Click on the video above to watch Episode 166 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 https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
Bradley: Bots.
Adam: Oh, we're live. All right. This is the fun episode where you watch Adam take notes and Bradley talk about stuff that has nothing to do with Hump Day Hangouts. Just kidding.
Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts and I believe it's episode 166. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't have it up in front of me actually.
Bradley: You are correct sir.
Chris: Yes.
Adam: Before we get into things real quick we're going to do a quick hello to everybody. Then we've got a few special announcements, and then, as usual, we'll get into the questions, but I'll start on my left here and see Chris. How's it going with you?
Chris: Doing good. Got a early rise up tomorrow. 7am airport time and then off to the slopes for some winter action.
Adam: Nice, nice. Outstanding. Hernan how about yourself?
Hernan: Living the life stanman. No, I'm good. I'm good. Excited to be here guys. Excited for what's coming. We're going to be with Adam I think it's early to mention that but we're going to go to the [inaudible 00:01:00] Live, right Adam?
Adam: Yup.
Hernan: In March. By the end of it. So if you guys want to hand out at some point. We're going to be doing some networking, we're going to be doing some good stuff over there sir.
Adam: Yeah definitely. Let us know if you're going and then if you're in the area. I think it's Orlando so we'll see. We'll have a little bit of time, can't guarantee anything right now, but obviously would love to hear from you.
Hernan: Yeah. We'll have more info as time goes, as we get closer but we'll be representing Semantic Mastery over there.
Adam: Cool.
Bradley: Represent, represent.
Hernan: Yeah.
Adam: Marco how's it going man?
Marco: What's up man? I just got out of the lab with Rob. We're tearing down right brain, just a little bit. A little part of the algorithm that we found. It's amazing. It's amazing the stuff that Google has that's public and that you can actually manipulate where I constantly back and forth, back and forth. Let's do this and let's try that, and what's this and what's that and then sometimes even our own users. Not necessarily in our way as reloaded. This was actually from a question in the Cemented Master Mastermind that made us go about 45 minutes into the lab. Okay let's track this down, let's see what happened. That was really good. I had fun. That's my idea of fun. 45 minutes of looking at code.
Adam: Glad you guys are doing that. I'm sure something good is going to end up coming out of this. Bradley, how you doing?
Bradley: I'm good. Happy to be here. Got lots to go through today. We've also, just update guys, we've got the Syndication Academy Update Webinar Number 18, immediately following Hump Day Hangouts today, so if you're in Syndication Academy, go check the events tab in Facebook and you should be able to get the URL to it. Okay?
Adam: Awesome. All right a couple quick announcements. We will be sending out some more information about the next two things I'm going to mention. The first one is video lead gen system. Bradley just put the finishing touches on a video email prospecting course that kind of deep dive into that so Bradley you want to tell people just real quick about that?
Bradley: Yeah, we did a really extended webinar. Went damn near three hours in the Mastermind about how to do the video lead gen prospecting system that I've been using for years that I really got my start. Started building my agency up using that method. That specific method. It's a bit time consuming but it works incredibly well for landing clients and it's still valid and works well today. It actually works even better today because you can embed gifs into the emails now that look like actual videos playing in the email. It's a click enticer. It's click bait so-to-speak.
Anyways, we went through three hours of training on how to do it step-by-step and I basically just edited that webinar. Put it into separate modules. Individual lesson videos and sections with notes and all that kind of stuff. We packaged it up and that's basically it. It's a very riffle approach instead of a shotgun approach for targeting prospects, but it works incredibly well.
The good news is about 90 percent of it can be outsourced. There is a part of it that should be done by whoever … If you're a one man agency or solopreneur or whatever, you're going to want to record the audit videos, or if you've got a sales person or something like that, maybe it would be them, but somebody obviously that knows a little bit about whatever service it is that they're selling, but other than that the rest of everything else can be outsourced and so we've had questions a lot recently over the last few weeks about prospecting and how to keep your pipeline full and all that kind of stuff. One way to do it is just to consistently be prospecting. Make it part of your standard operating procedure. Your just normal weekly tasks in your business should be prospecting so that you always keep your pipeline full.
That's why I think this course was so timely because if you outsource it then you know it gets done, and that way you can keep your pipeline full of leads at all times so that you can cherry pick the best clients, number one and number two you won't be so desperate when you are talking to the … If you only got five leads for three months, then you try so hard to close all five. Whereas, if you had 10 or 15 leads per week, then you could be a hell of a lot more selective and really, if somebody's going to give you any resistance, thank you very much, see you later, click. Hang up, move on to the next one.
Adam: Definitely.
Bradley: I think it's going to be a good course coming out. I think a lot of you guys, about 60 percent of our audience is into local marketing. I think this will help a lot of you to be able to generate some clients, as well as maybe land service providers if you're selling leads.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah, it's a good one. Like Bradley said, it can save you a ton of time. It's going to keep your pipeline full, and it works. I've used this stuff too in a couple different industries and this really applies to anyone, which is really cool. You can use this for consulting. You could use this for financial services. You could use this for contractors, and it has a very good response rate, which is why it is the lead gen system using video. Anyways, more on that later. We'll be telling you guys all about that.
The other thing we wanted to tell you about was Jeffrey Smith. If you missed his SEO boot camp webinar that was, I'm going to get the date wrong, I think it was early December or late November, but that went really well. We had some technical issues the very first time we had him on. He came back, had a webinar, that went great. We got really good feedback. People who hopped in the course loved it. I know Bradley, you said you went through it, or did you go through all of it or parts of it?
