 Hi, welcome everybody we've got our SEO panel here coming up For those that don't know me my name is Mickey Mellon. We'll run through new quick intros of each of us Essentially this will be an SEO panel of the three of us, but I'll kind of moderate and catch questions and stuff So I'll have a few questions for them to get started But we want this to largely be a Q&A about all things search engines for two of the brightest search engine minds we have here So quickly about me I'm with Green Mill and Media as a lot of you know been doing search enginey things for a decade or so trying to rank sites better Going back a long way mostly build WordPress sites now do some search engine stuff on the side Yeah, and work with these two on quite a few projects So we'll start with Jenny she wants to introduce herself and tell us a bit about our history And you guys can be thinking of questions to start hitting them with here in a few minutes after we get through Where they are and where they've been Hi, I'm Jenny Munn and I started working with WordPress about seven years ago when I started out as a website copywriter So I'm a little different than Mickey and Tom because I came from a marketing and copy background and not necessarily technical Which is what I bring to SEO so I came to the very first word camp and braved the ice storm in 2010 and Obviously since then I've been I have a little bit of a stalker ish obsessive tendency with word camp because this is my seventh Time speaking on SEO at a word camp. So I'm a little obsessed I love the community and you know how much Empowerment that WordPress can bring to clients and certainly to my own business And so today I work with in-house marketers and I consult with them on how to improve their SEO on top of all of their other digital marketing efforts So that's what I do. Would you like me to talk about? Yeah, go back a little bit, too Yeah, I could pull up your old one. Okay, so this is my current website But again, I started out seven years ago as a website copywriter and very quickly I had learned that just because I created what I thought was an awesome DIY website that I put up with I lived in the happiness bar for a couple years here at word camp trying to get that thing up That it did not automatically drive traffic to itself, which was like what I totally thought would happen So I had to learn how to do my own SEO And then I started doing SEO copywriting for people and that led me over to the years to doing SEO consulting for businesses So that's how I learned beat by ranking number one for Atlanta copywriter and then evolving from there All right. Hello everybody. How's everybody doing? My name is Tom when my plan has worked. Okay, so what else So my name is Tom when I run a website design company in Atlanta and I started I started freelance website designing in 2002 And over the last few years I went from being like unknown to the very top of search engines Mickey asked me yesterday is I do you rank number one for anything because I was I mean I'm in the top five for a lot of phrases, but I'm not number one for well For the ones I mentioned actually maybe I am but This is what I write for I'm anywhere from number one and number five depending on where you're at. What device you're searching from Atlanta web developer a lot of love with seal and web designer freelance web designer web designer web design So these are all pretty strong keywords To rank for and so I get I get as much I get more business that I can handle people on the waiting list To do business with me So I Get to pick and choose my clients These these clients they try to sell me. I'm doing business with them and that's all I gotta say about myself I will start with this SEO changes quite a bit. I like to say it doesn't change a lot Really Google just gets better at enforcing the rules, but things do change in their algorithms So what's the biggest misperception you still hear today that clients? Come to you talking about they want to do that. You know is wrong or old or just wrong. Yeah Either one of you Was wrong I know they just what they want to mention like they're they want to rank for Atlanta, but They're not located in Atlanta or located in Cardsville So I I can't get them to rank above a company that's located In Atlanta if they're located out there That's about it. Thank you So one of the things I hear and I feel like I'm sorry guys can't see it's really great over there I I feel like this is not very popular But one of the misperceptions that I feel is out there is just right good content Obviously, that's a huge part of SEO, but that is just one piece of SEO There's just so much more that has to come together today Writing great content is important, but it's not the only thing the same thing with you know PR is a new SEO or social media is the new SEO That's accurate in the fact that those are big contributors, but alone There's no one individual thing that contributes to a super high ranking So I think that would be it for me just content is so important of course, but it's not SEO is a whole discipline by itself Okay, I have some more to say no Okay, so Jenny just talked about great content. That's one of the aspects you've got to have backlinks as well But content is really important You guys if you're like for instance in my on my website if I'm just selling website design I'm not talking about any aspects of it. It's it's not going to be a very very valuable site Google's in the business of providing the best The best websites on the top and by the best websites I mean informative websites. What are you informing people about website design? If you're just selling throughout the whole website, then it's not going to be a really good source and Then you've got to have the backlinks from say local