Click on the video above to watch Episode 154 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: We're all excited and I'm fired up and you want to know why? ‘Cause today is Hump Day Hangouts episode 154.
Bradley: Wow. Can that one guys.
Adam: Aye. Welcome everybody. We got almost a full crowd here. I think Hernan's out and about, so he may or may not be joining us. But before we get into things lets go around and say hi to everybody, today on the 18th of October, and I'll start off. I'm Adam, if you haven't been here before, but I'll start on my left and go down the line. So Chris how's it going, man?
Chris: Good. Good time and good weather in Tampa.
Adam: Outstanding. Oh that's right, you're still in the US. So Chris is normally over on the European continent, but he's in the US for a little bit longer.
Chris: Yeah. Just for Halloween and then I'm off again.
Adam: Awesome. Awesome. Marco, how's the weather treating you?
Marco: It's been beautiful, man. But it rained for about a week. I'm willing to live with that because we haven't had a drop of rain in three days.
Adam: Gotcha. A little rain in paradise, right? So …
Marco: There you go. You have to take the good with the bad.
Adam: Awesome. Bradley, how you doing, man?
Bradley: Oh, I'm happy to be here. So, I'm going to try a new … It's not new, it's ManyCam. But I'm going to try to use ManyCam today for broadcasting the hangout, so that while I've got the screen share up I will also show my little image, like picture in picture, at the bottom. And we'll see how that goes. I don't know how well it's going to work, but we're going to attempt it.
Oh and before we get into any other announcements, you know what today is, right?
Adam: What? What is it today?
Bradley: Episode 154. You know what that means, right?
Adam: Beers on Hump Day Hangouts? I don't-
Bradley: No, that's in two more weeks. In the … We're three years away … Or, excuse me, two episodes away from our third year anniversary, 156 episodes. So I don't know what we've got planned for that yet, but I know were gonna do something special, like we have the last two anniversary episodes. So, you guys make sure that you're attending that one, because we usually give away some pretty good stuff. And this being our third, it's probably gonna be a pretty good give away.
Marco: Best question, I'll tell you right now, is going to get at least an RYS Reloaded Stack so that they can see how fucking awesome some of these things are working. How great these are, and then just spread the word, man. When it starts ranking like crazy, you go and spread the word, how good this shit actually is. It's incredible.
Bradley: And that's a several-hundred dollar value, so-
Marco: Oh, yeah. One of those is going to, it has to be the best question.
Adam: Awesome. And word on the street is that we got some Semantic Mastery, new T-shirts coming out. Some, kind of, high quality shirts with the new logo coming, so maybe that might work in there somehow. We'll see.
Bradley: Word on the street, huh?
Adam: Yeah, you know.
Bradley: Where'd you hear that?
Adam: Eh, I don't know. Just overheard some stuff, so. Alright, so what else we got?
Bradley: What else we got?
Adam: We got a few announcements. If you're watching this, and this is the first time or you're new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you for watching, thanks for tuning in. If you haven't ever yet, put your question on the event page. It can be about anything. SEO, marketing, anything related to that. And if you haven't yet, check our SEO blueprint, the Battle Plan. I'll pop the link on there in a second for you, we got a coupon code that'll save you 75 bucks. Please grab it, it's well worth the money. It's worth 100 bucks but you can get it for 25.
If you haven't been to Serp Space yet, head over there. You can create a free account, check out the free tools they've got. We're working on some more. And then that's where all the done-for-you services are at. So if you're looking at saving some money and saving time, instead of trying to figure this all out on yourself, or on your own, go to Serp Space. You're gonna hear us talk about a lot, you'll have other people refer you there. Trust us, check it out, at least.
Alright, and then, if you are new again, go to support.semanticmastery.com. We got a lot of comment questions there and FAQ's. It's a great place just to bookmark and we've got graphs, things like that, where we can explain stuff more in-depth. And I'll pop all those links up there, so again, if you're new, those are just some helpful areas for you to start.
And then also, as more word on the street, Monday I believe we have a webinar. Is that right, Bradley?
So we never actually produced a singular course about on-page SEO and silo structures, silo architecture and that kind of stuff. But people been asking us for several years and I actually have got … I got involved with somebody, we got a joint venture agreement thing going on in another area, but he's just an absolute on-page SEO beast. And I was actually going through some of his training the other day, or about a week or two ago, and I was just really blown away with how high-quality it is. And there's no reason for us to go out and produce any sort of on-page SEO course, when this one is absolutely gold.
And so we're going to be having him on as a special guest on Monday and he's going to be doing a lot of teaching about his methods and his strategies, his keyword research is what he called ‘keyword clustering,' silo building, all this kind of really … Internal linking structures, I mean the guy's just a ninja. So he's coming on to share that information with us on Monday, so guys, be prepared for that. I think Adam's gonna drop the registration link on the event page and emails go out tomorrow, but you definitely want to be there and be present for that 'cause it's gonna be a really good webinar.
Chris: Speaking of ninja, Rob just joined us, man.
Adam: Hey, what's up Rob?
Bradley: ‘Sup buddy?
Chris: The guy's a killer in the lab, dude. We're doing some math and stuff to Google.
Bradley: Can you say hi, Rob?
Rob: Hey. Glad to be here, fellas.
Bradley: Awesome, thanks man.
Rob: I'm on my phone again, so if you lose me, it's 'cause I'm on the Apple device you guys hate.
Bradley: Yeah, Apple device, well there's your problem.
Rob: Yeah, I know. I got lots of problems but that's one of them.
Bradley: That is one of them. I got 99 problems, and that's one of them.
Rob: Yeah.
Adam: Awesome. Anybody else, just a quick round up, any more announcements, anything that we didn't cover?
Bradley: We got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, gonna be talking about some pretty cool stuff going on over there as well, I mean, we always do anyways, but just kind of really interesting stuff. So anybody that's in MasterMIND, be prepared for tomorrow.
