Good Day Google+ (Episode 2)

I'm going to be live, I don't know what I'm going to say, so come and watch.

Hey there everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and we're here with Good Day Google+ and rule for today is we're not going to behave via Peg Fitzpatrick. This is my second show in the series and it looks like it's going to be a really fun show. If you have questions you can leave them in the comment bar beneath and I will get to them, hopefully. I'm going to introduce my panel for today, my guests for today, and just going from my side I'm going to say is Joshua Berg and he is here to talk about SEO and all things related. We got Nicole Murphy. Hey Josh, okay. We got Nicole Murphy next and she's a marketing specialist and she's here with Talking Moose Media.

Hey everyone, yes, Talking Moose Media.

And of course everybody knows Peg Fitzpatrick and she is here today to have a good time because there are no rules today. Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna take that old Outback philosophy, no right, no wrong, or whatever it is, and just have a good time. So I'm gonna turn it over first to Josh, and we're just gonna delve a little bit on SEO since I know there's some people here about that. And if you guys have questions in between, Nicole or Peg, please just jump right in and ask her, offer some, some insights. Alright, Josh, take it away.

Okay, so Usually here on Google+, I'm talking about social SEO because a lot of people that come to Google+ are interested in that as a topic, and you don't really get to hear much about that in a lot of the SEO circles. And social media optimization is something that I specialize in and talk about fairly frequently. I think a lot of you have seen that, and you probably all just noticed the other day we got a new Google update, the Google Hummingbird, for whatever that's supposed to symbolize. I think they're just using friendlier creatures to like, I don't know, sometimes the friendlier they get, the more it worries me. Because first we had the Panda penalty, and you know, they're kind of cuddly, but they do look a bit kind of big guys. And then we were down to Penguin, and they're cuter. And now we've got this little tiny hummingbirds. So, pretty concerned about that.

They probably do secretly mean something too. They probably all have some big huge metaphor. This is a really light update, they'll hardly notice it at all. It'll just float around.

Exactly.

Yes, no one—

And they often say that with the updates that, you know, are like cataclysmic. And then this one they said affects all searches. Yeah. 90% of us were all like, whoa. And they didn't even tell us until a month after. And then looking back in the records, we all had seen some big weather changes in the search rankings starting from a month ago. So that is very interesting and We will talk more about that. I mean, everyone will be hearing a lot more about the hummingbird in the near future. It basically has to do with the semantic web and the search getting more intelligent and understanding longer phrases instead of just keywords and things like that. And then another big change was the keywords. Are starting— are gone from Analytics. There are still other ways we can get a lot of those keywords. They have not yet disappeared in Webmaster Tools, and they are also, you know, people can still see them in different ways in statistics, and other people are putting together online tools. It's important though to save your— save your website statistics. Your— the raw data from your websites is going to be more valuable in the future for analyzing how people search. When you don't have that keyword data from Google, you can look back at your raw data statistics So that will be even more useful.

So Joshua, are you saying to save all our raw data now and then continuously, or just in general that's a good practice?

Yeah, yeah, you can save it, and depending on how your sites are set up, they may save that data anyway, but there are some websites that do not save raw data like that. And, you know, if you've got a blogger or something that's using the analytics mostly, then that's a bit of an issue. But we can still see a lot of that information in the Webmaster Tools, but I can imagine them rolling that back as well. I think it's a good thing for search overall because people were far too concerned with keywords, and they really kind of made the internet a disaster of keywords in any one industry, all of the websites used all of the same— all of the same titles. You'd have a title, description, header, your image tags, your H2 tags, and pretty much everything all started with the exact same keywords, times that by millions of sites, you'd have literally billions of sets of identical keywords. And I've been trying to advise people who've been doing blogging, and they don't even— many don't even realize how much, how many keywords they have. So I was talking with someone recently, I was like, you know, there's an awful lot of keywords on this page. You know, it says Seattle real estate, you know, in the title, and then it says it a few more times throughout, and it's all matching. And they're like, oh, but it's only a few times. And then I look in the source code, and you can see all the tags and everything. And then I do a search replace count. And I say, you know, that your key exact match keyword appears 60 times on that page. Wow.

So Joshua, what do you recommend then?

How many keywords do you recommend? Almost all of those. The fact is those keywords Google already understands For example, I work with real estate websites and realtors a lot. Google already knows they're hooked up to a local page with a verified address, for crying out loud, and yet they've got to have on every single page 60 repetitions of the same set of keywords for every neighborhood and stuff. I had tons of sites built like that for years, so I'm no one to be pointing the finger, but that is over as of like 2 years ago, and many, many sites are still heavily penalized for that. So I've been trying to get that message out, but a lot of people are still not getting it. Better to have to not even have them there at all than to have them even in, you know, a third of that kind of quantity.

