Click on the video above to watch Episode 87 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
Adam: Show me your war face. No, I’m just kidding. We’re not going to actually do that, we going to say, “Welcome to episode 87 of Hump Day Hangouts”. Hey everybody. Glad to have you here. For those of you who were wondering why we didn’t do this at 4 AM, that was a small technical issue that we resolved about five minutes ago. Thank you, if you’re watching this, for showing up on time. We’ll check and make sure that is says PM every time from now on.
Bradley: Wow. Don’t swear to that. Don’t commit to that.
Adam: Yes. I’m going to because I checked these, and I’m going to be paying attention. That’s something I generally don’t look at as PM or AM. I assume, and I made an ass out of you and me. All right, here we go. Some quick announcements, you guys. For those of you who missed out on the Outsource Kingpin launch, you want to check this out. If you are into outsourcing at all, you’re going to want to check this out; Training out VAs, how to get them through a funnel, how to do this, hire and find good people and get them trained up without spending a lot of time. For those of you who’ve dealt with outsources, I know a lot of people I talk to are like, “Yeah, I’ve had outsourcers, but it sucks. They wasted my time. It took forever.” There’s ways to deal with that. At least check this out. It’s worth its weight in gold, and it’s worth a hell of a lot more than what we’re selling it for.
Bradley: We did an entire webinar last week about it. It ended up being just a hair over an hour. If you want, we can drop the link on the page to the replay.
Adam: Definitely. I’ll put the link to both. The sales pitch has got some good info on it too. Obviously, we want you to buy it. It’s got some good info and you can see if this would be a good fit for you. We’ll put both of those links on there, and I’ll do that while I think Hernan and Marco have some extra quick announcements here.
Hernan: Basically, I just wanted to tease real quick about the V2 update webinar that we’re doing. After this, we’re holding an update webinar for V2 because that’s basically the idea for IFTTT V2, to keep you guys updated and sharing with you the latest techniques, and what’s working, and results from students. We have some really good results. I had some really good results through Joe on some approach in combination with PBNs and IFTTT. That’s basically what I have.
Adam: That’s right. What’s the way to get there, Bradley, for V2 members? What’s the path for them attending? Is it …
Bradley: Just go to the Facebook group, the IFTTT V2 Facebook group, and click on the events tab. You’ll see the event, and then you just click on the link for the event location. It’s just a link, and that’ll take you over to the Google Plus event page, where you can post questions or watch the webinar. Guys, remember that the update webinars aren’t really Q & A. If there is time at the end, we will answer questions, but Q & A is really for only Hangouts, so just keep that in mind.
Marco: What I wanted to add is that we were going to have some live stream training today during the update webinar, but it looks like we’re going to need more time because we want to do it right. You guys are used to quality, and so that’s what we’re going to do. In a couple of weeks, guys, look for this. It’s going to be free. We’re going to show you how to live stream, how Bradley’s doing the live event in YouTube, and at the same time going to Facebook, and how he’s doing it all for free. Since it’s free, there’s no reason for us to charge you guys to learn how to do it, so you guys are going to get that. Another thing would be the Semantic Mastery Minute. That’s another thing to look forward to. We’ve been talking about it. We haven’t defined how it’s going to be set up, what we’re going to be doing. We’re definitely going to be taking questions that we find provocative, something that’s going on at the moment, something where we find this needs to be addressed right now. That’s what that platform is going to be for. You guys can look forward to that because you will be able to have access to us directly during the time we have allotted for that. Just a bunch of good things that are coming to you. Again, it’s all free. Free is always good, right?
Adam: Fair enough. Sounds good, man.
Bradley: The Semantic Mastery Minute. We’re going to be doing that. It’ll be like every day, one of us will jump on and and just spend a couple minutes talking about something. People can submit questions. We’re not going to answer every question. That’s what Hump Day Hangouts is for, but every single day we’re going to select a question or a topic or something and jump on and chat about it. It’s most likely going to be done through Facebook, using Facebook Live, because that’s getting a lot of reach right now. That’s part of the reason we’re going to be doing an entire webinar specifically about live streaming, both to YouTube and Facebook. Again, look for that in two weeks, guys, immediately following Hump Day Hangouts. So two weeks from today, at 5 PM, we’ll send out a registration link for that webinar. The Semantic Mastery Minute I think is going to be kind of fun. Most likely, it’s going to be through Facebook Live, is how we’re going to actually record the Minute – The Semantic Mastery Minute, or Minute with the Masters, is what we’re calling it.
As far as submitting questions or topics, that kind of thing, we’re probably going to end up having that go through Twitter with a hashtag like #AskTheMasters or something like that. We’ll give you guys more details probably next week. We’re going to iron out the details. Then we’ll give you more details about it next week. Anything else, Adam?
Adam: That’s it. We’re good to go.