Adam: Awesome, alright, let's do this.
Bradley: Alright, so, I'm gonna attempt to switch this thing around a little bit and see if this works. You guys let me know what you're seeing, also did we double check to make sure we're broadcasting on the event page okay?
Adam: I'm looking right now. Also, while we're checking if … I shared it with the guys earlier, but in case any of you do your own broadcasting, looks like Facebook is finally adding the capability to do the screen overlays, or sorry, to show your screen as well as to obviously show faces. Which is a nice addition, but previously I'd use something like OBS to get that done.
Adam: Yes, I've got you and then I've got us in the corner, and I've got your whole screen.
Bradley: Okay, well actually you have an area. It may look like my whole screen but I don't think you see, like, the-
Adam: No I just see, sorry, I see your browser.
Can You Recommend A One Payment Keyword Research Tool?
Bradley: Okay, yeah, alright, very good. Well this looks like it might work. It's gonna screw me up a little bit but that's okay. Alright, so, Elizer is up. Excuse me if I mispronounce that. “What's up guys, can you recommend a one-payment keyword research tool?” Yeah, Power Suggest Pro. It's been our go-to tool forever. It's more of a keyword discovery tool, or whatever, it's not really a keyword research tool in that … And the only I say that is because most all keyword research tools show competition metrics and all this other kind of shit that really, in my opinion, is unnecessary. I don't use any of those tools anymore. I think they're over-complicated and that kind of data really means nothing to me.
We've been using Power Suggest Pro, the same exact keyword method strategy, or keyword research method, that I've used since, like, I don't know, three or four years now, is what I … It's the same one I use today, which is always going to Google Trends first, starting with that, identifying all your related keyword searches, both your top related searches as well as rising related searches based upon the trends' data. Which you can even drill down into specific geographic areas if you'd like.
And then from there, I take those and then I go do, right now it's kind of a manual thing where we're actually gonna be building a tool into subspace that will do that. We'll go scrape the related searches, so in other words, once you grabbed your related search terms from your seed set, or your seed terms, then what I do is go … Or, I have a VA do it now … But she goes and manually searches each one of those keywords and then pulls the relevant related searches ‘related to' at the bottom of the search results, and adds those to the spreadsheet then from there we drill down in each one of those with Power Suggest Pro.
That's it. That's all I do. I know there's another question further up on this event page today about SEMrush. I gotta be real honest with you, Hernan put SEMrush in the Battle Plan 'cause he uses it, I do not. I've never used SEMrush, well I've used it a couple times, but I've never used it consistently because it's just more data than I personally need to use for all the SEO stuff that I've done. I know there's some benefits to having some of those kind of metrics, guys, and there's a lot of cool stuff that SEMrush will do, but I just find it to be over-complicated for what I need to do, so I always just start with trends.
Well, to be honest, I have one additional step now that I haven't done before, that I didn't really do before, and that was using Google AdWords. Because, you know, SEO's become so complex. It takes so much more effort now to rank for keywords that it did several years ago. So instead of just determining, or looking at keyword research tools and letting those metrics tell me, “Okay, these are the hot keywords. These are what I should be optimizing for.” I've done that, many, many times and spent weeks or months ranking for keywords that were told to me by SEO tools or keyword tools, that they were good keywords. They were keywords that would produce traffic and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I spent weeks or months getting those keywords ranked, and find out that they're not converting or they're not really the best keywords that I should have been targeting.
And so that's weeks, and/or months, or wasted time. And so what I like to do now, is go to AdWords and set up a AdWords campaign for whatever project I'm working on, be it local or affiliate, or whatever it doesn't matter. I just go in and set up AdWords campaign and I might put depending on the niche, it might be a bit more expensive, but for like, a lot of affiliate stuff I might only throw like, $50 in traffic at it.
I'll spend 50 bucks and at the end of that $50, I will have this search query report from AdWords that shows exactly which queries were being, you know, were generating clicks to my ads. And so those are the ones that I know to go optimize for because there's traffic data that I have. Proven, bonafide, genuine traffic data from Google's own data from advertising money that I spent that says, “These are the keywords that are gonna produce the best results for you.” Then I'd go actually optimize for those, build out an SEO campaign for those keywords.
So I start with that, if it's local and sometimes some of the clicks are expensive for that, you know, you might have to pay $30 a click. I might spend $200 on traffic, but to me it saves me so much time from having to optimize for stuff that's not going to convert or produce traffic, or produce clicks, or might produce clicks but doesn't convert because it's not relevant traffic. And I need to know all that stuff before going in and starting an SEO campaign because an SEO campaign requires so much more effort.
So I'd rather spend anywhere between 50 to 200 bucks on traffic, let Google AdWords tell me which keywords I should be optimizing for SEO, then I go just do the exact same process. And I usually always start, guys, with the same process, even for AdWords, I still go to trends first then I look at Google related searches. I also look at the ads at that point. Strictly for keyword research, if you don't want to go with the AdWords route initially, which I recommend you guys do just to save yourselves a ton of time and head and heartache for optimizing for keywords that aren't gonna produce results.
However, if you're not gonna do that, then Power Suggest Pro is, in my opinion, probably the most inexpensive and best tool that you can possibly use for SEO keywords. Because remember, the AdWords keyword planner tool is for AdWords. It's for PPC. So it's not going to … Those traffic data, like the traffic search volume data and all that, first of all, we all know that it's not really accurate. Number two, unless you're spending money in AdWords, it's gonna give you this broad range of search volume instead of like, more narrow metrics right, more exact or precise metrics, which again, those metrics aren't precise anyways.
But also, those keywords for keywords in search queries based upon AdWords, there's not really SEO-type terms. Whereas with Power Suggest Pro, it's using Google Suggest or auto-complete keywords. And those are actual keywords that people are manually typing and searching in this … In order for them to show up and suggest it, it means there had to been, I don't know what the threshold is, but there had to have been enough occurrences or instances of those search queries being searched for, for Google to add them in auto-complete. Okay?
