Things That You Should Stop Doing With Your Website - Internet Marketing Podcast 189

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Hopefully the audio quality, which has been improving, is even better on this podcast. We think we got rid of some kind of radio frequency clipping thingies. And actually we'll get rid of a little bit of more white noise right there. And so hopefully this is much better. Remember, we thank everybody for all the feedback and patience as we resolve our audio challenges. We are not audio experts, nor do we claim to be. And so for those of you who have judged us for our audio expertise, kick in the shins. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Where our mantra is, if you're around some sort of electric device, similar to the one that Charles, I forgot your name. Like, you know those brief moments, how do I not know the dude who's next to me? Charles has in his hand. Go ahead and tweet. What should they tweet? You should tweet hashtag SEO Podcast. I don't know if y'all can see that or not. Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 189. It's happening right now. Be sure to tag us in it, at eWebStyle. That way we can link up and follow you back and do all of our social stuff. We did have a week off, so that would explain the reason that we don't have a tip from last podcast. Because I forgot to do it this morning. We covered the tweet now. Remember, we do have a referral program. If you refer some SEO clients to us, there is the opportunity both for an upfront commission and for a residual commission. So keep that in mind. You can do us a small favor. There's a couple ways to do that. One of those ways has three steps. You go onto iTunes, you create an account, and you write us a review. If you choose to, you can send us an email,

podcast at e-webstyle.com. And let us know, give us a heads up that you wrote a review, and we will give you a punch in the face. The other thing that you can do for us. Charles, a little sore. Oh, man. From working out. The other thing that you could do is you could go to our G Plus Local page and write a review. We had one. Actually, I think I'm reading one today. Yeah. And so we really appreciate that. That helps us out. And the way you do that is the easiest way, because there's all sorts of numbers and digits and slashes. And, you know, it's a dumb URL. Come on, Google. Get that together. Give us a vanity URL for G Plus. Especially if you want to increase the engagement and the user activity on G Plus, then come on with the vanity URLs. And I've got a whole list of complaints. It should be like gplus.com slash e-webstyle or google.com slash e-webstyle, something like that. Anyway, we've made it really easy for you guys. There's four possibilities. e-webstyle.com slash gplus and slash gplus and slash google plus and slash google plus. Our segment for today, the algorithm cataclysm, is in effect. What is the big announcement? There's something really surprising and crazy. Huge announcement Google said. They said we are going to have a very big algorithm change in 2013. That's it? That's it. Okay. That's what they told us. That's all they said. Thank you for that wonderful. Like we didn't know that was going to. Wow. Gee, thanks. All right. A little bit of news. I don't know if you checked this out. Twitter, hashtag music. So there's like Twitter apps and stuff. I don't know how any of that works. And hashtag music is an attempt to really get dynamically involved in the music scene. And they're going to be, you know, you can follow what your favorite musicians are listening to and what your friends are listening to and people you follow are listening to. The only problem I

have with Twitter in retrospect to that sort of deal is that they don't host any of that information themselves. It's always through a separate party. If you want to upload video, you're not uploading video directly to Twitter like you would do Facebook. It's Twit video or some other video. They don't own the content. Exactly. And so same thing in regards to music. You know, I use Tweetcaster and I was using TweetMyMusic. And so, you know, even then, those are third parties that sync well with Twitter. And so I'm not sure how they're going to work that out. So, still trying to figure out how to make the money. Google is shipping Google Glass. $1,500 a pop. It would be nice to have one of those. That would just be fun. Apparently, there was an eBay listing for Google Glass that got up to like $50,000. Oh. And then it got yanked down because Google's policy is once you get a pair of the glasses, you are not able to sell them. Really? Yep. That sucks. Well, this is just the development phase. Right? Right. So, they're aware that it's expensive. These are for those people interested in actually making products based on the Google Glass. Okay. Internet sales tax. Vote in the Senate next week. I thought that was interesting. The proponents are companies like Amazon, Best Buy, whatever. Any of the big box stores. All-line retail? Well, mostly people who are forced to charge tax because they have a presence in every state. Yeah, because sales tax is zip code based. If you're in that location, then... If there is a Best Buy in Illinois, if you're in Illinois, buying from Best Buy, you have to get... Best Buy is obligated to collect sales tax, whereas the individual one-offs who don't necessarily have to, it's a volunteer thing and they're not doing it. Yeah, kind of like Fry's or Micro Center or something. Yeah. If you're not in Texas and you buy from them online, then you don't have to pay that tax. They

