Tips to Enhance Mobile Search Interaction - #seopodcast 213

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet and Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our world-renowned podcast. We've been downloaded in 76 different countries. We have about 9,000 downloads on any given week. That is because of all you all, and we are gesturing towards the camera, because if you have only listened to our podcast, remember, you can actually tune in to our podcast on Fridays. Some time. Some time, yeah. We've had lots of appointments and meetings and things moving the timing of our podcast. And, you know, it's actually a good thing, because we're busy. A tip from our last podcast. Use your thank you page to increase social media activity and also provide supporting content for your conversions. Yeah, you definitely want to take advantage of the conversion. Because, first off, once somebody visits your site and they actually do something, like buy something or submit for a quote request or a consultation request or whatever your desired action is, that means they've already invested something with you. And so take advantage of that opportunity to get more out of them. So when they're on that thank you page, yes, ask for that Facebook like. Ask for that Twitter to follow. Or, frankly, maybe they just bought a product and ended up on their successful checkout page. Won't you show them a how-to video on how to use that product or maybe some other videos of that product being in use, right? But at the end of the day, take advantage of the thank you page, because once people have converted, that's the best time and, frankly, the easiest time to get another kind of conversion from them. Get them engaged. And we actually cover a whole lot of tips and details about how to do that best, how to manage that best. So go back and listen to podcast number 212. This is podcast number 213. And please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood

top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. If you can, tweet now. I see Chuck doing it. Yes, I am. Because he is at Chuck, after all. And what are you tweeting, Chuck? I am tweeting hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 213. Be sure to tag us in it, at eWebstyle or at bestSEOPodcast. That way we can follow you back and link up and do all of our social networking stuff. And you guys are probably wondering, you've been listening to our podcast for a while, or maybe only a few minutes, and you like it already, and you want to know what you can do to help us out. And there's really just about four things you can do to help us out. The first one is you could go onto our G Plus local page. By the way, did you see the email I sent you? G Plus is coming out with a vanity URL. Vanity URL. Yeah, I saw it. So, yeah. I don't know if that could almost be algo cataclysm. One of our clients got an email saying, click here to actually create a vanity URL for their G Plus logo. Yeah, I did it the other day for one of my other accounts. The problem with it is they force you to use Google Plus in the URL. Oh, the little plus. So it's like plus. It's Google.com slash plus. Yeah. That's plus Google. Yeah. Then, yes, then. The one I sent you was like Google.com slash plus, and then the company. Then whatever you type in after that. Yeah. Yeah. And so the one I looked at, it gave me a sample that they wanted me to use, but it was like add some extra characters to make this unique. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Yeah. That's not vanity. That's not vanity. I'm more vain than that. So, yeah. Google. What? And we haven't set up our G Plus local vanity page yet, so you can actually find our G Plus

local page by going to e-webside.com slash. G plus. Or slash. G plus. Or slash. Google plus. Or slash. Google plus. What do they do when they get there? Leave us a review. Put us in a circle. Give us a plus one. Like, do all of that when you get there. There we go. Also, you can do something else for us. It's only three steps. Go on to iTunes, create an account, write a review. If you choose to, let us know that you've added that review. We found one iTunes review from back in January. In fact, let me insert review now. This is actually from Romania, which is why we didn't find it until now. Recently, some podcast listeners gave us a tool on how to download all of our reviews from all of the countries across the... I'll say across iTunes because it's probably not all the countries in the world. This is an excellent five stars by Doc 2005, again from Romania. This was back in January. This is a fantastic podcast. Very informative and lots of fun. Thank you for all the useful info. Keep up the good work. That's a big patoof to Doc 2005. The way you could do that, we already told you how to do that. The other thing you could do is we actually now have a reviews tab on our Facebook page. It only has one review. One lonely review right there. So all you need to do is go to our Facebook... That's Facebook. I'm blaming Facebook. You're going to blame Facebook? I'm making the reviews tab difficult to find. All right. So all you need to do is go to Facebook.com slash... E-Wiffstyle. YouTube.com slash... E-Wiffstyle. And Twitter.com slash... E-Wiffstyle. And if you want to send us an email, send it to podcast at... E-Wiffstyle.com. Cool. All right. Remember, we do have a referral program. If you have an SEO account you want to send our way, as long as they're paying their bill, you'll get renumerated. That also means paid. Yeah. Get the cheddar.

