best time to get started with them. Thanks, guys. Keep it up. Tom Gould, P.S. I always liked it when you said G+. Wow. That's what's up. I understand why you had to

change it, though. So, cool. Punch in the face to you, Tom Gould. And do this for us, Tom. As you're making those changes, I wouldn't be mad if you kind of documented what you did and what worked. And more importantly, for yourself. This is just really to help you keep dates of the things you do and monitor your ranking. Because as you begin to make changes, you'll see increases. And it's good to be able to refer back to what you did on a certain date to determine the type of effect it had. So, punch in the face to you. Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate the review. And keep us posted on how things are working out for you. All right. So, Greg Took has a question. It says, I have a website, tonsillectomerecovery.com, that I created several years ago after undergoing tonsillectomy surgery as an adult. Okay. Over the years, I've added lots of good content that answers lots of questions, as well as drawing many comments, over 8,700 comments. The site ranks well for numerous keywords and gets good traffic. All of the content is my own. I have a doctor friend who writes for some big sites. And he sent us links to those sites so we can confirm they're big sites. I think he has very good author rank. He has agreed to write an article for my site, a guest blog, if you will. So, question, how can I best maximize the power of his author rank to my advantage? By the way, this is a great question because this is a question maybe other people are out there. It's like, wow, I got maybe us to write an article for them or I got somebody who's in the public eye a lot more. So, how do I best take advantage of that? So, Greg took a great question. Two things. One, in regards to the... Three things. First, punch in the face to you. Punch in the face. Yeah, Greg, you know, we love Greg. Greg's good people. So, first

thing, in regards to... If you caught 201, we talked about the cataclysm was guest posting. And so, they're really cracking down on that, especially people guest posting with all types of links and over-optimized guest posts that are going on these sites. So, be careful when you're allowed them to post. Make sure that it's not full of links and all sorts of things like that because you actually won't have any value. So, to answer your question, in order to gain the most traction from his authority, I think by first having him set up that authorship does that because in order for it to work, he has to add your site as a contributor on his G Plus page. And so, once he does that, then his authorship will show for your site. And so, if his rank is already high enough, then you will receive some kudos for that, if you will. Other than that, you may want to get him to maybe talk about you and what you're doing and why he's even blogging on your site. And not on your site, but on his. And then link back to you. I think that way you can get some more link juice, if you will, some good cross-linking to be involved, and all of the content will be relevant. And I think that'll really help you. Other than that, unless he's the main author for all your posts, then it probably won't have that much value. Hope that works for you. Punch in the face, Greg. Thank you so much. All right, let's jump into some news here. I thought this was really cool. I don't know if you heard about this. Because Apple, in response to the fact that somebody got electrocuted or at least severely shocked from like a third-party adapter, right? They said, look, bring them in. Bring them with one. You'll get one per device, and we'll give you an official Apple item for $10. Bring in the old third-party charger cable, and we'll give you $10 towards our $50. No,

for $10, you can have one of ours. Oh, if you bring in this other one. Yeah, and you can get one per Apple device that you own. Oh, that's cool. So, you come in here with my iPod, my iTouch, and my iPad. And your three generic chargers. Yeah, dollar store cables. Well, it doesn't have to be the charger. Not just the cable, but the actual charger. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I'd probably just go buy $3 chargers and cables and then go and get them for $10. It's a really great move because they end up coming into the end. They're probably still making money at $10. Yeah. They can probably recycle the copper that's involved. Wow. And huge opportunities for upsell. Have you seen any Nokia phone ads? I mean, they're phone and really focused on the camera. So, I'm watching one the other day. Yeah, Nokia. So, I watched one last night and I was like, wow, that phone camera, that camera is awesome. And it goes through the whole ad. It's all about the camera. It's all about how good the camera is, catching moments. And they actually have a spoof of the Apple ad. You know how Apple says that they catch more pictures than anybody else. And they have a really nice ad. And at the end of it, it's kind of like, oh, yeah, this is a great camera. And we have Microsoft as our operating system. It's like Microsoft flashes for like almost subliminally. Wow. All hardware advertising, no AOS hardware advertising. Wow. I think it was pretty awesome. And this is another. Imagine you walk up to a Xerox copier. That's funny. You put in your spreadsheet. And the copies you get out have different numbers on them. Okay. How bizarre would that feel? It's a copier. Right? So, apparently, it's not just a copier. It's a copier scanner conversion. Calculator? Yeah. And if you set it into a different mode, it uses a compression technique that can get confused. So, you can, your sixes can become eights and

vice versa and whatever. Wow. Man. Like. That's, wow. You got to get. How about handing in the wrong report? Yeah. So, we're bloke and we're going to have to close the company today. No, no, no, no. We made the largest profits ever. Check your email. Not this hard copy. All right. So, that is the potatoes of our podcast. You got a couple of punches in the face, Twitter and so forth. Well, you got Tim Heller and I wanted to give a punch in the face to Joanne at OkanaganBC.com. So, if you're out in the Canada area and you're looking to retire somewhere, tranquil, somewhere where you can be peaceful and chill out, holler at her. Cool people. And that's it. All right. Now. She's our self-proclaimed groupie. Okay. And she said that. Cool. She said that. Like it. Now, to the meat of the podcast. Yeah. So, I was at one of my favorite sites, SearchEngineLand.com. I got trying to put out an article called Five Critical SEO Mistakes Leaders Must Avoid. And it was a cool article. He was kind of running a business as a parallel to SEO. It was a stretch, but I get it. But instead of the mistakes to avoid in your business, I wanted to focus on your site. And so, let's dig into it. His first one was being stuck in the past. And that's a great step one, right? Do not use old techniques. And so, if you're optimizing the site, like our guy was who's working on his site, don't use those old techniques. He said that he was referencing our old podcast. Yeah. If you're listening to podcasts zero through 80, yeah, those techniques are old. And so, you probably don't want to do that anymore. Some of the basics still work, right? Title tags and headers and great content, things like that. But if you're building article spinning and just building a whole bunch of links that really have no value and stuff in content and things like that, don't do it. It won't

