Monday, February 19, 2018

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 171

Click on the video above to watch Episode 171 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: Hump Day Hangouts. There we go. We're live now.

Adam: Oh, you covered it up. I just saw Jeffrey and Tony, so good timing. We are live. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is episode 171. The crawl up towards 200 is continuing. I want to say hello to everyone watching, first of all. Let's do a quick run-through. We've got a special guest today along with the full crew. Chris, how are things going with you? Chris, are you muted?

Bradley: Yeah, he's muted.

Chris: Yeah, and now it's working. All right. Yeah. Good to be here, guys. Doing good here in Austria. Yeah, I'm in webinar too.

Adam: Hernan, what's up with you?

Hernan: I'm really excited for what's coming today. I'm really, really excited for the announcements that we're having. Yeah. We're all excited to be here.

Adam: All right. Jeffrey's next on my screen. How are you doing, man? Are you set up? Can you hear me?

Jeffrey: Yeah, I can you guys. Can you hear me?

Adam: Yeah. You're a little loud, a little loud.

Jeffrey: Okay. I'll turn it down, man. Yeah. Basically, just trying to get the camera set up, man. I have a history with Google Plus.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Don't we know it, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey: I know, man. No comment, Thanks, man. Yeah, for sure.

Adam: Yeah, no worries. We're going to get set up. We're going to run through a little bit of an intro and some notes, and then we'll get started.

Bradley: Okay.

Adam: Marco, how are you doing, man?

Marco: I'm good, man. Cold last night, really cold.

Adam: Fifty-nine?

Marco: Fifty-nine. I had to put on a shirt.

Adam: Everybody knows this is the world's smallest violin. Awesome. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

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Bradley: I am happy to be here. I'm excited, we got a Syndication Academy update webinar immediately following Hump Day Hangouts today. I got something really powerful that I'm going to be sharing that I'm sure Marco would be pissed if he knew what I was sharing. But it's something that I'm going to be sharing with the Syndication Academy members that is similar to something that I shared recently in the mastermind, but it's slightly different. Those people that are in the mastermind when they see what I'm going to be sharing today they can combine that with what I shared in the mastermind. It's incredibly powerful. I've been testing it. I'm kind of excited to talk about that, but, first, we got to get through Hump Day Hangouts.

Adam: Also, Bradley, while you're still on the camera, do you want to tell people what we're doing and what we've got going on with the Local PR Pro? We just got ready for some early access. Do you want to tell people a little bit about that?

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. Guys, I've been talking about releasing a press release course for months. But I needed to do a lot of testing and I needed to make sure that everything worked long term, so to speak. I've had several other people help me with testing as well for using press releases for local ranking, and it just works incredibly well. There's obviously some nuances that have to be taken into consideration, but we've been able to repeat it over and over and over again, get 3 packs maps ranking results with just using press releases and different strategies, too.

We're going to be covering all of that in the upcoming course. This is going to be different than any other kind of course that we released in that we're going to be recording it live. In other words, you can buy, get in early like on a pre-purchase or pre-sale. There will be a members area, just like all our other members areas, where we'll host the archives, the webinar replay and such. There will be some training in there, initially, because I've gotten some written procedures and notes and all kinds of stuff that I'm going to be adding.

But we're going to be recording the actual training via two maybe, three webinars. It'll be for sure, but maybe three. The third one, if we need it for Q&A and implementation and stuff like that. We're going to be selling it on a very steep discount on the frontend of presale and then obviously once we have the recordings put into the membership area, after the training has been recorded, then we'll sell it at a normal price.

I highly encourage you guys, any of you guys doing local, if you're not already using press releases and seeing awesome results, or if you've tried using press releases for local and you haven't been able to get the results that you hear me talk about a lot and so many others as well, then I highly recommend you pick up the course because it's super, super powerful and it works, I mean, damn near every time.