don't have to collect it, although a company that big probably is, because I think there are some requirements that they do it. Interesting. You know, I'm kind of a big state's right versus federal, and in this situation, we've got to recognize that from taxing purposes, from sales taxing purposes, it's an ugly thing. It's a really ugly... I don't think we should have a federal sales tax. And I don't know. I think people, you know, companies like Best Buy are losing money because they have these big box stores, and people go into them, look at the products, and then go home and... Or them cheaper. No, they pull out their red scan thing and scan it right there, and like, oh, I can save 20 bucks. They order it before they leave the store. Go and order it online. Yeah. Right from their phone. So, I think, you know, taxes is part of that. Pricing is going to be part of that. I think... Well, they're just suffering. You know, unfortunately, that's what happens with growth and with change. The internet is changing. How people shop is changing. How people use mobile is changing. And so, retail establishments are filling the blend of that. And specifically the big box stores. Yeah, specifically the big ones. So, we're going to get a... Hey, we got some reviews. You noticed no tiers. I actually got to erase one. Here we go. This is on Twitter. No. No. Wow. Fill in blank with something that sounds smart, but isn't. This is actually from iTunes. Democulator. It says, yeah. It says, good info. I have enjoyed listening to your shows. This is from Hogs87. I have enjoyed listening to your shows during my training runs. I've been taking good pieces of information from each show. The sound on the last episode was the best yet. Woo-hoo. That's not even this one. You haven't heard this one yet. And that was from U.S. This is from U.K. The title is Mr. Mr. Five Stars. Mr. Five Stars. I like that. Rob

Woolen. A great SEO podcast. If you have your own website or work for a company that has one, these guys make a difficult subject interesting, funny, and informative. Interesting, funny, and informative. Interesting, funny, and informative. Booyah. You've got to like that. He deserves a point. Mr. Five Stars. Five punches in the face. Interest of form-attainment. Interest of form-attainment. It just rolls off the tongue. I like that. Interest of form-attainment. Russell Lundstrom. This is the one who actually wrote a review on our G Plus account at G Plus Local. Guys, guys, guys, listening to number 184, and you are getting kicked in the shins for sound quality. Now, this is interesting because that's the same one that Hogs 87 was our best yet, and acknowledging the problems. All the while, the hiss is so bad on this edition, I can hardly hear you. Been listening for a long time, and it doesn't seem to be an issue until recently. Great show. The only SEO show worth listening to, but the sound issues continue and really make it difficult. Can't just be me. No, it's not just you, except for on this podcast. That's interesting, though. Hmm. And this one actually helped us to really identify, hey, we need to pay attention to the hiss a little bit more. The sound quality is better. There is hissing from 184 probably through 188, and then now 189, we should have gotten rid of 90% of the hiss. That's baffling me, though. Two different people listen to the same podcast with totally different views on the audio quality. Well, so it depends on how they listen, right? Exactly. On your PC, it may be fine. On your high-end headphones, I would imagine that what we've found is if we listen to one speaker, it sounds okay. If we throw in the headphones, it doesn't sound good, that kind of thing. So that would make sense. On our Facebook page, by the way, you can follow us, facebook.com slash... eWebStyle. Twitter.com slash... eWebStyle. YouTube.com slash... eWebStyle. And remember, you can