That was a long-winded question, or answer to that question, but I think that's important because we get those kind of questions all the time, about keyword research tools, guys. And I swear to God, I bought at least 15 keyword research tools over the years. I mean, no kidding, some of them that are incredibly expensive, I mean hundreds of dollars per month, know what I mean? And I've just always gone back to the same process that I just described, so … And it works.
Is It Okay To Point Client Sites To RYS Properties?
Um, yes, you can point at your money. We encourage you to so, okay? Because again, you're siphoning authority from Google Domains over to your main property, which would be your money site. And that's going to not only produce additional authority, but it also helps to validate the entity. There's a lot of benefits in doing so. So it's not just about promoting a Google site. If you don't have a money site and you're gonna use a Google site as a money site, then obviously you wouldn't have that. But if you have a money site, include it. Okay?
“Further, would you ever put both customers' website and Google sites on the RYS properties together?” Sure, absolutely. There's no reason why you shouldn't. If you've got both, link to both. Okay? Marco, do you want to comment on that, or was that good enough?
Marco: That's good enough.
Bradley: Okay. Mohammad's up, what's up Mohammad. He's here asking questions every week, certainly appreciate that Mohammad. “Hey guys, for a while I've been working on pay-per-lead AdWords campaigns with the contractor. I've gotten a lot of experience with this niche because of it and built a solid relationship with the contractor. Based on what I see, I have an opportunity to earn more if I go with a revenue share model. The only problem is, currently all calls go to the contractor.”
Oh, tsk, tsk, tsk, Mohammad. I know when you're first getting started out, that's the easiest way to go because it requires less. It's not necessarily that it's easier, it's that it requires less capital on your part, less investment 'cause you don't have to pay for a call center. I do not recommend sending leads directly to contractors, though. Personally, I've … When I first started my lead-gen business, for about the first … I'd say the first year or so, I did that. I had all calls just like … I had my own call forwarding numbers, you know what I mean, my own virtual phone numbers. I've always just used CallFire. I would have the calls go directly to contractors.
The problem with that is that contractors a lot of times, most contractors at least most of the companies that I deal with, the service providers that I've generated leads for are smaller companies. So the contractors are actually working contractors, in other words, they own the business but they're also out with their tools on, or up a tree. Like literally climbing trees, cutting limbs, and you know, taking trees down and stuff like that. So they're usually busy throughout the day.
And so when a call comes in, they often don't answer the phone because they're in the middle of work. And so if the phone doesn't get answered, guess what happens to that lead? It goes cold, or it goes to the next listing in Google, or in AdWords, or wherever they found the information for your contractor or for your lead-gen site. They found more, right? And so if the call doesn't get answered, that lead is gonna call the next person in line. And very rarely would a lead ever leave … Will a caller ever leave a message, because typically, especially in the contracting industry, people are looking to solve a problem.
So when they're in that mood or that mode of trying to solve that problem and, you know, request estimates … Set up estimates, and that kind of stuff, they're looking to do it now. And so if they get voicemail, they usually will hang up or they'll leave a message but by the time the contractor gets back to them, they've already scheduled other contractors to come out. So my point is, after the first year of doing that, running my business that way …
I don't remember who it was but somebody told me about the call center stuff. And I was like … And you know what, it was probably Ivan Budimir from Maps Magic again, 'cause he was like my biggest mentor when I first got into doing maps marketing. And so I hooked up with answerconnect.com, which is the call center that I've been using ever since, and I think that was back in … It would've been around 2012. Anyways, I've been using AnswerConnect ever since, and the reason why is because that's 24-hour day, 7-day a week, 365-days a year call center.
So they answer the phone every single time any lead comes through any one of my lead-gen properties, it goes to the call center. Call center screens the calls, gets rid of any spam calls. By the way, that's the other reason why you don't want to send calls to a contractor, because as you rank in maps, guys, you'll start getting a shit ton of spam calls from advertisers. Basically, people looking to sell marketing services. Which is kind of ironic that when you get on, like in the top three results, you get the most calls from marketers. When you're on page two, you don't. Seems like that's a little backwards.
But, so anyways, contractors will often times get hammered with sales calls, so having a call center will actually screen the calls to where the only calls or notifications that the contractor receives are gonna be notifications from bonafide, genuine leads that've been screened. And because the caller got a live body on the phone, somebody answered the phone, and took their information, it's not that they don't call other contractors, but they feel a lot … At least that lead is still generated. Because otherwise, you know like I said, if it goes to voicemail a lot of times they'll just hang up. So even if they don't get to talk to the contractor, they know that their contact information is being dispatched to the correct contractor, if that makes sense.
So, my point is, I'm telling you, I know Mohammad from when I first started, you're doing basically the same thing. You're sending calls directly to the contractor. I don't recommend that though, because you have a lot more control over the lead when it goes through a call center and you can verify the leads and you can verify the contractor got them. And then you'll have a record of it, so that you can even follow up with the leads if you decide to pursue a revenue-share model. Which I know is what your question is. Can a revenue share be done without a call center?
It can be, but you have to have … It's not advised, because the contractor can screw you and you wouldn't know it. I mean, I guess if you have a virtual phone number and you look at the call reports you'll be able to see the calls that came in. And if you look at the duration you can probably determine which calls were actually resulted in a conversation with the contractor based upon the duration. But to me, that's a lot of additional work to have to go filter through all that stuff and then call those customers to verify that jobs are either not accepted … You know, proposals weren't accepted or they were accepted.
And to me, again, back in the days when I used to do that kind of stuff, it was a pain in the ass. So using a call center is the only way to go in my opinion with the revenue-share model, because otherwise you got … And by the way, even using a call center, contractors can still screw you. So it is important that at least for the initial first six months to a year, that at least quarterly, so once every three months, you do a verification campaign. Where you'll just pick out, you know, like 10 calls that were actual, genuine leads that were generated, and you can use somebody from like, Upwork … Telemarketer from Upwork to do call surveys.
