Click on the video above to watch Episode 88 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
Bradley: Boom.
Adam: Hey, hello everybody, welcome to Humpday Hangouts episode number 88 as we inch our way closer and closer to episode 100 here. Today is the 13 of July, 2016 and we’ve got almost a full crew. I think Chris might be popping in later but right now he’s MIA. He’s down in Florida right now. Let’s go down and hello real quick. Hernan, how’s it going?
Hernan: Hey guys. Hey Adam, hey Facebook, hey Google+, hey everyone. It’s really good to be here.
Adam: Soon we’re just going to have Bradley surrounded by a multi-monitor thing with like 10 different cellphones on it so we can do everything.
Bradley: Like Hollywood Squares, you remember that?
Adam: Marco how’s the weather down there?
Marco: It’s warm and sunny surprisingly. We haven’t had rain or that much rain for about two or three weeks. It’s good, it’s the rainy season actually so no rain during the rainy season is always good.
Adam: I don’t know about you Bradley. I’m guessing your pretty warm too, cause I’m a couple hundred miles north of you and it is hot up here.
Bradley: Yeah, it’s nasty. The end of July to August is nasty in Virginia. It gets really humid. It’s awful. [crosstalk 00:01:08]
Adam: All right well on a happier note, I think you’re going to tell everybody about the change for the … I’ll mention Masters Minute because that’s what we were talking about last time, so that’s the lead off. I’ll let you jump in from there.
Bradley: We’re going to call it “Rant Mastery”. Instead of “Minute with the Masters” which is what we were going to do potentially, every day we’re going to try to jump … and at least on weekdays and jump on like Facebook Live and just kind of rant about something. We were calling it before “Minute with the Masters” but we like “Mastery” better. If you guys want to check it out, we’ve got a Google form up and it’s 100% anonymous so all you’ve got to do is go to rant.semanticmastery.com. It’s a Google form and you can submit a question or topic or something that you would like us to sound off about and we’re going to start on a daily basis, one of us will jump on the Facebook Live and produce a rant about a particular topic or subject.
Keep in mind we’re going to get a bunch of submissions, we’re only going to be able to select one topic per day so your submission does not guarantee that it is going to … Be about. However, we do encourage you to submit any topics or issues or anything that you would like to hear us sound off about and we’re going to select from them everyday.
Adam: Just so everybody’s aware, this is not a replacement for Humpday Hangouts. Please don’t ask like 5 15-part questions with 3 subsections. They won’t answer it.
Bradley: Oh yeah, that’s not what this is about. You can submit a question, don’t get me wrong, but don’t submit an essay question because we’re not going to answer that, that’s not what this is for. [crosstalk 00:02:47]
Adam: We don’t want you to get confused. This will be short stuff, keep it brief. Cool. Let’s see, Hernan, I think you’ve got an announcement about IFTTT, right?
Hernan: Yeah, indeed. Once a month we’re trying to invite you guys … usually the members from the V2, the IFTTT SEO Academy 2.0 group to join us and to share with us your results, because that’s what it’s all about. It’s a community and we love sharing results. We have a dedicated thread on the Facebook group in order for you to share that and what’s good about it is that if you share your results with us and you’re willing to make a case study and you’re selected, because we go through a selection process every month, you can hop on Mastermind for one month for free and then get a deal to keep going on this. I think it’s pretty cool if you’re into the V2 group it’s a great opportunity for you to showcase a case study usually. It’s a way of keeping accountability as well. I have worked with case studies on forums on communities before. It’s a great exercise for me to keep track of everything and also for you guys to share the results that you guys are getting. If you’re not on the V2 group, what are you waiting for? Like, really?
Adam: Fair enough.
Hernan: Yeah, so that’s basically it.
Adam: Cool. Also, I was looking at my own little thing down here, I think people can see it … or not or when I’m talking you can see the background obviously, and I realized I got lazy a couple weeks ago and I stopped putting the green screen all the way over, and I’ve got the whiteboard wall showing. I was just curious if anyone else is using a whiteboard wall or uses chalkboards just let me know on the page. I’m just curious. I haven’t seen one in another house yet and I really love using it. If I could have a blackboard I think I’d do that, just a huge one. Uh-oh, here we go. Nice!
Bradley: Mine’s got … my daughter likes to draw on it too so I’ve always got pictures from my daughter.
Adam: Bradley, you don’t have to apologize just because you like to doodle.
Hernan: I like his doodle.
Bradley: I like to doodle, too. I always leave them up because it gives me something to smile about in the middle of the day, you know.
Adam: Okay, cool. Well I think that’s it for announcements. Have you guys got anything else?
Bradley: I don’t think so.
Marco: We were talking about the … because we don’t even have a name for it. All we have is an idea of what this is going to be like, but we … what we want people to do is be able to build on their success. You get to a certain point and you need to know how to scale it. How to go beyond that. How to actually build a business with a corporate structure because we actually have a corporate structure and we have VA’s, we have part-time employees, and we have to do accounting and we have to do all these different things besides everything else that we do. We don’t just do marketing. We do SEO. We do Leech and we do Affiliate. We do consultation, we do coding and development, we just do so much and so for people who are looking to get past …
If you like client work, that’s fine. If you want to scale your client work, mainly this is for you, but if you want to build a real business that can get you the kind of income that will allow you to, as Bradley might say, to work on your business rather than in your business, this is the kind of thing that we’re thinking about. I just want to put that out there just so people know what it is we’re kind of pushing towards and where we’d like to go with this. It’s coming in the future. I don’t see it too far, but it’s coming.