Bradley: Okay, let’s do it. Yes, because we had the timing screwed up on the webinar. There was only one question and it was from Michael Dos. I re-posted it, and then invited a bunch of people, and now there’s a bunch of questions, so thanks guys. You guys are quick. It was fixed about an hour ago, and we’ve got a whole bunch of questions now, so thanks for that. It wasn’t even an hour ago, it was 30 minutes ago.
Okay guys, are you all seeing my screen?
Adam: Yes. Good to go. We’ve got the full screen.
Bradley: We’re not doing Facebook Live today, only because I ran out of time. I was trying to get it set up and I just ran out of time, and it would’ve been too much of a mess, so we are abandoning that today, but we’ll be back on Facebook Live next week.
What Are Some Good Training Links For Video Email Prospecting?
Michael says, “I recently listened to your video on how to find video SEO clients. You referred to a course you did on video e-mail prospecting, and offered a Google Drive link to the file. This link isn’t in the notes with the video. Would you mind providing me with the link? I want to get better at video e-mail prospecting.”
Yes, so guys, let me explain what I’m going to show you here in a minute. What Michael’s talking about is … Several years ago, it had to have been in 2012, maybe 2013, I created a course with two partners in a joint venture agreement opportunity. I was working with two ladies. We were providing social media and branding services to real estate agents, and we created a video e-mail prospecting, or what we called “V-mail Prospecting”.
In fact, that’s how I really started my SEO agency, was contacting clients using video e-mails. When I say video e-mails, they’re not really video e-mails, but you’ll understand what I mean once you go through the training. It is free. It’s got branding on it from the joint venture that I was in at the moment, at the time, so it doesn’t say Semantic Mastery, but it’s step-by-step. It still works today, but I had an incredible closing rate. I got three out of every ten video e-mails that I sent out. I would start a conversation. It would get me in touch with the person in charge of the business, and I would end up talking with them. I had a really good close ratio with anybody that I actually started a dialogue with.
It’s very effective in getting a conversation started. It’s called “V-mail” or “Video E-mail”. I created an opt-in page. That’s right. If you want it, you’re going to have to go opt in to get it. Here it is. It’s BradleyBenner.com/vmail. I’m going to go ahead and post it on the page here. V-mail Prospecting Training. It’s free. Go opt in. Once you opt in, you’ll be redirected to the actual Google Drive folder, where you can download the PDF, and then there’s a six series of videos that go with it. They’re download videos in a ZIP file, so you’d have to download it and unzip it. You’re more than welcome to check it out.
Guys, I won’t be spamming you. I actually created an e-mail list that’s an entrepreneur success like Mindset Training series. It’s an auto-responder with six e-mails. I just go through various mindset things that have had a big impact on me and my business. That’s what you’re actually opting in for. No spam, no pitch. If you don’t like any of the e-mails, just kindly hit the manager subscription link at the bottom of the e-mail and unsubscribe. If you want the V-mail Prospecting, that’s how you get it.
Will Semantic Mastery Offer A Press Release Service Soon?
Ryan says, “Will you guys be offering the press release servicing?” Ryan, I would say yes, but that would make a liar out of me, because I have no idea. Adam, do you have a better idea?
Adam: I’d like to say that I have a definite date but I don’t, so I’m also not going to say anything. Suffice to say, it’s in the works and it is being attempted to being wrapped up. That’s as good as I can do.
Bradley: Yes, it’s been many months. I was expecting that many months ago, and it’s still not available yet, guys. When it is, we’ll certainly let you know.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google’s Move Of Clamping Down Fake Reviews?
Kevin says, “Hey guys. I created some fake reviews via the Project Supremacy Plug-ins Review widget on my site. Then added the aggregate and review structure data to my JSON header code, but I’m still not getting the stars. I heard that Google is clamping down on this fake review stuff, and not showing stars, and possibly decreasing ranking slightly. Any thoughts on this, and should I remove the reviews and structure data from my site? Thanks as always.”
Kevin, I have a client that has bonafide genuine reviews, and he’s got over 100 of them. I think he’s got 110+ reviews now. He’s a roofing client. It’s incredible. This guy’s got a lot of 5-star reviews, and they’re not spam. They’re real, live reviews. Me and Marco and Chris G., who’s one of our Mastermind members and he also helps out with support stuff like that. All three of us have worked on trying to get the review stars to show up in Google for literally months now. We have been unsuccessful. The are bonafide reviews, man. It’s not just you. We’re having a hell of a time, and it’s interesting. If we do a site colon operator and search the domain, it will show all the indexed pages and posts, and show the review stars. It’s an overall aggregate rating instead of showing individual for each post. This particular site is set up as it’s “Roof Repair Plus City”, as a post. That’s how we have the site set up. The pages that we rank in Google are actually posts. Each one of the posts have their own. Because it’s “Roof Repair Plus City”, they have their own reviews, but for whatever reason, we’ve only been able to get the total overall aggregate review rating to show, and that’s only when we do the site colon operator.
