Click on the video above to watch Episode 149 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: All right. In the words of a great man I know, “Boom.” Welcome to Humpday Hangouts. It is episode 149. Today is the 13th of September, 2017, and we've got the whole crew here so going to go through and say hello real quick to everybody and then we will get started. We're all a little distracted. You can see Bradley peering into, oh god he's showing it.
Bradley: Does it show? It's not showing is it?
Adam: It was for a minute when you went full screen it did.
Bradley: Hold on. I've got to show the full screen then, because it's awesome.
Adam: That is awful.
Bradley: Can you see it now?
Adam: Oh yeah.
Bradley: Hump day. Sorry.
Adam: No, that's okay. I'm a big fan of gifs so this is working out for me, but I'm sure everybody else would like to move on to actual Humpday Hangout. I'll just go down the line on my screen and we'll start with Chris. How's it going man?
Chris: Good. Excited to fly out here in a week.
Adam: Outstanding. Yeah, that's right. I'm getting married in two weeks in Portland, and then we're doing a meet up and we're going to be doing a live meetup too. Hopefully you've seen the emails, but we're going to be doing that. If you're in the area, if you can drive, make it down there, please get signed up. I'll pop the link on the page and come join us. All right, Hernan. How's it going? Are you still there?
Hernan: Hey guys, sorry. Shitty connection. Yeah I have a really shitty connection but I didn't want to miss Humpday. Hangout.
Adam: Nice. Well, rain, shine, or hurricane, Hernan's always here. Thanks man.
Hernan: Yeah.
Adam: Hey, whatever gets the job done. Marco, how's it going?
Marco: Man, I'm in the [inaudible 00:01:40] detox zone man.
Adam: Yeah. What from?
Marco: RYSR man. RYS Reloaded. That's your [inaudible 00:01:51] detox zone. I can't say the F word right now, but it's Google man.
Adam: Fair enough. Yeah. Things have been going well with RYS Reloaded. The group is going well and the Facebook private community we've got. Obviously I'll put the link up there. If you want to find out a little bit more, you can do that. I don't have it in front of me so shame on me. I'll go find it though, but we had the webinar from launch so if you haven't seen it, check it out. See if it's the right thing for you. The right answer is yes, but I mean, we'll let you make that choice. Last but not least, Bradley, how's it going?
Bradley: Hey guys, happy to be here. We've approaching our three year anniversary. I was thinking about this today Adam. I was like, Damn we should have planned a meetup around that time for our third year anniversary. Didn't we celebrate the second year anniversary when we were down there or was it prior to Panama?
Adam: I think it was just prior. I'm not sure how well it would have gone over if I had to move my wedding for a Humpday Hangout.
Bradley: Priorities man.
Adam: Cindy might kill you.
Bradley: No, I just thought about it. Maybe next year because we keep having our meetups around that same time. We should probably try to focus on scheduling it next year for our four year anniversary, you know what I mean?
Adam: Awesome. Yeah, we've got some choices. Episode 200 or the actual 4 year. We can do something. That'd be awesome. Sweet. Everybody, I want to tell you too, if you're new to Semantic Mastery, if you're seeing this and you're wondering who these weirdos are, first of all you should check out the SEO blueprint battle plan. I'm going to pop the link up there. We've got a coupon code so you can save $75. If you haven't yet, go over to Serp Space, create your free account. There are free tolls over there you can use, as well as the done for you services. We're working on upgrading that. It got a massive front end overhaul. We're working on the back end with education and making things a lot smoother. Then, again if you are new, check out support.semanticmastery.com. When we get frequently asked questions, we'll answer, but we'll also point you in that direction and it's a great place to start before asking questions, if you can see if something has been answered, especially if it has to do with syndication networks. A lot of things around specialized syndication networks, you'll find a ton of info there.
Beyond that you guys, did we have anything else we needed to talk about?
Bradley: Not on my end that I know of.
Chris: I think we're good.
Adam: Good to go. All right. Let's do it.
Bradley: Well, okay so I lied. I'll take one more second. I'm just going to share a link with you guys. I started the Mindset series on Monday. Well, I started it on Monday, but after seven hours of working on it, I decided to delete it all and do it again because I wasn't happy with it. Yesterday, I rerecorded to start this Mindset Monday series that was originally intended just for the mastermind, but I'm debating whether or not just to make it public period. I think a lot of people could benefit from it, and I think that I would rather it benefit more than less, only because I think that a lot of the training programs for internet marketing and online, make money online type programs, one of the things that is lacking is the mindset and creating belief that you can actually achieve certain goals and build a business and that kind of stuff.
Anyways, I'm going to share the first playlist URL for the series that I recorded yesterday, and just published it this morning. There are several videos. It's like an hour and a half long through each one of the videos. You don't have to watch it. It's not required reading or watching. It's just something that I wanted to share in case it can help or inspire anybody. Then I'm going to be doing something similar to that every single week for the next several months. I don't see an end in sight, currently anyways. I'm going to share that on the event page guys. Feel free to watch it. Comment on them if you want. If you decide to leave negative comments, well then F you. Other than that, seriously, I'm really speaking from the heart with this so I hope that some people get something out of it. Just let me know what you think. Give me some feedback. With that said, I'm going to drop this on the page and then we're going to get started. Okay.
