Enter Doorman and a few mobile notes (for blog post, highlight the Police band analogy) 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, and Stitcher...and thank you for the Pinterest love! And thank you Whiff Roasters Coffee in Lititz, PA for your coffee and chicory blend...once again fueling my very existence:) We are here to schoolhouse ROCK you to help you get the most out of your website by 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. Bring your questions to US, too... web development, web design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and what it all means to your business, contact us 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. As we stated the obvious last week, we're getting close to the end of the first quarter of 2015 and surprise-surprise... Google has some new stuff in store for us in the second quarter starting on or shortly after April 21st. That's when their much ballyhooed mobile algorithm is going to go into full effect. It's all about user experience, my friends, and mobile accounts for at least half of all organic searches. A little more on that later in the podcast. See, that's called a "teaser"...it's a cheap ploy to keep you listening for that extra nugget of information you want. Kinda like when you go to a concert and your favorite song is saved for the encore...but I digress. Big news this week on the Google front...and when I say Google, I'm really referring to ALL of the search engines. Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck Go...whatever...they all have their own unique characteristics, but on the bigger SEO issues they're mostly following Google's lead. Because it just makes good sense to filter out the spammers and their tactics that make ranking more of a chore for the rest of us. The big news is the "Doorway" algorithm update. Google has updated their Doorway page algorithm and has even modified their guidelines for Doorway Pages. My friends, if you're not trying to game the system with your SEO methods, then this really is a non-issue. Many of you COULD BE gaming the system without even realizing it! This is why I encourage you to insist upon transparency with your SEO provider. "Don't worry, we'll take care of it." really doesn't cut it anymore because you're PAYING someone to help you...therefore, you have a right to know what the hell they're doing to "help" you. I'll give you the definitions and information straight from Google on what "doorways" actually are: Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination. Here are some examples of doorways: - Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page - Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s) - Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy What it comes down to is this: If you're a squatter...someone who bought up a whole bunch of URL's based on keywords with the idea of capitalizing on those keyword-rich URLs and boosting your ranking, I've got news for you: You've got your work cut out for you. See, 5 years ago that would have worked. I've never really agreed with it, because most people I've seen that have used it have MIS-used it to game the system. They have all these keyword rich URLs and they want to create basically bullshit pages for the URLs so they can get them to rank or they just want those keyword-rich URLs to point to a particular page on their website. The bad news for you, is that those days are over. As they should be. The Good news is there's no worse news in this regard, but you're going to have to make some changes if you're employing this method. Listen, as I've said WAY too many times before...it ain't rocket science. Google's not telling you that you CAN'T have doorway pages at all. Many of you are probably hearing that message when that's not it at all...your doorway page must have MERIT on its own. Friends...it's NOT rocket science...it's not even science...it's not a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma... If you're going to create these kinds of pages they MUST be a viable destination in and of themselves. Plain and simple...If you're a landscaping company, for instance, and you're based in Dayton, Tennessee but you want to rank for Bledsoe County as well as Rhea County (rhea county is where Dayton is located), then you deside to create a doorway page for Bledsoe County...the question for the search engine bots is simply this: "Does this page offer any information specific to that county for this particular business?" Yes, you can offer some historical info on the county, but what about as it applies to your business. Can people get the information they need from this one page or is there half-hearted information on that page because you REALLY want to funnel them to your main website? That's the question you have to answer....I'll let you mull over that for a minute or two and then we'll address it when we come back:) =========================================== OK... we're back on the MIND Your Business Podcast and we're talking about these doorway pages. To do a quick recap here, Google is basically rolling out an algorithm update that is rendering most of your methods of utilizing myriad keyword-rich URLs useless and even detrimental. If you have keyword rich URLs...for instance, if you're an attorney who specializes in personal injury and you want to rank for something like "truck accidents," well you may have a URL that you've bought that is something like truckaccidentattorneynewjersey.com or even more austentacious....truckaccidentsnewjersey.com. (No particular reason I chose New Jersey...it's just the first state that came to mind and I don't know why) If your