The cheddar. Also, remember, you can get a free website analysis. E-Wiffstyle.com slash nothing. Yeah. I'm going to make up some websites analysis. Website analysis. And we have our segment today, the algorithm cataclysm. Oh, man. That special effect. Yeah. So this cataclysm is not really something in regards to affecting your ranking or not, but it's more of a new penalty that Google has put out. So, you know, if you log into Webmaster Tools, right, that's where you can access your site and you can access whatever messages Google may have for you or any penalties that they may be penalizing you for, you get those messages there. If you just so happen to log into WMT and you see a new message called Image Mismatch. And so what this is is Google is indexing your site, and so you may say you have an image on your site, but if somebody does a Google search, a Google image search, and now they're just looking at images, and that image is pulling from your site, but it's different in the search than it appears on your actual website. And myself, I was like, well, who would do that? And number two, how does that happen? Because the image search, as I understand it, is pulling directly from the site. So whatever image is on your site is what's going to show in the search. Apparently, that's not all the way the case. Depending on certain tools and the way some people are coding their sites and the way some people are uploading images, you could very well be displaying a different image on your web versus what Google is pulling for the search. So they want the images to be the same. If they're not, you'll get a penalty called Image Mismatch, and you'll need to go and remedy that or your images won't show in search anymore. Ah, okay. Yeah, that's good to know. Image Mismatch. All right, so we have a question. This is from a long-time listener, Greg Tookpunch in the face first for that.

It says, hey, Chris, he left out Chuck, so I don't know what that's all about. Finally, me. Question about Hummingbird Update. His website, which is tonsillectomerecovery.com, saw a significant drop in traffic on October 4th, and it has not recovered. He says, I still rank for my bigger keywords, but am thinking I have lost many of my long tail. The site is all white hat and I think reflects what Google wants for its users. I'm stumped. Hmm. Interesting. So if it's all white hat and you think it reflects what Google wants, you're trying to figure out why you dropped. I did look at the site prior to the podcast, and I've seen it before. Tons of great content. The content reads well, which makes me believe that you're not being affected by a Hummingbird Update because you said you think your drop is for long tail traffic. Well, first off, evaluate analytics and webmaster tools. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Which keywords did you lose? And see which keywords are you not getting traffic for. But understand that Hummingbird was an algorithm update that targeted long tail phrases and long tail search. And so if anything, you would have ranked better. Yeah, I would have thought. If you were getting a lot of long tail traffic, you would have begun ranking better after the Hummingbird Update. So I don't believe that that's the source of your problems. You may have a different issue for not ranking. Maybe some sites that were linking to you before have changed domain names or something, and now you have a ton of incoming broken links or something like that. Anytime you see a dramatic drop in traffic but your keywords still place well, then it's usually because of something else not content related. Yeah, some search, non-search referrer. Evaluate your link profile, see who's linking to you, see who you're linking to. Maybe their sites have changed, right? Maybe somebody who you've shared a few links with has all of a sudden been blacklisted or something like that. That

will affect you. And so I would evaluate. I would start there. I don't think Hummingbird is your issue right now. All right. So it's not the bird. I'm just, that's funny. I'm just taking that down right now. So thank you, Greg Turk, for the question. We always like it when people send in questions. Again, you can send a question, podcast at e-webstyle.com. Just a little bit of news. A man turns $27 into $886,000 with Bitcoin. So back in 2009, you know what Bitcoin is, right? That's an online currency, which I'm not even sure is legal in the U.S. In 2009, he spent $27 and bought like 5,000 Bitcoins and forgot about them. And recently, you know. Logged in and was like, woo-hoo, woo-hoo. Yeah, well, so you log in, it's still the same 5,000, but they're per Bitcoin prices significantly different. He walked away with $886,000 between 2009 and now 14 years. Woo! Between 2009 and what? And now. Oh, and now. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, 14 years. So that's a... No, 2009? Four years? Yeah. Oh, only four years. Wow. See, that's why I don't invest in Bitcoin. Because the math is all wrong. Next, Xbox, the Xbox One, when it arrives, when you go pick it up, they admit, it's practically useless. You actually have to download the day one update, called day one update, because you need to update it on day one. And it's just, really, you deliver something. I guess it's all right, right? Because most of these things you can't really enjoy unless you've got internet access, so you can actually put on that update. And finally, have you seen the Google Barge? They're building this Google Barge in, I don't know if it's the San Francisco Bay or some bay somewhere. And it's just beautiful. And the premise is they're going to dock it at different points around the bay and then take it up and down the west coast. And it's going to be a product highlight thing, kind of like an Apple store on steroids. On