And there's other services out there that will do it, and their call surveys is little as like $1.50 per call or $2 per call, where they'll call those customers and say, “Hey we,” You know, this is, whatever let's just say Joe's Plumbing Service, let's just say that was your lead gen site or whatever, or your service provider. “This is Joe's Plumbing Service, and we're calling because we understand that you did not accept a proposal that we made, or you know, from an estimate that we gave. And we were just wondering if there's anything that we did that could've been improved upon that would've changed your mind?”
And it sucks, and to me it's dumb because for a contractor to do that is stupid. When you're sending them leads on a revenue-share model, where they're only paying for leads that are closing into actual jobs, for them to do something as dumb as try to cheat you out of your rightful small piece of that just to save a few bucks, is dumb. Because when they do get caught, they now have lost that lead source, because I'll never do work with them again, if that makes sense.
So, you know, my point is again, I know another long winded answer for that question but I think it's really important to understand why call centers are so important if you're in the lead-gen business. Because it's gonna prevent a lot of additional heart-ache down the road, and it gives you a lot of verification, a lot of ways to verify, if that makes sense. Okay? Great question, though, Mohammad.
How Do You Use A Live Rank Sniper Stream For A Rank And Rent Video Campaign?
I would do it in your new channel- [crosstalk 00:23:55]
Marco: Hey, Bradley-
Bradley: Go ahead.
Marco: Before you give the answer, can I just give him some advice?
Bradley: Sure.
Marco: Never publicly reveal the city that you're targeting or your niche. This is public. Everyone who comes to our channel and looks for this will now see your question and your niche and what you're targeting, and you know, we can't account for what other people are going to do when they see that you're doing this. So please, guys, and this is for everyone else not just Mohammad, be general but don't ever get this specific. Please.
Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, you could've said DUI lawyer, and then like, plus city. You know what I mean? And divorce lawyer, plus city. And that way you would've not revealed your locations.
Adam: Yeah, and so feel free to … You can actually delete this after the Hump Day Hangout. Mohammad, is who I'm talking to.
Bradley: Okay, and then Adam's going to edit the replay to pull it out, too. Is that what you're saying, Adam?
Adam: Look, I didn't think that far ahead, but …
Bradley: Alright, so anyways, “I made separate channels for the videos themselves with the YouTube syndication network. I think it's a good start, but should I delete that stream from LRS and upload the video to my channel, or just upload the video to LRS and give it some embeds from Serp Space?”
Upload it through your own channel, Mohammad, not the LRS channel. Go through the channel that you set up and optimized for that project. The LRS stuff, guys, you can do that. But however, if you're using live … Excuse me, Live Rank Sniper, which again, I ran it yesterday. I use that tool a lot actually, it's really great tool for that, for poking keywords. Those accounts should be like, orphaned accounts. They shouldn't be connected, really, to anything else. They're usually just for testing purposes, for poking keywords.
So after I've determined … Run a campaign, and then I go back and do the search using Live Rank Sniper to go back and determine, you know, searches page one and two, and then we'll send you a text file with the keywords, plus the ranking URL's for anything that showed up on page one or two. After I've grabbed that text file, then I just go back into the channel and delete all those scheduled live streams because there's really no reason to leave them. I mean, you can leave them there, don't get me wrong. If they're ranking on page one and you want to keep them as just a place-holder and it pushes somebody else off of page one, then by all means, leave it. It's not gonna hurt, okay? I don't know how long it'll stick, but you can leave it there anyways.
The problem with trying to live stream to a scheduled live event from a orphaned account, is that although the live stream may rank initially, typically it falls off or out or down. I mean, that's … Fairly quickly. Because it's not an account that has any authority or any validation. It's not an entity, so to speak, it's just an orphaned account. So I don't recommend it. It's will initially rank well, but it usually won't stick, alright?
What Kind Of Tasks Do You Get Your VAs To Do?
Alright, question number three. “What kind of tasks do you get your VA's to do? I currently have mine creating content and I'm training them to make syndication networks but I know I'm not getting the most out of them.” Mohammad, what I do is, our VA's are really compartmentalized. What I mean by that is that we teach our VA's, for the most part, a specific task, and they do that repeatedly and that's their job. That's it. And the reason why is because they become incredibly efficient at that. Instead of having them do …
Now, if you have an administrative assistant, that's different, right? Because administrative assistant's gonna do multiple types of tasks, almost like personal assistant, right? That's what I would call … An administrative assistant can handle all different types of tasks, but for most of the VA stuff that we do … It's almost like a franchise model, like an assembly line, because we teach our VA's to do, like, one specific task for one specific project type, or whatever it may be. And that's what they do, over and over again because they become incredibly efficient at it. Okay?
So, you know, if you're not a point where you got enough volume of work to keep them busy with those specific tasks, then you may want to train them on some other related type of tasks and try to get them more work. Or, here's a better idea, just go out and create more volume of work for them. Go out and sell more networks, create more properties, do whatever you gotta do, you know?
Are IFTTT Networks Still Working?
Okay, I'm gonna keep moving. James says, “Are IFTTT networks still working? I've heard that other done-for-you IFTTT network builders are discontinuing the service because it no longer works.” Well, that's great to hear, James. So I hope everybody does feel that way. All the other network builders out there, the copy-catters, I hope they do think they're not working and they all get out of the business, they just leave the industry. I encourage them to do so.
Adam: Yeah, I heard that somebody was giving a behind-the-scenes tell-all, you know, for a certain amount of money and made a reference to us, but, you know …
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: So, yeah, “IFTTT network builders are discontinuing their service.” That's great, I hope they all just leave the industry. But yes, they absolutely still work, James.
Marco: Can I say why?
Bradley: Sure.