Adam: Big deal. I've got to hop in there and say we were just telling the mastermind members that, of course, they get access for free as part of the mastermind. That's definitely one of the perks. If the mastermind members are watching, you're getting access. We're going to hook you up shortly. Also, if you're interested in joining the mastermind, we'll pop a link on the page.

Real quick while I'm doing that, Bradley or Marco, do you want to give Jeffrey and Tony a solid introduction here while I'm doing that, so maybe the very few people who are here and don't know much about them get to know?

Bradley: Sure. I'll do it. Jeffrey and Tony are on with us today. Guys, they're awesome.

Jeffrey: Thank you, brother. Thank you.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Jeffrey: Yup.

Bradley: You guys, if you've been watching Hump Day Hangouts at all for the last several months, you know that we've been talking about Jeffrey Smith's SEO Bootcamp training as being about the best on-page SEO course that I've ever seen. I stand by that statement still. It's amazing. We're honored to have Jeffrey on. He's become a friend of ours here at Semantic Mastery and it's good to have people in high places.

Jeffrey: Thanks. I appreciate it.

Bradley: Okay.

Jeffrey: That's it.

Adam: … Stuff on the page. Well, let's get into it, unless I'm missing some announcements. Do you guys have anything else?

Bradley: I'm good.

Adam: All right. Let's get rolling.

Bradley: Okay. Let me work my screen magic here for a moment, try to get Picture in Picture thing going. Okay. Is that freaking everybody out yet?

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Male: Yup, just a little bit.

Bradley: You have the inception effect going on?

Male: Yeah.

Bradley: All right. Is it normalized now?

Male: Yeah. You're good.

Bradley: Okay, cool. All right. Jeffrey and Tony, we're honored to have you here for real. So, you guys, please feel free to interrupt me. I tend to ramble a bit, so feel free at any time to interrupt me. I will not be offended, I promise.

Jeffrey: Thank you.

Tony:No worries. Thank you.

Is There A Specific Order You Prefer When Creating Google Drive Stack, Syndication Network And Press Releases?

Bradley: All right. Let me move up. It's awfully big, but that's okay. We'll deal with it. All right. Jeff's up. First, he says, “BB and crew, new client, brand new website, starting from scratch. Wedding venue niche. Am just finishing onsite: titles, metas, headers, alt tags, content, et cetera. Looking ahead to offsite. I know that the following will be part of the mix: Google Drive Stack, Syndication Network and Press Releases. Is there a specific order you prefer to create these in? And, if so, what's your preferred order and why?”

I do have a preferred order. I believe it's outlined in the Battleplan also, Jeff. But, yeah, I'll certainly cover it here for you as well. Let me just finish reading your question: “I'm sure you gone over the stuff in the past since this is something that occurs on a regular basis?” Yes. “If this has been answered on another Hump Day Hangout, just point me in the right direction.” No, that's okay. I'll run through it. It's fairly simple, easy process.

I always start with the Syndication Network. I have that typically being built while I'm working on the site. So that way once the site is done, because it takes a few weeks for the Syndication Network to get completed, then when I'm done with the site, the Syndication Network is typically done by that point and we can start to post the seed or the initial articles out, the post gets syndicated out.

I usually do three to five posts for any new website launch. When I'd rip those out, it depends on the industry how slow I'll drip them out or how quickly really. I always do a minimum of three, but often five posts, curated posts, which I just have one of my VAs do. That way I start to seed the network.

Then once I start dripping the posts out is when I usually ordered the drive stack because that takes a couple weeks to get back. By the time that several, at least two or three posts maybe, even all five have been posted to the network the drive stack is now completed. At which time I also, if it's for local, which it is in your case, I always order citations around the same time that I order the Drive Stack, so that both all of that's being built while I'm still kind of seeding the network with content.

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Then, last but not least, press releases, I do that typically one press release when the site is first launched or goes live. Recently, I've been waiting until the drive stack's done to launch or publish the first press release because I typically link to one of the drive stack properties, whether it's the Google site or one of the folders or whatever.