plan is to have that URL basically direct people to the general page on your website that deals with truck accidents...you're wasting your time. You're not going to get a rankings boost, that URL is not going to be a ranking factor, Google awards you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. See...this is a true example of gaming the system. Gaming the search engines...and you've just gotta stop. The bad news is that those days are over. Seriously. The good news is that there IS a legitimate way you can achieve these rankings. I almost hesitate to talk about it because I fear that it's only a matter of time before all the bad kids ruin this idea for the rest of us in the class. But here goes.... If you are legitimately trying to target an area outside of your home base, a subdomain could be the solution for you. I CAUTION YOU, though...DO NOT play games with this. You could find yourself in deep doo-doo with Google if you do. I'll use the attorney example again. If you're a personal injury attorney and you want to rank for truck accidents for whatever reason, you could have a subdomain on your website DEDICATED to truck accidents. For instance... truckaccidents.abclaw.com. Now the difference between this and a URL on your website called abclaw.com/truckaccidents is that the former is a SUBDOMAIN and the latter is a SUBDIRECTORY. A subdirectory is indexed as part of your main website, while a SUBDOMAIN is RECOGNIZED as part of your main website but the subdomain is indexed as its own webpage in the SERPs. The importance of this is that you truly CAN attain ranking for that page itself in the SERPs, but you MUST make sure that the page is a destination in and of itself and does NOT merely serve the purpose of funneling visitors to another page on your site. Basically, they should be able to get all the information they need on that particular topic or topic area and be able to contact you from there. Same goes for subdomains targeting specific areas. The best way to legitimize a subdomain targeting a specific geographic area or city is to have another bricks and mortar in that area or city. This lends inherent, natural legitimacy to your purpose. If you have a bricks and mortar in that other city, then Google can see that and it's a natural reason for you to have a subdomain targeting that city. If you DON'T have a bricks and mortar in that city, then the question for you is this: WHY are you targeting that city, county or other geographical area? Do you legitimately service that area? Seems like a dumb question, but you'd be surprised. What is your reason, BESIDES ranking, that you are targeting that area? WHAT information are you giving on that page that is SPECIFIC to that area...besides generic historical info? Do you have testimonials/reviews from people in that area? Is there something about that area that is different for your business? What CAN you tell people who go to that page that they WON'T find elsewhere on your site? It's more work, friends, but that's where you get your best rewards with regard to SEO. Your doorway pages MUST serve a purpose other than mere RANKING or Google will deem them worthless and your time will be wasted. And that's really the way it should be when look at it objectively and you think about it logically. And now, finally, I'm going to make good on that teaser at the beginning of the show. lol The big news out of the SMX conference in Munich yesterday is that the Google mobile algorithm will have a bigger effect than that of Panda or Penguin. Think about that for a moment and ask yourself: Is my website TRULY mobile friendly? You can check this easily in Webmaster Tools and Google also has a simple tool to do a quick check on your website's mobile compatability. In fact, if you visit our podcast page at minddevelopmentanddesign.com/podcast...just look up this week's show and you'll see a link to that Google tool. I urge you to check your website and make sure it is mobile friendly before April 21st. There are many of you listening right now who could stand to lose major ranking simply because you've not paid proper attention to your website's mobile compatability. To put this mobile algorithm update in proper perspective, consider this. Google's Panda update at its peak affected more than 10% of search engine results. Google's Penguin update at its peak affected 4% - 5% of search engine results...however, the effects were brutal and many businesses went out of business because they couldn't recover from the penalty. 10% and 4%....now we get to Google's mobile update. As mobile search accounts for at least 50% of all organic searches nowadays....well you do the math. That's a lot more than 10% and 4%. lol Just make sure your site is truly mobile friendly and this update will be nothing more than another Y2K for you. lol One last note...while you're doing these updates to make your website more mobile friendly, go ahead and implement auto-complete on your website's mobile forms. Google is saying you should implement autocomplete markup to improve your mobile user conversions. They're not saying it will be a ranking factor in and of itself - maybe it will, maybe it won't - but think about it. It's all about user experience and autocomplete makes things just a little bit more easy for YOUR users:) Thank YOU for listening to this week's MIND Your Business podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design...and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting...a homegrown PA hosting, baby! Thank you Whiff Roasters for the coffee and chicory blend...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. We'll see you next week!