Bradley: Okay, last thing was just, Hernan, I saw we had on the Youtube channel a testimonial submitted that was a slideshow video and it was pretty cool. Pete Lucas I believe submitted it. Maybe we can grab that and share that on the page for others to see. It might help them, I don’t know.
Hernan: In fact he was one of the winners from last month so we are talking … by the way guys that’s a good point. If you get to, you know you have a case study if you don’t know how to format, just post on the V2 group or contact me privately and we’ll figure that out. Pete Lucas is going to have a free month of Mastermind, which is pretty cool.
Bradley: Cool. Just thought it might be worth sharing on the page for the others to see how he submitted his which works great. There’s various ways to submit a case study, but what he wrote … That video was kind of cool. It was unique. Okay guys we’re going to go ahead and jump into questions. I think we’re good for that, right, Adam?
Adam: Yeah, looks like we’re good to go.
Bradley: All right, so guys make sure you’re seeing my screen.
Adam: Yeah, that’s your Firefox.
Bradley: Right. You should be seeing the vent page, right?
Adam: Correct.
Does IFTTT SEO Only Ranks New Post/Video?
Bradley: All right so we’re good to go. Let’s see. Lee Juan says “Is IFTTT SEO it’s only ranked new post video. Can’t rank the post or page we created before.” Yeah you can. Let’s see. New post … can’t rank the post or page we created before. Well, it’s difficult … pages don’t syndicate unless you use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages which will allow you to insert Pages into your RSS feed. However, if it’s been pre-published, then it’s not going to auto … like if you add that plugin and you’re using your feed, it’s not going to trigger IFTTT to syndicate. That only happens when you have a new published post. Apparently it doesn’t work to just change the publishing date anymore. I haven’t tested it myself in a while but it used to work, where you could schedule the post. For example, if it was already published you could change it to draft mode and then schedule the publishing date for a time in the future and that could literally be 5 minutes from now, right? Then after 5 minutes, you just refresh the page and it will show that it’s published again.
That will re-insert it into the feed, at least it used to. I haven’t confirmed that recently, it’s been a few months since I’ve done that, but that’s also a manual way and it sucks. I don’t recommend doing that. However, the developers that also created the RSS Includes Pages plugin also has a plugin called “Republish Old Posts.” Those two plugins can work in tandem and can accomplish what it is that you do. Now, one of our Mastermind members decided when I suggested they use that plugin that … I guess decided not to use it or test it himself. I tested it myself last week just to confirm that it does work, because it’s been a while since I’ve used that one too, but Republish Old Posts. You install it, it’s free, they have an upgraded version, I don’t think you need that, and you go into the settings and you change the publishing settings and how it republishes old posts, but it’s not instant, guys. If you set it to republish old posts every … To check for old posts every 24 hours or something like that, you’ll see what I’m talking about in the settings, then you have to wait.
You have to wait for 24 hours and I think there’s a 4 hour plus or minus window to kind of randomize it a little bit. You might have to wait a day, a day and a half, before you see an old post being pulled in and then reinserted into the RSS feed. It will trigger the IFTTT network, and that’s an automated way to do it. It’s kind of cool because it will drip out old posts or old pages if you want pages to be included as well, and it will drip them out over a period of time so that it’s not just a big data dump onto your network, if that makes sense. That’s the best way to do it. I’m wondering if … As far as videos, there are like recipes that you can use to re-syndicate old videos. We’ve got tutorials on how to do that inside the IFTTT SEO V2 training. It’s in the update section and the like recipes are on the account workbook template.
Do You Wait A Certain Length Of Time Before Building The Branded Network You’re Only Wanting To Rank In Maps?
Mark says, “Hey, guys. When building a new site that you’re only wanting to rank in Maps, do you wait a certain length of time before building the branded network and the citations? Or are you not worried about link velocity because there won’t be a huge amount of links?” Mark, I don’t worry about link velocity for new sites that I’m just trying to rank in Maps, especially for citations. Usually what I’ll do is I’ll do an analysis of the competition first to get an idea of how many citations the people that are in the 3pat currently have, like an average or a median number. Then what I’ll do is I’ll try to meet or exceed that with citations, and that’s pretty much it.
You’ll find guys for a lot of industries, markets, whatever, you’re going to see a lot of sites don’t have a lot of citations, actually. It’s not really that difficult. I’ll just buy a pretty big package to start, and once I get the citation links back in the report, then I always grab the URLs from the listing, the citation URLs, and I go submit them to an indexing service, because that helps. A lot of citations take forever to index, or they just … You won’t see them all the time in Majestic and AHS. Very similar to Web 2.0 links. You won’t see a lot of your citations links show up as back links in a lot of the back link analysis tools. However, you will see them in Google Search Console, if you go take a look at your domain there.
What is Google Dance?
All right, next one. Alex says, “Hey, guys. My SEO journey is off to a great start. Having doubts, as this is my first SEO campaign, but I’m pushing forward.” Well, congratulations, Alex. I would +1 that, but I’m not signed in in Firefox so I can’t. Somebody else +1 that. He says, “I’ve learned a lot since one of your previous hangouts and I have been able to open my mind as you guys suggested. I’ve gotten my first video ranked onto the first page of Google, but sometimes it’s up there and sometimes it’s not. Why is this happening?” That’s normal, Alex. It’s called “The Google Dance.” Especially with videos, you’ll find that over time your channel, as it gains a little bit of authority, that it won’t happen as much, but especially with newer videos or newer channels, you’re going to see that happening a lot. Don’t worry about it, don’t freak out.