If we do a keyword search, then the listing … Although when we do a site … When we do a site colon operator, and it shows the post with the aggregate review rating, the 5-star rating, and the stars actually show up. Then we take the same page that’s showing that, or the same listing in Google, and then we do just a keyword search, and find that listing, the review stars aren’t showing. We can’t get it to show for anything other than the site colon operator. It’s been months. I’ve been banging my head against the wall and so has Marco and Chris G. We haven’t been able to get it to show, so it’s not just you, Kevin. If anybody else has some insight on this, we’d love to hear it, because I really am at a loss. Marco, you want to comment on this at all?
Marco: No. We’ve been trying everything we can, and it’s just fickle. I don’t know what it is that makes Google pick up or not pick up the stars. We have to maybe call Google and see what it is that we have to do to get the stars to appear. Maybe get something that has real reviews and have them take a look and tell us why they’re not appearing. There’s really nothing else that I can say, because we’ve tried just about everything we can.
Bradley: With no luck. Sorry Kevin. I wish I had some better news for you. Personally, I wouldn’t do any fake review stuff. If you’re going to do fake reviews, I would try to get fake reviews on some of the other platforms, like Yelp, which is difficult unless you’re doing it from a mobile device. Desktop reviews usually get filtered out from Yelp. Mobile devices tend to not get filtered as easily. If you can get some reviews on some of the others, like Yellow Pages. There are so many of them. It’s been a while since I’ve done any of that kind of stuff, but like MojoPages or whatever. You know what I’m talking about. Some of the ones you can add reviews to. If you want to create fake reviews on those, that’s what I would … I wouldn’t just put fake review data in the structure data. I wouldn’t do that. I would actually have it reference some real reviews somewhere, just because that structure data spam. If you’re creating fake reviews, that’s review spam. There’s no question. You can do what you want. I don’t recommend doing that.
Guys, I’ve tried to do fake reviews in the past, and I’ve used some services that do it too, and I’m not talking about Fiverr. There’s been other services that do that. They end up getting terminated or deleted over time. I’ve never found a really good service. The only way that I’ve been able to fake reviews in the past, which I don’t even do anymore, but when I was doing it, was to create fake personas, and do it through mobile devices. You can actually create fake mobile devices using … What do they call … Shit, it’s been … God, it’s been so long since I’ve done it. What do you call it when you have a virtual box?
A virtual box, where you can create an Android operating system in your PC, and give it its own IP address, and install the Android operating system and do reviews from that. It acts as if it’s a mobile device, and those tend to not get filtered out, but that’s really geeky setting it up. At least it used to be. It’s been at least two years since I’ve done it. It’s probably a hell of a lot easier to set up now, with Bluestacks or something like that. Back in the day, when I was doing it, it was a lot more difficult. I would build up five or six profiles that were active, and they each had their own virtual box and their own IP address that was tied to an Android device operating system. We would build those personas up. For example, they had Yelp profiles, each one of them. Those Yelp profiles, they look like real people, real reviewers, and so there was activity. It was just a lot of work to maintain. It was powerful at the time, but it’s not something that I recommend doing anymore. I haven’t tested it in a couple years, but personally I just don’t do it anymore.
What Are Your Thoughts On Local Client Taking Over FB Group On IFTTT Networks?
Well, that could take a whole hour in itself, Wayne. I would just refer everybody to that thread and let them read through the thread and make their own decisions. I don’t know if that’s a public Facebook group or not. Do we want to drop that link? What do you guys think?
Adam: It is not public.
Hernan: No, it is not public. You will need to join. I think we could shout out the link anyway. I think it’s a lot of fun, actually.
Marco: The only thing that I would add to that is … We’re not marketists, guys. We’re just some guys who have our own businesses, who came up with an idea of sharing the stuff that we know works. How do we know it works? Well, we have our membership that will tell you. That’s our best testimonial, right? Our successful members. The thing that I would say is talk to the members. Reach out, talk to them, and say, “What are you doing?” Go to IFTTT V2. We have a bragging thread. Go to … I know you guys can’t get in to the RYS Facebook group, but by meeting and talking to people who have been successful with RYS, just to see whether the stuff works or not. The claim is that it doesn’t work. We know. We do tons of testing before we release anything to the public. The one thing that we do know through our testing is the shit works, man.
Hernan: Period. Point blank.
Bradley: Yes. If you guys … I don’t care if we dropped a link to that Facebook post. You guys might have to join the group in order for you to be able to read it, but it is a very long thread. There’s been a lot of comments on it. I stand by my comments 100% and the effectiveness of IFTTT networks. There’s some haters in the group that are going to say that it doesn’t work and blah, blah, blah, but I’ve got over four years of testing and results. I’ve built my entire SEO agency business and my lead gen business on IFTTT SEO as the foundation.