By the way Wayne, I love that SEO meme. That's awesome. It's really great. This is Mindset Mondays Playlist. Check it out when you have some time. Put it on 1.25 speed or something like that. You'll get through it a lot faster. Like I said guys, I welcome feedback. Let me know what you think because it's something that I'm going to continue doing and if I can improve it in any way I'd certainly like to know how.
What's The Difference Between A Syndication Network And An RYS Stack?
All right, looks like Adam had the first question from Serp Space. “Can you tell you what's the difference between a syndication network and an RYS stack? Syndication network [inaudible 00:07:28] looks like a great way to push new content out. Not sure what an RYS stack is or how it works in conjunction with syndication networks. Can you explain?” Yeah. Syndication networks are really a branding tool and an entity validation method as well. There's kind of a new term that's been going around for probably a year, year and a half. Two years. Maybe more. It's kind of a newer term. It's called content amplification.
Content amplification went from SEO was traditionally just what you did, so you'd do create back link building campaigns by publishing content on other sites. Then there was guest publishing. Then it became guest posting. The buzz word became content marketing, and so content marketing is where you just continually pump out content, and that includes building back links back to your site. That's typically why you do the content marketing, is to educate the consumer and also educate your audience, as well as to build linking opportunities, using that content as linking opportunities. Well, then that became somewhat saturated, so content amplification came out. That's basically where you can publish content and then have it picked up and syndicated and shared via social media, web 2.0 sites, picked up and published on other people's sites as republished guest posts, that kind of stuff. That's content amplification.
Syndication networks is a way to automate that to a branded network of syndication properties. By branded, I mean you would theme all of the properties within a network around your brand, which can be a company, it can be a website, it can be a person. It can be a personal brand. It doesn't matter what your brand is. The point is to create a consistent brand across as many different third party properties as possible that you can automate syndicating your own content marketing too. You publish your own content. The syndication networks take care of automatically pushing the content and republishing them to those different websites. Web 2 sites. Social media sites and it kind of builds.
There's an SEO component that's automatic, which is the building of back links and social signals and bookmarks an such. That's really what the syndication networks are. It should be the foundation that you begin with any sort of website or digital asset in my opinion, and it has been that way for me since about 2012. That's basically the foundation of what we teach is built upon the syndication network as really the bedrock of everything else that we do. Now, drive stacks, I'm going to let Marco talk about that here in a minute, but the RYS drive stacks are using Googles own properties to basically boost your own digital assets or anything that you want. They don't have to be your own. It can be third party sites, but I would recommend that you always are pushing authority into your own properties.
It's great because it works really well with syndication networks as a companion strategy. It's also a great standalone strategy, but it's using Google's own properties and it's own narcicisstic in your favor. Drive stacks are very, very powerful and more powerful now than they were two years ago when we first released that product. Marco, can you shed some more light on that?
Marco: Sure. We accomplished two things with Drive Stacks. First of all, we hit ART, or what we call ART. We talked about this before. We want to have activity on the link. We want to make sure that it's relevant, and we want to boost trust in authority for ourselves. What we're doing is we're borrowing that from Google by publishing everything that Google makes available to us. That's one. The second part that we accomplished through a drive stack is pushing the brand, the entity. I call it your thing. It's the web of things. Right? It's things, not strings. Google is looking for entities. The better that your brand is amounted on the internet as a thing, rather than just something that's standing alone in digital space and doing nothing. The more that you push this entity at Google and throw it in Google's face and say, here I am. This is who I am. And you just do it over, and over, and over until Google says, “Okay. We get it. We need to rank you.”, and they do.
One, it amplifies, the IFTTT as you said amplifies the content and it accomplishes some entity validation. Through drive stacks we through everything at Google all at once. We just shove stuff, I can say shit, we shove shit down Googles throat and we make them like it.
Bradley: There you go. Now, I like that you said, shove shit down Google's throat. It's funny because that's what we said, use Googles own narcissism against itself, which is great. It's very, very powerful. Definitely check out both of them. Again, I think syndication network should be basically required. I've been doing a lot of testing recently with local stuff with press releases without even building syndication networks and I'm having some success with that, which is very interesting because it's just been part of my overall strategy for five years now, going on six years. It's really interesting. If able to achieve results without them, and I know from almost six years of practice and experience of using them and being able to produce results, then combining those two strategies and the RYS drive stacks as well, it's like you've got a one, two, three punch combo there that is just incredibly powerful. We're going to be doing some more training on that in the weeks or months and we'll talk about it then.
Will A Site Lose Backlinks When Switching To HTTPS?
Okay. Thanks Marco. “Hey Semantic Crew, I want to thank you for your dedication to success. The battle plan is great. Helped me as it gives me the exact direction to go and steps to take.” Thanks Jenny, I appreciate that. He says, “I am planning to switch all my money sites to https. Will my site lose back links that were previously built?” No. No, they won't. “Should I do some redirecting on domain level or C Panel or will it auto 301 redirect to https?” Typically, there will be some sort of an HT access directive that will … Now, all right. There's plug-ins like Simple HTTPS is one of them that will basically create a record in your HT access file. It will add a directive to your HT access file that automates the redirection of HTTP to HTTPS.