But then, from that point forward, recently, I've been doing a lot of press release stuff. I usually do about one press release every two weeks for a new property until I get it in the three pack, which sometimes happens in just two press releases, sometimes it takes you know five or six. That's usually the same timeline that I follow every single time.

Just to recap, and then I'm happy to hear some other people's opinions as well, start with the syndication network while the site's being built, so when the syndication network is completed, typically the site's down by then, I have some seed posts curated and ready to be dripped out to the blog. As soon as I start dripping those out, I'll order the drive stack, and citations also at the same time. Then, once I get the drive stack back in the citations back, typically all my seed posts have been posted or published. From that point forward, I do a press release about every two weeks until I get into the 3 pack.

Anybody want to comment on that?

Jeffrey: [Inaudible 00:10:04] The thing to watch out for in the beginning too is just not to hit things too hard too fast, because then you create a velocity that you have to sort of make it continue to ramp up. So as long as you're dripping things like that in a very gradual fashion it should work just fine.

Bradley: Yep. Your audio is popping, by the way. Your mic is popping, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Oh, man. [Inaudible 00:10:30]

Bradley: Okay. No worries.

Male: If can add something just real quick?

Bradley: Go ahead.

Male: All of our Hump Day Hangout videos are time stamped, for those who are new. If you don't want to wait until Wednesday to see if your question has been answered, you can just go to the channel Youtube.com/semanticmastery and just do a channel search. If you post the right question, you'll come up with the answer.

Bradley: Yup. Last thing I wanted to mention is … I agree with Jeffrey 100% about the timing. So, velocity. In other words, you don't want to start, come out of the gate swinging with everything all at once because then you have to pretty much maintain that level of link building and all that. It's too much for newer sites. That's why I like to do that exact process that I just laid out, guys, in that specific order because it's kind of a slow ramp up and then once I hit it with the press releases, it gets a flood of inbound links. But that's natural because it's a press release.

Then, I just continue citation building, publishing on the blog, and now I publish press releases regularly too until I get the desired results, and then I kind of scale back a bit once I get there.

Any Advice On Getting SEO And Web Design Clients?

Okay. Brad's up. He says, “New SEO and web design. I'm trying to get started while unemployed.” Okay. “Working from point of desperation, has no money coming in. I've advertised my writing and basic web design services in freelance places and in groups to other SEOs and working on cold emails. Someone who's successful …”

By the way, I didn't mean to jump. I forgot that he asked about the Press Release training. I think that's ready for people to go purchase today, isn't it, Adam?

Adam: Yeah. I just put the link on there. Yeah, 50% off applies. You can go and get access today.

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Bradley: Yeah. Sorry about that. I jumped from one question to another, guys, but it just dawned on me that I missed it. Okay. “Someone who's successful that uses some of your training said I should also just focus on web design as it's an easier cheaper sale as a foot in the door. I haven't had time to build a business plan because I've been scraping and emailing trying to get customers. About ready to lose apartment and I have wife and kids.” I'm sorry to hear that, dude. “Any advice on what else I can do to speed things up would be appreciated, please and thank you. Sorry for the drama and the novel.” Yeah. I mean …

Adam: Bradley, I think this is what you're going to say and I just have to … Because it immediately came to mind, was stop trying to sell to other SEOs.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, because other SEOs are going to nickel-and-dime you to death, Brad. I would recommend that you try to go direct to customers, so business owners really. That's something that, if web design is your thing and you don't have a learning curve with that, then, yeah, that's what I would go with if you need money fast. Obviously, I wouldn't say start selling SEO services and you got to learn how do it first, that wouldn't make any sense.

Something you might want to do, though … I don't design websites. I use WordPress templates that I just swap out images and stuff. But when I was selling a lot of websites to local businesses, typically, I'll just sell like a new site when I take on a customer for SEO, unless they've got a decent site, which most of the time they don't.