Again, with our students and everything else that have had success … My partners and I, we’ve been using … They’ve all been using them for over a couple years now. I stand by it 100%. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, which I’ve mentioned in the thread, or in that post. Pick what works for you guys. The way I look at it though, is the IFTTT networks were giving that Google tickle, as Marco calls it. We are actually feeding into the Semantic algorithm. That’s what we’re doing. We’re giving Google what it wants. That’s why I think it’s so effective, and that’s why I think it’s going to continue to be effective, even long-term, whereas a lot of traditional SEO methods are becoming less and less effective. Sometimes even become a negative ranking factor at some point. I don’t see that being a problem with IFTTT SEO.
Again, I stand by my comments 100%. I’m happy to share that thread, if we can find it.
Adam: Yes, I think just one thing on that is that … Everyone here is … I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone out of line in a Hangout, or on the Hump Day Hangout. I would just say if you do go over there, you do join. Be civil. If you’ve got anything to say, make sure it’s useful. Don’t go in there and just say, “It works.” If you’ve got something to say, that’s great. Otherwise, just read through it. It’s a pretty cool thread. There’s a lot of information in there.
I think a lot of the confusion comes from people who are used to having people say, “This is the only way to do something”, which is never what we say. It’s like, “Hey, this is a really easy way to do a lot of really cool things.” Like Bradley just said, this isn’t the only way. There’s so many different ways you can accomplish things. It’s just that this is, one, it works, and two, it’s fairly easy. I think a lot of people miss that point and think that if they’re not familiar with us, they probably think we’re just saying it’s, “IFTTT is the only way you can do SEO”, which is obviously not the case.
Bradley: Yes. The people that say, “Well, you guys only say it works because you sold the product.” No, I’ve built my business on that foundation prior to ever becoming a product. The only reason why it became a product is because it works so damn well for me. When I started sharing it with a few others, they tried it. It worked for them. They said, “Hey, your on to something here.” Thus, Semantic Mastery was born. That’s really why. It’s not we’ve created a product to sell to people. I created a system that worked for me that then worked for others that then ended up becoming a product, so that we could share something that works so well with so many others. That’s how it worked out. Like Adam said, just be civil if you’re going to go in. I could tell you, I was pretty pissed at some of the comments. I wanted to lash out, but I had to exercise some control, and post some diplomatic responses instead.
Marco: I was actually pretty civil also, man. I am very proud of me, because I started to tell people, “Kiss my ass.”
Hernan: You know, what’s funny is that, I think these kind of discussions, or these kind of debates, they do a lot of good to our community, because you all see a ton of … I’m really honored that a lot of people are actually saying, “Hey, I tested this and this worked”, and there’s a bunch of big names over there, which I truly respect, including you guys. I think these kind of debates, these kind of discussions, they do really well to our community. What we were trying to convey on that is not that … The group is called the Proper PBN Group, so they are still thinking on the PVN side of things, which is completely fine. In fact, we’re going to be talking about PBN on today’s update for V2.
At some point, you need to understand where everyone is coming from. We have been testing it pretty much everything. We’ve tested PBNs and we are always in the trenches. One of the good things about, for example, IFTTT SEO Academy is that all of the people that have been going through the training, like guys like [inaudible 00:21:53] Taric Kyle. He’s a big name, in my opinion. They’re saying, “Hey, is there really thorough training and deep training?” Yes, because we developed the training to train VAs. That was the original idea. It has to be step-by-step. That will be my take on it. I think it’s been a great thread. Of course, we got some haters, but that’s the norm.
Adam: That means we’re doing good if people are hating.
Marco: Yes that’s right. If people are hating, we’re doing really good. One last thing, just to go back to one of the original pillars of Semantic Mastery was we were going to be testers. We were going to be the lab, so that people wouldn’t have to go out and buy garbage. This is what we do now. We found some people, I’m not going to mention names, are peddling garbage. They’re peddling stuff that doesn’t work. We’ve probably mentioned names, which we shouldn’t have, but it’s what we do, man. We test, and we re-test. We tell you whether something works or not.
If it doesn’t work, we’re not going to try and sell it to you as something that’s the end-all to it all, and this is all you need. We’re going to tell you, “No, it’s crap. Don’t buy it.” You’re going to get it straight from us, so we’re your lab. It’s what we do. We’re dedicated to that. We stay true to that. Look at what we do every Wednesday. We give you an hour so that you can come and ask us, “Guys, what’s working? What do I do?” Here we are, working on a year straight. Has it been two years?
Bradley: This is number 87, buddy. We’re approaching two years.
Marco: Two years, and we’re still here, man.
Bradley: An hour every week. We give back to you guys. We do appreciate all of you who follow us and support us and all that. That’s why we do this every week. It’s our way of giving back. I truly do enjoy these Hump Day Hangouts, guys, or else I wouldn’t do it every damn week. We’ve only missed one week in 87 episodes. That was a scheduled week off. That’s consistency, baby. We’re really proud of that. We stand behind our comments and our products. Hands down.