So what you're saying is almost more conversational. So if you were talking to somebody about what you're writing your blog post about or how you're going to describe your business, you wouldn't walk up to somebody and say, I bake cupcakes, we sell cakes at X address. I love decorating cakes because it's more of a conversational— you have to think more of the storytelling. And I, I recently was talking to one of my clients and I said, think about how your, your social media presence and your web presence almost as your financial profile. If you're well diversified, then when something happens and there's a shakeup, you're gonna be okay. And so, and they finally, they were like, oh, so they kind of backed off the keywords where it's like we don't have to say this word 14 times anymore. So that was kind of my aha moment the other day, was, you know, I just kind of feel like I just see a meme in my head, somebody's got to make it for me, where it's just like, you know, like, just act natural, you know what I mean? Like, just do it, just talk, talk like you're a human being. That's what I think that's what Google is begging us to do, is just have conversations and stop. I think a lot of people were so conditioned to looking up at the keywords and then you can't get past that. It's almost like writer's block. You ask—

SEO tools that are still in use and you want to use the latest WordPress SEO tools, real killer. Are often put together— I mean, they're often put together by people who are not up enough on the latest search technologies, and they're still using things like keyword density. So that's—

Yeah, I've been trying not to say the word keyword.

They'll tell you, put it in title, put it in description, put it in headers. And if you repeat keywords, use different different words that are not the same. Mix it up.

So how many keywords is too many then? How many times would you repeat it? Because I mean, when you're talking about the WordPress SEO programs, I mean, food bloggers, we all use it. And, you know, a lot of us just rely on it because we don't know any better. This is what they're telling us to do.

Yes, I've seen some of the food food blogger sites, and someone— a few people asked me to take a quick look at their site, and they said, you know, I use the WordPress SEO plugin. And I looked, and basically they'd have like custard cupcakes. It would appear in the title, description, header far too many times. It'd be like 10 times too many times, and those are a real problem issue. The important thing is to have it at least in the title or, or somewhere in the title. Look at how many of the sites are doing it, or, and have for a long time, and then you want to do it different. Mm-hmm. And you'll see those are the sites that are actually going— rising in results. And sites that are using some unique words in there that are not the same as all of the other matching sites are using. And then especially some branding, brand words, proper names, things like that to mix and match with I mean, or at least to have on your site in the main areas.

Right.

Yes, I've seen some of the food bloggers that had it way overboard. We're so conditioned, we're still not getting it because I've been saying it a lot and I explain that to people. And we, you know, we could have a few consulting sessions because I do private SEO or SMO consulting, and still I have to look and I say, I told you to get rid of these. It's like, you know, well, this is my last pack, and you can't get unconditioned from that. So get rid of the, those, the SEO tools. I suggest, I recommend anything—

you recommend getting rid of the WordPress SEO plugin?

I recommend not using the SEO tools unless you, well, if it relates to keywords—

I'm like SEO lazy.

Wait, Peg Fitzpatrick, is this breaking news? You are SEO lazy?

It's true. I actually just write what I want about what I want, but I do have the plugins on my blog. It's not like I do nothing, but I don't spend a lot. I'm more interested in what the people who read my blog want to learn about, and I never pay attention to how long it is or how short it is. I'm like, this is my I have an idea, it's this long today and next week is that long. So I actually do all the things that really you're probably not really supposed to do. But I have to say, Google loves my blog.

No, you are right on. People, the SEO community has been preaching exactly what you're doing, Peg, for a year if not more. Just write conversationally, write when you feel like you have something to say. Don't try— obviously, yes, you want to create consistency so that your followers know when to look for you. But just be yourself. That is the whole thing. You're doing exactly what they want, and I think that's why you're so successful, is because you're being yourself, and that's what they want online.

I'm just me. This is who I am. This is who I am on my blog. This is who I am on Twitter. This is who I am on Google+. The hugest compliment— I got a huge compliment from my mother-in-law, which is of all people, who's known me for obviously years and years, and she said, "You're exactly who you are when I talk to you." She looks at some of my stuff online. She's so cute. She's always proud of me. She's like, "You're exactly like you are in real life everywhere else." She's like, "Other people are so boring." I'm like, "They just need to not be worried and just be themselves and not be like, 'I better do this,' or 'I better do that.'" I had the funniest comment once..

And it was, I don't understand your business Twitter account. It's like you're talking to me. Yeah, I'm talking to you.