With videos, you can go in and start editing and stuff. Most of the time, I say, “Just leave it alone.” If you syndicated a video to a network that you’ve set up or several networks, whatever, just leave it alone. I always wait about 14 days before I start doing additional SEO things to the video because 14 days gives it enough time for it to stop doing The Google Dance and to settle in where it should be settled in from all of the syndication points. In other words, all the … The video syndicating out across the network will have received all the benefit within 14 days that it’s going to get from that single syndication, if that makes sense. From that point, I’ll do additional work if needed, so that’s like build additional links to it, do additional embeds, send it out through a Syndwire blast or FCS Networker, or tweet the URL and get a bunch of retweets to it because those are social embeds. There’s a number of other things you can do. You can set up another network and do the like recipes, like what we’ve mentioned, to re-syndicate an old video. There’s multiple things you can do. Just give it about 14 days before you start doing anything else to it.
Should RSS Feeds Be Submitted/Spliced Once Or Would It Have Better Results If Submitted Repeatedly?
He says, “Also, I’ve been revisiting the RSS lessons from IFTTT Academy and I wanted to ask, should RSS feeds be submitted or spliced just once, or would I see better results if I keep submitting repeatedly? Is it work the time?” No, there’s a diminishing return, Alex. Just do it once and be done with it. You don’t need to keep creating a bunch of weird feeds. I’ve tested that. I used to spend a lot of time testing different methods with RSS and splicing and then re-splicing or burning new spliced feeds. In other words, if I created a feed, a spliced feed, and let’s say then I would go burn a feed-burner feed out of that same feed and in a Yahoo Pipes feed.
That would give me 3 separate unique feed URLs for that 1 feed. Then I could submit all 3 of those. Then I would go and burn another version of it. Burn a feed-burner feed out of the Yahoo Pipes feed, does that make sense? Then go and submit that, but really there is a diminishing return. You don’t really need to do that. Yahoo Pipes isn’t available anymore anyways, guys, so don’t freak out. You really don’t need to do that. Just create the feeds, splice in whatever you’re going to relay the content feeds, that sort of thing, and then go submit them to Aggregators. Use a tool, a submission tool, if you have one. If you don’t, you can always hire a Fiverr gig, that’s what I suggest that you do. Then submit it and just be done with it. Move on.
What Would You Recommend As Far As Quality Content Goes?
“Lastly, what would you recommend as far as quality content goes? I’ve been purchasing from Textbroker, but I’m worried the articles may respawn or may be reused after I publish them. Thanks.” Yeah, for money site content, I have some pretty good paid writers that I use. If it’s a lead gen site, then yeah, I’ll use a content form because I don’t care. It’s a lead gen site. For big money sites or client sites, then I have a U.S.-based and a U.K.-based writers that I use for money site content. I’ll pay somewhere around 40 dollars for a 1,000 word article. What is that, like 4 cents per word? Which actually is not a bad price, but that’s high-quality, top-tier content, which actually like I said is a really good price. If you’re doing lead gen sites and stuff, you can get away with using content forms. Don’t worry about it, if that’s what it is.
If you’re doing money site stuff, then for Pages you’re going to want to have original content. For posts, you can use curating content, which is what we always recommend because it’s more efficient. I’d rather use a curated article for a post than a shitty, 2 dollar content farm article, because that’s just crappy content for the most part. For Pages, like I said, if it’s lead gen stuff I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You can get away with … As a matter of fact, the Pete Lucas case study that we were just talking about at the beginning of the hangout was a test. If Hernan dropped that video, you can see the case study video that we’re talking about right here on the event page. You’ll see that Pete Lucas set up a test, and I’ve known this to be true because of ATM sites that I build with Lead Gadget that you can have pretty much the same content across hundreds, even thousands of pages and they’ll still rank for local. It still does. I don’t recommend it for money sites, I recommend that you have unique content for all the pages, but you can use Content Forms for that if you need to.
For money sites, absolutely … Big money sites or client sites, you’re going to want to use all original content that’s high quality, okay? For that, just go find your own writer. It’s good to have a relationship, to build a relationship with a specific writer because then they get to know what it is that you’re looking for and you get to know their style, so that you know you have consistent content … A source for consistent content. Does that make sense? It’s really worth going to Upwork, interviewing a few. In fact, we just put out an entire training course under Mastery PR called Outsource Kingpin that will teach you how to set up a hiring funnel and that kind of stuff if you wanted. You could always put a writer on staff or you could hire somebody on a per-project basis. You can actually interview some separate writers and find one that’s a good fit for you. That’s a good way to go at it. If you’re going to make a true business out of this, you should have a relationship with a writer that you can always turn to for content needs. That was it for him, right? Yeah, that was him.
Can You Recommend Any Free or Low Cost Apps Other Than Browseo That Allows Different IP Address For Multiple Browsers?
Greg says, “Using proxies in Windows is a pain in the ass,” or “arse,” as he said it, “Can you recommend any free or low cost apps other than Browseo that might allow you to use multiple browsers with its own IP address?” I don’t know of any others, other than Browseo.