Marco: James, if you don't mind.
Bradley: ‘Cause they-
Marco: Most of the other-
Bradley: … Haven't … Right.
Marco: … Other people, either they build them incorrectly, or they use automation. Both cases, the reason why it doesn't work is not because syndication, the way Semantic Mastery teaches it doesn't work, it's the syndication that's done via the way these other people do it.
Bradley: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah, and they'll have to change it considerably because the brand and networks, guys, just a way to validate the entity. It's like you're claiming your brand, your footprint, and then you're syndicating your own content to it, which has been encouraged. And that's been like, best practice, for years. So, you know, again, unless they change their algorithm significantly, yes, they still work. The reason why other networks aren't working is because they either built them incorrectly, they built them with automation like Marco said, they didn't interlink them properly, or they're syndicating bullshit content.
Sorry to say, but that's really what it comes down to, if you're syndicating crap content, it's not gonna help. Although, if the syndication network is built correctly, I've seen boosts of serious ranking jumps for lower competition-type keywords for just connecting the syndication network without even syndicating any content. So we know that they absolutely work, okay? But again, I hope they all get out of the building game.
Adam: Yeah, tell them that it doesn't work.
Bradley: Yeah, tell them that you came to our webinar and we said, “Yes, they stopped working. So go ahead and get out of the business.” Tell them we said that.
How Do You Create A Sales Pitch Video For A Referral Client?
Alright, Ben's up. He says, “Hey Bradley and guys, on episode 148 you talked about 27 minute, here's-what-I-see video you put together for a referral client who was very impressed. What info did you look at to show him, what tools did you use to get the info?”
Okay, Ben, I just do the same … Usually, those type of videos, those analysis videos aren't that long. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. It depends. It depends on how valuable the client or prospect may be to me, so sometimes I'll put more effort in than others. But in this case, for something like that, usually what I'll do is just … First of all, go into some keyword research 'cause I start with that, and I'll explain … Like especially … It depends on the prospect. If the prospect has been around for a while, they've had a digital presence, they're already probably gonna know a lot of like, what has been working or they've done AdWords in the past or whatever.
So this particular client had really, a very non-existent digital presence. They had a website that was very poorly done, and it's because they had been relying on a couple of … They're an HVAC contractor and they had been relying … A commercial HVAC contractor. And they had been relying on primarily, the majority of their work coming from large contracts with, like, franchise type chain stores. And they had a couple of their biggest contracts, like drop. And so now, they're scrambling for leads, and that's what part of the 27 minute video was me explaining to them that they should've threw out …
They got fat, dumb, and comfortable, you know? And fat, dumb and happy living off those big contracts but they had no backup plan in case those contracts didn't renew. And that's exactly what happened. And I said, you know, “You should never rely on just once source of leads.” You should start building your lead funnel regardless, because that way, you always have a pipeline full of leads in case one source or two sources dry up, you've got multiple sources.
So that said, I usually start with just keyword research stuff. I show where I've … What keyword opportunities I think exist that they may not have been aware of or that I can look at their site and tell that they're not targeting certain keyword opportunities. So I start with that, then I usually show them their site. And I don't criticize anything that they're doing, you never do that, 'cause you … Sometimes people have an emotional connection to their website or to their digital presence, period, and if you start to criticize stuff you can lose them.
And I'll just explain each thing that I found and I always try to do that same method where I don't ever talk down, as far as what they've got. I just try to explain how it could be improved. And that's all it is. As far as the tools, I just use, again, the exact same process I always talk about for keyword research. I show them Google trends to show them Google data. And what's nice about trends is it gives you graphics, right? Graphs and charts and things like that, so you can actually show related searches and the correlation between the keywords and that kind of stuff. You can show all that and it comes out really nice.
So I use Google trends and then I use, for local stuff, which is where, obviously when I'm sending out an analysis video to a client it's, at least for me, about 99% of them are gonna be local-based. I use BrightLocal for reporting, for showing citation reports, for showing what they call the Google Local Wizard or whatever it is in there, which will show you the report and there's also local ranking report. So after I do the keyword research, I'll go input all the keywords into BrightLocal, I'll generate a report. Even though they're not a client I still add them as a client in BrightLocal.
I'll generate a keyword report, a citation report, all of those. They have a full SEO analysis report inside of BrightLocal that's a really good report. So I'll generate those three, it's very simple, I just enter their details in, I hit the generate button. It takes about 10 minutes, then I get all three reports back and I put all of those into an email along with the video where I just go through each one of the reports and point out and explain what the reports are saying. And that's it.
It basically comes down to keyword research, showing opportunities that I think exist that they're not capitalizing on, and that analyzing their digital assets, showing where I see some improvement could be made, and then walking through the three reports that BrightLocal generates. And BrightLocal's an incredibly affordable service, guys, if you're doing any sort of local, I highly recommend it. Okay? Again, another good question. You guys got great questions today.
Is It Possible To Create A T2 Persona Network For The T2 Personas That Support A T1 Network For A Youtube Channel?
Now if you're using something like Serp Space network monitoring, you should be notified that something's not posted quickly. So you can go back through and identify very quickly, especially if you've added your networks correctly inside of Serp Space. But prior to having Serp Space, it was kind of a pain in the ass to troubleshoot to find out where there may be a breakdown in the process chain, so to speak. Because, again, it can become very complex. If you look at a graphic, typically we draw the graphic with the branded ring, tier one, and we've got three tier-2 rings and that's because we use the three primary blog accounts, Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, as the tier two trigger accounts, right?
So … God. If anybody else gets Yelp calls as much as I do, I mean, we should get together and go blow up Yelp or something. I'm getting another damn spam call from Yelp. They call at least five times a week, I'm not kidding. It's just unbelievable.