directories other other blog posters For instance, I've I've got a good back link from Jenny. She gave me she gave me an interview not too long ago Could you go to Jenny's website? That interview so this this interview that she gave me was back when I was on the bottom of page one and The I answered the questions and there's a few backlinks in there So I got this interview right here because I post the valuable content on my website Not just because I've spammed people and say hey get some website design for me I don't sell anything on my social media. I'll do is provide advice So I got So Cool, then the other one Jenny and I were talking about last night We hear again a lot of misperceptions out there I don't want to go too far into that but things like clicking on your own rankings in the search results People will say like Jenny saying she saw a group of people said that all get together search for each other and click The results in there trying to rank higher and things just don't work that way And we'll get into some more of those as we go along But I have a few more questions for them But I'd rather use those as filler if we didn't hear what you guys want to learn and pepper them with that So hands hands if you have questions to to get things going Nobody yet. We have lots of juicy. There we go here in the back. There we go Let me repeat that just for anyone. So he's asking yet someone has business in multiple counties They have a home office in one place and business in multiple counties How if anyway can they rank in those various counties without having a presence in them? So Tom thoughts? Check it. Okay, so there's two types of rankings in Google and if you if you do a search You've probably seen the map listings first which shows It shows map address phone number website address Maybe no it doesn't show the website address, but it has a link to the website So those results are going to be geographically tailored. So they're going to give you the results that are closest to you Where you're searching? So it's not going to show like It's not going to show like a moving company 50 miles down the road over someone. That's like one mile down the road now They're right below their geographic the local results are going to be the organic results And now those you you have a little more influence on And so you might be able to you might be able to pop up for that whole region if if you tie if you Do the right things you have? The cities and your title tag and your tags and your links and h1s h2 tags mmm What was the other part of your question? Is that it? Well, just how do you do that? Yeah, so there you go You've largely answered it. How would how would you do it? Yeah, how would how would you get to rank in those places? Yeah, so if you're in it landing you want to rank okay, so so if you have those locations, but you I mean to rank in the To rank for the map locations You gotta you've got to have a physical address in every one of those locations to rank and then you should specify like Like a service area So like I'm not sure if you've seen on the maps it'll show like It won't show likes there's some places that don't have an address But it has like a a range of area that just that that business serves So that that might be other That might allow your business to show up in the map listings No, no, you can actually set up City-specific pages. I've done it for a granted countertop company like I set up like Granted countertops and noon and grand countertops in Columbus grand countertops and Lagrange But when you do those city-specific pages, you better be talking about the city You gotta talk about the city and then you could talk about you gotta find a way to talk about the city and how the service ties in You can't just meant you can't say a you want to rank for like grand countertops and Lagrange Georgia You don't talk about Lagrange at all. So what you can do is you can give like a history of the city Give it give a history of the city and then somehow you've got to tie it in if you have any history of the city then throw that in there Both of them will be both of them will be good. But if you and if you link to them, it'd be even better Yeah, hopefully that answer your question In general pages and blogs in theory are the same. They're both just individual URLs for Google to rank In theory though So if you had a page devoted to that city and had blog posts around it Then like times that have those blog posts linking back to that page and help build that one page up to be more more authoritative Well, one more remark like I'm on my way up to the very top of page one on Google being being sucks. So by the way I'm on the top of those two, but they they're still horrible. I I Documented my trip up to the top and I mentioned like Atlanta web design and every one of my blogs But that it made sense that flow that like We I had like week three of my quest to be top the top for Atlanta web design So that had a land of web design in the blog title And then when I mentioned Atlanta web design in the content I linked to my web design service page So So that that told the search engines that that whoa, and maybe that's that page has something to do with land of web design And can I say something that so it's really funny because we all Disagree with each other on certain things and I think that that's okay So like we won't get too much in a follow or no follow links now But Tom talked about a local local or Directory citations and backlinks and I'm not necessarily a big fan of that And so we just have each such good different backgrounds is something to know to he specializes in a lot of local SEO I do a lot of national Mickey does a lot of technical and a lot of reporting and a lot of looking a lot of troubleshooting too when