work. It's a waste of your time. And frankly, with the new algo cataclysm we had, Webmaster Tools will likely tell you that you're doing that. And so, don't do it. Invest in analytics is one of the takeaways. And this is key. I would recommend all business owners who are doing any form of internet marketing to invest time and money into analytics. You must know what's working, what's not working, how you can improve it, what you can do better, what you should stop doing. And the only way to know that is if you're spending time in analytics. So, do that. Mistake number two, managing without leading. I mean, again, he was running a parallel to a business, and I'm talking about your site. And so, I want to say you can't act like the authority and not be the authority. You know, one of the reasons we claim to be top position snatchers is because we are. We can get that position for you. We've been doing this podcast for a long time. We are downloaded in almost 80 countries. And so, you know, we are experts. And so, in your industry, if you're going to be the authority and act like the expert, then be that. You know, do what it takes to be proclaimed as that expert. Put out the post. Get whatever media coverage you need. Create whatever event you have to create. Make sure your authorship and things like that is set up so you can be that authority and then be that authority that you're proclaiming to be. Number three, he says, chunky organizational structure that lacks synergy. So, in regards to your website, I want to talk about link sculpting. I think this is a tactic that still works today. Make sure that, you know, you have your links in the right order by order of importance. You want to make sure that your structure on your site in regards to navigation and how people move around your site is easy to use. It's nice and fluid. It's definitely user-friendly

because that helps with conversions, which helps people stay on your site, which at the end of the day provides a great user experience, which should increase your ranking. So, spend some time on your structure and your navigation and how, excuse me, and how your links are set up. You almost have to throw in the disavow tool into the umbrella of link sculpting now, right? You have to. And speaking of the disavow tool, that's another one of those GWMT updates, right, that you saw there, huh? Nice. One of those updates that you have to do. You have to log in weekly, you know, it's kind of my practice to make sure everything's going okay with our sites. And if you have links coming to your site that may be unnatural or that Google is spamming, they've given you the opportunity to disavow those. Take advantage of it. Yep. Number four, lack of integration. So, I want to talk social here. We were talking about social earlier. And I think it's key that you not only connect all your online profiles, social profiles, and other things like that, but all of your offline activities as well. They should all be connected to your website. That's what I mean by integration. Your website is kind of the hub of your whole internet marketing campaign. So, Twitter's tweets and those links and those tweets come back to your website. People who are Facebooking and they're including links, those come back to your website. And Facebook is integrated in your website. You know, all of your LinkedIn stuff, you have those profiles that link back to your website. Your Google Plus profile, you have your website listed as the contributor. You know, things like that. And then all your offline stuff, if you're doing any community events or you're having any, you know, I don't know, a party for all your clients because you reached a certain threshold or whatever it is, feature that information on your site. So, the people who come to those events can check in, right,

Foursquare, Facebook, things like that. Even though they're offline, they can still connect back to your site. So, make sure that all of your things, whether it's offline or online, all come back to the site at some point. That's extremely important. Yep. Number five, and this is the last one, he calls it short-term thinking and budgeting. I'll say this. It will take time and money. So, monitoring and reporting is extremely important. You know, I was talking analytics earlier. I can't stress that enough that it's important to monitor what's working with the understanding that you should be getting a return. You know, we say it all the time that internet marketing is an investment. It's not an expense. And so, since it's an investment, you should respect a return on that investment. Yep. So, and you won't know how to get that return if you're not monitoring it. And like we always say, the last thing you want to do is throw money against the wall and see if it sticks. Yeah, you don't want to do that. You want to take strategic shots, you know, that have a greater return of bringing you value back. And you can't do that if you don't strategize and if you don't research it and monitor what's currently going on. So, definitely do that. And that's it. Cool. Meat and potatoes done. Mmm. That was delicious. Do we have any blank stare? Other than at me. Yeah, I know. Mmm. That was delicious. No, no blank stare right now. No blank stare today. All right, you guys have been tuning in to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. The most successful internet marketing podcast on the known airwaves, also including the web waves. Web waves. Worldwide web waves. Web waves. Waves. I get it. It works. It'll catch on. Thank you guys for making us the most popular SEO podcast and internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of you. We really appreciate you. You right there. Everyone who's writing a review, we can't express how much

we appreciate that as well. We can, actually, by reading it on air. And so, keep those coming. Keep the great questions coming. That gives us great information. It's worth me to do much. It's worth me to work. Do some work. Do some research. Thank you guys for tuning in. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burns. So, Futh, bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up eyebrow, high brow. And in my way, cool as mountain.