Hernan: There are some VPNs out there that will allow you something that’s called “tunneling.” Basically, you assign one of those IPs to an application. Let’s say you have your native IP in Chrome and you’re having the VPN on Firefox. I think I have somewhere, I’ll need to look for it, I have a deal for one of the … I think it’s a limited VPN. It’s for lifetime or something like that. It’s super cheap and it will allow you to do something called “tunneling,” which is this: It will allow you to turn it on selectively depending on the app that you’re using. Just remember that those IPs, they are not dynamic like they are on proxies. They are being used by several people, but you can emulate another location from your … Without having to change your system IP, that’s my point.
Bradley: That’s why typically, if you’re going to do it manually, which is how I had done it before, I would use Firefox. Use Foxyproxy, so that you’re logged in as a proxy. Do all of your work under a specific account set in that Firefox browser because then you know that you’re under that IP. Then if you go to switch accounts, you just close everything down. You go through the cleanup process, the wiping, the cleaning process using Ccleaner and Proxytool which is that add-on bar that goes across the bottom of Foxyproxy, or excuse me, Firefox. All that training is in there. Just clean it all and then close your browser. Restart the browser and then setup the new IP, which is really simple with Foxyproxy, then just go work on your next account set.
That’s really the only way we have done it. Browsio came out, and I have Browsio on my own computer because I use it sometimes for some video project stuff, but other than that, my RBAs don’t even use Browsio. It’s a great product, and in fact they probably should. It’s just a matter of we had trained them on the method that we have inside of IFTTT SEO Academy, so that’s the actual process that they still use, too, because they’re typically only working on 1 account set at a time anyways. You can do it that way. Those of you that are doing a whole lot of building yourselves, which I don’t know why you would be, but if you are, then Browseo would be a big help. It’s worth the investment because it would save you a lot of time.
Should A Persona Be Logging In Into To Consistent Location To Avoid Google Hassle?
“Also, what about logging into persona networks? Google doesn’t hassle you so much when you log into network from consistent location. If Bob lives in Phoenix, then shouldn’t you be logging into Phoenix via VPN or have some better control of login IP address?” Greg, at some point maybe that will be the case. Right now, it has not been an issue. At some point I believe that that is going to cause a problem, but for now it doesn’t and I know that to be true. Here’s the deal, Greg. When we … If we create, and I’m saying “we” because we sell the networks to people all the time, but let’s say you created … I don’t know where you’re located, but let’s say that you’re in Florida and that you build a persona network based in Phoenix. Once the account has been created, you can login through your own IP so that it binds to your account and it doesn’t … It has not caused any problems to this point. Like I said, at some point in the future it may, but it’s been 4 years that I’ve been doing this and I haven’t had any issues with it yet.
The other thing is, you can also just log … You could also make yourself through … Log into the Phoenix person account through the proxy that you were using to create the account, and then assign your main profile, the Greg Driburg profile, as a manager. Then, whenever you’re logging into that account from now on, you’re doing it from your own computer from your own profile. It doesn’t matter where you’re located because you’re a manager, if that’s an issue that you’re worried about. To be honest with you guys, I don’t worry about it. When I have networks delivered to me from my builders, I just log in as soon as I get them back from my own IP, and that’s it. I set them up. I’m just letting you guys know to be honest.
I know there’s some real … People that are real nervous about that, tinfoil hat, the whole 9 yards, and I’m just going to tell you the truth. I don’t really worry about it, because it hasn’t seemed to have any negative effect at this point so far. If you want to get … If you’re worried about it, just do that. Log … Once you have created the accounts via the proxy, just assign yourself as a manager because then you can log in and do whatever. Guys, you only need to do that for the Google account. Everything else you’re pretty much fine anyways. That’s why we don’t teach to setup fake Facebook profiles, because you will IP lock Facebook very quickly. That’s why we don’t do that.
Can A Google My Business Page Rank For 2 Different Languages?
Adam Yong says, “Hey, guys. Questions about ranking local map: Can we rank 1 Google My Business page for 2 different languages?” That’s a good question. I don’t know, Adam. Hernan, Marco?
Marco: I saw this earlier before we came on and it’s interesting but it’s not anything that I’ve tested yet.
Hernan: 1 Google My Business for 2 different languages, I don’t think so, Adam. You could treat the 2 different languages, because I like to treat languages as sub-domains. You can treat the 2 different languages as 2 different, separate websites, you know what I mean?
Bradley: Yeah, but if it’s the same phone number and the same address though, couldn’t that cause NAP issues?
Hernan: Yeah, that’s something that we will need to check out because I like to treat different languages as different entities, because that’s the deal. You’re dealing with an entire different set of SEO rules. I do a lot of Spanish-English stuff and that’s the deal. Google doesn’t even work as well in Spanish or any other language for that matter. On the Google My Business side of things, we will have to double check actually.
Marco: Now that you mention entity, from an entity standpoint, you’d be creating ambiguation if you use the NAP on … The same NAP on both. From that standpoint, I would say no. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to be ambiguous when it comes to the business. You want to make sure that your entity is what it is and that Google knows exactly what that verified entity is, especially with regards to the semantic web. That’s a good point, you have to be careful with that entity … With the entity and whatever signals you’re sending to Google.