You.

It's like you're listening.

I know. What would you like me to do on Twitter?

Not talk to you? Right. Broadcast.

So it was funny.

Joshua, I have a question for you that will help Nicole and I both because we're both bloggers, right Nicole?

Yeah, I pretend to blog.

I blog.

I totally say I'm a blogger. If you write— I have a WordPress blog. I write all my stuff on WordPress. I do maybe 3 keywords if I remember to put them in there. When I put it on Google+, does it hurt you at all if you use exactly the same title and some text from it, or does Google like that because you're combining the two together?

That's a very good question because it came up in a test and then in a debate on the topic that we had recently.

So what do you people say?

Spill it, Josh, spill it!

What happens is a lot of people felt that the hyperlinked text was the most important keyword relevant when you embed that link. Then it stands to reason that the hyperlink is most important. Well, that is changing, and now what happens is on every one of those shares onto Google+, it strips away the hyperlink title in favor of the post title.

Mm, what if they're the same?

So you want the post title to be— to have those keywords and, and to be the relevant portion even more so than the hyperlink. And then, you know, don't overdo it. But in this test, they were trying to isolate some certain patterns in the Google+ SEO, and I was one of the consultants discussing that. And I noticed after the test had gone on for some weeks, then they asked me to look at it. And the first thing I noticed was all the results were appearing that said, you know, "Do not plus," "Do not share this post" in the title. And that's because by trying to isolate it, they had asked people not to engage or interact with those posts, and then assuming that the hyperlinked text was the most relevant in those posts. And what happened was All of those shares basically tanked like you would see with, with some kind of spam. They were all bumped way down. And then a couple, like 2 high authority figures who shared those and put good, good titles in the top route, keyword relevant titles in the post, regardless of the hyperlink text Those did good. They rose to the top, they showed strong authority, and they were very effective.

So that's awesome. So I think I really— I think I lucked out, Joshua. I like just did— I do all the right things, like, and I haven't had to change anything. Like, I look at each Google+ post like it's a blog post. I do a title, then I do a little text, then I do some hashtags at the bottom and I put the link in there. I do like to put 2 links because I like to put a Pinterest link too. Does that hurt it if there's 2 links? I like to do a photo. I do not like to just put the link in. I like to do a photo. Is it better to do a link? I don't like to do that.

No, I heard that it's okay and that it takes the first link but not the second, but I'll let the master answer. Hopefully I will know.

Officially, the links, the embedded links, like when you use a photo, officially those links are nofollow.

Mm-hmm.

But—

okay.

There's another understanding—

but that's fine because it's a photo, right?

Yeah, and because it's not embedded, it's not the hyperlinked text. But although they're not saying it, I believe that that's still important, that link in the posts. And Google does consider patterns of follow and nofollow in a link structure. So those are still important. And I'm going to say that having a single link in a post, in that respect, there's indications that that could be better and more effective. In other words, if you put a couple of links into a post, what has been seen is that the +1s or certain factors like that will not flow through to all of the links unless it's a single link on the page.

So let me ask this really dumb question because I don't understand this. Maybe someone else doesn't know what I don't know. I like to always think that my question is something at least one other person has. If I put two links, the top link is a follow link, the second link is a do not follow link, but it's to Pinterest. I don't care if it's a do not follow link. People still go to Pinterest, which is my goal.

They will all be do not follow link. If you're putting in an image, all of the links in a post are do not follow unless they're embedded, and you can't do that with an image. OK.

So that means that the social stuff doesn't follow it. That's what the do not follow means?

It's supposed to mean that it doesn't flow PageRank authority to that link. But unofficially, I believe that having a single link is still a useful factor. But, but again, I think what you're, you're saying and what a lot of people have been saying about using the image versus using the hyperlinked text is that it will be seen by far more people. So the end result is that a lot more people will see that content and follow or comment on it from their blogs. Therefore, that can be very effective. Uh, one tip is you could share as a hyperlink in the morning and then with an image for the afternoon crowd. I've broken it up a little bit like that, but the image tends to get seen and shared around by a lot more people, and that can be even more valuable.

And no complaints of having a duplicate post on Google+?

No, doesn't—

good to know—

doesn't seem to be any problem.

Would it be considered a duplicate post if you're posting a link one time and then a picture the next with that link?

Probably. Well, that's kind of semantics. That's like what people Yeah.

With it being a dupe anyway.

I think you have tremendous success with the way you're doing it, right, Peg?