Anyways, so, one tier 1, three tier 2's, and then you can actually have for tier three, you can have three tier 3 rings per tier 2 ring. So you would end up with what? Three, six, nine tier 3 rings, three tier 2 rings, so that's 12. And then the branded tier one ring, so that would be 13 rings if you have a full, entire built out structure like what you're describing here, Chris. And it works, it does work. It's just a pain in the ass to set up. It's a lot of work to set up. And again, if anything breaks down, you gotta go troubleshoot and there's a lot of steps in that chain.
So to me, it's more work than it's worth, although I know we've got somebody that took our methods and basically did what you're talking about here Chris, and she just went crazy with it. And she builds these great, big, super massive networks with hundreds or rings, no kidding. And she just ranks shit whenever she wants, like at-will. So it does work, it's just a lot of work and it's something that you gotta monitor to make sure that it is all firing correctly. Okay?
“Also, is that a recommended strategy in the first place?” I mean, again, you can. It's just up to you how much effort you want to put in and how much headache you're willing to deal with in case stuff does break down. And personally, I don't. I've got too many of these network, you know, too many campaigns that I monitor and manage, for me to worry about building them out like that. I just like to do tier one and tier two for YouTube. I do tier two rings … Tier two networks structures and I just stack multiple tier two structures together. For money sites, I typically just do one branded tier, one ring, and then just boost the hell out of it. Okay? So, alright, there you go.
How Can You Get Ads Inside The 3 Map Pack Using Local Kingpin?
Jenia's up. He says, “What's up buddy?” It's been awhile since you've commented on Hump Day Hangouts. “Hey Semantic crew. Wondering if you could shed some light on the ads inside the three pack and how I can get one in there. I own Local Kingpin, very grateful for this course, but I don't see the info in there. Thanks.” Yeah, because Jenia, at the time it was … In the areas that I worked in, the ads weren't appearing in the Maps pack yet. They were starting to appear in the expanded Maps, so like when you clicked on the ‘more results' and it opens up, instead of from Google search, it actually opens up in the Maps. It would show an ad at the very top, sometimes two ads.
It's the same process either way, it's … You have to have a location extension, number one. So you have to be using a local extension in your ads. Ad extensions for location, that makes sense, number one. Number two, you have to be the top bidder or the highest quality score. You gotta be the top-ranked ad. If you do that, then you should be able to get into the Maps pack for those keywords that are displaying ads in the three pack. Okay? That's just started to roll out in my local area, not for all keywords, but for some of the niches that I'm into. For some contractor niches, now ads are starting to appear in the three pack.
Since Local Kingpin was launched, which I think was in August last year, 2016, the expanded Maps … I've had a lot of ads show up there, and my ad, it typically shows up because I usually end up being the top-ranked ad. For about 80% of the AdWords I set up, I usually end up being the top-ranked ad. And so my ad will show up in the expanded Maps pack but now like I said, just recently, within about the last six weeks or so, some of the projects or campaigns that I've worked on are starting to see ads appear in the Maps pack, the three pack too.
So again, it's just a matter of: you have to have a location extension, and then you have to be the top … Not the top bidder, the top-ranked ad. Because sometimes you can be the top-ranked ad without being the top bidder because your quality score's higher. So that's really what you should be striving for, is improving your quality score to the best that you can get it because that lowers your cost-per-click and increases your rank positioning, or your ad positioning, ad rank, whatever. And that will get you into the Maps pack. Okay?
What Are The Possible Reasons Why A Verified Client GMB Page Isn't Ranking In Google Maps?
Alright, Shane is up. Let's see, and Shane's doing this to be showing an actual listing here, so Marco's advice earlier to Mohammad should apply to you [crosstalk 00:42:28] as well. “Hey, I have an issue where I can't get a client listed in Google Maps. I have the website ranking on second page for the primary keyword. Also the GMB is verified, site already has citations, site over one year old, Maps listing two to three months. The next step was to get it ranking in Google Maps. It was set up as a service area, not a location, as he only does call-outs and there was another business in the location as it's his residential address he submitted. Here's the actual Google location on Google Maps.”
Okay, I'm not going to click through, but, “I've ordered Maps Powerhouse with 30 primary embeds in correct categories, and 1000 secondary embeds, but the listing isn't even appearing in the Maps listing. It seems every other carpet cleaning business is listed in Google Maps except this client's. Any suggestions on what I should do next?” Sounds like you're being filtered out from the Pigeon filter, Shane. That's a more common occurrence now. I've had that happen, I've got a couple sites, actually, that are Maps listings that have been filtered from Pigeon as well.
I've been testing some different methods to get that filter lifted. They did a little bit of a rollback on it recently, and because one of our sites that we've been struggling with that on is actually a client site, it's not a lead-gen site. And his sites came back for about 50% of the keywords, where it had been filtered for 100% of the keywords for several months. Now it's back for about half of the keywords. So, I know that the Pigeon filter has been lifted somewhat, but I've been testing some other methods. I'm not ready to reveal them yet because I don't have consistent enough results, Shane. And when I do revel it, it'll be inside the MasterMIND and I understand you're not in there anymore.
What I would suggest is maybe testing, if you've got it as a service area business, I know if it's his residential address that is listed as the physical location and he doesn't want that to show, that could be an issue. But I was gonna say, we were just instructed, actually yesterday I was talking to one of our MasterMIND members about another similar case, and they changed the listing to show the address, from hidden address to show the address, and everything came back just like that, that had been filtered out. Within like, a matter of days, he said. So that might be something you want to try.
And then what I would suggest is if you just go back in, set it to where it does show his address, and his listing does come back, give it a few days. But if his listing does come back and starts to appear in the Maps again, it means that it was being filtered by Pigeon because of the address being hidden. Which again, I don't know why that would be if it's a true service area business, but what I'm saying is if you do that, what I would suggest is if the client doesn't want his address being shown, then I would do a citation clean-up job and I would change the address. Literally go get a PO box or something. You know, like what we've talked about many times, and change the address for the business, so that you can still show the address but it won't be showing his home address.