it comes to SEO issues So it's good to know too and we all have different backgrounds and disagree with each other slightly on different things Which kind of makes it fun so cool in the back. Yeah Good question. Yeah, so he asked you if you have a client with the top ranking You want to totally redo their site but not risk losing the ranking? How do you ensure that you don't? The first is you can't insure that you don't But there's certainly things you can do to give yourself the best chance possible We we've had that a few times we had one that came to us that was stuck at number three and said it three Is good. I don't want to lose that and I said we can probably get you to two I promise nothing and sure enough making the site mobile responsive and doing things that she needed got her to number two But yeah, it's really just I think first you said three one redirects I think make sure the keywords use the same kind of keywords and the same title tags and stuff as you have before Keep the page URLs the same if possible or put in redirects to other pages that go around Further thoughts and things they could do. Yeah, so when you do a redesign preserving the SEO you have is really important So Google Analytics and Google search console just formerly Google webmaster tools are going to be your best friends and Understanding okay, well, what is the specific keyword or keywords that are ranking? What is the website page the URL it's going to because it's not always going to be the home page then really taking all those top SEO Pages and understanding okay, well, where is a keyword used is You know, I still say above the fold is there a copy of there? Do you have an h1 how many words are on the page? So really preserving all of that and then one upping it of course with a mobile responsive redesign But you really do have to make sure you preserve and carry across any SEO and if you are redirecting URLs You really have to be very careful. There's sometimes in the URL sees the same and it's just a facelift But if you are redirecting you have to be very careful About that and know that you might not preserve all of the SEO value, but you will work your way back up Do you have yeah? Yeah, you All right, so yeah, she asked yeah for sake of the video if you have a business online That doesn't have a local address at all, but you want to target some local customers. Is that accurate and how do you do that? They want to target your target is everybody which is not a great target, but yeah You're not going to put an address you don't want to put an address on there, but you want to rank for national Okay It's gonna be I mean you're not going to rank in the the maplest things ever without an address You might be able to hit the organic Results below it and that's that's okay. You don't have to have it for there But you better you better have a really informative website That talks about the industry and more so than just selling like putting like by widgets By now like all over your website isn't gonna make make it rank any higher So if you get you've got to provide information about it That's that's the only way I can think of about ranking nationally. I've I took I took a gravel driveway Company and like within a year from like being unknown to like the very top for gravel driveway repair But they had they had an address, but I got them to rank nationally I would just say one of the biggest tips, of course if you're starting out Can you give us an idea of your keywords that you want to rank for? Do you know the keywords? Okay, so and that's okay a lot Ladies apparel, okay Okay Okay, so that's definitely one of the first steps Ladies apparel is really general and very competitive. So the more general terms the more competitive It's going to be so it's really counterintuitive, but the way to start ranking Immediately it's not counterintuitive in that you want to go after more long tail terms be more specific at first once you start ranking on some of those More longer tail terms then that helps build momentum up to the more competitive terms So that's just certainly get get very specific if you can you really are going to have to because you can't start Ranking high for those competitive terms. So you've got to go more specific and if you can identify a target market That's even better because Google will tailor like they know the context of your site and your products And they will tailor it to the appropriate search. So you're just going to have to get very specific Yes, three of you over there one of you All right, so it's two questions Yeah, one is asked about paid search and just our general opinions on paid search and then making yeah PDFs available making searchable Findable from Google there. So yeah, so I love paid search So I only do organic SEO, but I love when people do paid search Because it shows that they are willing to commit and invest and getting in front of their target market in more than one ways So I think when people are involved in paid search, it just shows that they're not You know, they won't put all their eggs in organic SEO They're trying to do multiple things and they're putting a budget where they need to be so I like paid some people come to me and say Well, should I do paid or organic and it depends on how quickly do you need to get up onto Google? Organic SEO is a lot longer term investment. So you're not going to see results right away. So the diversification is really important I like that and then as far as yeah, my free report I do have a landing page if someone googled around SEO essentials or some of the keywords they'll land on my landing page That mostly is so that I can get people to opt in and take advantage of website traffic I get and that's one of the biggest things too is that a couple years ago