I do. I did try to do the link, but I've toyed with the idea of doing just what Joshua said, doing my big post with a photo. I just have a little recipe that I do in every single post and they do really well. If I don't do one of those steps, If I don't put like pin it for later, my people are like, "Where's my pin it for later?" Immediately people ping me at it and I'm like, "I'm sorry, wait, let me edit it and put it on there." Sure, it takes a little longer to post them but I feel like on Google+ it's so worth taking the time to make a gorgeous post. I think every time it pays off as a blogger, even just as things that I post. If I was posting one of Nicole's posts, I take exactly the same amount of time. I format them, I put something hopefully interesting or funny, and I share it. I think that I always have done the title like a separate title. Obviously I worked on What the Plus with Guy Kawasaki. That was when Google was a little baby, when Google was new. I did the research for the book, so I actually read all the Google+ Help. How's that for a geeky dork fact? I read all the Google+ posts back in the day.

You should get a badge for that.

I should get a badge for that. I got like a mention in the book. How's that? I learned a lot. That's the most important thing.

Peg, you're making this all seem too easy. You're going to put us out of a job.

What? None of it's because I'm a dork.

It's just like be natural.

I bust my butt. Are you kidding? I work like a bazillion hours. 1 million hours a day. Robin, I will share my recipe. I'll write it for you. Robin, who just put a question up.

Thanks. You had a gorgeous infographic about how to create—

That was the one where someone stole my content and made the infographic.

You had great content about this.

I did have great content about it and I wrote about it on my little blog.. And they took it, and then Google told them, fine, you can take it, but you get nothing for it. Because that's the one where Google did the smackdown on and took away all their SEO for it. Nice!

You messed with the wrong person.

And Google loves me. That's why I say Google loves me, because if you're being like a good person, Google totally backs you up. And I like that about— I love you, Google.

Because you're acting natural.. And you're not overthinking.

Of course I overthink. I mean, I spent like, I spent a while creating that little formula. I had no friends on Google+ when I started. No one would come over and there was no bloggers. Everybody on Google+ was like having a great time chatting and doing their stuff and I was like, oh, I have a blog, how can I share that on here? I was like, I don't have any friends, I need to make some friends. I was like, uh, so I just had to figure out ways to to do what I wanted to do. Now there's tons of bloggers on Google+, but it wasn't that way in the beginning. My blog got zero traction because I didn't know how to do it. You can't show up on Google+ and make connections with people right away, but it's totally worth it for the long run because I love it. For bloggers, it's the best.

I've had to drag my friends over here. Almost forcefully and get them to come over to blog and then they still go, "Well, why do I have to use it? Why do I have to use it?" I'm like, "You don't have to use it." Yes, you do. Well, I know you do but I'm telling them they don't have to if they don't want to. They just won't show up in search anymore, that's fine. That's what you want but they just don't seem to understand that it is a social place too and they just want to drop links, some of them, and run back to Facebook. It's just crazy.

Right. I go one person at a time and I just like and I'm like, come on, try Google+, it's really awesome. And all my friends that I've done this with now have like Rebecca Reyes, she has like almost 10,000 followers now. My other friend Paul Biedermann is up to like, I think he's up to like 5,000, maybe more, I haven't checked lately. But all the people that I've encouraged, they do just as well.

Yeah, if they follow the basic formula for interacting and engaging, they do. And they're having a good time too, that's the most important thing. So many of them tell me, I have made so so many more friends here and different friends. I keep telling them, stop just concentrating on food. There's so much else on Google+. There's more to life than food. No, food is very important but they've got tons of food friends already. You need to go out and play nice with other people.

Yeah, go meet some people in the blogging community or the photography community or groups that are related to what you do. Meet people who are related to your main thing and then work it all together.

So Joshua, I got one question too since you said about the link in the picture because that's how I've been telling everybody to post because you get more traction and that's how I post. So is that even just one link in a picture, is that link no good then? Is that a nofollow?

It is a nofollow. I'm not gonna say that it's no good. In fact, if you look, uh, if you look around the Google doublespeak and if you look at where they're going, why are they taking away keywords in the first place? What is Semantic Web all about? Why is it more— why is the user experience more important? Then it makes sense that these nofollow links are— I'm going to say that they are important, that they do matter. And the, the context— this is something else that we're seeing a lot more— that the wording around a link can be as or more important than that link itself. And while I mention that topic regarding your blog, let's say if you have a—

we're all like, where's my paper?

Those pages and mentions and personal mentions, all the tagging in Google+ is follow regardless of where it is. So if you have, you know, food blogger as a page and that, and you have a mention like, you know, this is my— you're sharing a post with a picture and this is my recipe and here's the lovely chocolate cake, don't eat too much of this. And then you've got—

Dennis Littley says that, he's like, eat it all and make another one.