It can be handled via plugin. That's typically how it's done. Now, I've run into some crazy weird issues when switching an existing site over to HTTPS that required more effort than I was willing to put into it to fix it. I've just gone to UpWork and hired somebody to go in and correct the issues, and so now it's just my go to strategy. If I'm switching a site over from regular to HTTPS, I just go to UpWork and hire somebody from UpWork to handle it for me, or if you've got a good host, that's the key, if you've got a good host a lot of the times the host will take care of it for you. All you've got to do is contact them and say, “Look, I'm doing a switchover today.” Whoever their host is, if they're decent, you just tell them, “Look I'm buying an SSL certificate. I would like to transfer a WordPress site or whatever site all the way over to HTTPS. If I run into any issues would you help me to correct them?” A good host will take care of it. Some of the more cheaper, shared hosting services won't.
Yeah, as far as the HTTPS things, the auto redirects, basically you should just try on your own with the plugin. If it's an existing site with a ton of content, I would have a backup plan ready, where I would just go ahead and hire somebody to do it or ask a host to do it for you, if they're willing to, so that you don't run into any down time while the errors are being corrected or you'll minimize that. If you try to do it on your own first, then I recommend you do it on a site that is relatively new or has very few pages and/or content posts because otherwise it could end up being a bit of a mess for you to clean up after the fact, after you've made the switch. It's just a matter of how big is the project, how critical is it? If downtime is going to cause significant loss of income or revenue, then I would recommend that you line up some professional help in the beginning.
It's not very expensive guys. You can get somebody from the Philippines for example to do HTTPS or SSL installation and updating the website for any errors or CSS functions, and sometimes scripts and stuff will go awry. All that stuff can be fixed relatively cheap. I pay somebody $40 or $50 to have the site gone through with a fine toothed comb and make sure everything is correct. It sounds relatively inexpensive. If I had to do it, it would take me several hours and my time is worth more than that in my opinion. I'm willing to pay that to have somebody else do it for me if that makes sense. Anybody have any comments on that?
Marco: Yeah. It's really simple. If you move everything over to HTTPS, and you copy the site, I mean you clone the site and you move it over to HTTPS, and you don't change the URL structure, all that's changing is it's going from HTTP to HTTPS, and you can just do a site wide 301. Where people run into problems is when they go to HTTPS and they start changing URLS and they start changing CSS and they start changing the basic framework of the website. 301 was designed to let Google know that the content from this place, whether it's a page or an entire site, has moved to another URL, which HTTPS is another URL because of the S. At any rate, if you're doing that, if you're cloning a website, same theme, same everything, you're not changing anything and you're going to HTTPS, then you do a site wide 301 and you're not going to have any issues. You shouldn't run into any 404s although you should still have a plugin or anything else that will let you know if there are any issues which can be easily solved.
Bradley: You'll see the site dance, but you won't lose any back links is what I'm saying.
Marco: No. No, because the URL structure has remained the same and the 301 is site wide, the URLs and the destination are the same so it's pushing the links from the HTTP to the HTTPS the same way, so no. You won't lose any links.
Is It Better To Use Subdomains Or Folders In The Main Domain Of A WP Site?
Bradley: Yeah. Kingslayer is up. “Hello guys, are WP multi sites better using subdomains or folders or main domains? It depends.” First of all, I've never used WP multi sites. If that's what I'm thinking, which isn't that a way to control multiple sites from one dashboard. Somebody shed some late on that.
Marco: Yeah, and it's also a way to control different language websites.
Bradley: Okay. I've never used it. I can't speak on WP multi sites. I just know that throughout my career, I've heard a lot of stuff negative about them so I've just never even attempted because I was like, why would I want to start building WP multi-sites when I've heard about issues that arise because of it? As far as building multiple sites, I just do separate WP installations on subdomains of a root domain. We talk about this a lot. I don't know if we have an actual knowledge base article for this or I would give it to you, King. I'm just going to call you King. Anyways, yeah. Typically, what I do for [inaudible 00:21:17] and stuff or sites at businesses that have multiple locations is I try to build out, the root domain will be their main brand. That's basically their branded domain where you might have a locations page or something that will point out all of the different locations that they have locations in. Excuse me. Each one of those, you'd click through and it would go to a subdomain. Typically, I just name the subdomain after the city. So city.joesplubing.com. So cit1. and city2. and city3., so on and so forth.
That's typically how I do it. I like to do that because, we talk about this a lot, but it's because it mitigates risk. Each one of those subdomains is considered an individual entity by Google, even though it's part of an overall brand. The site itself, the digital asset is a separate entity. If any one of your subdomains ends up catching a penalty, it should be isolated to that one particular subdomain, whereas if you caught a penalty on a root domain, it would effect all of the subdomains. If you caught a penalty on a root, then all of the subdomains are in trouble. They're all going to be caught up in that penalty, but if you catch a penalty on a subdomain only, then it won't effect the root and it won't effect the other subdomains. My point is, that's why I like to do it that way. It's a little bit more of a management headache, like many, many locations. It can be a pain in the ass, but here's the trick. Just use something like Main WP. You can use Main WP to have a separate installation, maybe a separate subdomain installation that you use a control panel specifically for Main WP so that you can update, add and remove plugins, make mass bulk edits and changes to all of the sites at one time using main WP.