Are Yellow Pages Do Follow Or No Follow?
Lucian says, “Two-part question. Is Yellow Pages a do follow or no follow? After researching I found some mixed answers.”
Well, the easiest way to tell is just go find a Yellow Pages listing and then use source code. See where the URL is. We could go pull one up. Also, if you’re using … I always use browser plug-ins that put a strike through no follow links, so it just puts a line through it. Most of the time, you can tell just by actually viewing the listing. If for whatever reason you can’t tell, using a strike-through plug-in and a browser plug-in, then you could just do a right click, View Page Source, and then find that link. Just do a Control F and look for the link. Type in the link and then find it, and then look and see if there’s a no follow tag or a redirect or something that would be pulling the juice, not redirecting, like a 301, or a straight link if that makes sense.
Marco: I could be mistaken, but if you pay Yellow Pages, I think they’ll give a do follow link. I think that it’s no follow by default, but if you pay, I think it’s like a likes. If you pay, you get a do follow.
Bradley: YellowPages.com. I think it’s just YP.com now, isn’t it? I think it is. I think you can go to YP.com. Let’s just find something. Let’s say, plumber. Culpeper, VA. Let’s just take a look. Well, that was a landing page. That was weird. I want to look at the actual listing. How do we do that? Oh, that’s an ad. That’s why. Let’s go find an organic listing. Let’s look at this one. Okay. It looks like “Visit Website”. I got the strike-through. This is showing no follow. This is a free listing. He might be an upgrade. He might have paid for an upgrade, but it’s not an ad. If you saw on the previous page, which was the index page, the search page. You’ll see that these are all ads up here and those, when you click on them, they go straight to the landing page. However, if you look at these, these … Here’s another one. Lorenzo Plumbing. That’s a landing page too. Remember, that’s the guy that’s got an ad earlier as well.
Just looking at this first organic listing, take a look at that, and you can see the website. It’s got the strike-through. That’s because I’m using a browser plug-in that highlights no follow. But you could also right click, and then do View Page Source, and then you could do a Control F, and find that link, which is “Visit Website”. There’s the anchor text right there. Take a look at the actual link and it says, rel=”nofollow” right there. See that? There’s the actual URL, www.fhfurr.com. It says rel=”nofollow”, and you can see that right here. That’s the easiest way to tell, guys. Just go look.
Researching and getting mixed reviews or whatever. The quickest way is just validate it for yourself.
Marco: Yes, but look at that map body frame. I’m loving that.
Bradley: It doesn’t pull up the iFrame though. You know what I mean? It doesn’t pull up data window. You know when we could add it? I wonder why that is. I wonder if we could hack that in, though.
Marco: Probably.
Bradley: That’s something we can play with.
Marco: That’s definitely worth trying to play with. I’m loving the fact that you can iFrame a Google Map in there.
Bradley: Yes, if we add the MyMaps pin in there with a … [crosstalk 00:27:55]
Marco: There you go. Multiple stats.
Bradley: Making note of that, we can …
Marco: Start giving away stuff.
Hernan: Okay, shush. Let’s move on.
Bradley: Thanks for doing that, Marco. We’ll look into it further. Good question though, Lucian.
Would A Website Be Spammy If There Are Lots Of Yellow Pages Links Pointing To It?
No, because that would make sense. That wouldn’t be spammy if … Let’s say it’s a national franchise, for example. It’s one domain, and as a franchisee, you either get a sub-domain or a page on the main domain, which is how a lot of franchises do it. Then having multiple links from different locations from Yellow Pages to the same domain would be okay, because it would make sense. It wouldn’t be spammy, because it’s an actual valid reason for those. Does that make sense? It would only be spammy if you were linking to the actual same landing page. Chances are, it’s going to be separate landing pages for each listing. That’s how I look at it, anyway. If it makes sense, if it’s logical, then it wouldn’t be spam. You know? If you were doing it purely for manipulations purposes, then yes, that could be spammy. It doesn’t mean don’t do it. It just means it could be spammy, but I don’t know how that would work with Yellow Pages anyway.
Does Using 3 Cloudflare Accounts For All Lead Gadget Sites Can Be A Footprint?
Ray is asking a question about Lead Gadget. Ray, I think you’ve asked questions here about Lead Gadget before. I will answer your question, but remember, I host a webinar every Thursday. Well, not every Thursday, almost every Thursday morning at 7:30 AM, specifically for Lead Gadget, guys. If you have questions about Lead Gadget, please post your questions on the Lead Gadget webinar. That’s what that is for. That’s 7:30 AM. If you want a link to that, I’ll drop it, but I do that at 7:30 AM on Thursdays and it’s a Q & A webinar specifically for Lead Gadget, guys.
“Do you think three Cloudfare accounts is enough for Lead Gadget sites or can that be a footprint?”