Bradley: I would worry about that, too, because of NAP issues. We just had a conversation about this in one of the groups. Somebody was asking about having 2 businesses with different names. They were in the same location, so they had the same name and the same phone number. I said, “That’s probably not a good idea.” I’ve experienced stuff like that, guys. It’s a real pain in the ass. If you have 2 businesses in the same location and they have a unique name, they share the same address but they have unique phone numbers and different web addresses, that’s usually okay. It’s usually if you start to share 2 out of 3 data points from NAP, that’s when it starts to cause problems. Usually, if there’s only 1 shared data point across multiple listings, then it doesn’t create NAP issues. That’s just typically how it works out.
I would recommend against that, Adam. Trying to do that, anyways. Do something where if you were to change the name, use a sub-domain and have a second forwarding phone number. You could do that. You could get away with that. Like Hernan said, have a sub-domain with 1 of the languages versions of it and then just change the name, which it might be changed just because it’s in a different language, I don’t know, but then you could have the same physical address. Then for the phone number, just get a different virtual phone number and have that forward to the same destination. If all calls are out to the same place anyways it wouldn’t matter, but at least you’d have a unique phone number then.
Hernan: I think it’s going to be more related to the queries that trigger that listing. Probably the name is going to be pretty much the same, but the keywords are going to be different.
Bradley: Yeah, that’s true.
Hernan: The queries are going to be different, so that could work. The fact that you get another phone number, maybe another PO box, I don’t know. We’ll need to test at the end of today.
Will There Be A Problem Syndicating Full Text Content With Raw URLs To The Homepage?
Bradley: William says, “Does the RSS trigger feed still work for IFTTT or would having a Twitter trigger be better?” Yeah, it still works, William. It absolutely still works. “Meaning, does it cause a problem syndicating full text content with raw URLs to the home page, etc?” No, it doesn’t cause a problem if you do it the way … If you’re syndicating your content to branded properties, you’re just sharing your content to your other branded properties, so no. It doesn’t cause any issues. It’s when you start stacking persona-based networks on a website for blog syndication that that can cause problems. You don’t want to do that. When you’re syndicating a branded properties, you’re sharing your content across your social media properties. That’s what the big brands do, it’s pretty much encourage. That’s what we do, we just automate the process.
Hernan: It’s a good question, actually, because I’ve seen that probably some vendors aren’t doing, like Twitter, that they base their syndication on Twitter, so you will tweet automatically and then you will trigger from Twitter which is an intelligent approach. Now, my question would be, why wouldn’t you do both? For example, on the Semantic Mastery plugin, the RSS plugin, the semantic RSS control, the pro version, which is available for Mastermind members, we have a separate feed for Twitter with hashtags and the whole 9 yards. I think that could trigger another syndication or something like that. What do you think, Marco?
Marco: Well, we also created Twitter SEO Academy from our RYS Academy which deals right into this, where you create a separate IFTTT network to syndicate the tweets and to bring back … To make your Twitter, whatever your Twitter is, to give it trust authority and to give you that much more standing inside of Twitter. We do have that.
Bradley: That’s a good point.
Marco: It is a good idea. I wouldn’t do it instead of IFTTT, I would do it as an add-on.
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:30:10] As an addition to, not instead of, do it in addition to. That’s what I was going to say. That’s actually a good point because if you syndicate your content to your branded properties, full text feed, RSS trigger, that’s fine. That’s what we’ve been doing and it works great. I think it’s the Google Tickle. We’re giving several signals, we’re triggering the good part of Google, but at the same time you can do that with the Twitter. Set up a separate syndication network around your Twitter, or it’s triggered by Twitter. Get additional juice, you could set up persona based networks that are triggered by Twitter. I don’t see why that would be an issue. In fact, I haven’t actually explored that myself, but I don’t see why that would cause an issue, because like you said, it would be basically building links back to the tweet, which would have a URL back to the post that you were syndicating from your money site. You’d be basically juicing just the post URLs through Twitter, which isn’t a bad idea. That’s a pretty good way to do it. Like Marco just said, I wouldn’t do it instead of, I would do it as an addition to.
Would A Link Just To The Blog Post Via Twitter Do Better Ranking Wise?
One last question, “Is there a rule such as if you should have x-pieces of original content on your site versus every 1 post that you syndicate? Thank you.” I don’t think so. I syndicate everything, because it only makes sense. If I produce content on a money site, I want all of the social media properties around the money site to link back to that post, to basically show that post. Why would I have any posts on my site that aren’t being shared? Remember, we’re doing it for SEO, but we’re also doing it for traffic, guys. By sharing your content on social media networks where there’s potentially traffic, you could get traffic back to your site, which is essentially what you want to do. It’s not just about the SEO. I think you should be sharing all of your content to your branded properties, there’s no doubt.
Marco: Syndication also creates trust and social signals, which is part of the Google Tickle.
What Category In My Schema/JSON Markup To Use For A Mosquito Control/Pest Control Company?
Bradley: Brian says, “What category in my scheme adjacent markup would I use for mosquito pest control company?” Brian, there’s a … Guys, all of you bookmark this. I’m going to grab the URL and I’m going to drop it on the event page up at the top. This is, and I’ll open it up here first so you guys can see it, this is a Google Doc that has … It’s updated in real time, I don’t know who maintains it. These are the scheme a list categories for local businesses. It’s a big list. Scroll down and look, I looked earlier for you because I saw this question earlier, and there is no mosquito control in there, at least I’m pretty sure there wasn’t. I did look. Let’s see, no, but there is pest control. Pest control is underneath the overall, or the general … Right here, pest control service. Line 272. I’m going to drop this link, guys, just bear with me. Pest control service doesn’t have it’s own category. It’s schema.org/ProfessionalService. The first letter of those 2 words are capitalized. That’s what I would use, is Professional Service. This is updated often.