people would Google You know I'm laying a copywriter SEO consultant and almost immediately they would reach out and become a lead But these days the sales cycle is just longer and more complex and people are self-educating a lot So the quicker I can get them onto my list and the the better I can nurture them So I do have a couple free opt-in Reports to get them on my list even if they're not going to convert right away. They're visiting my site So that's what that's for it's crawlable, but on the home page. It's mostly for opt-ins Yeah, the PDF itself is not crawlable because it's hidden away. They only get when they download. Yeah, right behind them there Yeah, all right, so he's asking just yet ethical backlinks how to gain ethical backlinks Did you get emails all day long saying hey we should 10,000 backlinks for $9 and if you get that put your competitors name in it And you'll get you'll do better, but Don't do that But yeah, what is the back links or something we used to offer that to help you get your backlinks and now we for us We just do more consulting out saying hey if you remember the Chamber of Commerce do that if you're speaking at work You know try to get because it's so hard to build but Tom is Mr. Backlink. So let's hear what he has to say Okay, so there's several types of backlinks you can get you can go with directors But you've got to be very careful about those if you go to any directory that lets you put anything in the title of it If like for instance about I get to put best Atlanta website designer in Atlanta, Georgia You probably want to avoid that so you want to find directories that that Only let you put unbiased text about your Website like for instance like D maus is a is a huge directory. You can't pay to get in there I mean you it's not a paid directory. It's free, but you've got to know somebody or It's like a secret society to get into it and How I know it's if it's pretty powerful is that sometimes Google pulls the descriptions from D maus And he and it puts into the meta descriptions for Google or puts into the description text then there's local directories Those are credible like Yelp City search superpages Chamber of Commerce there's several those there's like 60-something directories and you could go through like Like you could use a tool like yes, which allows you to do it all at once But the only don't draw back with that is is that if you cancel their service like if you didn't create the pages yourself and you didn't You didn't Create the listings yourself as soon as you cancel with yes, though They'll remove it or your page goes a blank in there So that's that's another type of credit back link another one is You know if you're providing information someone someone's bound to like A link to you after a while if you if you provided useful information like Jenny linked to me Judy night in here Judy Judy no no anyway, so Judy night roll the blog post on me to you on my contact form You could also get Customer spotlight stories like let's say if you have a vendor like can you go to my elegant themes page? Yeah, which one is here? I'll find it There's the one for Judy. Okay, there we go. All right, so elegant themes is a vendor of there They're WordPress premium theme provider. And so I converted my website to to Divi Like around this period right here or right before it and I asked him if I could submit a spotlight story and And allowed me to have some links in there granted these links are no follow links but but you know follow or no follow my My visit my site visits double after after this article came out So that's another type and then so you got you got general directories local directories customer spotlight stories You can have you can talk talk enough to where other people blogging about you and then There you have social media. You have your social media pages Twitter Facebook pages LinkedIn LinkedIn has a company page So find those Pinterest all those are all credible. They're not spam. They're not spam links I just wanted to give my opinion on that really quickly. So Credible back links. So I like how did you guys hear rich Brooks talk about? Local SEO Brooks is not his last name rich talked about local SEO and he was really good and said that after Blogging and putting up a lot of high-quality content on your site for a while links kind of do just come But in the meanwhile, you should definitely go out more purposefully and ask identify sites in your In your neighborhood of the the community you want to be in the people you're gonna be in front of an asking is Just so critical. What can I do? Can I post something here? Guess blog posts are still really relevant But my biggest secret on when I'm helping Clients identify their links is first of all go to their Google search console And it's a free report you can go and pull the latest links to that website And so I look and see well where have they already gotten links and I can help them identify Here's where you've already gotten links keep doing more of that or do more of this more purposefully And then also Moz has a tool called open site Explorer and I will plug in I will Google the keywords They want I'll see who are the websites ranking at the top for those terms And then I'll plug five six seven competitors into open site Explorer And I'll pull all the backlinks to the companies at the top and I can really start identifying Okay, well then a member of this association. They have this press. They must have a PR agency They've sponsored this event. So when you start looking at the backlinks of your competitors It's just it finally starts dawn on you what a backlink is and how can you get it more readily pertaining to your industry? So competitive spying is my answer for that And just a little more backstory there for those