You add, you tag your page, I've got more of these recipes on this tag or something.

I do that too.

Officially, that is a follow link. Those will show up later as backlinks in Webmaster Tools to the page. Diversity, I mean, you, you mentioned it yourself, Peg, is important and more important than all of this. So that's what you get with the image and being more real. When you take away the whole SEO factor, that you're sounding like you're trying to do SEO, and, and you're just being real and you're doing— using beautiful images, and then you'll find more people will write and use your content off of the web when you spread out those nodes.

—yeah, ripples are an awesome thing—all over the internet.

The further out that they spread and the more diverse they are, a little bit of that is more effective. This is some top-level SEO guys have done, been experimenting and looking into all this, and, and they don't talk about it a lot But the diversity in link building can be even more effective than quantity. Not only diversity, but authority. And, and people who write blogs that are here on Google+ tend to know what they're doing and, and get— have lots of followers. So these blogs tend to be higher authority, and they have authorship. They're all far more effective than what you would typically find on some kind of a backlinking campaign through the internet using some backlinking tools or something like that. So that is, can be far more effective. And so I'd say that the images are great, but once in a while sharing some of your stuff as an embedded link is fine.

And I think I'm gonna do both, Joshua. I I think doing both is probably a good way to cover it all. I still am sticking with my picture with a good formatting. Here's the thing, like you were saying how it spreads, when I do a really good post and have a great picture, it just makes it easy for someone else to share it. I found when I follow the ripples that other people get really good conversations off of what I broached as well. You know, it spreads the conversation around. It's really cool. If you just do good stuff, it's not only good for you, it's good for other people too.

So help your people. I've always said the same thing. Good content is good content no matter whose it is, whether it's yours or somebody else. If you share it, it's going to help you and help that person that you're sharing. Josh, we have a question here from Jean Layton. Would it make more sense to post first onto Google+ then embed the Google post onto our webpage to keep the follow?

The, uh, it is great when you, uh, write something new that you post it to Google+ and, uh, so that other, more people can see it and spread it around. Those embedded posts, if you're talking about the new feature of the Google+ embedded posts, uh, you can use that embedded post back in the blog. However, that is an active script, and basically the meaning of that is, is you— we could look at it like a, a time tunnel to your— to that Google+ post. There's no active content appearing on that page, so you don't want to just have embedded post on that page. You need to have real content on the page. As far as Google+ is concerned, when they look at it, it's kind of like the Google Ads, AdWords. They appear on pages throughout the internet, but they're different on every— everybody's browser. Each time someone pulls up their browser, it renders that again and refreshes that. So those are active script, scripts, those embeds, they are not effective content on the page, and the link is also not existing on that page. But when people do share that embedded post, here's what I do see. And like, when I share, when I'm writing about SEO or something, I share someone's embedded post and then I talk about it. And I always mention them or talk about them, and those are real hyperlinks going back. So that has real value there.

So you're almost better off though using the WordPress plugin. So if you write a really awesome Google+ post, you can send it over to your blog and then all the content goes over instead of just like a frame of it or something, right?

Sending it over to Google+?

No, I have a plugin that I can send my Google+ posts onto my WordPress blog using a hashtag. Dennis is like, really?

I know, I'm going to pull up—

As an embedded post? It's not embedded, it's actually the content. It sends all the content and the image over. Really?

Some sites that are set up to do that too where they pull in—

It's just a plugin. Yeah, it's just a plugin where you can just— I'll put the link in the comment thread after. I don't use it all the time on my blog but I use it for Holy Cow all the time. I can send my Google+ post there. I just know that it's one that I want to do it. I put the hashtag. It shoots it over into a WordPress draft and then I go in and edit it. —publish.

Ooh, that's nice. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Because then it's actually the content, and usually I add a little more, you know, change it. I take the keyword, you know, like whatever stupid things I put on the bottom out, you know.

And that diversity is good too, and that's what y'all mentioned, and that's very, very true.

Joshua, I'm feeling like I did the right things. I feel like you're like, uh, I can't think of the word for it. I feel like I've— what is that word, Nicole? You know what I'm trying to say. You're like, not accepted. Not vindicated. There's a word for it. People in the comments, what is the word that I'm trying to think of? I feel not accepted. Dennis, do you know what I'm saying? Redeemed?

Not even redeemed. It's the legitimacy that you've been legitimate. But not that.