Bradley: Not all of it. I've been through parts of it. Kind of like what Marco mentioned to me. I just go through and find stuff that I need when it's pertinent at that particular time. Everything I've seen has been so thorough though. It's training after our own hearts in that its so detailed and he went way over and above and it's an amazing course.
Before we get into it I wanted to remind everybody about the charity that we're supporting throughout January. That's still going on. We've had a lot of really good donations so far. It's really impressive so first of all, thank you to everyone who's helped out and then Marco, if you want to tell people, because I know we have people come who aren't here all the time. If you want to tell them quickly about what the charity is, whose it for?
Marco: Yeah sure. It supplies uniforms and books for kids. We're targeting first, second and third grade kids. We want to keep them in school. A lot of times the reason why they can't go to school is simply because they don't have the supplies, the uniforms or the books. They don't have shoes. Right? They have to go to school barefoot. Imagine if you're having … still in 2018 going to school barefoot, man. This is the type of stuff that we're dealing with. Not only that, the environment that these kids live in. Someone comes knocking at the door, you don't know who's coming knocking at your door. They're living in a place where they're under lock and key. When they go out they have to go out in groups because they have to run a gauntlet man. Drug dealers, drug users. Just the worst of the worst man, so what we're trying to do is, I know that education is the key to success. Without an education all you're doing is you're going to stay in that poverty cycle because you're not going to know anything except that which you experience.
So experiencing an education, experiencing the world, experiencing all of the different things that are offered through an education opens your mind to all kinds of possibilities and it lets you know that you're not useless. That you're not worthless. Someone is taking the time to tell you you're actually worth something, which to me, that's incredible. That's what we're trying to do. We're going into these neighborhoods. We're trying to get these kids, as many as we can. Right now we're almost at the 10k mark, which is what had set. 100 kids takes $10,000. We're almost there so if it's a dollar, if it's two dollars, we don't care. Just go ahead. Please donate. Thank you very much those who have donated already. This is really a really good cause, man.
Adam: Awesome.
Marco: I just hope people will listen and donate and I dropped the link on the event for those who would like to go and take a look at the video and see what it's all about, more in depth.
Adam: Awesome. Thanks again as Marco said, to everyone who's donated so far. We appreciate it. When is it? I think we got another week or two right?
Marco: Yeah. We made the cutoff on the 26th so we can go the week of 29th for the supplies. Just before they're going to school on February 5th, but after that we're going to keep it open. We're going to do something else so that when next February comes around we're ready for even more kids to go to school. We'll be doing something. We'll announce it. I'll talk to you guys and we'll work it out.
Adam: Sounds good. Awesome. Well if you are new to Semantic Mastery, first off, thank you for joining us on Hump Day Hangouts. A lot of times we get asked, “Where's a good place for me to start?” Well the Hump Day Hangouts, you're in the right place so that's the good place to start. The next step would be the Battle Plan and we've got a discount code. I'll pop that up on the page, but check out the Battle Plan, it's a solid investment and it is very, very much worth the little amount of money you have to pay for all the information in there.
If you don't yet have an account over at SerpSpace, go to serpspace.com, you can open up an account for free. Check out the tools there, check out the Done for You services and if you're really jonesing for some Semantic Mastery information and you just need to see Bradley making a chart or something during the week head over to support.semanticmastery.com and that's where we put a lot of these common questions that come up, or the more in depth answers where Bradley's maybe drawing a chart or giving some information, so you can go check that out and get an answer in the middle of the week.
If you're really ready to take things up and you're not new maybe to Semantic Mastery, then I highly suggest going to the mastermind.semanticmastery.com. I'll pop the link on there and if you're ready to join the Mastermind, that's the place to be. If you ever have any questions about that, you can contact us at support@semanticmastery.com. If you have any questions about the Mastermind after looking through the page and seeing if maybe it's a right fit for you or not, we'd be happy to chat with you.
Bradley: Sweet.
Adam: All right. Anybody else? Any announcements or are we ready to get rolling?
Bradley: No. I'm ready to get in questions. Just one brief thing. The new Mastermind curriculum starts this week. We have our first Mastermind Webinar for 2018 under the new training schedule, which is tomorrow. We're in the PPC module. I'm actually a bit behind in preparing the presentation and training for tomorrow, but whatever is fine, because I imagine for the next couple weeks it's going to be a little bit in disarray as we settle into this new training, but we're going to be doing … AdWords has been updated, the interface has, so we're going to be doing AdWords for local, as well as for national stuff, which could apply to affiliate campaigns, plus we will be doing AdWords for YouTube for again, local led gen, as well as national lead gen and then also for affiliate stuff and we're going to be doing some of that for Semantic Mastery for our own channel, for example. Some of that will also be included and then we'll be doing some Bing ads and also Hernan's going to be doing some training on Facebook ads. This is all stuff that's going to be in part of module one, which should last probably about six weeks and so again, I would highly encourage you to come join the Mastermind.
Last thing I want to mention very briefly is, and I say this the beginning of every Hump Day Hangouts go to bradelybenner.com and subscribe and the reason I say that is because I got an email from one of my subscribers today that was replying, and it's Jenny, and Jenny is always on our Hump Day Hangouts asking questions. I'm not going to read your email to me, Jenny, but the last two lines that you put in the email as a reply to one of my emails about the Mindset series was, “Thanks for kicking my ass today, sir. May I have another?” That's awesome. I get some replies from some of my subscribers because it's just about mindset stuff and I highly recommend that you go check it out. At least I know it helps me to be able to write those.