of you not as versed in SEO, you know when Google came out in the late 90s, you know search engines were horrible back then if you remember Northern Light and Light Coast and all those And Google decided if more people linked to a site, it's probably a better site and it for the most part works And while that was pretty much all they were in the late 90s That's still a big factor today and then Tom mentioned no follow and follow and I know some you may not know that So I think it was in 2007 Google decided. Okay, people leave spam comments a lot and stuff We'll set up a thing where people put links in certain places They'll have a little no follow tag which means Google ignore this link or at least counted a lot less We can debate about how they treat those So getting a link that has followed like from Jenny's blog or from Judy's blog is great Giving a link that is no follow like from elegant themes is not as good But like Tom said he still doubled his traffic from the pure clicks So even if that link was of zero value, it's still good to have but we hear follow versus no follow That's what that is most social media links are no followed So they don't count directly to help you but again still can be some second and third party ways they make an effect Yeah All right, so getting rid of spammy back links how you do it the impact it has on SEO It's not a full proof way, but there's a This link disavow tool in the Google Webmaster tools a few yeah I would say yes You should probably go and contact them because I have a message board from years ago That's still up that has a lot of spammy accounts and stuff on that shady people add in so when they come to me to Hey, will you please move my link? I make them grovel a bit because they're the ones that were you know spamming my site for their own benefit And then they got hosed by it So I don't have a whole lot of love for that But I can appreciate there are a lot of cases when you step in to help someone they already have this history You should still try to reach out even Google says the best ways to just get those links taken down But then yeah, then add what you can to disavow and hope for the best is kind of what I've seen what I've experienced But I feel further I just want to make a comment on that So I think that every site or most sites I see have some spammy backlinks pointing to them because you can't control that and Google knows that for the most part that you can't always control who's going to link to you it is certainly a problem though if The bad backlinks the spammy backlinks Substantially outweigh the good backlinks and what I've seen so I have a client now And they've got a lot of spammy links with like Louis Vuitton fake purses pointing back to their website Viagra and casino are definitely a huge problem So the flag those right there you definitely need to take care of them But if I'm starting to see their keywords come in like I've got a client and there's a lot of Pharmaceutical drugs they have nothing to do with pharmaceutical drugs and it's coming in as impressions In their analytics and search console that's when it's a problem Or if you're not ranking because of that so again a handful of spammy links are okay If you've got the majority of good links Google does want to see a history that you've tried to reach out to the owner So again, even if you know it's not going to work I was on a lot of backlink removal teams a couple years ago And they just want to see record that you tried again a lot of spammy site They don't have a webmaster there's nobody to email But at least if you have a record that you tried then definitely go the disavow method And disavow for those that know in Google search console, which is a free thing You can all connect to your site used to be called Google webmaster tools. They have a feature in there We can add a text list of links that you don't want to count and just upload that to them and Google should disavow them and not Count them against you anymore Free tool, but they warned you be very very careful because you put some good links in there They will those won't count anymore either and you could tank your rankings real fast. So be super careful Way in the back Gotcha, so the first one was meta description versus meta keywords Okay Gotcha, so just meta descriptions versus meta keywords and you including misspellings in them Meta keywords you can completely ignore Google has never used that as a signal since day one That was why like those and all those were so bad because you just fill that with a bunch of stuff And you'd rank high and it was you know worked well for spammers meta description is valuable in a secondary way It doesn't help you rank any better Google said we don't look at the keywords in there at all However, that's typically the snippet that shows up under your search result So if you have a nice well-written description thing Hey, this page will answer your question whatever it is and the other one's just kind of the list of navigation Whatever the generic stuff is you might be ranked third or fourth and get the clicks because yours looks more compelling Neither one will affect rankings for misspellings. I haven't done a lot with that lately Google's getting so good about correcting misspellings in the results. Anyhow, I don't really concern myself with that But either you have other thoughts on misspellings and including them intentionally in places Yeah, and you know that's kind of an older practice where you would go and add misspellings But you know, this is one of those things where and I'm not saying this like but common sense trumps the SEO factor So if there's like a one of that's more of a commonplace way to spell the term for brand consistency You just want to be consistent and you don't want to