That's really what I've been doing, for every one of my multi-locations businesses that I either provide SEO services for, or if they're my own lead gen assets, then I just use Main WP, a separate installation on each one of the branded domains, either on a subdomain or sometimes I'll even put it just on the root domain itself, because the root domain is typically just used as like a branding page, because all of the heavy lifting is done by each one of the subdomains as far as content marketing. It really just depends on how the configuration is. Personally, I would recommend that you go with subdomains. I'm not going to recommend WP Multisites. I really cant' speak about it, but I've never heard anything really good about it, so I would recommend that you would just do separate WordPress installations on subdomains for the reasons I just mentioned. You don't want to put them in folders, although if you added separate WordPress installations in subfolders, it's still treated as being a part of the root domain by Google.
As far as link building strategy, for main domain at first, or to each subdomain, really to be honest with you I usually will start, it depends how I've got it set up, but I like to do one branded syndication network for the root domain, which can serve as the syndication network for all of the sub domain sites too. Let me give you an example. Let's say that you've got a site with four locations. You put the branding page basically on the root domain. It can be a WordPress installation. You can use blog from the root domain as the content distribution engine, so the syndication point that distributes the content for your content marketing efforts. What I would do is then I would create in the blog categories and basically silo out the blog to have a category to match each one of the subdomains. That way you can do your content marketing and distribution from the root domain, so you only have one site that you need to … I don't know how that popped up. It keeps popping up. Look at that. It's wants everybody to see it.
Anyways, I would do all my content marketing from the one. Here's the thing. You can do that and place the content within the categories that match the subdomains so that you can have location specific posts that are going to benefit those posts. You just put an internal link within the content body of that post that links up to, or down to, the subdomain side if that makes sense. That way you've only got one blog to manage. Now, the idea here is you start content marketing. You set up a consistent and regular publishing schedule, start content marketing, start tracking results. Some of the subdomain sites are going to respond better than others. That's just the nature of the game. The ones that respond well you just keep blogging for. The ones that aren't responding as well as you would like them too, you can always at that point go set up a location specific syndication network for that subdomain and then start blogging directly from that subdomain to that location specific network. That will give it an extra push. I always hold off on doing that until after I've determined whether or not that's even necessary.
The way that you do that is by, again, set up the root domain, use that as your blog. Set up all you subdomain sites and then start content marketing from your root domain blog, to cover link building for all of your subdomain sites. That way, try to achieve results with the least amount of effort is my point, and the least among of resources. Having to build another syndication network or purchase another syndication network, and then also having another blog to maintain and all of that, that's just additional work that most of the time, or a good part of the time is unnecessary. We see a lot of people that are ambitious and they want to go out and build 15 networks right off the bat. I say why? Why go through all that? Why not start with one and see how well it performs and then you can add additional networks as needed. Then you stop as soon as you started to achieve the results that you want and you save yourself a ton of work and effort.
That said, as far as … You would be building from the main domain. The back links from the content marketing would benefit the root domain as well as the subdomain sites, because the content would be published from the root domain, which means there would be an automatic back link though the attribution link to the root domain, which will subsequently also benefit all of the subdomains. At the same time, you're going to have a contextual link within the content body of the post that's going to also be pointing to the subdomain site. You are basically killing two birds with one stone through the content marketing and the syndication network. If you're going to be building external third party links, then I would recommend that typically what I do is just start building citations and announce press releases, and obviously Drive Stacks too, but to each one of the separate subdomain sites so that the vast majority of the link building is actually being done in the subdomain sites and not to the root domain because, remember, if you start doing third party back links to the root domain and you catch a penalty, all of your subdomains are going to be in the tank. You want to mitigate that risk.
Does SAPE Links Work?
Vitally I think. Maybe that's it. “Hello, thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. What about SAPE links? Do they work? Relevant or not relevant?” Well, it depends. If you're going to go out and find them on your own through this sape.ru network, then you can find relevant links because you're going to sift and sort through them. You can actually go find out, you can search by category, but then I would also recommend that you go actually physically take a look at the sites that you can purchase links from so that you can see if the content is relevant. The way that I used them though, I did some SAPE link purchasing on my own where I would actually go through the network and find stuff, but I always found that to be way too time consuming for me. I just didn't like it.
I would go to a bulk SAPE link provider, and most of the time you couldn't really specify. If you go to a private provider, like somebody from an SEO forum for example that sales SAPE links. You can typically get relevant links that are topically relevant links if you request that. You pay a premium for it because you're having them do the research and find it, and they're going to make a profit off of it, so you pay a premium for it, but again, they do all the legwork. When you buy them in bulk you typically, at least from the provider I always used, which was seolutions.biz, great service for bulk SAPE links. They would be really good links but they weren't typically relevant, like topically relevant. It didn't matter because they way that I used them, it was still powerful. SAPE links, as far as I know, they're still powerful.