Again, I don’t know who maintains it, but this is what I’ve been using for about 2 years now. That’s right, I can’t comment on that because I’m not logged in. Adam, I’m going to drop this in slack.
Marco: I also dropped in a URL for him, a little bit of both. You can just go and set up the schema on J-SON LD Schema Generator. The recommendations that I gave were either professional service or general contractor just for that reason. There is nothing for pest control or anything like that. You should drop in that URL also for everyone.
Bradley: Could somebody post that on the page if it hasn’t been done already? I can’t post on this.
Adam: I can do it. It’s on there.
Bradley: Okay. All right, so try that. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, that’s it. Professional service is really the sub-category that it should fall under for now. Again, guys, they’re updating this, and so it’s interesting. You’ll see over time that some of these that are more general or ambiguous, like a broader … Professional service covers a lot. You’ll see that as the schema.org database gets updated, that they’ll come in and edit these. They’ll have more specific, like pet store, for example.
What Are Your Thoughts On Social Signals And Social Profiles As A Social Media Tactic To Send Trust Signals To Google And IFTTT For Automating?
Richard says, “Let’s see if you can clear up some confusion. Last week, I mentioned how there was a Facebook thread that said IFTTT SEO is a waste of time. You are all aware of that thread since I read your responses and think they were spot on. Anyway, my confusion this week is because the person who runs the Facebook group did a post today.”
Adam: Uh-oh.
Bradley: This is funny. Marco pointed this out earlier. I didn’t know we had somebody comment on this. “I’m trying to absorb as much knowledge as I can about SEO so I decided to read the blog. To my surprise, the blog post recommends social signals and social profiles as a social media tactic to send trust signals to Google and IFTTT for automating it, but isn’t that IFTTT SEO, or am I missing something?” No, you’re not missing anything, Brian. Or Richard, excuse me. That’s exactly what it is. [crosstalk 00:35:22] That’s exactly what it is. “Sorry for being such a noob, but I have to admit, I heard Marco repeatedly refer to this as the Google Tickle, and here is “blank,” I won’t mention his name, saying the same thing, but he said last week that it was a waste of time.”
Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I know exactly what you’re … That’s what I’m saying, Marco pointed that earlier today. I think it was more about stirring up controversy than it was anything. Can you guys agree on that, or what?
Hernan: Yeah, I think at some point, Richard, you will see there’s a bunch of articles that are click bait. IFTTT is definitely a hot topic. It’s being used for a ton of things. If you are a blogger and you want to get some of that piece of that pie, you will add to that controversy or to kind of be in the genre of IFTTT, so I think it is. It makes sense. We ended up sharing the Facebook thread because we wanted everyone to go ahead and comment, not on our side, but with their own …
Bradley: Have a real debate about it.
Hernan: Right, yeah, which is a great thing, by the way. That’s exactly what IFTTT SEO [inaudible 00:36:37] traffic, social signals, and of course back links and increasing ranking.
Bradley: Here’s the thing, guys. I truly believe that that post was more about stirring up controversy than anything, was to get traffic to the Facebook page. I know you’re … Charles Floate, right? The God of SEO. He’s smart, man. He’s a crafty guy. I truly believe that that first post was to stir up controversy because I’m quite sure that he does use IFTTT at least at some level for automating social signals and everything else. I think he was smart in stirring up controversy, and it did get a nice debate going that we all contributed to. We stated our cases clearly, and I stand behind all my statements just as I’m sure the rest of my team does as well.
“Can you talk about this a bit more?” Yeah, we just did. I truly believe that he did that intentionally. “Sorry for such a long post, but you have to admit that SEO information that’s being shared is confusing and even contradictory.” Absolutely, Richard. There is a ton of contradictory statements out there, and I always say that you have to consider the source of the information and go look at it and see what qualifies them to give advice. I’m not saying our training is the only thing that works. There’s no doubt, there’s a million ways to skin a cat, guys. We share what works for us, that has worked for us for years, and we are always trying to stay on the cutting edge of SEO as well. That’s what we share, but ours certainly isn’t the only way, either.
Marco: As I said last week, what we have is the people who have been successful with our training, who can stand up and say, “Yes, it does work.” Or, come in and say, “Look, your stuff doesn’t work.” Then we can get into, “Well, why didn’t it work? Did you do everything according to the training?” We’ve had people come in and say, “Well, this doesn’t work,” but they only tried a couple of posts for an IFTTT network and trying to take down something like a message, DUI attorney plus city. You can’t do that. There’s no way. No, it’s not going to work for that, but if you do it on a regular basis and over time you develop the trust and the authority, and you send the right signals to the algorithm, it’s going to take notice. It might take 3-6 months, unless you use our RYS Academy, of course.
Over time, I would put this up against anybody and say, “Look, I challenge you to go in and do the training the way that you’re supposed to and then tell us, ‘No, it doesn’t work.'” Show it. Show it with your case studies. If you don’t test, if you just come in and give your opinion, it’s useless. You’re not giving us anything that we can go on. There’s no empirical information that we can base anything on. Go in, test it, and if it doesn’t work, you’re welcome to come in and say, “You guys suck,” and I’ll say, “Yeah.” I’ll give you a +1, but unless you can do that, don’t say shit, man.
Bradley: Hernan, were you going to finish commenting on that or are we good?