I would say it should be enough if you’re doing other things properly. Based on some recent events, I know that I’m a little bit gun shy right now too. I had 689 sites de-indexed in one fell swoop, which hurt because it was about three months worth of work. Now it’s just gone. We’re in the process of rebuilding now, and we’re doing a few other things. If you want to talk more about it, Ray, post on the Events page. Go to the Lead Gadget Facebook group, click on the Events tab, and you will see the event scheduled for tomorrow. Post your questions over there, even if you can’t attend live, I will answer your questions and you can catch them during the replay.
Are There Benefits In Crowdsearch Referral Traffic To Search Social Hashtag?
I don’t know, Scott. To be honest, because I haven’t done that, and I can’t speculate. You could test it though. That’s all I would tell you to do, Scott, is just set up some tests on your own and see if there’s benefit to that. Remember, sending referral traffic, guys, isn’t going to give you an instant ranking boost. At least for the most part it doesn’t. What you do is drip out referral traffic, CT Spam, click through spam, over time and you’ll see that it will help to boost the rankings. Don’t go real aggressive with it unless you’re trying to mimic a viral event. If you’re just doing, trying to … What I do with these types of referral traffics is I set up little streams or trickles of traffic that over time helps to increase the authority of the site.
Marco: I can see a definite benefit, as long as he’s not … As long as he doesn’t get carried away, and it looks really natural. Because he’s dropping a shortened Google link in there, and those metrics will go straight to Google. Google will measure the activity on that link, and so, yes. If you’re letting Google in there and they’re seeing all the activity that’s going on in there, as long as it’s normal activity, just like it would be for anyone else doing that, I think that you could probably get some really good results out of that. You’re not going to an about page, you’re going to another social property. So it’s people going throughout your social properties, following those links, and Google will track every part of that, since you’re letting them in that stream.
Hernan: I think that you make a great point, Marco, because what I’ve seen with referral traffic and CTR spam and those kinds of things is that they help boosting a property. It has to be already liked by Google, in a sense, because if you have a website or property on page 10, and you want to force it out with CTR, it’s kind of hard. It’s unnatural. It’s unnatural to have a result on page 10 will actually naturally move because it’s not the way a person would behave, you know? But, if you have it on top of page 2, or brought on page 1, referral traffic can really help you out. I think that if you add that to IFTTT, in a way that you are branding the properties and you are feeding them with content. I think that could be really powerful.
Bradley: To expand on that, guys, we did an entire update webinar for Clap Crowdsearch. If you haven’t seen it, just go to Google, search “crowd search training 2016”. “Crowd search training 2016“. You’ll see that we have a webinar. It should be ranked #1 for that term, or “crowd search demo 2016”. Either that, demo or training. Either one should give you the same result. Go through that training if you haven’t already, Scott. If you have and others that haven’t, then go through that training.
One thing I want to mention that Hernan just said is absolutely true. A [inaudible 00:33:53] mistake that I see a lot of people … These are the same people that try it. They don’t get instant results, and then they say, “Oh that doesn’t work”, and they quit. Good. Get the hell out of here. Make room for the people that know what they’re doing. You know what I mean? Honestly, because I hate it when people give up too soon because they’re lazy. I’m not saying that about you, Scott.
What I’ve seen a lot, that Hernan just mentioned, was that when people use crowd searches, they go after the keyword search. They want to force their site to show up for the keyword search. Their site might be on page 4, and all of a sudden they set up click through, CT spam traffic. That’s why it’s called click through spam traffic, which is not negative, in my opinion. They set up click through spam traffic with the keyword search and then they have the CT spam, the visitors, go search for all the way back to page 4, and then click on it. That is completely unnatural. Completely unnatural. For it to start getting a steady stream of traffic, for a keyword search when it’s listed on page 4. That’s the problem.
People do that and think, “Oh, I’m going to force this up on the page 1”, not thinking that’s dumb. It looks completely unnatural. The better route is to send referral traffic, but not a flood of traffic. Just do a little trickle of traffic, and over the next few weeks to a couple months, you should see your site start creeping up, because Google’s recognizing referral traffic from alternative sources. Not from Google search. It’s getting referral traffic through social media, on Web 2.0’s, third party platforms. That’s why you use either analytics on your site, or you use a goo.gl short link, which injects analytics into the link. The other thing that you can do is set up a brand, or navigational searches, where you search for the name of the business or the name of the website or the blog. Then send traffic that way, because that does make sense. That will also increase, what we call, site weight. It gives the site more authority in Google’s eyes.
Instead of setting up a keyword search, when the site’s listed on page 4 and then clicking through to that, which is completely unnatural, you could do a search for the name of the site, or the business, or the blog. Then click through to that because chances are, it’s going to be ranked right at #1 for that search. Right? For that brand name search. So that makes sense too. Again, you don’t do a flood of traffic. You do a slow and steady stream of traffic, and let it build over time. You want it to look as natural as possible. That’s where most people go wrong with CT spam, is they try brute force click throughs to make something rank. They don’t think about it strategically. I’ve had incredible success using that tool. It’s part of all my SEO campaigns now, because it works well when you do it that way. Again, we covered all of that in the training webinar.