steroids on the water. So, and that's all the news. And I think we answered. Google Barge? That's what's up, I guess. I posted it on our G Plus page, on my G Plus page, actually. So you can go check it out there. And, you know, just Google Google Barge and it'll come up, I'm sure. So we've got a few Twitter punches in the face. So this punch in the face goes to GIE Dental Lab. They actually voted for us. Oh, cool. Excellent. Main Street Grits program. Excellent. So punch in the face to you guys. We really appreciate that. And you follow them. That's at GIE Dental Lab. The other one is at Shot by CA. A guy named Chris. I think he's doing some photography. He's a new follower. He tweeted that he was listening to the podcast 206. So appreciate you listening, Chris. Punch in the face to you for your support. I like your name. All right, so let's go. We want to get into Greg's. Okay, you just did the question. Okay, so the content for the day. The meat of the podcast so that our podcast organizer can find this section. Definitely. So I went to Search Engine Journal, pulled some articles. I got this one here from Christian Arno. Tips to enhance mobile search interaction. And so I was like, okay, mobile search, we actually have a client we're pursuing right now, frankly, with a lot of focus on mobile. So I thought this would have been a great article for us to review and for us to also bring to you guys. You know me. As I began going through it, as you can see, I've noticed several things that he really left out. I won't give him any ads because the information he had was good. Good, all right. But when we're talking about mobile search and the mobile experience that people have, I just felt some things that he left out that he could have gotten. And so with that, let's dive in. So number one, let's

talk about some mobile mistakes that people tend to make. And these mistakes are really from your site, right? So we were talking earlier about a mobile site versus a desktop version. The proper term is arguing. Debating. Passionately debating. About, you know, and we can bring it to the people just to get your thoughts on it. Yeah. You know, so would you prefer, what's more valuable to you? A responsive design, right, that focuses on desktop, on tablet, and on mobile? Or a more strategically crafted kind of mobile responsive layout, where your desktop works on desktops and tablets, but your mobile version is considerably different. Yeah. What do you think works? Because we're of the thought, and this is after debate, that everything you do should be designed. And when it doesn't need to be designed, you shouldn't spend time on it. There's better places to spend time on it. Kind of the summary of what we like to say is, yeah, responsive designs, really the only time we want to use responsive design is actually on mobile. Yeah. Because with the tablets and the quality of the tablets and the pinch to zoom and all of these features, you don't really need to design for it. Yeah, your desktop version will work on an iPad. iPad mini. It'll work on a Galaxy tab. It'll work there. The only time you really need a different version is when you're on a smaller screen and you're on a mobile. And then you want that version to be responsive because some people like it landscape, other people like it portrait. Yep. And so at that point, that's where you should invest your time. That's where you should invest your resources because that's where the conversion happens at. Yep. Not necessarily determine if it's going to look right on the tablet or the desktop. Right. Because they're going to look the same, frankly. In fact, as an example, which we haven't spent any design, our star old website, we're working on our new website. If you look on a smaller

device on a phone, our website in landscape is fine. Our website in portrait needs some help. And so this is kind of where that argument comes from is that really the portrait design on a mobile device needs to be different than the landscape because it's a significantly different viewing experience. And everything else really should be the same. Now, is there some value in tablets and doing tablets? Yeah, there probably is. And if you have the budget. The value in tablets would come with the action people take, right? From a desktop version, people use a mouse and click. On a tablet, they tap. Yeah. And so when you start considering that sort of interactivity, then, yes, there is some value there. But at the end of the day, whether you tap it or click it, it's still the same action. And so that's why it's not worth investing those resources, I believe. Yeah, we've had websites that didn't do what you wanted them to do on the iPad, so we had to go back and tweak CSS code. At the end of the day, though, we didn't redesign the site for that purpose. So that's kind of our thought process. Anyway, so into mobile mistakes. Back to those mistakes, right? You want to make sure that you don't make those mistakes. One of the most common mistakes that even Matt Cutts talks about, which is not part of this article, was that some people who tend to make a mobile version and they host it on a different domain, like m.yursite versus your regular www.yursite, is that you don't redirect links correctly or the real canonical links aren't configured properly, and therefore you end up with this kind of error loop or from somebody on a phone, just a page that won't load, right? That's a horrible experience. Google recognizes it, and you'll frankly lose your ranking. So these are mistakes that you can make when trying to implement a mobile strategy incorrectly. So some of the things you do want to do, right, in regards