Yeah, like, ah! But anyway, these are important things for bloggers. And Google+, it is the perfect place for bloggers. So many people aren't getting it exactly right yet. And with a few tweaks and— it's really just about really being smart about being a blogger. It's not like looking for some big huge endgame, like how many keywords can I stuff in this. Nobody wants to read it then. It's not interesting. I don't know. We did that on 12Most early on. We never accepted posts from people who weren't writing for their own blog. The content marketers who were trying to shove things with keywords, we always said no. If one accidentally got by from a different editor, we would take them out. Now all those people are going back and trying to say, "Oh, sorry, can you take that off?" We never accepted those because we just felt like it's not good content for us. I have a question.

Going back to when I said I didn't blog, I actually like making videos more. I think of blogging as the written word. Validated is the word. Thank you, Jane Layton. I feel like I'm going more towards vlogging. I like just turning the camera on and talking. I feel like it's more of a creative outlet for me. How does that transition, Joshua? Right now I'm just throwing them up on YouTube. Embedding them into my website. And that's kind of the recipe that I want to follow. And sometimes I'll take a picture, like a screenshot of my video, and then sometimes I'll go ahead and when you share a video, it like asks you for the YouTube link, like there's no other kind of video you can put on Google+. So how does that play into everything that we're talking about?

On the YouTube, since you mentioned YouTube, your YouTube videos, and if you want to think about some of the SEO aspect of that, let me throw out a little tip here. Something I was learning about recently is you can use the captions, and if It's— if it's your own content, your own YouTube, then you can get a file and you can make a file of those captions that's like a playback of the entire show.

For example, at the end of the show— The transcript?

Yeah, you can get a transcript. Now it's full of numbers and all sorts of useless stuff if you download the whole thing, but you can use a word processor and, and, and do replace and pull out all of that real quickly. And then—

so that's not considered duplicate content then? Rough content?

Well, that's not written any— anywhere. Yeah, so that can be valuable.

So I can put that underneath my video and we're good?

But it's not really very legible, so you wanna go I have a transcriptionist. And then you can actually upload that to YouTube as a file, uh, right, which is a much better quality. And having keywords, uh, you can also edit it right on. You can edit the captions right in YouTube.

Yeah, that's actually, yeah, that's a service that I do for my—

Edit it and make sure you have a couple of keywords. It can see and understand that even better. So you've got some of that in there for those videos.

So what I've done with some of them is— because I get the transcript actually transcribed, so it's correct, and then I go ahead and upload it as captions. And that's part of our SEO process that we do. But I will also take that and stick it underneath the blog post. So like, I'll open up a blog post, embed the video, and then put it under there. And is that considered duplicate content if I'm putting it in two different places?

Uh, whether it's considered or not Either way, it's not going to be a problem that it's appearing in the transcript.

Okay, like I'll put a summary, but then to rewrite everything is—

It's a totally different environment and format. Okay, awesome. So I would bet good money that it is absolutely not something you need to worry about or be concerned with. That will be very good quality and useful content in the— on your blog as well. So I would, yes, use it. I mean, we've got, like, Martin Shervington, some projects I've done and other people have done with him in interviews and stuff. He's put together some very good video blogs and he'll use, like, break up the video into parts, and then he'll use transcripts and then also have some other written content about that. And the effect of that on these video blogs that he's put together has been phenomenal. Their reputation, their reception just by people in general and backlinking and sharing that content has been very great, and, and they've been very effective. So I absolutely would not worry or be concerned with the, that being a duplicate content factor because that's in your captions on YouTube.

I like to embed my Hangout. I'll probably embed this Hangout and then I'll just write an intro and put some key points from it so even if people don't want to watch the whole video, they can still get some of the— I don't know how we could possibly summarize this brain thing. People at home, I hope you enjoy that Nicole and I are asking our dumb questions for you. Yes. We're like, can I ask a dumb question? Don't be smart. Yes, I can ask this.

Well, it's a collaborative effort. I'm writing a presentation for a conference I'm speaking at coming up. One of the parts I'm going to be talking about is that you can't just pretend like I got all this knowledge by myself and I'm the only one that knows it and that's it. It's a collaborative effort and you have to give credit where credit is due and say, "Yeah, this person helped me out with this and then we figured this out and that's why we're all smarter today and let me tell you about it. I'm glad, Peg, that you feel the same way. I have this one question and it's really bugging me and I've got Joshua in front of me so darn it, I'm going to ask it. It's a collaborative effort.

Social SEO all the way.

I think the more you share your knowledge, the more you get back. —because there's not one person who knows everything. Everybody has a huge different base of knowledge, and I spend a ton of time—

Some of my teenagers, they know everything.

Oh, they know everything. Oh, well, teenagers who definitely aren't watching this right now.

