Welcome to this week's MIND your business podcast, brought to you by the MINDs at MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting right here in good ol' Pennsylvania. Thanks to all of you for listening to us on iTunes, Spreaker and Stitcher...and thank you for the love on Pinterest! We DO love you back...we want you to get the most out of your website, so we're arming you with knowledge to empower you to make the best website decisions and ask the best questions of those who are working with you. You can ask US questions, too... web development, web design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and what it all means to your business, please hit us up on Facebook with your questions, email us at info@minddnd.com or just hit that big beautiful and quite personable "Ask A Question" button to your right on our website. Today I'm going to discuss with you an SEO and social TRIFECTAHHHHH......mwahhahaha. Sounds foreboding, doesn't it? You thought TWO was bad...wait till you see THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..... Yep, Three important pieces of your Internet marketing puzzle in the news this week: 1) We're going to discuss how PPC is NOT SEO and vice versa...and why there's no such thing as a Google Certified SEO partner. That just chaps me that some people would blur those lines...and they DO! 2) Remember a few weeks back we talked about TripAdvisor getting sued by the Italian Competition Authority for over 600 thousand bucks...and I said watch out! This is just the beginnings of the Review sites controversy? The saga continues with Yelp sueing a "positive review provider" ---cough---spam---cough----- Yep, you got it...they sued one of those companies that promises to provide you with positive reviews for a price. Can you believe people actually DO that...and then turn around and criticize the New England Patriots? 3) And then finally we have a question this week from Bob in Elizabethtown...his question is: "Will Duplicate meta titles and meta tags get me into penalty with Google? I love this one...especially because Jon Mueller of Google addressed this issue very recently and we'll answer that in the second part of our show. So first, the issue of the blurring of the lines between SEO and PPC. Seriously...nothing chaps me more than this, because so many of you listening right now think SEO is a bunch of hogwash, snake oil or you just don't think that it's all that it's cracked up to be. The main reason for this is that there are so many people and businesses who claim to be SEO "experts" who are passing on misleading information (I'll getcha to the top of Google), blurring the lines between SEO and PayPerClick and in some cases using outright Black Hat tactics like buying links. Here recently I saw a blog post by a regional web company that includes SEO in their mix of services. The post was basically a sales piece and stated that they do SEO the right way and -quote- "As a Google Certified Partner, we can't afford not to." Oh, Pandora...your box is open yet again! What concerns me most is that the entire piece was about SEO...and the Google Certified Partner program has NOTHING to do with SEO. It has EVERYTHING to do with PayPerClick...more specifically, AdWords. Ladies and gentlemen, these are the kinds of claims that are succeeding in confusing you all. SEO is ORGANIC search....AdWords - slash - PayPerClick is PAID search! It's as simple as that. They do not impact each other. The only way they're similar at all is the fact that there will be some overlap with your organic key words and your paid key words Read my lips: Google does NOT partner with SEOs! That would constitute a major conflict of interest that would NOT go unnoticed. If someone is trying to sell you SEO services and they tell you they're a Google Certified Partner, I want you to ask them this question: "What does PayPerClick have to do with SEO?" And then I want you to remember these facts, because these are the 4 criteria for becoming a Google Certified Partner and this is RIGHT OFF the Google Partners page itself (https://support.google.com/partners/answer/3126965?hl=en): 1 - Company Profile - Create and complete a Partners company profile so we have the information necessary to list your agency on Google Partner Search. 2 - Certification - Get certified in AdWords to show that you and your colleagues have advanced AdWords knowledge. 3 - Spend - Meet the Spend requirement across your managed accounts to show that your agency has a healthy amount of activity. 4 - Best practices - Implement the recommended best practices in your client accounts to demonstrate that you're maximizing their AdWords performance. If you're listening on iTunes, Spreaker or Stitcher and you don't trust your short term memory, just visit this episode on our podcast page and you'll see the link to this information for your reference. What word was missing from those 4 criteria? OK, it's not a word it's an acronym...but you know what I'm getting at...SEO. Knowledge is power, friends, and the more you know the better decisions you can make with your Search Engine Optimization. Being a Google Certified Partner means basically that you took Google's test to become AdWords Certified, you implement their recommended practices to "maximize your clients' AdWords performance" - love the corporate cliche' - but MAINLY...you're spending enough on AdWords to make Google happy. Again, this has NOTHING to do with SEO...EVERYTHING to do with PayPerClick. This is a blurring of the lines that has lead many of you to utter confusion with regard to SEO. Just remember...Google DOES NOT PARTNER with SEOs...if an SEO uses "Google Certified Partner" in any context with you other than AdWords - slash - PayPerClick, ask them "What does PayPerClick have to do with SEO?" and then reference the criteria I just gave you. Now, SECOND on the agenda this week....Once upon a time there was an online review site called TripAdvisor that got sued by the Italian Competition Authority for over 600 thousand dollars for - quote - Failing to prevent fraudulent reviews on their website? That was just a couple of months ago and when I reported it, I told you to watch out...that this could be the beginning of the snowball rolling downhill with regard to the accountability of online review sites in general. Well, do you think it's any coincidence that Yelp has just sued a review company? Yep...a company that