misspell on your website So you just kind of have to pick one and forgo But that did used to be an older school tactic, you know of note there Yeah related to that having again having keywords in your meta description or meta keywords doesn't help at all So the only place you can put the misspellings is in your title tags and in your headers and that would look pretty bad So I would typically avoid that I agree with Mickey on the meta description It has it doesn't have like a direct effect on your ranking, but it does have an effect on your click-through rate So if it looks enticing and someone clicks on it and they stay on your website, dude That's also an important factor if they click on let's say if you're at the top and Google clicks on your your listing They are immediately hit the back button. Maybe it's telling Google that your content sucks Yeah, cool Now how often is SEO criteria change? All right Where to go find out cool. So again my general philosophy is that it hasn't changed much at all in 17 years I think really the only change Google has made is to make mobile sites more Rank higher because obviously 98 they didn't and maybe a bit with secure sites Everything else Google has done is just forcing their laws better, you know 98 99 They said don't spam keywords in there don't span backlinks all that it worked And so all they've done all their changes really just fixing all the stuff They've been telling you not to do that finally you're kicking in you know There's a big penguin update a big panned update everyone panics that sites are losing ground It's typically sites that were cheating and succeeding and then they lost ground and the rest of us that were legit All moved up two spots But that's just my personal opinion. I know we may disagree a little bit here. So thoughts No, I think the principles are pretty much the same. All right, but where do you go to keep up with stuff? How about that that part of Mars and Mars comm is great They have every Friday to have a whiteboard Friday video that ran does that fix a topic and spends 10 minutes Just isn't cutesy whiteboard thing explaining a topic or theory and stuff. That's pretty good MOZ MOZ.com they used to be SEO Moz now They're just Moz, but they have great great stuff great tools Jenny mentioned open site Explorer. That's theirs They have some paid tools, but lots of free great blogs and videos and other other sources Yeah, SEO land SEO land. Yeah, and then I was so those tend to be I think websites that people who are like really nerdy like us go to like, you know SEO professionals if you're like a business owner or maybe a marketer I think HubSpot and social media examiner are a little bit more general it may be easier to understand But certainly any SEO industry site is really good But if there's a big change you'll hear about it in multiple places So anywhere you follow digital marketing, but I do like those two HubSpot and social media examiner And then one thing about does SEO, you know keeping up with changes So what I kind of tend to think like, you know, how often does Facebook change like Facebook evolves pretty often And that's how I think of Google like Google is going to continue to evolve and change different things But the core foundational layer of how you do SEO has not changed in a number of years So as long as you have a solid understanding and my mind was blown today So is Nancy by chance in the room who spoke on accessibility and accessible websites? If anybody was in her session, she went through a checklist There was a two column checklist on everything that has to do with an accessible website And everything on there was SEO 101, on page optimization 101 And so that kind of stuff that's good common sense website marketing has not changed in a number of years It's just when you try to do some of the spammier things But that's what Google constantly penalizes and tries to stay ahead of So just learn your foundational SEO and then you just learn incremental changes on top of that It's really not too bad Cool. All right, over here So a review on your site from Carolyn Marietta, Georgia I wonder if that helps you rank better in Marietta My thought would be yes a little bit because you're getting Marietta in your page I would say it would be infinitely better if you could go leave that review on your Google Plus page Or on your Yelp page or something that Google looks at as a review As a more authentic review rather than something you very well could have put in there yourself The keyword in there will help a smidge, I think, but we encourage people We encourage our clients all the time, please, you know, we give them a simple email It says here, here's our Google Plus page, here's our Yelp page Just click whichever one you like more, you know, leave us a review Most people are logged in to one or the other most of the time anyhow Takes 30 seconds, helps a whole lot more Further thoughts on page? I just have a quick thing So I think it probably would help But what I caution is don't make people do that on purpose So don't ask every user to sign in with the name of their town or put that Because when Google sees patterns of trying to scale something That's when they might flag you So again, every once in a while instance is fine But let people choose that on their own if they did do that I have, I mean, I don't make them put the city in their review But on my website, sometimes I'll put their city below it Let's see, yeah, like on my web design page or SEO services page I'll put their review and then they'll say like their name, their title, their company And where the company is located at So it's in there, but it's not looking spam like Go, go, go All right Just scourge it I just, I don't buy any extra domain names to rank higher Yeah, in