Is Picasa Dead?
Scott says, “Where are my images stored in Google? Is Picasa dead?”
Yes. Hasn’t Picasa been down? Isn’t it Google Photos now?
Marco: Yes. I dropped a link in there. It’s photos.google.com and then he can search through albums or photos. You can see everything that was uploaded in either Google or Picasa. He’s good to go.
Bradley: Yes. Google Photos are at photos.google.com. That’s right. Also, you could do some stuff with Panaramio, if they’re original images. That’s the problem I found with Panaramio, is they have to be original images, but you could do some pretty good SEO stuff for locals with Panaramio.
How Does IFTTT SEO Validates Entities & How It Differs From Link Wheel?
Richard Bowles. “Please excuse me if this is a noob question. I am new at this SEO and I’m trying to find my way. I read on a thread in Facebook that IFTTT SEO is like a 2009 link wheel.”
He’s talking about the same thread we were mentioning earlier, guys. That’s where Richard came from, so welcome Richard, by the way.
But he’s said, “I’ve also heard Marco say that IFTTT SEO validates entities. Not sure what that means and that it does the Google tickle. Love that by the way. Can you please explain entities to Google tickle, a link wheel and how IFTTT SEO is different from a link wheel?“
We can’t get into too much detail here, but a 2009 link wheel, that may be true except … If we were using a persona-based IFTTT ring to syndicate our content to, then that would be true. It would be very much like a link wheel from several years ago. But what we do is we don’t try to hide footprints. We claim footprints. We do that, and we create a branded network of sites that is an extension of our brand that automatically syndicates our branded content from our main money site, whether that’s a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever, out to our branded properties, which is completely natural. It’s completely normal. That’s what the big brands do. They produce content and then they share it to all their social media and all of their third party platforms, because it just gives them more reach, more exposure. So why should our little sites be any different than what the big brands do?
That’s what we do with our syndication rings, is syndicate our own content to extensions of our brand, where we are on third party platforms. It helps to build authority. It helps to validate the entity, as far as the Semantic web, Semantic web validation, and it helps with the Google tickle. It gives several … It speaks to the positive parts of the algorithm very well, which is building brand, freshness of content, relevant and related content. There’s so many things that it does that a link wheel wouldn’t do. That’s why when somebody says something like that, they truly don’t understand what it is that we’re doing. I’m not talking about you, Richard. I’m saying that the comment that referred to a 2009 link wheel, which was the first comment on that thread. Something like, “2009 called and said they want their link wheels back.” Okay. Keep doing what you’re doing and I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. It works for me. As long as it works, I’m going to use it.
Marco: I would just add that a 2009 link wheel, going back to Essie New, which is a 2009. They were properties that were set up to provide a link back to the source. Google used to pick those out left and right, and de-index them like there’s no tomorrow. Now, what we do is we set up profiles. We brand them. We customize them. We make them look like they’re actually being used by someone, because they are. If they’re your brand, or if they’re a persona, then it’s going to look real to whoever looks at them. They have activity, they have visitors, which is totally different. From this website, way out there, nowhere, that’s just providing a link and it does absolutely nothing except provide a link back. That’s a huge difference. As you said, talking to the positive sections of the algorithm, distance graph, freshness, seasonal. There’s a bunch of things that it does and validation takes place in different ways.
The way that this validates is through this activity and through all of these positive sections of the algorithm that are going out into the web. The bot goes out and it looks for all of these signals to say, “Okay. This is a real entity.” That’s what it’s looking for. It looks real, whereas this PBN or whatever it is set up out there, that is not linked to anything else except this website, that is not linked to anything else and is not doing anything else. It has no social media. It has no presence. It’s not doing anything. That’s the big difference. Having something that’s, for lack of a better word, alive, versus something that does absolutely nothing, except provide a link. There’s an algorithm that looks exactly for that, just so you know.
What we do, what we give you isn’t just something that we make up. I go and I read that patents, and I see where Google was going. I see the patents that it gets granted. I see what it’s trying to do. I don’t know how, but it just pops into my head what it is that Google was trying to do. I have a programming background, and I think that’s where it comes from, where I can see where the communication is taking place and what Google is trying to do. Richard, take it for whatever it is. I would just to try it. Set it up. Set up something that’s just PBNs with nothing else, and set up something with IFTTT and see which one ranks better.
What Are The Possible Impact If Someone Doing Negative SEO On Your Sites?
Bradley: Yes. All right, Ryan says, “Bradley, you mentioned some negative SEO on one of your sites with thousands of links all no follow and it boosted the rankings. Did there ever end up being a negative effect on this site?”