But what I found, and again I'm anxious to hear what some of you guys have to say, but depending on who your type of customer is, I typically deal with contractors and smaller type, colleague, mom-and-pop contractor companies. So, what worked for me was coming up with a website template that I could just sell en masse for a very inexpensive price, for like 500 bucks or even sometimes less. Because it was just a template, it would be like a three- or maybe a five-page site that would have standard pages, outside of the standard pages like home, contact, about, privacy, and terms, but then it would have like maybe three optimized keyword or service pages. I would sell that for like 500 bucks and that was more or less like a foot in the door strategy.

It's something you need to do more volume of, but it's something that you can get customers, at least through my experience I was able to get customers much quicker than doing full-on custom website proposals where $1,500, $2,000, $2,500 website design. You certainly make more money that way with the custom stuff, at least you can make more money.

But I found the templated type of, almost like an assembly line, you just start mass emailing out, you'll get some takers and you can sell them on an inexpensive website just to get them started, and then you can always upsell them on additional services like SEO or PPC or anything like that. That's something I would suggest doing. Like Adam said, stop talking to SEOs, go direct to the consumer, in this case, which would be a business owner, and try to sell.

Also, I would highly recommend that you zero in or kind of narrow down to a specific industry type. So that when you do create that particular template, if that's the route you're going to, you already know the keywords, you know the pain points for those business hours, you will have already done the research, you can just duplicate in various cities, in other words. That way you're not having to do research over again and learn the pain points for each industry type and all that kind of stuff.

So, niche down and then just try to generate some sales in a particular niche by just, in my opinion, going cheap on the frontend if you need money quick. Sell your higher price stuff later on once you've got some revenue coming in. That's my opinion.

Adam: Yeah. Something else and, Bradley, you may have touched on this too, but with the timing situation, now is a good time when your back is against the wall, it's a tough situation to be in, but now's the time to build those sales skills and get out there and go door-to-door instead of scraping and emailing that's a long-term plan. Doing something like the video lead-gen system is great, and if you can do it targeted, that's going to help.

But those systems take time and if you're talking about the next month or two, you need to get a client or build some clients, then it's going to work a lot better and you're going to build trust faster if you get out there. Maybe go to some business group meetings, start talking to people about how you can help them and find out and provide that service. It's tougher. I know a lot of people don't like doing face-to-face, but it works and it helps you build trust fast.

Male: Another thing is also, I know that money's an issue, but you can basically create templates on click funnels. You can actually create your own funnel and then have that as an add-on to somebody. You can actually embed your affiliate link. In order for them to actually use click funnels, they have to pay 97 a month. I think they give you a third of that. If you create a really nice two or three step funnel that you get both onto a very narrow niche market, that could be a way that you can get started and say, “Hey, look, I know you have a website but you can use this to actually start generating leads.” That way it's more of a bolt-on service and basically by the time you get four or five six people to use your funnel, that's the way that generates revenue.

Adam: That's excellent advice. I totally agree with you. I forgot about that. Adam and I talked about this last year when we were down at the click funnels, funnel hacking live event. That's absolutely true because you can take, you could even create a lead-gen funnel for a specific industry and then give that away. Like you said, just totally email and say, “Look, here's a landing page, an opt-in funnel, a lead gen funnel, whatever you want to call it. I'm giving it to you for free,” and then they basically go sign up for click funnels so that they can use it and you get $35, $40 per month off of that and you can sell [inaudible 00:18:13] of those.

Jeffrey: Yeah. I have one more option for Brad in case none of those fit. This goes along with what Adam said, it's get out into your local neighborhood, visit the folks that are on main street and instead of you're worried about having to actually deliver the services, just sell some of the Semantic Mastery packages to local folks to help their local listing. Find somebody that has listing is not breaking in the pack and say, “Hey, I'll do a three-month deal with you, 250 a month and then just buy drive stack and all the other things that are known to show some … That way you don't have to worry about doing the actual work. You can go out and sell and make money.