By the way, I started crossfit training as a coach every single day this week. This week is when I started. I was supposed to start last week but the extreme cold prevented me from doing it, so I haven't been able to write an email every morning, but I'm trying to squeeze it in when I can. Like today, I got the email written right after I got back from the crossfit gym. Just to let you guys know, I'm trying to write every single day. I've got about 40 emails in the series now. Go subscribe, check it out. If you don't like it, just unsubscribe. Okay? With that said, let's get into it.
Okay you guys. Let me know if everything's coming through okay?
Adam: Yup.
What Are Your Recommended Frequency And Topics On Press Releases?
Bradley: Sweet. Okay, Harold's up first. He says, “Hello everybody, thank you so much for giving us this space so we can ask our questions.” You're welcome Harold. “Mine is, how often should I get press releases and what are some good topics?”
Well the frequency is really up to you. The nice thing about press releases is whenever a press release is picked up and distributed, it gets picked up by usually hundreds of websites so it's a kind of a natural occurrence to get a bunch of links back from a press release, because companies all the time are announcing news and it's a natural type thing. It's traditional. It's normal and so you can be a bit aggressive with press releases. I know I usually do them about once every two weeks. That's usually the speed with which I do it, until I get the results that I'm looking to achieve, which is typically to rank in the three pack. Sometimes it's organic stuff, it depends, but for the most part I'm trying to rank in the Maps pack and usually , just do them about every two weeks.
Marco: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen it. Like you said, we just bang one right after another and we stack them the right way going after different URLs. Now we have another press release service that has even more publication sites so that's a really good mix. It's really good to mix them up. One of them gives us embeds, which is even better for us and so it's a lot of good things that you could do and a lot of nasty things that you can do with press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. All right, and as far as good topics, Harold, all right, so there's a couple of things I want to mention here about topics. One, pretty much anything can be turned into a press release. Any sort of company news, any sort of seasonal changes, sales, specials, new products, new services. Anything at all can really be worthy of a news release to be written. What I've been doing for the most part is we published press releases anytime a customer review has been received by one of my lead gen sites or one of my contractor, client sites, excuse me. That's another reason to publish a press release is because you're announcing the glowing testimonial review that you just received, right? That's just another example and I like using that method because it encourages the business owners to solicit reviews from their customers and then every time they get a review, I get notified and I go publish a press release for it and I get to bill them for it, and they get to puff out their chest and say, “Look at me, look at how awesome we are.”
I've been using that method. In fact, that's our front end service on our new agency. It's doing basically reputation. It's a combination of video marketing, reputation marketing and PR marketing. It's a combination of those three and that's our front end service. It's a very, very powerful way.
Also, any time you publish a blog post typically you could do that. Now, the last thing I want to mention about that is if you've got a good writer, a PR writer that you work with, a good PR writer will typically be able to create an angle out of just about anything. So an angel or a news hook out of just about anything. The other option would be to use the press release writers from the distribution service that you're using.
For example in Serpspace, we don't even allow manually submitted PRs anymore, I don't think. I think we just have our net distribution service or network writers write them, because they know what the editorial guidelines are and a lot of those distribution service writers, right, that will provide as just an add on service, the press release to be written. It's usually about $30 or so or something like that and it ranges between $30 to $45, somewhere in that range, but a lot of times, all they need is just a handful of small details and then they'll create the news hook, because they know what they're distribution network is looking for, if that makes sense?
A lot of times all I'll do is just list who, what, when, where and then a quote from a company executive or in the case of using a review, I just quote the review, whatever the customer review text was that's the quote. Does that make sense? That's all we do and it's very, very simple and I love it because it takes the content marketing side of things off my shoulders. We still have bloggers that do the curating and stuff, but I don't have to think about so many content ideas for press releases anymore. We just say, “Hey go get another review. As soon as you get a review, let me know. We'll publish a press release” and boom it's done.
By the way, just to let you guys know, I had been doing that myself for my clients for my own agency every month. I would spend about two days at the beginning of the month. I still have been generating client reports and there's a reason why I do that, because I typically, once I generate client reports and I send the reports to the clients I also include a brief breakdown of what the reports are showing in my own voice and sometimes I record a screen cast video and send that to them with an overview of what I'm seeing for the month and some new opportunities that have arisen and I've got a really close relationship with my clients so because of that, I don't outsource the client reporting part of it, but I had been generating the review commercials, which is a David Sprague. Every month, this is just an add on service I added to most of my clients. I would generate a review commercial from a new review that they received within the last month and then publish the video, distribute it across my network. My syndication networks typically ranks the video, but if it doesn't then I end up with a press release anyways.
I had been doing all of that myself for the last six or seven months since I've really started playing with this strategy. One of my virtual assistants is in the UK. She's been blogging for me for, I'd say at least four years. She's great. She reached out to me around the turn of year and said, “Hey, I'm looking for more work and we've been working together for years. Would you have anything else you wanted me to do?” And I was like, “Oh, perfect. I've been meaning to unload this work, now that I know this is a viable strategy and it's something I'm going to do.”