I used to, about 20 years ago, I knew everything, but yeah, now I'm just learning.

The best thing you can get rid of in your life is the need to be right all the time. Yeah, yes, absolutely. I think probably we all had that when we were younger.

In our late 20s. Exactly, those 6 years really, you know, we really matured in that 6-year span.

But no, I think that people do, they are afraid of sharing their knowledge, Nicole, exactly true. Like, people are like, you know, there's a certain amount of things that I do If it's some proprietary thing that I figured out for clients that I'm working on, obviously I'm not going to share those things. But the everyday-to-day things, share it and learn. People are happy to— we were asking questions, people in the comments were answering for us. I couldn't think of a word. How lame is that? But still, I couldn't think of it. But Jean knew it, so I'm all set now.

We do have a couple other questions I'm going to address real quick. Karen, Karen Grenoud wants to know, I have a Blogger blog and every Wednesday I share 5 to 10 other blogs who also share the same theme. Check out these other blogs that are also talking about this. Are those links no good for SEO now? Would it be better if I called them out as name, +1 name, +2 name, +3 name?

Hmm. So those are other blogs which are referring back to the original blog. I'm assuming that she is referring to guest blogging unless those are all of her own.

No, I think it's other people. She just shares, like she makes a little weekly post where she's like, check out these blogs, and she puts links to 5 other people's blogs. A lot of people—

Yeah, they're all on the same theme kind of basis. They're all doing the same type of thing. Yeah, that's a lot of that in blogging.

That's fine, that's fine to do that and, you know, to use links and say check this out and check that out. What you don't want to see happen is that the high point of your content is all of the other content going out that you're referring to. So then what may end up happening is you're building more authority and sending more authority out to other content, to other blogs, than you're receiving back. So if you're getting like shares and links back, like other people are citing your content, like so-and-so wrote this and this is really great, and you're, you're building authority back to your blog then that's a good sign. You're doing good. If, if those other people are seeing that and saying, oh yeah, look what she mentioned here, and they're saying, oh, that's the good stuff over there, and they're sharing all of that content, then you can't— you can get in a situation where you're giving more authority away, or technically, on technical terms, PageRank away, than you're actually receiving to your blog. But if you have good content—

it's probably better to not do that. I mean, if she's not writing a whole blog post and adding those in as a little bottom thing, it's actually not helping her at all to do that post, right?

You want to make sure you've got the good stuff. Right. You've got the good stuff. It's fine to talk about other people and other things, but if that's the whole crux of your content, then maybe you need to Talk with Peg about being yourself.

That's funny. That is a common thing that people will do though. People like to do a little wrap-up post like Dennis Littley and just kind of give a shout out to their friend. If they're on Triberr or one of those things, they think they're getting more traffic, they're sending out another thing, but in the long run it kind of sounds like Google's like, that's not really content from your brain. Like, think, is it from your brain? Then it's good. If it's like someone else's brain, like, but that aside, you should always mention all the people that you read their blog and you're inspired by them, people, you should always link back to those people because that was their brain power.

So maybe a good place to do something like that would be on Twitter even though we're on Google+ or maybe make it a Google+ post. Just make it a social post because you definitely want to— if you see another blogger or somebody that's doing a good job in something, go ahead and throw them props. Maybe just don't make it a blog post.

Just make it a social post. I'll throw out a little inside trick here that's kind of something new. Since the Google+ posts, the embeds is a new thing. But this is just between us here. When, when you embed that post, right, like we're talking about, you can be sharing other people's content, but you're not giving away links with that content. So say they have a bunch of links, and you need— you still need to have really, you know, relevant and good content on that page, but in that post itself, even if the post has a hyperlink to somebody's blog, mm-hmm, that they're referring to, that hyperlink is not active in, in, on your blog. That Google+ embedded post is not giving away authority to those blogs. The content, or the way you write around it will do. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So what's the benefit of an embedded post?

Visibility on your own page that you've got something people are interested in that they want to share.

Joshua, what's the benefit of a Google+ embedded post then?

It can have a lot of benefits. One of the best things that I like about it is that you could use— you can use the, the comments to be interactive back on Google+. Like, in, in your same blog or your same article, you can get a lot more interaction. Your content can be spread around the internet a lot faster and a lot easier with those embeds. And what I mentioned earlier is that most people, they're going to to refer back to you with your name or your blog name, and those are all genuine authority PageRank-passing links. So those are very effective. Those embeds can be a big help, and there's a number of ways you can use those embeds to help you in your blog. I wrote something a few weeks ago about how to Google+ embed posts on my realsmo.com blog in which I listed a number of different things and what some of the different experts had also suggested about new ways that those could be used that can be quite effective. Cool. Cool.