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Bradley: Arbitrage, and that works well too. Yeah, absolutely. You guys, your mic is still popping a little bit. I don't know, it's a bit sensitive or something.

Adam: Too bad. It's not like it's popping loud or anything. It's just a little cranny so.

Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay. I'll look into it real quick.

Could You Potentially Lose Ranking Factor If You Delete Curated Posts From An Unrelated Category That Has Been Syndicated Through IFTTT?

Bradley: No worries. Sam's up. What's up, Sam? He says, “I'm using virtual silo structure for an affiliate site. One of the solid categories is probably not relevant to the overall theme of the site and it also gets very little traffic. So I'm considering removing it all together to keep my site more focused. My question is, since I published a few curated posts in the category and syndicated them with IFTTT, if I remove this post, can I potentially lose ranking factors for my site pages in other categories? If so, how would you suggest mitigating that? Thanks a lot.”

You could, but it's unlikely. I know Jeffery probably speak thoroughly on this, but if the keyword of the category itself wasn't all that relevant to the rest of the theme of your site, then it's probably unlikely that it's going to cause much of an issue by removing those. But remember, you can always just go redirect those URLs, just use the simple 301 redirects plugin, I'm assuming it's WordPress site, and then just redirect the page URLs or post URLs, category URLs, anything that was associated with that category that you're going to remove, just redirect those to something else on the site.

Maybe put up a standalone page or something like that discusses briefly what it was that you were talking about and other category or something like that, but it doesn't have to be in the silo structure or anything like that. You can still recapture or recycle, I guess, the inbound links from those posts even if you delete those posts, you just have to redirect them.

Male: Yeah, definitely.

Bradley: Jeffrey, I'm assuming you would say, if it's not real relevant to the overall theme of the site, remove it. Right?

Jeffrey: Yeah. The redirect works. I mean, honestly, if it's not getting traffic anyway, you just want to go as broad as you can, as far as capturing all of the conversation, but you don't necessarily have to continue to create new categories. You can just add more vertical depth in that category or so. Yeah, I agree. I concur.

How Do You Use Amazon S3 HTML Page In Passing Link Juice To The Money Site?

Bradley: Okay, cool. Paul's up. What's up, Paul? He says, “Marco, on a previous mastermind, you mentioned about using Amazon S3 HTML page to pass juice to our target money sites where you block the other bots, except for Google Bot. Could you provide a guide or outline on how to achieve this?” Oh, so you're looking for the bot blocking script. I think that's what he's asking for.

Marco: No. I already answered the bot blocking in the mastermind. What he's talking about, and I'm glad that Jeffrey and Tony are here, is copying the G site or embedding the drive stack into an S3 HTML page so that you can pass juice over to the target or money site. That's what they call “the subwoofer method,” if I'm not mistaken. They'll use a sub-domain and they'll use S3. Well, we use S3 also. I gave them that. But I don't know how much you want to give away. Jeffrey, I'm putting you on the spot. Can you kind of elaborate? Just give us the 10,000 foot overview of the subwoofer method.

Jeffrey: Yeah. The subwoofer method, the S3 does work with the subwoofer method. It's a little bit broader than I think the question. You're asking about the S3 in order to pass power and theme to your money site as a way kind of to buffer, to wash any aggressive link building, whether that's through a drive stack or otherwise. One of the things that we did is we created an in-depth article on a sub-domain and then do a single link that goes out and you can pass it either directly to the site or category page on the money site. Or again you could pass that to an S3 page, which gets not only the theme from everything behind the subwoofer, the RYS stack, and everything that's pointing to that domain through the link. But also we do a rel canonical to that S3 page.

The S3 page really it's carrying a lot of authority and it has the ability again to clean the aggressive link building or to kind of purify all of that power whatever you're doing and pass it on safely to the money site, either with a link or again with an exact match or exact duplicate of the article on the money site on the S3, no links but a rel canonical to that page.