The reason I'm telling you this guys, is because I want to let you know, I struggle too with doing shit that I'm not supposed to be doing. For example, taking two days at the beginning of every month to generate these review videos and order the press releases. It was something that could have been outsources three or four months ago once I really knew that it was going to be something that I was going to carry on or be a continuing service, however, I never took the time to create the process docs. I get up on my soapbox all the time and preach to you guys about outsourcing stuff, yet there are processes in my business that I still have not outsourced, and it's just because of a lack of time, or really a lack of desire for doing it. For creating the process training for that process and what it comes down to typically is just not wanting to do it because it sucks. It's boring work. It's tedious and often times I'm so freaking busy with all the work that I'm trying to fulfill that I feel like I don't have the time to create process docs about the work that I need to fulfill. If that makes sense? So it's a catch 22. Right?
Because she gave me a reason, Michelle did, my VA. She gave me a reason and because I've got so much work on my plate right now for this new Mastermind training curriculum, I knew at the beginning of every month this year, I don't want to spend two days generating reports and also the review commercials and ordering the press releases and all that stuff. I don't want to do all that. So I spent the first two days of this week creating the training process. The training videos, the written procedures, which are in Google docs and all that and I sent that to her yesterday and she's now going to take over it for me and guess what. I never have to fucking do it again.
The reason I went through all of that is just to let you know that this is all stuff that can be outsourced guys and I highly recommend, sometimes I need to remind myself of some of my own advice, and this is something I should have done four or five months ago, and I just finally got it done and I can tell you what a weight, a load has been lifted off my shoulders because now I'm not going to dread the beginning of the month every month because it's going to eat up two days, if that makes sense. So guys, if you take anything away from that at all, it's that if you've got stuff in your business that makes your stomach turn sometimes because you have to do it and every time it comes up it makes your stomach turn, that's the shit you need to outsource first. Honestly, that's the stuff, the stuff you don't like to do or you hate to do, that's the stuff that you should absolutely, as much as it's going to be painful and tedious to do, but create process docs for how to do all that, and then hire that shit out so that you don't have to do that anymore.
Again, we get into this business not because we want another job, right? We want freedom and we want to enjoy it and so sometimes there's obviously going to be stuff in everyone's business that has to done, that's not enjoyable. Outsource it. If you create the exact process for how to do it, you can outsource anything. This was not a pitch for Outsource KingPin, but we do have a training product that specifically teaches the methods for how to do exactly what I just described and it's called Outsource Kingpin. Check that out. I know that was a long winded answer and I'm sorry Harold, but I just wanted to share with you guys that even I struggle with not following my own advice at times, but outsource as much as you can.
Anybody want to comment on that before I move on?
Chris: I agree with you Bradley.
How Does Google View Directory Sites In Terms Of SEO?
Bradley: Okay. Good enough. Thank you. Juan says, “Hello lovely people and thanks for having me. Are directory site's viewed by Google as good or bad for SEO?” I think Juan, this is going to be not anything based in absolute data for me anymore, as it is just more of opinion or assumption, but I'd like to get some opinions of the other guys. I believe it has more to do with the directory itself then just a blanket statement.
For example, I know they say reciprocal links are bad, but I've seen many cases where reciprocal links actually are still very beneficial and I know a lot of low end directories that are really spammy, will require a reciprocal link, those are the ones that I would suspect are not good, but there's a lot of good other directories that are good.
Chris: Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree with you Bradley. The fact that on some directories you need to think about this in terms of what kind of value can you get from the directory, right? As well as what kind of value can you get from the reciprocal link, because if it is let's say that you're doing, I don't know SEO for a doctor, and then you can get the doctor, put it in directory for doctor's and even further for local doctors that would actually, could help you bring in some profit. Right? Even further if the directory is ranking in Google. Paid directories sometimes work as well because just being paid, even if it's $5 or $10 for a lifetime link, usually work because they weed out 99 percent of spammy links so have that in mind. Some of them are really, really high authority so I would say that it would be on a case by case basis.
Some people would say that, for example, blog comments will be bad for SEO and that's not entirely true.
Bradley: That's right.
Chris: If you make a really thoughtful blog comment on a highly relevant publication or blog, it can blow your website away, right? It can really help you so I think it's a case by case basis. If you're on GSA's spamming blog post or spamming directories, which you could definitely do, just do it as far away as possible from your clients or your own website, but if it's a manual placement from a website that you can get value from and value meaning either authority or traffic, I would say go ahead and do it.
Bradley: Good advice. Marco?
Chris: No I think you guys covered it perfect.
What Is The Best Way To Indexing One Million Pages A Day?
Bradley: Beautiful. Fabian. What's up Fabian? He says, “I want to index about 1,000,000 pages a day.” Wow. Okay. “So I need a very scalable solution. How would you do this using IFTTT and Plus Twitter. If yes, how often can I post the tweets that my account won't be shut down? Should I create several accounts and spread my posts on them? Thanks a lot.”
Yeah, I don't think you would want to do a million tweets per day in one Twitter account. I don't think that's a good idea. You probably need a hell of a lot of Twitter accounts to be able to accomplish a million tweets per day. We have an indexing service in Service Space. I don't know if that amount of links would be a scalable option. There is one service that I can mention for mass volume that I know my, one of our link building director, he basically pointed it out a while ago. Now it's been probably a year and a half since he mentioned this to me, I know I still use it though, but it's called Express Indexer. Let me see if I can …
Hernan: Yeah, Bradley.
Bradley: Go ahead.
Hernan: I talked to [Debbie 00:28:48] already about this because I had seen this question come up. I actually saw it on Facebook.