And it's gonna suck, 'cause you're gonna have to go and update all the existing citations, but there are some services online that will do that for you. Cost money, but they do it and they do it very, very well. Okay, so that's what I would suggest doing. If that's not an option or if that does not help, showing the actual address doesn't change anything, than I don't know what else to tell you. Other than, again, you're saying that there was another business at that same location? That could be causing a problem, because that's part of the Pigeon filter.
If Google determines that there are two businesses closely adjacent to each other, Google is going to determine which one is more relevant. And Google makes that determination, I don't know what that criteria is, but that's where my problem has occurred with several of my listings that have been filtered by Pigeon, is that it was in close proximity to another company that provided the same service. Products and/or services. For whatever reason, Google determined that other business was more relevant than mine, so it only shows that because it's too close in location.
So if you got two businesses listed at the same location, it could … I don't know why it would happen unless they're both carpet related businesses, but for some reason Google's saying that that other business is the only one that it's going to display. And I'm not sure why that is or what the criteria is.
Marco: Rob and I actually took a look at this a couple of weeks ago for someone who was having issues with the Map. The issue was the entity. I typed in the address and what Google showed for the entity was something that was sharing the … It was another company, related, sharing the address. And that was showing as the entity, rather than the one that we were looking for to be the entity. So this … The only way that he can determine this is by listing the address and doing a Map search for …
Bradley: On the address.
Marco: Not a Map search, doing an address search to see what comes up in the entity panel, in the knowledge panel, and then that's the only way to know which one Google is taking, considering the entity. And you need to get that changed. You need to either pop a three pack in there and then change it back to the knowledge panel. There's a few ways that we do it through RYS Reloaded, it's one of the … Rob, correct me if I'm wrong. It's one of the webinars that we'll have sometime in the future, on how we can't always do it. And that's a big issue. I don't like going into anything unless I can replicate and do it over, and over, and over again. But I can tell right now, just from this, from reading this, his problem is probably entity.
Bradley: Yeah, so changing the address can help to solve that because again, if it's like what Marco says, is absolutely true. If you do a search on just the physical address instead of the company name or the phone number or anything, then Google's gonna show you what it sees at that location. And so if you change the address, then that could actually help. But again, I would test … First start with showing the address, instead of selecting for it to be hidden and see if that helps. Give it a few days, though. Don't just change it and then tomorrow, go look and say, “Oh, it didn't work,” And then start doing all this other stuff. Give it a few days and see if it changes it, and you can go in and update then if that does help.
If it doesn't help, then like Marco said, it's kind of difficult because I haven't found anything that consistently solves that problem yet, either. I've tried several different things with mixed results, so that's why I'm not willing to share it yet either. Because I don't want to send people down a rabbit hole, go chasing stuff that may or may not work. Okay?
How Do You Use SEM Rush With Keyword Template In SEO Battleplan?
Okay, Ivan's up again. He says … Or this is a different Ivan, excuse me. Ivan says, “I'm starting a new business. This morning I took some time to read the Battle Plan again. I downloaded the keyword research template provided after the SEMrush part. Can you give us a brief overview of how to use SEMrush to fill this template?” I'm sorry, Ivan, I can not. As I mentioned earlier in this webinar, I do not use SEMrush.
What Are Some Best Practices Building Links Pointing To A Google Stack?
Okay, Armand says, “Is there a best practice for what links you point at a Google Stack? Do you generally use PBN's or do you go crazy with GSA? Or could something like GSA be bad for the money site?” Well, if you're not pointing directly at your money site, you should be okay. We don't typically recommend throwing any sort of like, kitchen sink spam onto tier one links. Even Google links, I know Marco and Rob have tested, like literally over a million of the worst, most horrid, awful, atrocious links you could possibly imagine at Google Stacks and it actually ranked them.
Marco: In fiber gigs.
Bradley: Yeah, in fiber gigs and everything else. We don't want to tell you to do that, so use at your own risk. I prefer to still use our [inaudible 00:50:39] methods that we do for syndication networks, which is the tier one links going to the drive stack are contextual links on higher metric properties. And then we throw kitchen sink spam behind that. Also, press releases are working really well to point at drive stacks, or drive files, drive folders, whatever. I deal with a lot of press release stuff right now with drive stacks and then I'll throw GSA spam behind the press releases. The ones especially that have the do-follow links, which you just gotta identify those.
PBN's do still work for that kind of stuff, guys. I wouldn't point them at my money site but a drive stack, sure, why not? Okay? So you can go crazy, I'm just not encouraging you to do it, because we don't recommend doing that because even though it still works now, we don't know if in tomorrow or in six weeks or in six months, that all of a sudden that could tank your stack and/or your site. So I don't recommend doing that. I would still be somewhat gentle for tier one to the drive stack, and then you can throw spam behind that.
Alright, Roger. “Is there an RYS Reloaded webinar on Monday?”
Marco: It's listed in the events in the Facebook group, so go there.
Bradley: From now on, Marco's going to be listing the webinars in the events tab of the Facebook group. So Facebook will be sending out notifications to everybody. So, yes, just pay attention to the Facebook notifications that should solve the problem.
Marco: And that one was already sent out, by the way. It's already scheduled. And no, it's not this coming Monday, it's the following Monday.
Adam: Gotcha. And if it did, if we have somebody coming on, when we do these webinars, we know a lot of people can't make it. So we'll definitely have the replay available.
Should You Go With Serp Shaker And Build Pages For Lead Gens?