I don't really use them anymore because we're able to achieve results without them through the messes that we teach, but I know they are still good links as far as I know. They're still powerful. I would recommend using them as Tier 2 or Tier 3 links though, not direct to the money site unless you can find topically relevant links. Comments anybody? How about from you Hernan?
Chris: I think he dropped off.
Bradley: How about you then?
Chris: No. I stopped using them. I stopped using them because we figured out how to use G-sites as PDM's.
Bradley: Yeah. That's what I just said. I kind of stopped using them too, probably about a year and a half ago just because the methods that we teach work, we don't need them. Again, it depends. If you've got something that's really competitive and you want to push some additional link equity, some power into a network or into your golden frame so to speak, I would say you can still use them, but I would use them at Tier 2, Tier 3, so that you're not pointing directly at your money site. Have some good buffers between them is what I'm saying.
If A GMB Account Has Been Reported/Removed From Google Maps, Does It Jeopardize The Other Locations In The Same Account?
Jay Turner. What's up Jay? He says, “One of my clients has six locations. One of them is his single GMB account, it's a PO Box. If it is reported removed from Google Maps, does it jeopardize the other locations in the GMB account?” Not typically Jay, but I don't work for Google. I've had that happen though under a profile that had more than one location and one of them got terminated for that, but the others did not, which actually I found quite interesting because the other locations within that same profile were basically the same type of set up, just in a different location. I don't work for Google. I'm not going to tell you no. It's not going to hurt the other locations. I can just tell you the experience that I've had it happen, has not effected the other locations. Remember, if it's only one and all the other are valid or legit, then I would say you're probably safe because they would terminate the one for being against terms of service, but the others, because they're legit, how would they penalize those? Again, Google can do whatever the hell it wants. It's its own property.
Yeah. I don't blame you. Just do what I said. That's what I would do. I would go create a persona account or just assign a persona that I already have existing as a manager, and then I would transfer ownership to that and then I would keep the main profile that has all the other locations as a manger instead of an owner if that makes sense.
When Saving An Image From Another Site, Do You Save It Directly Or Do You Use A Snipping Tool Like Snagit To Take It?
Okay. Mohammad says, “Hey guys, when saving an image from another site, do you right click and choose save as or do you use a snipping tool like SnagIt to take it? I know from Max Kingpin that snipping it means that it won't have any metadata, but is it something I should do when even when I'm not optimizing [inaudible 00:34:17]?” Yeah. It should be. Here's the thing guys. I don't recommend … Images are a bitch. If you are copying other people's images or downloading them, you can get caught up in extortion schemes from places like GettyImages. Sometimes you'll even just get copyright issue claims from even, not even the big image sites. Sometimes just from individual log owners and things like that. Over the years. Over the course of my career, I've really learned that it doesn't pay to copy images. Unless you –
Chris: Just to break in, didn't we have a little problem with IFTTT just a few months ago, right along these lines?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah, and I was chatting with somebody in one of our groups, Syndication Academy group or something. I can't remember who it was off the top off my head, but we were just chatting recently about Rick Dougmore I think it was, we were chatting recently about he got some extortion letters from GettyImages, and I did too. At the beginning of this year we got several from all those associated with one blog. I ended up having to settle on a few of them. It cost me quite a bit of money. It was a pain in the ass too, and it was from a really silly mistake that I thought was corrected, and they caught us on it for two years in a row, and it was really just very painful. It also kind of made me look bad to the client. I mean he was very understanding, don't get me wrong. The client is still my client. It's not a problem, but the problem is those types of copyright images, they're called extortion schemes because that's exactly what they are.
Getty Images has an algorithm. It always runs at the end of the year, the beginning of the new year, and that's when they'll start sending out these letters saying there's copyright infringement. You used our image without proper licensing, therefore we are charging you a copyright fine, or we're going to take you to court. You either settle out of court and pay this fee or we're going to court. The thing is it scares most people, the laymen, the civilian. It scares them into just paying it so that they can avoid any potential issues. Other people like Clint Butler is a mastermind, remember a lot of you know Clint Butler. He says tell them to go shit in their hat. Delete the image from the site and move on
When the actual letters are being sent to a business owner and not you as the agency owner, and I'm not saying you're an agency owner Muhammad. I'm just explaining through what's happened with my own experience. You can't really do that because if they continue sending threatening letters to the business owner, the business owner gets kind of nervous. If it was direct to me, maybe, but since it went direct to the business owner since they're the site owner, then I ended up, I just said, “Look, there's a way to send in a form letter to dispute those charges.” That's only … Two years ago it was successful 100% of the time. This year, 2017, we got hit with 4 or 5 again. Only two of them got accepted and the other three I had to settle on. It was a real pain in the ass. Again, it was just to kind of save the client from any headache that I said, “I'll just pay the damn bill, and I did.”