Bradley: Okay.
Hernan: And he said, “No, it's not working.”
Bradley: Okay.
Hernan: As it used to. He said that he's trying to find a way around it. He's still working on it because we had to shut down the indexing service in Serpspace actually.
Bradley: Oh did we? I didn't even know that.
Hernan: Yeah, we had to shut it down because it just wasn't indexing the way that it should. This option IFTTT to Twitter is not scalable because you're going to need, for a million pages, what a hundred thousand profiles to push 10 tweets a day, 20 so that's how you have to look at it. You can't get away with more than 10 or 20, 20 tweets a day actually is pushing it because you'd have to scale up to 20. You can't start at 20. You'll get banned now.
Hernan: In Twitter. So I don't have a solution. You don't want to submit a million pages to the Google URL submitter, because you'll trigger the captcha and so I don't have an answer for this other than what we were using isn't working at this level.
Bradley: Yeah. Well good. Thanks for chiming in. That's a good question Fabian. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you. Apologize.
What Are The Different Ways Of Indexing Local Citations?
Okay, so Shripad, I guess. Forgive me if I mispronounce that. He says, “What are the different ways to index local citations?”
Well indexers work. Typically that's what I do. For example, when I order citations, whenever I get the citation report back, I just open up the spreadsheet. Copy all the citation URLs and then just submit them to the indexer. I usually submit them to multiple indexers. That's all I do. That's all you need to do. Okay?
Some citations, if you try to let them index naturally, sometimes it takes forever for citations to index naturally, that's why I typically, as soon as I get a citation report guys, I'll just go copy them and submit them to at least two indexing services to try to speed that up a little bit.
mbedding Maps – MyMaps Or GMB Map Page
All right. RL Sanders, “Hey guys, as always thank you for what you do. When you guys talk about embedding maps are you talking about my maps or the GMB map page?”
Both, RL. Both. I don't mean embed both at the same time. I haven't really tested with that, but I just mean you can do an embed run with the My Maps and then do another embed run with the GMB maps page. I'll be a hundred percent honest with you, even though I know it's super powerful, the My Maps thing, I don't do a lot of that. I don't set those up typically. If I get it back from a drive stack then I'll do an embed blast with that through MAPS Powerhouse, but I don't do, when I'm working on client stuff myself, I typically don't do the My Maps. I just end up doing all the GMB stuff, but the My Maps are very, very powerful and what's great about the My Maps guys is you can squeeze them, basically do follow links in and there's a whole lot of ninja stuff that you can do. Marco teaches an RYS Academy that I just don't have the time to do it or I would do more of it, but fortunately we have a [jessen 00:32:12] who can build them for us.
“Also, can you repost the link for Marco's charity?” Yes. He posted it already, I believe. RL's another question. He says, “Can you share any tips for finding local SEO clients? I need a few recurring payments to get the ball rolling. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.”
Yeah, look, I don't know if I want to share this on … Well okay, RL, let me just say this. There's one method that … no I'm not going to share that here. What I'm going to say is select a niche, RL. Right? Select a niche that you want, an industry that you prefer to work in or that you know that you may already have some experience in, whatever. Something that you're familiar with or that you have a genuine interest in so that it makes it feel like not so much like work. Then start targeting those clients. Craft a very specific message. Again, we talk about the video lead gen system, which is going to be the product that we're going to release in about two weeks. You could use that very specifically for finding and prospecting local SEO clients. Finding the clients isn't that difficult, it's the prospecting. Right? Finding prospects isn't hard. You can use scrapers, there's lot of tools out there. You can hire VA's to do that kind of stuff, whatever. That's not really the difficult part.
The hard part is starting the conversation with them. I found that even sales isn't that difficult. The hardest part is starting the conversation from a position where they're willing to receive the message and I found the video email is a fantastic way to start that conversation. To initiate that conversation. Break the ice and lower the defenses a bit and get the conversation started because you can position yourself as an expert and show them beyond a shadow of a doubt that you know what they hell you're doing, whereas 99 percent of anybody else that's contacted them about marketing services isn't going to do that, and that's what makes you stand out.
I would recommend that you pick that up when we release it in a few weeks. Obviously if you're in the Mastermind RL, we cover that in there. That's all included, but we did also cover a very specific … By the way, the method that I just said I'm not going to reveal right here is in that course that will be released in about two weeks or whatever. Just keep that in mind guys. It's a very specific method for finding video SEO clients. Well for finding local clients period, but it's a very specific way, using YouTube to find those clients and it works like crazy. Okay?
Anyways, I have to tease you guys with that a little bit, because I can't reveal it here. It's in the course. Come to the Mastermind though and I'll share it with you.
What Are Your Recommendations On InMotion Hosting All Domains In One Cpanel Account?
Yeah, that's how they do it, Ajay. When you have a shared hosting account that's how it works. Every time you create an add on domain, it's really like a sub-domain of your whatever the IP or C-Panel was set up as. It doesn't matter. You can still configure your sites to all resolve to the exact, to whatever domain it is that you've added, but that's just how it works in C-Panel. Okay? That's not an issue.
Are There Any Benefits Of Sub Folders In Terms Of Link Juice?
Guys we need to probably create a … somebody wants to make a note of this, a frequently asked question about this because we get this question a lot.