send us an email at podcast at... e-WebStyle.com. That went that way. I like that. So on our Facebook page, I put, Cheers to Bizable for including us in must-haves for DIY SEO, do-it-yourself SEO. So there's a link on our Facebook page to Bizable, B-I-Z-I-B-L-E.com, and they have, what is it, five SEO tips for doing SEO yourself, and we're included in the list. They need to listen to our podcast. So... That's what's up. Punch in the face to you. Bizable. Bizable. Man, painful punch in the face. You earned that one. Yeah. You're all the way knocked out. Thank you. And finally, we've got Jess Pierce on our Facebook page sent in this question, and I'm going to breeze through it as quickly as I can. He's new, listening to the podcast. He hopes he can answer this, we can answer it on the show. Sorry, sorry if it's not a... My question is about... It's called human fast-forwarding. Yeah. My question is about duplicate content across different domains for different cities. For example, say I have two different domains for computer repair. One is for Baltimore, Maryland, and one is for Scottsdale, Maryland. Both have exactly the same content, except for the city name being different for each in the page content, domain name, page title, description, and keywords tag. Because these are going to be very close to each other, do you think Google will not rank one or both of these sites, or do you think there wouldn't be a problem because they would target different search terms in Google and could never possibly come up together in the same search results? Thank you so much for what I've heard so far. I plan to listen to every episode eventually, Jess and Rhode Island. First, don't listen to every episode, skip 180, because we don't want to hear the complaint. And second, punch in the face for the question, punch in the face for wanting to go back and listen to our podcast. And third, Chuck. Yeah, so it was a lengthy question, and

I think your answer is both, right? First off, it's a duplicate content issue. And so when possible, you don't want to have duplicate content ever, whether you're taking it from somebody else's site, whether it's several domain names that you manage in this case. What's the kind of gauge that you use to identify duplicate content between, say, two different pages? Oh, 75%. 75% needs to be different. You know, if your content is 75% different from what it is on a different site, then it won't be considered duplicate content. And remember, Google's gotten into the level of, if you took, because we've seen people penalized from a duplicate content standpoint, one paragraph from one source, another paragraph from another source, another paragraph from another source, so the individual page is at least 75% or more different than any one of the pages they grabbed it from, but it's all duplicate content grabbed from other pieces, Google's aware of it. What you have to do in your case, it's kind of fishy, right? Because technically, your Baltimore and your Scottsdale content is probably relevant for that service area. So if somebody was in Scottsdale, was it Scottsdale? Yep, you knew that. If they were in Scottsdale and they searched for you, that content would likely show. If they were in Baltimore and they searched, that Baltimore site would likely show. I think you answered your own question. Would they show in the same results? No. That probably won't ever happen. And to be honest, you will probably start to lose ranking for one of those. And I say this from experience. We have a client who's been with us for 90 days now, I think, maybe four months. And the problem they had was three different sites, similar industries, duplicate content. One site just got kicked out, got pooped on by the panda. And so we're fixing that for them. And so you run that risk of running two sites in a similar service area with duplicate content. So it depends on that service area. It depends on

the service area. Absolutely. So our client was serving the same service area with those two websites with less than 75% different content. And one of them got the black eyes from Panda, pooped on by Panda, something like that. Something like that, yeah. Now we do have, so here's. Pooped on by the penguin. Pooped on by the penguin. Yeah, he got the panda black eye. So the, we do have some websites where we've, you know, for in the vein of testing, created dupe content through the whole, everything's identical except for the city name and gone after, I don't know, the largest 10,000 cities. It still gets traffic for the really small cities. Yeah. Because Google's. That's a relevant search result for a small city search. Google's very serious when they say, and that kind of proves it, you don't get a penalty for dupe content. You just don't have the opportunity to show multiple times. And you're, well, I actually, you. So in the larger cities, there's more relevant content. More relevant content. I think there is a slight feeling. More, more, more competition, more everything. So that page that is targeting Houston never shows. It's actually a quit smoking and quit smoking in some really small. There we go. Kalamazoo. Just Missouri. We'll say. Does well because there's no other quit smoking CDs in Kalamazoo. Content available. So Google does display it. So it's an interesting situation. So at the end of the day, I think you try them with the same. And if you're struggling, what you may find, I don't know, populations and densities or whatever between Scottsdale and Baltimore. I guess Scottsdale is smaller. If you find that Scottsdale does well and you never get there with Baltimore. Rewrite. Then you've got to rewrite Baltimore. That's my recommendation anyway. Yeah. For the sake of A and B testing, yes, go ahead and run them the same. But be prepared to go in and rewrite one of those pages. If you want to do a test and give us feedback that we can