short, yeah, Google a few things One, Google doesn't look at the text in domain names nearly as much as they used to EMD update, they've come to the exact match domains It still matters some, but they think it's silly to rank first For a keyword because it's in your domain name versus in your content and links and stuff Having multiple domains pointed to your site though, they don't count at all If you do it properly, it's a 301 redirect where they redirect in They count 0% toward that But it still can be useful You know, if I say go to GreenMellonMedia.com You guys are going to spell it four different ways probably And so whichever way you spell it though, it's going to redirect to the main one Google doesn't see those misspellings, but it's good for our business to say it To have the redirects You have two different URLs, right? No, they're all one URL, they rank for all those keywords Yeah, he's actually MrTechnique.com But it's MrTechnique.com slash Atlanta Web Design So you still get the key... And again, those keywords in there don't help as much as they used to But it looks good and can help a little bit Just type in like Atlanta Web Design on Google and see if you can find me on top five There you go Even better, type in Atlanta local SEO too So if you have a craft website, how do you beat Pinterest in Etsy? Alright, Jenny, how do we beat them? So that's tough While you do want to do all your SEO best practices But while you're waiting on that, definitely developing a community Long-tail blog posts, social media, maybe some paid So it just absolutely will be an uphill battle Because of who you're competing with So you can do it You know, again, the more you can identify a target market And really be specific and really bring even more value And do a lot of outreach and try to do guest blog posts There's just going to be a lot of work to try to outseat them So I have clients who they have their own website But then they also are on Amazon local You know, the Amazon Handmade one And they also have Etsy So they've really tried to repurpose and be everywhere Which I think is the general theme, just be everywhere So it's going to take a while for their website But in the meanwhile, they could put videos on YouTube And maybe YouTube will rank I see LinkedIn Pulse articles rank for top keywords So maybe the site won't rank on page one But I'll see a LinkedIn article come up So make sure that they're in all the most important places So maybe they can rank other places While their website is gaining traction It will be an uphill battle Education is really important about that Be on Pinterest, you know, that could be If Pinterest is outranking If they have their stuff on Pinterest Maybe it'll rank number one It'd be better to come straight to your site But they go there and it's another click It beats nothing That's what I wanted to hear from you everywhere Okay, all right, Chris She's asking about social media activity How it affects your actual rankings With your own activity And with other people talking about you So, Tom, you got thoughts? I mean, it affects it But everything we're saying is all theory We don't work for Google or Bing You don't work for Google? If you're putting back links In your social media policy It probably gives it a little bit of weight But they might be no follower They are, yeah Also, that's no follower Yeah, but it brings traffic And it brings traffic That's what I was going to say, too Social media is more indirect But it really helps, of course, with discoverability So when you promote and share your content And it gets in front of more people There's more of a chance to get backlinks Or to give visits to your site And in Google Analytics There's a very specific report that tells you How much of your traffic comes from social media And gives you a breakdown Of which specific accounts it comes to And so what I say is Anything analytics can measure They're either taking it into account for Or against your site Like Tom mentioned Pogo sticking is that someone comes to your site And then bounces off really quickly Or if they stay And they're consuming your content And they scroll down And they visit multiple pages Those are great signs So the same with social media, too There's just a lot of correlation With sites that do, you know They're active on social And they're actually getting visits from there And their content is getting in front of other people That really does boost it So it's not direct It's indirect But you definitely want to be doing that To be everywhere Yeah, I believe Google has said Directly that that stuff doesn't Influence your rankings Because they're all no-followed But again, if you can get it spread Around more than other people Blog about you and stuff Then those blog links are followed And it can be a good thing Right, yeah Certainly can help your business out Yeah For me, I look at Trying to improve my search How the methods I do To improve my search engine rankings are I don't really push business I try to establish myself As an authority source Or I try to provide advice In there And Google loves that If you, I don't know Let's say you type in a celebrity's name What's the first thing Results is going to show up Wikipedia Wikipedia is nothing but information They're not selling anything I blog about once a month It used to be once a week But then I got so busy I got to be once every two weeks Once every three Now it's once every month But I make sure I blog I blog regularly At least once a month And since then like I went from like a static website To a WordPress site And then since then I started out with like 10 pages And then I went up to Now I'm like 150 97 blog posts So I'm coming up on my 100th Pretty soon Cool Let's go back I'm sorry And we'll come back to you Yeah