Hernan: No, I think we’re good. Marco made a great point with us pushing the test, test, test side of things. We always say that because we have people from all over the world, we have people on the most diverse niches, so it’s all matter of testing. We are out there in the trenches, working for clients, working for our own projects, and we’re testing. That’s why we’re sharing stuff. I know that the guys commenting on those kind of posts are, too. It’s just a matter of who tests and what are the results. That’s we are always preaching. Do not believe us, just go out there and test it. Put it to work.
Do Virtual Offices Or Mailboxes Still Work For Lead Gen Sites?
Bradley: Jay says, “Just wondering if virtual offices or mailboxes still work for lead gen sites for you?” Yes, Jay. In fact, I just picked up 2 more mailboxes on Tuesday of this week, or Monday. What’s today? Wednesday. Today’s hump day, so it was Monday. I picked up 2 mailboxes on Monday for 2 more. I’m working on the … Not the next product we’re launching, but the one after that. I’m already working on that, developing that. That’s for local … It’s called Local Kingpin, and we’re going to be … I’m building out some local funnels with that, and so I needed 2 more locations, so I picked up 2 more on Monday. It absolutely still works. It’s all I’ve been doing for the last, I don’t know, 3 years, and in fact I use the post office, US post office, and I get a PO box and use the “street address” option. Works like a freaking charm.
In fact, one of the mailboxes that I got on Monday was only 48 dollars for the entire year. 48 bucks, man, that’s awesome. The other one was 86 dollars for the year. I got 2 new locations for, on average, 65 dollars per location per year. That’s dirt-cheap, guys, and it works like a charm. He says, “I’m assuming renting a mailbox with the actual, physical address,” and then he gives an example, “Is better than just a regular mailbox?” I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’m not sure what you mean. Whenever you rent a virtual mailbox, you get a street address of the building that it’s in, and then you get the box number. I’m not sure what you mean. “Can you share what you’re doing for that or can you give me some advice?” Yeah, I just did share. I’m using the USPS …
The United States Postal Service, you have to fill out a separate form, and in fact, to be honest with you, you really don’t have to fill out the form. You’re supposed to, but on one of the more recent ones, I got another mailbox about a month ago, and the guy didn’t have any of the forms available, so he said, “Don’t worry about it, just format your address using the street address of the post office and the # sign and the number of the mailbox.” They tell you not to use “suite” or “box number” or anything like that. You just use the # sign, and that’s it. They’re real particular about that, I’m not sure why, but they still delivered the Google verification post card to the correct mailbox, so it didn’t matter.
Let’s see, okay, 5 minute warning, I see. He says, “I have a lead gen site that’s stuck on page 2 that I do not have any citations for because of the business address, looking for a solution.” Yeah, go get an address, guys. The way I look at it, guys, is organic listing for local is almost worthless in my opinion now. I know that’s probably going to piss some of you guys off, but the problem is, if you go look at a web browser, if you’re on a desktop or a laptop and you do a local search now, guys, there’s 4 Adwords ads above the 3pac, and then there’s the 3pac. You’ve got to scroll below the fold before you even see an organic listing, and you’ve got to go past 7 other listings to get to the organic listings. Because of that, I am starting to do a hell of a lot more paid traffic stuff, Adwords stuff, and I focus on Maps for SEO, for local. I really don’t care about organic anymore for local. For local, just make that real clear, guys. I focus on Maps for local and I’m starting to do Adwords.
In fact, the Local Kingpin training that I’m developing right now is specifically about how to setup funnels and generate traffic using paid traffic, so that you don’t have to worry about the SEO. That will be an additional option, if you want. I’m just saying, guys, seriously, organic SEO for … In my opinion, based on my lead gen business, all of those that I had ranked organically but didn’t have Maps listings for, those phone calls have seriously declined over the last couple of months for my organic lead gen businesses only. They’re now so far below the paid ads and the Maps listings that my phone calls dried up. However, all my Maps listings, the ones that I have Maps listing for that are ranked in the 3 packs, there’s been no change in the amount of call volume. My organic listing call volume has seriously declined over the last several months because of the new format of the search engine results pages.
I’m just saying, guys, I think as SEOs, we have to evolve with the times. I never did Adwords before in my life and I just recently started doing it. I’m learning a lot about it right now. I think it’s something that should be included in an SEO campaign now. I truly believe that. I think that it should be a combination of organic SEO, paid traffic from multiple sources, not just Adwords but Facebook, Bing, Youtube, Adwords for Youtube. I think there’s a lot of various options for traffic generation. You shouldn’t put all your eggs in just the SEO basket, if that makes sense. Guys, what happens if Google changes their algorithm tomorrow and all your work drops because you’ve got, whatever, I mean, you’re screwed. At least if you’ve got Adwords campaigns, you’ve still got traffic coming to your site, or generating traffic to client sites, or lead gen sites, whatever. We’re going to be doing more training in the future about Adwords. That’s kind of what I’m working on now.
Marco: Just to finish that and just to show you the power of that map and how much Google trusts it, I actually had a website de-indexed by Google. It was a verified entity, meaning that it had a verified Google My Business list with the phone number, with the link to the website, and everything was still up, all of the links and everything, and the phone number. It continued getting calls even though the website was de-indexed. It was getting visits from the Map listing because there’s a link to the website. Even though the website was de-indexed, it didn’t matter because the calls didn’t change that much. I mean, what is it? It’s about 80-20, right? 80, 90 percent of the calls come through the Map listing. If that happens to you, you don’t even have to worry about your website being de-indexed because Google is still going to trust you enough to display all of your information on the Maps and rank it and just keep it. I just though I’d throw that out there.