My point is, I don't recommend that you save images or even take screenshots of images, unless you're going to significantly alter the image to where it's unrecognizable by these programs out there. Here's an idea, Muhammad. Go to tineye.com. T-I-n-e-y-e.com, and just drag the image into the little search bar and drop it. You'll see. If it recognizes the image, it's going to show you other places on the web that it's published. What I recommend then is don't use that image or alter it more to where it becomes unrecognizable. A better strategy is just go buy some damn credits at something like stockfresh.com. Right? Stockfresh.com is what all of my curators use now for blogging. We pay for every image, but it's very inexpensive, and it saves our ass. We don't have to worry about, we've got proper licensing if ever an issue arises, we can prove that we have licensing for it. To me, it's a small price to pay to save yourself from headaches. Either use original images or go pay for stock image credits and just avoid any issues. That's my best advice.
Lastly, one other thing Muhammad that you can absolutely do, which is a sneaky, but it works great way, is to go to YouTube, search on a keyword or to find videos that are going to have images of what you need within the video, then use the filter in YouTube to only show HD quality videos, and then play one of those videos until an image appears on the video that looks like it would work for whatever your content needs are, pause the video. Make sure it's in high resolution, 720p or 1080p. Pause the video and then take a screenshot of that image, because that's 100% unique image that nobody else has and it's an easy way to get free images. The only thing that's a pain in the ass is sometimes you have to sort through multiple videos to find an image that's going to work and it's kind of hard to pause a video right where you need it. Sometimes it's a little bit blurry because it's in between frames, that kind of stuff. You'll know what I mean if you try it. That's another way to do it if you need free images.
I recommend just go to Stockfresh is a great site. It's inexpensive. It works really well. Okay.
What Are Some Best Practices When Embedding Customer Reviews From External Sources To Your Website?
Bradley: Some little bird. He says, “I have a client who has a huge amount of reviews on Facebook and Google My Business. I realized I need to make use of those. A few weeks ago [inaudible 00:40:08] a review plugin that embedded reviews on the site that sounds cool, but how would I use it? Where would I place the reviews on the site? Would I have to dedicate a page or just drop them around? Just want to see how you guys leverage reviews.” Let's see.
Adam: It's not in there? I'll have to check. It's appreciate that. Let me make a note of that actually. It should have been in the members area. We're doing another by the way, Syndication Academy update webinar next Wednesday immediately following Humpday Hangouts. If the last one is not in the members area, then I apologize. I will go through and double check. I'll just make a note of that. That would have been the August webinar.
Bradley: I'll check on them. No problem. If that ever happens, yeah just ping us or contact support. I'm not in the Facebook group much guys. I apologize for that, but I stay the hell out of Facebook because it's nothing but a distraction for me. That's why. As far as the reviews, the plugin I was talking about, we really should get an affiliate link for this. It's called Richplugins.com. Great, great plugins. It's totally worth paying for the plugin bundle if you've got Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews. There's a free version that's very limited. The configuration options are very, very limited for the free version. Guys, it's totally, totally worth paying for. These plugins are fabulous, and they add structured data to the reviews, all kind of stuff. They're fabulous plugins. If you have business, or you do client consulting, or client SEO work or whatever, and they're utilizing reviews and reputation marketing, which they all should be, then these plugins are absolutely fabulous.
It's user generated content that gets automatically added to the site. When anybody leaves a review, these connect via API, so they basically will publish within a matter of second from Google or Yelp or Facebook or whatever, those user generated reviews on the site. It helps to add content. The content usually has keywords in it because the reviews are talking about the services or products that were purchased. It's just an automated way to add additional relevancy and activity to your site without you having to life a finger. These plugins are great. You can add review widgets in the sidebar of the site. You can add them in the footer. There's also shortcuts. You can actually put review widgets in the content. You could break up content with review carousels and things like that. They're really, really good plugins. For the price, I think it's $90 for the plugin bundle, and it's totally worth it in my opinion. Anyways, go check them out.
Exact Match Vs. Highest Bid With Best Quality Score in Google Adwords
George is up. George is a newer mastermind member. What's up George? He says, “AdWords, let's say the key word is plumbing services. Business A bids for plumbing services as phrase matched so plumbing services, Dallas would trigger the ad. Business B bids for plumbing services, Dallas as exact match. Could Business B appear before Business A in the search at a lower CPC just because it is exact match, or highest bid with best quality score wins?” It's supposed to be based upon quality score really. You can actually pay less per click and outrank somebody that's bid higher, as far as the ad positioning. If your quality score is an 8 to a 10, and your competitors quality score is a 5 to a 7, and you have bid let's say your max cost per $10, and their mass coast per click bid was $12, it's very likely that your ad is still going to outperform theirs even though they're a higher bidder for the same key word because you have a higher quality score, because you've proven to Google through historical data, through the performance of that ad, both the click through rate and, well pretty much the click through rate is just mainly it.
You've proven to Google that your ad is more relevant because it's a higher click through rate, which in turn improves your overall quality score, which means it lowers your cost per click bit, or it lowers what they charge you for the click. If you set up both, let me try to explain this in a different way George, when I talk about Alpha/Beta campaigns, we always use the Beta campaigns to identify the cherry, the primary traffic driving keywords, in which case … Those are modified broad match that we use as the match type. We use that to generate enough data to be able to determine what the best exact match keywords are, the ones that are most frequently searched and generate the click from the user, the visitor. Then once we've identified that, then we turn those, we peel those out of that ad group, the beta campaign group, and we put it into its own single key word ad group as an exact match in an Alpha campaign. If you've been through local Kingpin George, then you know what I'm talking about.