Okay, good question So a lot of you have things Set up on your site When you post a blog entry Automatically post to Facebook And Twitter and all those And how do you avoid duplicate Content penalties from that A few thoughts I have And then we'll see what they have One, I don't recommend Doing that too often We'll do it occasionally For clients But it's going to take If you've written it Spend an hour writing a blog post Spend 10 seconds to post On Facebook and Twitter Make sure it looks good And looks, you know Formats correctly And Facebook takes that Into account in their algorithm For how many people Will show it to For duplicate content It doesn't really apply too often Because most of those Are just showing snippet Whereas you have the full thing You know, Twitter's Only going to have a link to you A link that may or may not help But it's not duplicate content And then finally What I've discovered And again, there's differing opinions Is there is no duplicate content Penalty, per se They don't penalize you For duplicate content They just figure out Who the original source is That one ranks well And any duplicates don't So if you've written it first Just make sure the one In your site is the one Google seizes the authority And anything else Is comes off of that That's also the reason I don't worry too much About people that steal our content Because I know as soon As you post a blog into it There are probably 5 or 10 sites If you do some searching That grab your RSS feed And repurpose it And I don't worry about that Too much But people know that We're the authority They'll ding the rest Of those instead And if they ding us for one It's not a penalty It's just saying This is the good copy Of that So further thoughts On social sharing Anything? All right, cool All right, yeah Cool, so good So she said They're number one For Atlantic graphic design Which is pretty awesome They want to be number one For just graphic design And do their backlinks Need to say just Graphic design To help further that cause Possibly, but you Might actually rank For graphic design Inside the city of Atlanta If you're located in Atlanta Like right now I rank for Website designer Web designer in Atlanta But I don't rank I'm sure I don't rank For that to anywhere else Want to talk about Anchor text? Anchor text, yeah So you're meeting From other websites To link over to you With a term Graphic designer That did When people did that At scale They tried to influence The anchor text The copy that was Actually in the backlink Back to them They did get in trouble For that So you have to be careful You could have Maybe one or two Links try to Say back Because Google can Directly tell that You are somehow Influencing that backlink And they don't like that So again if someone Were to kind of link To you naturally ish With that That would be good But you want to Make sure that you Don't do that At scale Which is what I say So one or two instances But certainly link To your own Internally link To your own pages With descriptive text And I can certainly Be very careful To be a very minimal amount Cool We have just Yeah we're about out of time We'll do like one more Yeah Oh well It's not good Alright so other than Google analytics And search console Top three tools To use Mine we use Raven tools It's a paid product The reason I like it Moz I think is great I think they'll Probably mention Moz Moz is $99 a month For five sites Which is not bad Raven is $99 a month For unlimited Doesn't require Any access to someone's site So if we have a client Reach out and say Hey We want to talk to you guys Next we've got Maybe building a site You know redoing our site I can take theirs And put it in Raven today And it can run some Analytics and stuff for us Without us having access To their site And then positionally Is another one we're playing With Click host is big On that one So Carl's encouraged Me to try that And it's more similar To Moz Excuse me A whole lot cheaper Not quite as good And then We have a new tool Yesterday I think Which is just for tracking Ranking So it's not a whole Lot of SEO stuff But it's one more way To keep track of that stuff And do some pretty reports And that kind of thing But what are the thoughts Here Yeah So well first of all I don't think that Analytics and Google Search Console the importance Can be understated enough I still work with big Companies and they Don't even have those Oh my goodness Okay good Well they've got Those as their basics I would say Google's keyword planner So it's a part of the Adwords tool Certainly Moz Is really good And then Screaming Frog Is my best friend It's a very technical tool For technical people out there It crawls all of your pages It gives you the title tag The meta description The H1 The word count The canonicals If there's a 404 What type of content it is It's magical It's very technical For small business owners But if you know What to do with it Screaming Frog is amazing Price Price is free You can't beat that Yeah Can you go to my blog post Where I just documented All my steps on how I got To the top Probably Let's see Now there There you go Right there Alright so After this presentation If you want You can follow this right here I give like All the steps that I use To get to the top Keep scrolling down Okay Those are my results Top 5 Top 10 Anyways Very informative post there So I think So you can You can go to that blog post And see what's up Just go Type in Atlanta Web Design Look for Mr. Technique in there A recap of my SEO journey On his site There you go So if you go to his site MrTechnique.com Use the search box In the upper right Yeah You can find it that way You can even type in Web Designer right here Cool So yeah Think we're out of time We're ready for our panel Let's see if we're open to that