Yes, sub-domain folders apparently through a lot of testing, not so much my own, but from other people's testing I do understand that there's supposed to be a slight SEO advantage of doing multiple sites in sub-directories as opposed to on sub-domains, but we have repeatedly, or we've held our position on this for many years now, which is that sub-domains in my opinion is a superior method. There may be a slight SEO benefit to doing sub-directories over sub-domains. That's fine. I get that. The problem with that is every single site that's in a sub-directory is subordinate to the root domain, which means that if the root domain catches a penalty or if any of the subordinate sites in the sub-folders or sub-directories catch a penalty, it will penalize the entire domain and all of the other sibling sub-directories. Does that make sense?
The problem is it's a penalty that would be leveled to basically the root, which would damage everything. It would be applied to everything domain wide, however, if you do a sub-domain, then in Google's eyes, each sub-domain site is considered a separate entity. Right? A separate website and so when I talk about using sub-domains, it's a way to offer or provide a level of protection for every individual site. The trick with that is to make sure that you keep the root clean and don't do anything spammy to the root, because just as we talked about with the sub-directories, if the root was to catch a penalty or any of the sub-directories catch a penalty, it would apply to the root, and therefore tank all the rest of the sites. If you catch a penalty on the root domain with sub-domain sites, all the sub-domain sites will be affected as well because it is a domain wide penalty, but if you get a penalty on a sub-domain site, then it only applies to that sub-domain. Your root would still remain intact and your other sibling sub-domains would also remain untouched, unaffected.
Adam: No, you nailed it.
Bradley: All right cool. Great question though Ajay. That was a really good question. We get that often, but guys, like I said, we should probably just make a frequently asked question out of that one.
Did You Eventually Charge More As The Company Grew Or Did You Keep The Rate The Same?
Mohammed, what's up buddy? He's recently joined the Mastermind and he's been incredibly active in there. I saw your question Mohammed about local stuff in there. We're going to cover that slightly tomorrow in the Mastermind as well. So keep that in mind.
“Hey guys have you ever worked with a small company that grew because of your marketing?” Yes, my BB's Tree Guys. “Did you eventually charge more as the company grew or do you keep the rate the same?” Well Mohammed, that's a great question by the way. Yes, I always … Well let me rephrase, if I add additionally marketing services I always increase. I don't necessarily increase the rate, but because I'm adding more services I bill them more. Does that make sense?
To answer your question. For example, I just had a client call on Monday. A client of mine that I've had for, well shit, she was one of my first clients and it's not 2018 and I opened my agency in March of 2012. So almost six years she's been a client of mine. She called because she's been ranked at the top of Maps for six freaking years and she, like often happens with a lot of clients, they tend to forget why they're getting leads on line. Especially when it's been six years, right? You guys would be absolutely ashamed if you knew what I was charging this lady, because again, it was one of my very first clients and it was such a small amount of money per month. I'll tell you what it is. It's $250 a month is what she's paying me and she's been ranked at the top of Maps for six freaking years, but she has never wanted to do any additional marketing services.
I have pitched her a least a dozen times on different types of marketing services. Press releases. PR marketing, video marketing. All this other kind of stuff and she never wants to do a damn thing. On Monday, we scheduled a call for Monday, I guess actually it was last Friday, anyways, we scheduled a call from two months ago and we got on the phone and she was like, “I need to know what you've been doing. I just really want to know if it's worth me still spending $250 a month.” I almost laughed at her. I told her, I was like, “Listen, you were one of my first clients. You're on a rate that is so much lower. That is less than half what I typically charge any client, even just to speak to them basically and I've left you at that because we've had you ranked, you've been receiving good results. I've pitched you on other marketing services. You don't want to do any of it. Look, if you want to cancel that's fine, but I don't understand after six years of getting results.”
Anyways, it was just this long basically me having to convince her not to cancel services with me, when honestly, I should have just let her freaking cancel. I should have just said, “Hey, if you don't think $250 is worth you being number one in Google and have been for six years, please feel free to cancel. See how you do in six months.” You know what I mean?
Chris: She's costing you money.
Bradley: Huh?
Chris: She's costing you money.
Bradley: Probably, but my point with that was that I have clients that have been grandfathered into specific rates that I have not raised. I probably could, but I haven't. If they ask me for additional marketing services, then I will price those accordingly based upon my current rates, but whatever I have been charging them guys, I will leave it as is. But again, this is going to be different. Marco, I'm sure, does stuff different. I'm sure Hernan does stuff differently. Adam does stuff differently.
Personally, I don't charge more for existing clients for existing services. I just charge more for new services as they add them. What are your opinions guys?
Chris: Yeah, this is actually a good question. I think it's a case by case basis. I usually don't, as you were saying, I usually don't … unless I have some fixed costs that needs abating. You know how we raise our BA salaries once in whatever. We try to do that for BA's.
Bradley: Yup.
Chris: If that's the case, then I would raise it slightly. Just to update the costs, but I don't do it, not because they're getting more clients because of what I'm doing I won't do it. That's why I really like half retainer, half revenue share agreements. Revenue share could be whatever. It could be on a sales basis, it could be on a lead basis. If they are paying you, for example, x amount of money on retainer, we can be a little bit lower since you're getting some revenue share. There is no cap to the amount of money that you can make and at the end of the day you will be motivated to work more for the guys, right? Because if they are making more money, you're making more money, we're all happy. If it's activity based, meaning blog posts, et cetera, et cetera. Unless they increase the amount of activity, I don't charge them more for it.
Bradley: Right. Anybody else?