Bradley: Okay, and I got a couple minutes left. Let me run through the last few. Sajjad … Forgive me for being a dumb American. Can't pronounce some named. “Recently found out about Serp Shaker, should I still go for it and build pages for lead-gens?” That's up to you. It's more cost effective than some of the other mass-page generators, that's for sure. But it requires more manual work. We've used, for those types of things, Lead Gadget, is something that I was associated with for quite sometime. That's a really good powerful, it's a lot more expensive though, tool. Yeah, it's still valid. P
Personally, I don't like those methods for lead-gen stuff so much anymore because a lot of times those sites get slapped and de-indexed. Or they just fall or they catch penalties, whatever. So it's just, to me, it's a churn-and-burn. And I don't like churn-and-burn strategies, guys. I don't like doing rework. I hate doing anything that I've put a lot of time and effort into, to just have it disappear. So I got away from doing that, although it does work, I got away from doing it because it was a lot of rework. You'd get site slapped, or they would get de-indexed and then you'd have to go rebuild them again.
And although it's not a difficult process to do, especially once you have a process in place, it's still a lot of repeat stuff. That kinda stuff just annoys me, so I kinda got a way from doing it. Don't get me wrong, they're good. They work, okay? But you just have to understand what you're getting into, okay?
How Do You Use IFTTT Networks When Ranking A Podcast?
Only got a couple left so Jay says, “Hi guys, high five.” High five back at ya, Jay. “Have you got any suggestions, tweaks, or warnings regarding using IFTTT ring whose content is a podcast? Can you take the podcast or iTunes RSS feed and use it as an RSS source for the tier one ring?” I don't see why not. I've not done it. I don't know what the syndication would look like. I know we've done … I've tested some stuff in the past. This was a couple years ago now, but with SoundCloud, and using SoundCloud as a trigger. ‘Cause the SoundCloud embed code's very much like a YouTube embed code, you know what I mean?
So it's just like … It shouldn't be a problem. It's just an iFrame, but play with it, Jay. As far as, will it work? Yeah. I don't know how they look when they get syndicated but-
Adam: For example, we've got ours. Like it's not our only, so that's what I can say, is that I don't have any experience using solely a podcast, but Semantic Mastery, we integrate our podcasts into our blog, which then gets syndicated though.
Bradley: Yeah, and that's what I was gonna say. I don't see it … It's not gonna cause you any problems. I just don't know how it looks once it's syndicated 'cause I haven't gone and investigated that. But yeah, you can absolutely do that.
Adam: Yeah, definitely be some power to adding, like call to action or some extra content onto it, instead of just like the SoundCloud play button. But, anyways, sorry Marco, what were you saying?
Marco: No, that's three sources of content that he actually has on there, right? Because if he records it, then he has sound, he has video, and then he gets the video transcribed, and now he has a blog post.
Bradley: Yeah, written content.
Do You Have Any Training On Getting SEO Clients?
Bradley: Mohammad says, “Thanks for the advice guys, not much I can do now but I did edit the question. At the very least, lesson learned.” No problem, buddy. You know what, lesson learned is right. So back to another question from this gentleman. That's all I'm gonna say. “New to your training. Do you have any training on client acquisition? My SEO agency site is currently ranking for a few countries and also for a few states, but I need more clients. Called a few from Yellow Pages, says not interested and ends the call.” Yeah, that's the problem. And the reason why is because so many … Well, I say contractors 'cause that's what I deal with, but clients of small business, they get hammered with sales calls guys, all day long. That's why interruption marketing really doesn't work that well for prospecting. It just doesn't. Because you get read the riot act from prospects that when you interrupt them, and I don't blame you, 'cause I get so many damn spam calls a day that I don't even answer my phone anymore. In fact, my voicemail reading says, “Due to the overwhelming volume of spam calls that I receive, I'm no longer answering my phone. If this is important, leave your name and number and I will call you back. If it's solicitation,” Well, I don't say this but I wanna say it: Go ‘F' yourself. You know what I mean? So anyways I don't answer my phone anymore specifically for that reason. So I totally understand where businesses are coming from when they, even though like, from you, you're genuinely trying to help and provide them services, but they don't see it that way. So that's why I try to do a more nurturing, like lead development type of strategy, where I contact them like cold-contacting. Email. I get them into a funnel and I do remarketing, direct mail, you know all these different things that I can do to constantly remind them that I'm there, so that when they're ready, they'll schedule the call with me on their own time. And that changes the whole psychology or the dynamic of that phone call, if that makes sense.
Adam: And I think, also Bradley, something else you've done is the video mail and I think that might be something that he could do. You don't have to show yourself if you're … Depending on if you're comfortable speaking and doing a screen-share, walk through people. You don't have to show your face but talk to them and then send them that, and then they have time to look at it. Send them two or three emails and then get them to call you.
Bradley: And so, there you go. That was gonna be my next comment was to tell you that we have, in our bonus site, we have the video email ports that basically walks you through the process of how to set up and use video email, or v-mail is what I used to call it, to prospect for clients. It's very, very effective. It's a bit time consuming but it's very effective. So if you don't have access to the bonus site … You're supposed to have purchased one of our products. If you haven't purchased any of our products yet, start with YouTube Silo Academy, it's 7 bucks. But contact us at support@semanticmastery.com.
Adam: I was gonna say, his next question was about the Battle Plan, so I would say, what's it all about? It's about having a list that you can go down, a process, a plan, that you can follow for your SEO. So, grab that, get the training, and that's probably the best thing for him.
Bradley: Yeah, contact us at support@semanticmastery.com and we'll get you set up with the bonus site if you pick up the Battle Plan or whatever. Just contact us there and we'll get you set up with the bonus site. And in there, there's a ton of additional training too, guys. Alright? Okay, cool, well let's see if I can undo this. Crazy thing. I know isn't that weird? Okay, it's back. Are we back?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Okay, cool. Alright everybody, thanks for being here. We're a little bit over on time, but we got MasterMIND tomorrow. Any final parting words, guys?
Adam: Good to go.
Bradley: Alright.
Adam: Bye, everyone.
Bradley: Hey, Rob, thanks for showing up and participating so much.
Rob: Yeah, you know, I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Adam: Awesome, good to have you here man.
Bradley: Alright guys.
Adam: Alright. Have a beer. See you guys.
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