No, because I disavowed those links anyway, Ryan. It’s funny, but some negative SEO on one of my client’s sites, and the hit it with thousands of exact match anchors, but they were all no follow, which is like, “You dummy.” It was funny because we were always bouncing between 3 or 4 organic listings, and after that negative SEO attack, with all no follow links, exact same anchor, we ended up shooting to #1. I was quite aware of the fact that, although it had a temporary boost, that it could end up hurting this site. I ended up building a disavow file, and then submitting it to Google Search Console. At the time, it was Webmaster Tools. So that those links were disavowed, but it’s funny, but that ranking boost stuck after that.
That’s kind of like what Hernan calls, “The Ghost Effect”. That’s where you build links to something to get it to rank, and then you can take those links down once it ranks, and it still has a lasting effect. That’s what I think happened in this case, because … Well, that, and I was also doing other SEO, so once it was boosted to #1, which coincidentally happened right after those thousands of exact match anchors were sent to the site. Within 30 days, I had already built a disavow file and submitted it. We maintained our rankings. It never ended up causing any negative effect. Had I not built the disavow file, and submitted it to Search Console, it may have ended up hurting the site at some point. It was a paying client, so I didn’t want to leave it up as a test. That would be kind of a cool case study though. To set up a random site, and hit it with 10,000 exact match anchors, all no follow, and then see what kind of an effect it has. I have never actually done that. That would actually be a pretty good case study.
Where To Get Affordable Content For Syndication In IFTTT?
“Where to get affordable content for syndicating the IFTTT regular?”
Curate it, Jesse. Curate it. That’s the best and most effective or efficient way to create content regularly, is to hire a virtual assistant, train them how to curate, and have them do it for you. We have an entire training course on it called “Curation Mastery”. We’re updating that course for 2016, and we’re going to relaunch it at the end of August under a different name, called “Content Kingpin”. That will be available. Anybody that purchases “Curation Mastery” will get the updated version called “Content Kingpin” when it’s released, so if you’re interested in that, we could drop the link. You can literally take the training for “Curation Mastery” and hire a virtual assistant, and put them through the training course, and they’ll be able to curate for you when they come out the other side. I know because that’s how I train my curators, and I’ve got a team of about 9 curators right now.
Kevin says, “Not a lot of questions today, so I’ll ask another.”
We’re almost out of time, guys. We’ve got to run, so I’m going to try to get through 2 more questions.
Is Having A Link From Non-Niche & Popular Websites Better Than Having A Link From Regular PBN With Related Niche?
That’s a tough one. What I would do is set up the … If you have a domain that has back-links pointing to it, from LA Times, Huffington Post, etc., that’s pretty powerful. You should use that, absolutely. I’m not sure whether you … I’d have to have more details, Kevin. I would want to look at it more to tell you exactly what I would do with it. I might set up a buffer site. Rebuild that domain, and then just link from that domain to my money site. Or I might just do a redirect to an IFTTT property that’s got a do follow link to my money site or something like that. That’s going to be more powerful than a regular quality PBN link.
Even if it’s niche-related, those big sites like LA Times, Huffington Post, they just carry a lot of juice through those links, guys. Even though it’s not really related, it still has quite an effect, at least for now. As we continue to move further into Web 3.0, the Semantic web, that will become less effective and it will be more about niche-related. It’s kind of going that way now, but some sites are just super powerful, like LA Times, Huffington Post, Forbes.com, Inc. Those kind of sites are all really powerful. If you can get a link from them, and I don’t care how you get it. If you can get a link from them, you’re going to see a pretty significant effect.
Does It Matter If The Same Exact Business Name Is Used In Multiple Locations For Google My Business?
Last one, guys. “Google My Business names for multiple locations. A client of mine has 3 locations.”
My computer is yelling at me. Excuse me. I hate how Google Calendar does that. It drives me crazy.
Absolutely not, Varun. It makes no difference at all. What’s important is because … If it’s the same company, it shouldn’t have different company names for each location. It shouldn’t. It should be one consistent name. What you want the name, address, phone number, you want a unique address, a unique phone number, and a unique web address, which could be a sub-domain or it could be just a landing page on the domain, so each location has its own landing page. It should have the same business name because it’s the same company. I’ve got Lead Gen sites all over the place that are built on sub-domains. For each locations on its own sub-domain, but it’s the same business name. It’s got a unique address, physical address, phone number, and web address, but the business name is the same. It’s never caused me an issue. Where it starts to cause issues is if you share the same phone number, the same landing page, or the same physical address. Any time you do that, across more than one location, that’s when you start getting NAP issues. You’ll start having some serious NAP issues. As long as the physical address, the phone number, and the landing page are unique, it can share the same business name without any negative effect. That’s actually the right way to do it.
Okay, guys. This ended up. I was worried that we weren’t going to have enough questions. We ran out of time, so thanks everybody for being here. The IFTTT V2 Update Webinar starts in about 8 minutes, guys. Be there or be square. We’ll see you then. Thanks guys.
Hernan: Thanks. Bye bye.
Marco: Bye everyone.
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