Hernan: I charge high enough from the beginning so that it'll be awhile before I decide to raise my rates, but yes, I definitely do if year over year, you can show growth that can be attributed to your efforts. If you can show growth at that level, right? 10, 20, 30 percent, whatever it is, then I would raise my rates accordingly and then you're going to get a lot of push back. You're going to get a lot of no's, get a lot of people that'll just walk away and that's all good and well. I have one specific company that I did a bunch of AdWords for and it was a million dollar account and we had it humming. We had it to the point where they were making just so much stinking money that I told them that I want more money and they decided to go with what they had in house and try to keep it that way, but 18 months later they contacted me again and said, could you come and work on our AdWords again. This is after they told me that they longer needed me, but I was at a point in my career, my life and my on line business where I could tell them, “Hell no. I don't need a client like you.”
The thing is you have to weigh whether it's worth raising the rates, how much it is that you're charging from the beginning. If you price yourself right, if you know what you're worth and you know what you're going to be worth to that company, then you'll be charging the correct price right at the beginning so you should know what you're worth rather than worrying about what it is that you're bringing to the client. The client should just say yes to you with whatever it is that you have because you're producing.
Bradley: Yeah. Lastly on that Mohammed, when you said like BB's Tree Guys. Yeah, but remember with the Tree, especially with the one contractor that I've really, really expanded his business, that's a revenue share model, just like what Hernan was mentioning. I cover all the costs of expanding any marketing services. I build all the infrastructure at my expense and then I just get a cut of every job that gets closed. Again, with that, when you're selling leads or you're on a revenue or equity share model, then its unlimited scalability in that I don't charge them anymore, it's the same rate. I get 10 percent of any job that closes. Whatever the contract price is, I get 10 percent of that and that's been that way with this contractor for four or going on five years now. Again, there's no change in rate, but as I continue to build more and more sites and we cover more and more territory, we generate more and more leads and therefore, I make more and more money. Right?
Is It True That Google Will Penalize A Review/Product Type Rich Snippet That Is Placed On The Homepage?
Okay, I'm just going to call you Steve. What's up buddy? He says, “Hey guys, I remember I read somewhere that putting a review product type rich snippet data on your home page instead of an organization webpage article type is not good, because Google will penalize you somehow. I mean a review product type schema, which shows those review stars below your listing in the Serps for better click through rate. Is this true or just gossip?”
Well first of all, if you're adding schema for review stars, just for the sake of getting review stars, then yes, that structured data spam, don't do it. You would probably get away with it for some time, but it's likely that eventually you'll get caught and you can get a manual spam action for that in search console, so don't do that.
Now, if you actually have products, I don't know because I don't do eCommerce, but product review or product stuff, I don't do that kind of stuff so I don't know if there is some law or rule, not law, excuse, but some rule or best practice that states that you're not supposed to have product reviews on your homepage. I don't think that that's the case though. Anybody have an answer for that? Okay.
If you do product stuff, if you have products, you sell products, for example, if it's a product review site and the homepage has got a blog roll on it and there's product reviews, I don't think that that would cause a penalty because that's a valid site right? When you're spamming schema or structured data specifically to gain search right? Which would be like adding review stars to a site that has no business having review stars, then yes, that can be a problem so don't do that. All right?
Is There Any Good Up-To-Date Google Adwords Course You Would Recommend?
“A short second question please. Is there any good, up-to-date AdWords course you would recommend?” Yeah, well first of all, we have Local Kingpin, but it needs to be updated because the AdWords interface has changed so much and so what I'm going to recommend is that you join Semantic Mastery Mastermind because we're covering PPC and AdWords this month in depth. That's going to packaged up like it's a separate course, but we're not selling it outside of the Mastermind. That's how we're going to be doing the new Mastermind this year. Every single module is basically going to be like a separate stand-alone course. They're all going to piece together because they're all going to be building out the same businesses, but, like this is the PPC module, so it will get packaged up into its own basically course, but only way to get it is to be in the Mastermind.
That said, the AdWords training that I learned from was Perry Marshall's training and it was really good. Again, that was almost two years ago now though. Yeah, that was probably two years ago now so I don't know if he's got updated training. I'm assuming he does and that's good training too. Okay? I would say our training because we're current as far as we're going to be doing all types of AdWords stuff. Google search, PPC, YouTube PPC, remarketing, maybe some display network although I'm assuming we're going to hold that off until we do the remarketing module and that's a separate module all together. We'll also be doing Bing, PPC, and Hernan will be training on some Facebook PPC stuff. That's what I would recommend is you get in there, because it will be a much more well rounded training then just buying an AdWords course alone, if that makes sense? All right.
Do You Use Any Plugins In Blocking Web Spiders?
Jenia, there he is. This is one that I was just talking about. Replied to my email. What's up buddy? He says, “Good afternoon gentlemen, I have a question about blocking spiders. Do you use any plug-ins like Spider Spanker or anything else like that?” I don't anymore, Jenia. I used to do all of that when I was running a lot of PBN's and stuff, but I don't do that anymore. I don't even use that plug-in at all anymore.
“Is there a good way to prevent competition from reverse engineering your SEO efforts?” As far as blocking spiders, first of all, you do that through HT access. Can you do that in robots.text too? I can't remember.
Hernan: You can but it's always better to block them through HT Access.
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: Because robots are directives that the robots can or may or may not follow. Now when you're blocking them through HT Access, the hosting is not even serving them the webpage. You know what I'm saying?