use on air, that would be a great test is leave a duplicate on both, see how the search terms, the exact same search terms on each work, and then rewrite it later. If you want to focus on the right thing for your business, rewrite it now. Rewrite the content. Go ahead and rewrite that. All right. Let's get into the meat. So, I've been poking around at search engine journals. 17 things you should stop doing to your websites. I was like, wow. 17 things, that's a lot. And it's probably more than that. But I went through some of them I agree with, some I disagree with, some were kind of funny, and some will change. So, let's breeze through these real quick. Number one, stop posting pathetic, useless promotional content. Stop posting pathetic, useless promotional content. Yeah, buy me because I'm awesome, or get this because he's great, or all these promotions that you get for lackluster content that really serves no purpose or has no function, then stop doing that. And this goes for anybody, whether you're a service provider or you're blogging or whatever. I think that should have been, stop posting pathetic, purposeless promotional content. Purposeless, instead of useless. Yeah, purposeless. Can't do anything with it. Great. Number two, stop stealing lame stock images. They are not so super effective anyway. I totally agree with that, and I added, create your own. If you're in a position where you're creating images which work well for SEO, and you have that opportunity, create your own images. I'm kind of eager for you guys to see the new eWeb layout. We actually did some testing with a top position snatcher's image, and it's totally custom, and I think you guys will like that. So, one caveat to that, better to have a stock image than no image, and much better to have a custom image than a stock image. And if you're going to use a stock image, then one of the things we do here, because we use them, right? I won't say we

don't, but manipulate it. Change some background colors, add a CTA, make it as close to original as you can so it won't be the same stock image that everybody sees. How many times have you seen the chick with the black hair and the customer service microphone on, she's like on like 10,000 times. She's popular, and apparently has a lot of jobs. Number three, stop ignoring your readers. I think this is more for blog content. If you put out a post and you're getting tons of Facebook comments and comments on your site, respond to those. Oh, yeah. Right, answer people's questions, and stay in tune with your readers. Because what that does is what people don't realize is when you post again, those same users who may frequent your blog or frequent the blog that you happen to be guest posting on will likely be more engaged in your future post because they're engaged with you. Stop using big words. This is number four. And then I like this one here. Didn't you just use democulator? You're going to have to cut that. I like this one here, the little tip he said, but you should include the mighty five. You, free, because, instantly, and new. For some reason, he says they don't do any magic to your pages, but they prove to be more effective for conversion rates. And that kind of made sense to me. So use those. Number five, stop writing novels. If you have a lot of content, sometimes that's important, right? You got one of those topics to discuss, and it requires a lot of information. Then break that information down. Like, use a lot of internal links, relevant images and photos, things like that. Make your paragraphs short and specific to maybe one topic apiece. And format the page so it's easy to scan. And bullet points and charts and things like that to help people absorb all of that content that you have. Just a note on that. I heard a depressing statistic, I think, this week that the

estimate is only 35% of the U.S. population has been in a bookstore in their life. Only 35%? Wow. Sounds low, right? And I also... I disagree. Yeah? Well, in a physical bookstore. Yeah. Because, you know... So I bring that up because if you're writing novels, remember most people don't read lots. They're looking for the bullet points. What is the information I need out of this and how can I move on? And there are some who like to read, but if you're targeting those, remember that you're really limiting your target. Yeah. Number six, stop using tiny fonts. Okay. I don't know where you got that one from. Yeah. Number seven, stop requiring... Which begs the question, who's using tiny fonts? Who's using tiny font? Exactly. If you're using a tiny font. Number seven, stop requiring a registration unless it's really necessary. We talked about this a couple podcasts ago. Especially if it's an e-commerce site and people are purchasing, don't require them to register unless it's extremely necessary. Give them a guest checkout portion. But I like what he says here. If they must register, then make sure they understand what they get after they register. Make sure they understand the value that comes with registering. More importantly, give them confirmation that that information is secure. And so that way people will feel comfortable registering. Yeah. Number eight, stop overusing Flash. I changed this because people are going to use Flash no more. Be careful with Java and HTML5. So it's a great technology. It really makes your website responsive and interactive and things like that. But what we've been noticing is that when overly used, a lot of jQuery and all kind of other things going on, then your site can load flow. It may not render well on different browsers or different types of devices. And so be careful with the dynamics of your site. Number nine, stop blending advertising with content. I put a question mark here because I totally disagree with that. I think that the reason we write content is to