to a mobile, make it easy. Matter of fact, his topic says make it easier to search. Right. Right, and so the example he's given is really focused on like an e-com site. Yeah. So if you are an e-commerce site and it's being pulled up on a mobile device, yeah, you need to make it easy for people to search. You got 500 products. You don't want them to click through 20 pages to find this product. They need to be able to type it in and find it. But I wanted to change that from make it easier to search to just make it easy, period. Whether it's an e-com site, whether you provide a service, whether the information you're providing is strictly informational, make it easy, period. And how do you make it easy? Well, if you're talking search, his first one is use a prominent search box. People shouldn't have to look for where they want to search. It should be prominent. It should be right at the top. It should be easy to use. One of the things he left off that I'll add is all phone numbers should be linked, right? That way they can tap to call regardless of however they pulled it up on. Even on a desktop, you want that phone number to be linked because usually people's desktops are configured with Google Hangouts or configured with Skype. And so even if you click it then, then that program will open up and you can do what you have to do, usability, right? A better user experience. So all phone numbers should be linked. Another thing that he left off that I'll add is list your services prominently. So let's say you are a service provider and you are an electrician and you do commercial work and residential work and you are a master electrician. Those three links should be readily available because those are the three core services you offer. Everything else, FAQ, About Us, Terms of Service, all of that stuff shouldn't be readily visible on a mobile site

because that's not what they're really looking for. So another one, use autocomplete, right? Understand, people on a mobile device are unfortunately probably driving, you know, and so they're looking for whatever they're searching for, they're looking to take action on it then. And so whether, if you can autocomplete phrases so they don't have to type in that whole search word, great, saves them some time. I would even take that a step further. I would autocomplete with alternatives to what they may be looking for, right? Because maybe they didn't understand it was a different name for whatever they were searching. So do that. Another thing you should do to make it easier on a mobile device is use infinite scrolling, right? This is not a desktop where you want to go with some sort of pagination where they can click from page to page and let all these images load up and things like that. On a mobile device, people using one hand, they got the thumb or the finger, right, and they're scrolling. So you want to give them an infinite scroll. So new content automatically loads at the bottom, new images automatically load at the bottom, and they can just keep scrolling. That's a better experience than trying to click to the next page on a mobile device. So here he put provide localized information. And we're talking about a local search, right? So let's say you're looking for a location. You're searching Starbucks. Of course, your GPS, if it's configured right, should automatically open up and show you the closest Starbucks. But let's say your web page comes up, right? This is a great place for you to put some other identifiers. This is a Starbucks on the corner of 290 and West 34th next to the fish shop, right? That sort of local-based information that's on a web page specific to that search phrase is crucial. I think from a mobile search, when people see that, oh, I'm right around the corner from that. Frankly, those are also text, right, that Google can

index and recognize that this search is more applicable to what they're searching for, and we should show this result. Right. So use those local identifiers. Throughout this whole concept, which is my biggest problem with Christian, was that Christian left off social. He didn't include any social in regards to enhancing a mobile. That's the easiest way to be social is on your mobile. On your mobile device? Easier than on a desktop, yeah. Exactly. You think about programs like Foursquare and Instagram even. These are mobile programs. You don't use Instagram on your desktop. Right. You don't use Foursquare on your desktop. No. You use these on your phone. And so why not, when we're talking about a mobile experience, why not include social during that? I mean, you know, optimum scenario, somebody searches, they find you on their device, and now they click your address because they're coming to you. Why not on that page on your site where they found your address, give them some instructions like, hey, when you get there, check in on Foursquare and get 50% off of an accessory or whatever it is. Or, hey, when you get there, like us on Facebook and get this or get that, that sort of deal. Or, hey, when you get there and you buy this, come back and leave us a review. And not only that, but you put the links to your Foursquare page, you put the links to your Facebook check-in page, you put the links to your G Plus page where they can give you a review, guess where? On that page. Yeah. So that way they can pull it up, they can nav to wherever they need to be, where your location is, and then they can follow it with you socially. So, Christian, definitely you want to include social in every aspect of the mobile experience that you can because that's, frankly, one of the best times to actually get them to do it. I think Facebook wouldn't be where it is without a mobile device. Without the mobile