Now, theoretically, or what Google says, is that if you have an exact match keyword in an Alpha campaign, like an exact match keyword match type in one campaign, and then you have a Beta or a phrase match, excuse me, a modified broad match or a phrase match in another campaign, so that they're competing, Google says that AdWords will deliver the exact match so that it charges you less on your budget, but come on guys. You think Google is really out there to try to save us money? In all reality, I've seen it happen in my own campaigns where I set up the Alpha campaigns and forgot to add the same exact match keyword from the Alpha campaign, as a negative keyword in the Beta campaign. I forgot to do that, and I've seen where my Alpha ad isn't being served near as much as it should be, and my Beta ad is, and it's still receiving clicks because it charges the higher amount.
If Google will serve the Beta campaign ad to charge you a higher amount within your own AdWords account, imagine what they're going to do when it's a competitor account that you're competing with. You know what I mean? My point is, whatever is going to charge the higher dollar, unless it's a quality score issue. That's the exception. If you have a higher quality score, then you will pay a lower click, cost per click, but you'll often outrank somebody that's even willing to bid higher. The reason why is because Google wants the ad to be the most relevant to the users so that the user is satisfied for clicking on the link. If you've got a higher quality score, it's because you've proven you've got a higher click through rate, which means the ad is more relevant to the actual search query if that makes sense.
Anybody that doesn't know AdWords, I know that was like Chinese, but that was a great question George. All right, “Hey Bradley, I bought Power Suggest Pro through the link you provided and I absolutely love it. It works wonders. I used it for one of my native language sites and I found more than 1,000 keywords. Manually I was only able to find about 10% of that. I think this is the fast and best key word tool I've ever used so big thank you for the recommendation.” Totally agree. It's probably my favorite keyword tool of all time because it's simple and it does exactly what the hell you need it to do and it does nothing else, and that's why I love it. So many of those keyword tools out there have so many bells and whistles. Personally, I don't think any of them are worth a shit. I like the Power Suggest Pro because it's simple and it's fast.
What Are Your Thoughts On Misspelled Keywords?
I don't know, because I'm not familiar with other language type keyword stuff. This is not something I typically do. I would say that I would go back, it depends on where you're trying to … Are you trying to rank in a different Google, instead of Google.com/Google.Us, are you going to rank in a separate search engine or a different country search. If that's the case I really can't speak on that because I don't know. Perhaps Hernan or Marco could comment on that, but if it's for English language, I would go after the correct spelling. There's no doubt, and I would start with reoptimizing the page to be correct. It would always start with on page guys. Before you start trying to correct off page issues, you should always correct on page issues first. That's what I would do if it's for English. If it's for foreign language stuff, I can't really comment because I don't have any experience. Marco or Hernan, if you're on.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: I think that's a quick solution and you don't have to do too much on page, since you should already have the correct spelling page optimized.
Bradley: Yeah. We've only got a couple of minutes left guys. I'm going to try to run through the rest of his question and then get through the next two or three, because they're very, very short anyways. If anybody has to bounce, feel free. I think I'm going to stick around for about 8 more minutes.
Would Google Penalize Changing Backlinks/Anchors?
Question number two, “Is changing back links anchors a dangerous move? Would Google penalize this in any way?”
Well, the probably with changing back links and anchors, it's a very manual process if you have access to them, those sites, if you can go in and actually edit the content so that you can change the link. I don't particularly like to do that. The reason why is because it's a clear indication that some SEO work is being done. If any of those pages that the content, the pages that contain the back link that are pointing to your site. If you're able to go in and edit those, if any of those have already been indexed by Google, then it means Google knows what's on the page. There's a history of it. It's been cashed. It's in their index. You go in and start swapping the links out to change how it's optimized and that kind of stuff. To me that's kind of a signal that is not a good signal. I don't particularly like to do that. I only do that typically as a last resort. What I would do is fix the on page first, and then I would dilute the anchor text with some additional types of links. Probably naked URLs or generic terms and stuff.
Then try to get some particularly powerful links. Drive Stacks would be good for this. Press Releases would be good for this, that you can … Well Press Releases would be good as long as you're using naked URLs, but what I'm trying to say is try to find some sources of some particularly powerful links that you can add anchor texts to. You only need to add one or two with the correct spelling, if it's a good enough link, and it should give it a boost, especially if you've diluted the incorrect anchor text with some generics and/or brand terms or naked URLs, if that makes sense. If you can dilute the bad first to where it's less optimized, your anchor text ratio is less optimized for that key word. Then once you've diluted it, then you can hit it with a particularly powerful link with an exact match, the correct spelling. It should give you a boost. At least that's been my experience.