Bradley: You’re right, Marco, because it’s not the website that ranks the Maps, it’s the Maps listing.
Marco: Correct.
Bradley: So that’s a good point. That’s why honestly guys I don’t care about organic rankings for my lead gen sites anymore. I just focus on Maps and now Adwords, too. I’m doing that, too. All right, we’re almost out of time, we’re going to answer a couple more real quick.
Can You Give Me Link To Semantic Mastery’s Curation Course And Webinar?
Anty says, “Bradley, can you give me a link to your curation course?” Did you already drop that, Adam? I’m assuming you did.
Adam: Yeah. Lulian, whoever is right above there helped him out.
Bradley: I think he was talking about curation mastering and probably the one we did with Scott Scanlon.
Adam: Yeah, he’s good to go, though. We answered his questions.
Curation Mastery webinar – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHCkXQrnYLE
Curation Mastery Course – https://curation.semanticmastery.com/main
How To Best Handle Over-Optimized Blog Posts?
Bradley: Okay. All right, let’s see. Cody. All right, this will be the last question. We’re going to answer Cody’s question. “Hi, guys. I have a client that I recently started working with. We created him a better a new, better-optimized website according to Best Practices for Marketing in SEO. One issue we are having is that he has a lot of old blog posts that were way over-optimized. My question is how best to handle these blog posts. They are great subject matter, but they are keyword-stuffed and just terrible in terms of Best Practices for SEO. We were considering taking them down, revamping them, and then re-posting them in a drip. Obviously, our concern is that this would create 404s, so do we redirect them to the home page or would the 404s be less of an issue than a bunch of stuffed content?“
No, because … What I would do, is I would do a full analysis of the old blog posts, like the back linked analysis, to see which posts had links built to them already. What you’ll probably find is a lot of the posts don’t have any links, or that the ones that might have a few links, but they’re really insignificant links, anyways, that really aren’t benefiting the site any. You would just have to use Majestic or AHS or whatever and do a back link analysis and go sort by pages or posts and start looking at the back links. You’ll probably see a lot of them don’t even have posts, or excuse me, back links pointing to them anyways. For those, you don’t need to worry about 404s or any of that. If you do have back link … The ones that don’t have any links pointing to them, I’m saying. The one’s that do have back links pointing to them, if they were decent back links, then yeah, you’d want to setup a 301 redirect to either link to the new version of the post, the one that has been less optimized, it’s been edited and made better, or you could redirect it to the home page or something like that.
What I would suggest doing is redirecting to potentially a sub-domain on the site or something. The posts that have URLs pointing to them, back links pointing to them, that might not be the highest quality back links, you could still benefit a little bit from that juice. Although, I would probably just go ahead and remove them or redirect that old post URL to something like a sub-domain to where you can benefit a bit from the domain authority from those back links, but it wouldn’t be pointing directly to your money site. Does that make sense? That’s what I would do. Then I would create … I would absolutely redo the content, though, and have it dripped out as new posts. The only old posts that you have to worry about redirects are those that had back links pointing to them. The ones that had decent back links pointing to them would make sense to redirect them to the new version of the post. All of the other ones with kind of spam-y links, which you’ll find a lot of that, probably, is go ahead and redirect those.
You can either do a, what is it, a 408 error code? Or a 408 code is when you say, “No longer exists.” Or you could do a 301 redirect and redirect them to a sub-domain on that root domain … Of that domain, which could push the domain authority still to the domain, but it wouldn’t be pointing directly at your money site. You might actually see a … When I remove spam-y links, sometimes I’ll see an actual ranking boost.
Marco: If I can just jump in for a second, if he has just a couple of great posts, they’re ranked, they’re getting traffic, they have great links, and whatever, and he’s planning on deoptimizing, as long as the slug isn’t optimized, then he can just re-post it. Clean it up, and re-post it with the same slug and he’ll eliminate all of the problems of whether you’re 301, you’re 404, or whatever. Just ones that are worth keeping. With that same slug. That’s just another suggestion.
Bradley: That’s not over-optimized.
Marco: Correct.
Bradley: Right, that makes sense.
Hernan: That’s what I’ve done with some clients, we have actually taken, well, not taken down, just revamped the content or de-optimized the content. Once you make a new blog post from your IFTTT network, for example, and point links back to that page that has been worked on or de-optimized, you can re-crawl it or send it to be re-crawled on Google. You can reap the benefits because you’re lowering the queue re-staffing and the over-optimization. It’s just a matter of editing the article or the page.
Bradley: All right, well that was it. That about does it. Everybody, thank you for being here. We do have Masterclass today, so we’re going to start that in about 8 minutes. It’s going to be mainly Q and A today. Next week we’re going to do a webinar after Humpday Hangouts. It will be public, but about how to use Open Broadcaster Software, OBS, for live streaming.
Hernan: Oh, nice.
Bradley: I’m sorry?
Hernan: I said, “Oh, nice.”
Bradley: Yeah, so we’re going to do an hour-long presentation, guys. It’s free, it’s pure training. We’re going to do that after the Humpday Hangouts next week. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you guys next week.
Adam: Adios.
Hernan: Bye-bye.
Marco: Bye, everyone.
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