drive traffic and we want that traffic to land on our site. And if they're reading that content, then I need to market to them. So I think we shouldn't do any cheesy advertising in the content, right? Like, you shouldn't have whatever pop-up ads in the middle of a statement, you know, that offer a product not even relevant to what I'm looking at. But I think it's in the game to highlight yourself, to highlight your products and your services in the content and link to those different products and services. Absolutely. Number 10, stop testing your website in one browser only. Duh. I like number 11, stop using unreadable captures. Because that sucks. Oh, yeah. Especially if I'm a human, right? And I'm trying to sign in or I'm trying to register. I'm trying to complete your CTA. If I'm on my third try. And it's because I can't figure this CAPTCHA out? Like, come on, we use standard CAPTCHAs. Yeah. Right? I'm going to make you type in E-Web or type in something like that. So it's relevant to the business that's actually branding as they're doing the CAPTCHA. You know who does a good job of this? When I download music, the CAPTCHA is whatever the ad is. So they got video CAPTCHAs. And you'll see a 10-second video promoting lotion, and then the CAPTCHA will be lotion. Nice. And so it's pretty cool. It gets on your nerves because you have to watch the ad in order to put the CAPTCHA in. Yeah. But, you know, stop being afraid of linking out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Share your link juice. Number 13, stop ignoring the social mentions on your website. That's important for people managing brand or your reputation. Dude, if people are Facebooking about you, tweeting, Instagramming, things like that, pay attention to that. Respond to it, more importantly. Don't just look at it and think it's cool. Retweet them. Reply to them. And engage them. Number 14, stop cluttering pages with badges and counters. Yeah, who uses counters? Yeah. Number 15, stop lying

to customers. Yeah, like if your product sucks and you know your product sucks, then work on your product. Yeah, pick your product. Don't try and get more traffic to it. Number 16, stop auto-playing video and audio. It just depends. Yeah. I think that depends on the site. I got a side site. I'm working on lyricalspiritual.com, and the audio is automatically playing when you land on a site because it's a site focused on music, and so you should hear the music when you land. That's the word lyrical. I think it just depends on your site. But if you are, you know, a plumbing repair company, yeah, you shouldn't have your favorite song playing. No, yeah. Shouldn't do that. Last but not least, number 17, he says, stop planning, start doing. I changed that to start doing, keep planning. Yeah. You have to keep planning. You have to keep adjusting your strategy. You have to keep improving the plan that you're working on, but you can't get stagnant doing that. You have to publish that site. You have to upload that content. You have to build those links. So keep doing the things you need to do. Just don't stop working on what you can do better. So there are 17 things you should stop doing to your website. I'll post this on Facebook. I'm interested in looking at your comments. One of them, I can't remember, maybe number 14 or something. Remember, just as long as you're providing a good experience, it was about outbound linking, as long as you're focused on providing a good experience to the Google user. Remember, a dead-end web page is not a good experience to the Google user. So link out, have references, maybe Wikipedia, maybe it's manufacturer links, whatever it may be. That is a good experience if I'm reading about your particular product and I can find more information. Now, you don't want to link to your competitors and you want to, again, just make sure it's a good experience to the Google user. That's a fine balance,

right? Because a page where the only option is to buy is a powerful page. But it's not as good a page to Google as it is to the actual company. Slightly raised up, eyebrow, highbrow. Headed my way. Cool as mountain snow, girl glow. I think she's gonna set me free.