Free Keyword Traffic Data Tool
Last part of this. “Can you recommend a better free or not free for keyword traffic data than Mangools?. Google KeyWord Plan is a piece of shit.” Yeah. You're right. Totally is. It's not an SEO tool. It's an AdWords tool guys. For years, everybody has been using the Keyword Planner as an SEO tool. It's not an SEO tool. That's why Power Suggest Pro is a much better option because it uses Google Suggest terms, which is an indication of terms that a highly searched and have traffic data. Even if they don't show traffic data, they have traffic. As far as better free keyword traffic data than [inaudible 00:54:51], I don't even care about it anymore. I honestly don't care traffic data is. I use Google Trends to determine the popularity of keywords. I don't care what the traffic is. If they show in trends, they're good keywords. Then I use the keywords that come back from trends as seed terms with Power Suggest Pro and I don't care what the traffic data is guys. Those keywords have traffic. Some people care about those numbers. I don't. I stopped caring about that a long time ago. AdWords I do care about, but for SEO I don't.
I do the Google Trends as my starting point, then I copy the seed terms that are relevant to my campaign. Then I go drill down on each one of those seed terms with Power Suggest Pro. Then I create a very robust or long list of keywords. All right.
How To Become Google Adwords Certified?
[inaudible 00:55:43] says, “Can you tell me how to become Google AdWord certified?” Yeah there's a test and exam and all that. I never got certified. I started to, but it was just too much work for me, and I really don't need it. I don't do a whole lot of agency stuff with ads. I've got a few clients I do some management. Very few. It's not something … I do more AdWords stuff for my own business and my own need gen properties and some affiliate stuff. I don't really do much for agency. If you're going to be performing agency services like AdWords management, then yes it would absolutely be good for you to be certified.
You can go to YouTube and find AdWord certification videos and webinars and things like that, that walk you through mock exams and stuff like that. Just go to YouTube and do some searches. Plus, you can also go to Udemy. I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's U-D-E-M-Y. It's a digital training marketplace. You can go there and find Google AdWords Certified Training courses. There's often times sales. You can get them for cheap. $20. $30. $40. Stuff like that. I would just recommend going through that. I never became certified so I cannot speak on it much. I started going through the process, but it's not something that I do enough of to where it's worth my time if that makes sense.
Taylor says, “When I do a Google site, is my info in the Google Drive area available to others or just myself?” Well, you can make it accessible to view, but not edit. That's part of the settings in Google Drive. When you go to make the document public, you just make sure that the setting is people are free to view, but not free to edit. That's part of the settings in Drive. Again, when you go to make the links for those files public, there's a setting there. It's just part of the … It's very, very simple. Walk through the process and you'll know what I'm talking about. Nobody can edit them. They can see them though, if you have the settings correct. It's a very simple process. When you go to make them public, it's right there. It's like a little wizard.
Marco: Yeah, but that's the whole point. The whole point behind this is to make them public so that anybody can view, and Google Bot can crawl and put them in their index, whether it's the public facing index, it's in their database.
Bradley: Yeah, but you don't want them editable.
Marco: No. Some of them will rank. Some of them won't, but yes, the info in Google Drive, in the drive that you make public, to build the G-site will be visible to others.
Bradley: Second question, “Can I do these Google sites in bulk?” Yes you can. In fact, there's a tool by Peter Drew, which is awesome. It's called G-Sites Builder. I don't know if we have the link handy where you drop it on the page Taylor, if not we can tag you on thel link later, but it's a great tool. It build Google sites very, very quickly in bulk. You can build multiple sites in bulk, or you can build multiple pages on one site. It's a great tool for setting all that stuff up very quickly.
[inaudible 00:58:46], “Hey guys, I know that Done For You RYS Stacks are English only, but if you use them to boost a site that's in another language, can they still be effective?” Yes, they absolutely can Ivan. Mark, do you want to comment on that?
Marco: Absolutely. Links in other languages with websites in other languages work. We use English all the time, because Spanish is limited in what they offer as far as Power Links. If that works, I don't see why doing your own drive stacks in English and ending up in I don't know, I know where I live, but let's just say Romanian, if you do that, the relevance should carry over. Google is able to understand that there's a relevance between the content in English, and the content in Romanian.
Bradley: Yeah. Roger says, “It's hard to believe how much spam Google properties can take.” Yeah it is hard to believe Roger, but it's awesome, so exploit it while it's still effective. The last question by Jenn I guess it is … It's 5 o clock so I've got to wrap it up. Marco, is this something that you started with Jenn about?
Marco: Yeah, but I can't go into detail. He asked about the Power Loop, and it's something that we discuss only, I've discussed it in the Mastermind and I've discussed it in the Facebook group, the Rank Your Shit Reloaded. I am not willing to give away information that people pay for.
Bradley: Then, I would just direct Jenn to repost this question back into the Facebook group and that way the discussion can occur in there.
Marco: If he's not in the Facebook group, then you should think about joining RYS Reloaded. If you're not in the mastermind, then maybe perhaps you should thinking about joining the Semantic Mapping mastermind, because this information will go in depth in either one. I'd be glad to cover it and show you exactly how it works, and show you exactly how to bump up GMB listing map into the three pack.
Bradley: Yeah. Very good. Thanks everybody for being here. We don't have a mastermind webinar this week. I think we're done this week for webinars aren't we? All right guys. Well, thanks everybody for being here. We'll see everybody next week.
Marco: Go rank your shit.
Bradley: That's right.
Marco: Later.
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