Check it out. Alright, we have another question here from Linda Kelly, and she wants to know, is it okay to share a new blog post on your business page and then share from your business page to your personal page?

That's fine. That doesn't— from that single share, it's not going to be a hugely effective big difference. What we— what the advantage— okay, the optimization, the social optimization that we get from Google+ is from all the other people that see that content, that share it, and that cite and refer back to it. And a lot of people, they don't necessarily feel engaged with people's business page as much. So sometimes it can be more effective to share it from your own page, and, and you can also share it through your business page and through your own page, a couple of different ways. So there's no one way that has to be like this, or that this is always going to be more effective, but when we're talking about the social SEO aspect here then look at what is going to be socially more effective first. And that's why I mentioned these ladies are making it look so easy, because they know what— they know what people like and what people want to see and what people want to read. And just that natural process is far more effective than looking at the intricacies, and technicalities of it. So sharing it the way more people want to see it and will share it on can be far more effective and diversify your content even better.

But from a straight-up social media point, it also helps if you have more followers. Like if Dennis had two accounts, one for his blog and one for his Chef Dennis personal page, if he has more followers on his personal page, it's always better to share it on your business page and then over. 'Cause if you— more people can just see you, they're already interested in you, that may never click and see your business page. So I think sometimes people forget about that.

So it's a good way to brand. Personal branding too. Yeah, absolutely, with your branding. And then Chef, going back to— you asked about how many keywords as far as food blogging, 'cause all the food bloggers. I would think about how you actually talk to someone when you're describing how to cook something. And if you're using organic sweet potatoes, instead of saying organic sweet potatoes all the time, you might be— you might say, okay, now chop the potato, throw it, you know, throw it in the boiling water. So go back to some of that, even though it sounds— it might not be AP style completely. You know, there's that bear that you need to wrestle, you know, but just kind of get away from so proper and so, you know, you don't have to say organic sweet potato 6 times. You can say grab the potato, you know, get your chopped vegetable, you know what I'm saying? So that's kind of where you guys can help get some of those keywords out. I think that's like the first baby step.

Off-site context can be even more important than all of this. And so that's why you're all— I mean, as far as— better to go to the other extreme, you know, kill the keywords, don't use too much, and mix it up, use all kinds of different stuff. But Google looks at and is looking a lot more at the semantics off-site context of those links. You know, what are other people sharing? And when they share it, what do they say on that page and in that context about those links? So those, those right there will give a lot more important context. So that's why talking to people and being socially engaging is the most effective.

Don't just share your post, that's not effective. Share your post and talk to people, that works.

Yes, and if nobody's talking to you, you go find someone that you have a similar interest with and you talk to them first and then they'll come talk to you.

And if they don't talk to you right away, Yeah, and don't get disturbed if they don't answer you right back or the first time they don't connect with you or follow you. It's going to take a little effort, not just expect that they're just going to jump right in.

I think the hardest thing is people who have a lot of followers and get a lot of mentions, you literally don't get every notification and I don't think people know that. I didn't know that until I was like one time I didn't see that. People are like, yeah, at a certain point Google doesn't give you all your notifications. I'm like, I want them all. I'm always paranoid. If I don't answer, it's because I literally didn't. I try to check everything I posted, but you can only do the best you can do. If you're on mobile too, I think you miss—

you switch back and forth.

It seems like I get different ones on mobile sometimes that don't show up on my other two.

My emailed ones are a lot of times different than both of them. I'll get an email about something and then I can't find it. On. Don't get us started on all of the nuances of using Google+ as a social media professional.

That's a whole other topic.

Yes, it is.

Oh well. It's been a very informative talk today, I think. Everybody's added in a lot of good information and good questions. Thank you for asking them. Does anybody have— we're going to wrap it up pretty soon. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to say before we call it a day for this session?

Thanks to all the people who watched and asked questions. It's always nice when people are paying attention. Thanks, people. It was really interactive.

And I just wanted to answer Robin's question. It's called speechpad.com. That's my secret.

Giving it away. Okay. Okay. And yeah, if you had questions we didn't get to, we'll come back and try and answer them in the comments. Or if you have anything else you'd like to say, we'll check the comments a little while and hopefully give you the answers you need. Or you can always interact with us on our pages and ask us questions there. All right. Well, thank you very much all. Joshua, for being— taking time out. Nicole.

My pleasure to be here. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. So thanks for stopping today, and this was Good Day Google Plus, and we'll see you next Friday. Have a great day. Bye.