is brazen enough to say "Get ALL POSITIVE REVIEWS for your business AND REMOVE FAKE REVIEWS! Oh, my word....so the moral of the story is that all negative reviews are fake and all positive reviews are real. Oh yeah...we're gonna discuss this... ==================================================== Welcome BACK to the MIND Your Business podcast, where this week we have so far empowered your MIND as to the fact that there is no such thing as a Google Certified SEO Partner and we're talking review sites again now, with the follow up to the aforementioned TripAdvisor lawsuit. Now, when TripAdvisor was sued by the ICA back in December, I told you right here on this podcast that this could mark a real dynamic shift in the realm of online reviews. We have talked on this podcast about how review sites are a forum that is constantly spammed with both negative and positive reviews, and the ICA lawsuit was specifically sueing TripAdvisor for "failing to prevent fraudulent reviews." This is something that simply needed to happen because if you're a review site, YOU should be accountable for the reviews you get. Period. It's up to you to set guidelines for reviews and to REVIEW the reviews for quality's sake. Like keywords and linking before it, online reviews have been spammed and manipulated to the point where they're not as reliable or valid as they used to be. Don't get me wrong...we ALL still use them and there ARE plenty of legitimate reviews to be found...but the spamming and manipulation has reached a point where something's gotta give. And that something is the review sites. The first precedent has been set holding review sites accountable for the quality of the reviews they publish. And now Yelp has taken action against REVLeap. REVLeap is a Los Angeles based company that promises POSITIVE REVIEWS to its clients who pay for their service. REVLeap actually says in print right on their website..."Create a large constant flow of positive reviews that stay on top of your profile and remove fake reviews." I'm sorry, you just can't get any more brazenly stupid that that...oh, wait, you CAN! They make this claim while using the Google+, TripAdvisor, Yelp and Facebook logos on their site....right above that statement. And this is why Yelp has sued REVLeap, claiming "trademark violation, unfair competition, and breach of contract, amongst other claims." People, when I see this stuff, I almost don't know what to say. ALMOST. lol Seriously, though, these kinds of businesses ONLY exist because there are enough of you out there in business who will pay these jokers because they tell you what you WANT to hear. You WANT to be told that you can pay someone and get good reviews...it's a lot easier and faster than getting those good reviews the old fashioned way. Anyway, it's happening. Review sites are going be scrutinizing review submissions even more heavily now that they know it could cost them BIG TIME. If you want control of your online reviews, the most legitimate way to handle it is to FIRST - serve your customers to the best of your ability, SECOND - when someone expresses satisfaction to you don't be shy about directing them to your YELP or Google+ business listing where they can leave a positive review......don't be overbearing, just ask and direct them to your business profile. And THIRD - the one we all dread...address all your negative feedback. When you do this, be as courteous and helpful as you can, and remember...this is an opportunity for people to see in print how you go about handling customer complaints and concerns. There's a lot that you DON'T have control of with regard to your online reviews, but one things for sure....paying for good reviews is NOT the solution to the problem. And finally, I got a question from one of our listeners...Bob in Elizabethtown, PA asks this: Will Duplicate meta titles and meta tags get me into penalty with Google? It's a great question and one that Matt Cutts' apparent replacement at Google, Jon Mueller, addressed recently in a video. In a nutshell, we're looking at duplicates of meta titles, meta descriptions and meta tags. First, let's get meta tags - meta KEYWORD tags out of the equation here. Google hasn't indexed meta keyword tags for around 4 years now and other search engines only index them to help determine if your site is spam or not. They don't help your optimization in any way and could actually hurt you. Meta titles and meta descriptions are another matter entirely. You want to have both of these and you want to have them formatted correctly with as little keyword repetition as possible. The truth is, though, that you will NOT go into penalty with Google if you have duplicate meta titles and meta descriptions. Now...before you breathe a huge sigh of relief, I'm gonna go Paul Harvey on you and say "Now...the REST of the story." You will NOT go into Google penalty for having duplicate titles and descriptions because A) Google's algorithm will most of the time only pick ONE of those pages to appear in any given search anyway and B) Google doesn't HAVE to penalize you because you're basically penalizing yourself! Pages on your website that have duplicate titles and descriptions are competing WITH EACH OTHER for ranking in the SAME KEYWORD SEARCHES, so you're watering down your own results by having duplicate titles and descriptions. Will it get you into penalty...No. Will it keep you from getting better rankings...Yes. It's totally worth the time to get rid of those dupe titles and descriptions because, while they're not the keys to the kingdom, they're the first clue to search engine bots as to what any particular page on your website is about. If it appears to the search engine bot that several pages on your website are about the exact same thing, the bot will pick the most representative page to show up in the SERPs. Thank you Bob for a great question this week! And Thank YOU for tuning into this week's MIND Your Business podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design...and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting...a good homegrown PA company! Thank you for listening on iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher and for following us on Pinterest! Send us your questions on Facebook, on our Ask A Question page on the website or email us...info@minddnd.com. Or heck if you bump into one of us at a Chamber event or grocery store...just ask. We'll see you next week!