Bradley: Right. Yup.
Does Blocking Web Spiders A Good Way To Prevent Competition From Reverse Engineering Your SEO Efforts?
Bradley: Yeah. Okay, we're going to try to run through guys because we've only got a couple questions left and we're almost out of time and I want to get to them. It looks like we really only got like two, three questions left. Jenia, he says, “Is there a good way to prevent competition from reverse engineering your SEO efforts?”
There's some things that you can do, Jenia. For example, we talk about in the Mastermind how to use tag pages, well canonicals period. Very strategically, which will hide, will mask your efforts from prying eyes so-to-speak. Canonicals are a great way to do that, but there's a lot of other stuff that we talk about in the Mastermind too and I'm not saying that because I don't want to answer your question, Jenia. One, when it comes to reverse engineering, if it's a good SEO they're going to be able to find a lot, right? One of the things that you could do would be to use Spider Spanker or some sort of bot blocking stuff and block the Majestic SEO Crawlers and the AH Refs Crawlers and things like that so that nobody can index your links or what's on your site. The important thing then would be to use those bot blockers on the sites that are linking to you.
In other words, when I was doing a lot of PBN work, I would use bot blockers to block Majestic and AH Refs on the sites, on my PBN sites so that those links wouldn't get indexed. The inbound links pointing to my money sites wouldn't get indexed and people wouldn't be able to see them. Does that make sense? Google will see them, because they'll show up in your links to your site in search console, but the SEO analysis applications wouldn't, right? That's one way you could do it, but again, I don't use PBNs really at all anymore, so because of that I just … remember guys, we'd talk about using syndication networks and we'd do a shit ton of back linking to the syndication network properties, so people want to start looking out at our different tiers and doing back link analysis on tiers, then they're likely going to be able to find out what we're doing, but if they're just going to look at the money site, they're not going to see a shit ton of inbound links, or if they do, they're going to be press release links and syndication network links and drive stack links and stuff like that. Does that make sense?
I don't really go … I don't spend a lot of time trying to prevent other people from seeing what I'm doing anymore. I just don't really worry about it that much, Jenia. “Or are so amazing that no one can't touch this.” No anybody can be taken down.
Can You Explain The Basics Of How Money Site Integrates When Using Syndication And RYS Academy For Both Local And Affiliate/Ecommerce?
Money site just means your primary digital asset. Whatever you use to create revenue, right? So a money site, if you're doing lead gen, could just be a landing page, right? What I mean by local lead gen. Say your generating leads for a plumber, for example, then your money site could typically be a lead gen style landing page. Somebody lands on it and it's got a big contact form. Says contact request form and it's got a big phone number on it and that's it. That could be a money site. Another money site could be an affiliate site. Could be a blog. I'm sorry, was somebody going to say something? I thought I heard somebody trying to jump in.
Marco: No.
Adam: I don't think so.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah, a money site just means any website that you own, or that you are generating revenue with. Don't let that confuse you. As far as syndication RYS for both local and affiliate eCommerce, I'm not sure what you mean unless you're trying to set up a local aspect on a site as well as an eCommerce or affiliate and again, that's a little bit of a unique situation and with our limited time right now, I don't know how I can really unpack that and describe to you a good strategy without knowing a little bit more. I know it can be done, I'm just not sure how to tell you how to set that up without knowing specifically what your objectives are. Does that make sense?
Okay, it says, “Example for local create an article and place a link with offer. Where, how many, suggestion, where it links into syndication, RYS general was more than enough.” Well remember RYS Academy is just basically it's like a link building method so that you can boost existing properties, right, and the drive files themselves can rank, but syndication networks are just a way of … it's a content amplification method, right? You publish content to your money site, or your YouTube channel, either one and it syndicates out across your network for content application, excuse me, amplification as well as provide some SEO benefits. Okay? Just keep that in mind. The link with the offer, where and how many? That's really just going to depend on many different things, but essentially yeah, you create an article and then you can link out to whatever you want. If it's an affiliate offer, so be it. Okay? Again, I apologize that I can't give you more specific answer. I would need more details Nigel.
Would You Say That It's True That The IFTTT + SEO Strategy That You Teach In Semantic Mastery Will Probably Stand The Test Of Time, Not Fall Victim To Any Google Penalties?
All right guys we're almost out of time. Dee says, “Would you say that it's true that the IFTTT plus SEO strategies that you teach in Semantic Mastery will probably stand the test of time, not fall victim to any of Google's penalties?” Well that's our hope, Dee and I certainly feel confident that it's not going to become an issue because it has been effective for me since 2012 when I started using this method. It's only become more effective in pretty much standard op … It's almost required now to have your footprint. To claim your footprint as a brand. That's what helps to validate the entity, so I can't imagine, although I don't work for Google. I could change tomorrow, it could change six months from now. It could change six years from now, I don't know, but as it stands right now and the foreseeable future, I don't see it creating any problems. Okay?
I think we're done guys.
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Before we go just a second. I listed the resource on the page. It's called botreports.com and it actually gives you the HT Access code for blocking whatever specific bots you want to block. It's a really awesome resource.
Bradley: Yup. You got it. Okay guys thanks for everybody being here. Remember Syndication Academy webinar starts in about one minute, well probably two and then we'll be at Mastermind webinar tomorrow with the new curriculum, so we'll see you guys there.
Adam: Awesome buddy. Bye everybody.
Hernan: Bye everyone.
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