experience. Yeah. So those were some tips to enhance your, you know. I think he missed one, too. And maybe you mentioned now it says, sending out a tweet. A link to the full site? Definitely. Like. Definitely a link to the full site because what I said earlier was for the sake of focusing on a conversion, you should omit pages like FAQ and. Or hide them. Right, don't give them prominent. Yeah, hide them. Yeah. You configure it so they're not displayed on this mobile device. Yeah. But not all searches are from people, not all mobile searches are from people who are in a rush. Frankly, I could be sitting on my couch, you know, doing, searching on my phone. I do it all the time. And I want to read your FAQ. Exactly. Or I want to, whatever it may be. Maybe I'm at your location and I'm waiting in line. And so I need some more information. So, yes, definitely. A link to the full site should always be an option. And it should be fairly prominent. So that way people can get to it. That's a good one, Chris. Absolutely. Cool. Yeah, that's our meat. That's the meat of it. Do we have any what? Yeah, we do got a little bit of what. All right, here's some what. Yeah, really, this is more like a what? Really? Really? Yeah. No. Yeah, this goes to a guy named Stephen Elop. Stephen Elop. Stephen Elop. So Stephen Elop, he's trying to get the CEO position at Microsoft. Okay. You know, they're trying to hire somebody. He's positioning, right? Yeah, he's positioning. England. And so according to Business Week, Mr. Elop got out there and he began naming some of the things he would do if he became CEO. Okay. And so I was like, all right, this is Microsoft. Yeah. You know, but then. I can name a few. Like what? Like improve Windows 8.1 to 8.10. Exactly. That's how I was looking to feel. So he wants to do things like possibly shutting down

Bing because it doesn't make sense to compete with Google. What? What? Wow. Wow. You were talking about. I don't even know if that's what good idea or what bad idea. It's just a what? Exactly. Wow. The second thing he said, what he thought about doing was to capitalize on things that are already working, he would consider selling off the Xbox portion of the company because it's already extremely successful. Yep. And sell off the division that delivers products that don't work. So I'm like, so really Xbox, the one, one of the things that's really working for Microsoft? We should get rid of that. Yeah. What? Yeah, that is a what. That's a what. That's stupid. That's stupid. And so then the last thing he said was rather than focusing on improving Windows 8 and things like that, he'd rather focus on making products, office-related products like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and Excel, creating apps and making those available on other devices like iPhones and Androids instead of promoting and fixing the Windows 8 platform and using those products to bring people back to Windows. What? Yeah. So, Steven, you ain't going to get that job. No how, no way. Good luck with that. Wow. Because what I got from it, I said, okay, so take our core products and make them available for our competitors. Take our top-selling product and just sell it. And then the biggest thing we have going with the biggest competitor, just bow down, that's what you're going to do. Man, and it does not bode well. I mean, you know, being, I think Google would be, is fairly self-motivated. So, they're continually getting better. They're continually, they've got a really good mission statement, I think, is what the real difference is. It's because they're providing great experiences and increasing revenue, ad revenue. And so, that continually, that mission continually pushes them to make a better search engine. I would like to see more search engines because they're just going to make Google better. And, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What? And Windows

8 is, I mean, that's your... That should have been, it should have been like, you know, Windows 8 is my focus. So, make, yeah, make it better. Make it mobile. And then, that's your, that's your, that's your way to get into Bing, right? Yeah. I mean, if you can make a decent mobile platform, I mean, you know, and I had a Windows phone. I would have done things like, took Windows 8, fixed it. And Windows 8 would have probably been, become the operating system, like, on the Xbox. I would have forced people to get accustomed to Windows 8. Or, or if Xbox is so good, bring it back. Bring it back. Yeah, that's just bizarre. Like, your, your OS sales are gargantuan. Like, that's, anyway. All right. So, that definitely qualifies for, what? Yeah, he didn't want to focus on the biggest portion of the market share that they have, which is OS. Yeah. He chose not to focus on that at all. You know what? If they were hiring based on revolutionary ideas, he'll get the job. Because revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean good. Profitable. Or profitable. All right. You have been listening to the most popular SEO and internet marketing podcast on the planet. We are that because of all of you all. You and you right there. And over there. And over there. And you in Romania. Romania. Yeah. That took, took 11 months for us to read your review or so. So, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you guys for being great listeners. Thank you guys for interacting with us. By the way, everyone who voted for us. Appreciate that. Yeah. We're applying for Chase Grant. Punch in the face to you guys. Punch in the face to you. We made our vote. So, now it's up to the Chase Grant judges. It's up to the Chase Grant judges. So, thank you guys for helping us. And until the next podcast. Oh, do this for us. So, our app is coming along. We all actually got it installed internally. We're

playing with it. Doing some mock-ups. So, I like five good people. Maybe you, Greg, Bill, a few others who are probably tuning in. Send us some emails. Once we get to the next phase, we'll likely let you guys get kind of an exclusive install with an app to help beta test it for us. Yeah. That would be a great idea. Beta, or apps and beta testing. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burris. So, bye-bye for now. Slightly raised up eyebrow, high brow, headed my way.