There's a lot of different ways that you can use it. It is really powerful. I've seen some tests with no results and some tests with outstanding results You have to kind of an experiment with it. There's a lot of a lot of things you can do the S3, and I do use it.

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Bradley: Yeah. You can also use the iframes. I've been doing a lot of that stuff for just using iframes and passing juice that way.

Marco: Yeah. That's what I was using. Our method is to-

Bradley: We've got a terrible echo, guys.

Bradley: It has to be Jeffrey. I'm going to [inaudible 00:24:11]. Our recommended method is that you go in and do the embeds so that you don't run into trouble. Embeds or iframes. You embed the drive stacks. You embed everything into the S3. It's an exact copy of what the G site is and then the iframes will all pass the juice through without letting any bad stuff. iframes are awesome. People don't know enough about them. People don't use them enough. Think about it, if Google were to penalize an iframe, they would have to penalize you, too. Think about it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for that. By the way, guys, the Syndication Academy update webinar, we're going to be talking about something very similar to what this past question. Again, if you're in Syndication Academy, I highly encourage you to be there for that webinar. It's going to be in 35 minutes.

Would A 301 Redirect At The Domain Level On Each Of The Old Sites Be Enough To Keep The Organic Search Traffic Flowing And Protect The Current Google SERPs Rankings?

Keith is up. What's up, Keith? He says, “Hey guys, I have a client with 10 brands in one niche, each with its own site. Client wants to reorganize so we need to move all the old brand sites to a sub-folder on a new domain, newdomain.com/oldsite1, newdomain.com/oldsite2, et cetera. Would a 301 at the domain level on each of the old sites be enough to keep the organic search traffic flowing and protect the current Google SERPS rankings?”

Well, only one page at a time like a 301 … Now, let me see if I understand this correctly. You're saying if you just do a redirect, like if you create the sub-folders and put the new the old sites in there to where now, it's going to look like a page on the site essentially, right? A redirect to that would just be to whatever the home pages is, unless you're doing redirects from on a page-by-page basis, in which case it's likely that you will see some dancing because that typically happens.

But if the sites were all, like if you're doing … I'm not even sure because … If you redirected the old domains to the new ones, yeah, it should work. I mean, obviously, you will see some dancing initially when that happens. But everything should come back if basically you're just cloning the site, putting them into the sub-folder on the new domain and then redirecting all the old URLs to the new ones. I don't see it causing any problems other than an initial dance, but you know, stranger things have happened. What do you guys think?

Jeffrey: Yeah. That's what I'm testing also. Hopefully, that echo is gone. Did it go away now?

Bradley: Yeah, it's gone now.

Jeffrey: Okay, cool. I turned on my audio. Yeah. I was going to say if you're going to do a one-to-one page-to-page from old sites a new site, that would be the best. But if you're going to, like you suggested, you're just going to redirect the exact same domains and just put them in a different place, then redirects work fine. Simple 301 should suffice.

Bradley: Yeah. You'll see some initial dancing and that always occurs. But if it's just basically just moving it from one to another and then redirecting all the old domains on a page-by-page one-to-one ratio, then you shouldn't really have any much issues. It should settle back to where it was or damn close to where it was afterwards.

“Would a 301 at the domain level on each of the old sites be enough to keep the organic tracking?” At the domain level, I don't know. On a page-by-page level, yes. But I think you can … I know you can. I always have to have somebody do it for me, but you can accomplish that with a wildcard redirect in htaccess, I believe. Again, I always have to ask somebody code that for me. I can never do it. Okay, so that looks pretty good.

Do You Recommend A Silo Menu In The Sidebar Or Just To Use Internal Linking In The Pages Up/Down The Silo?

Keith is up again. He says, “Being greedy here, second question, in a silo structure, do you recommend a silo menu in the sidebar or just to use internal linking in the pages?” It's entirely up to you. I like having a silo menu in the sidebar. I know, Jeffrey, SEO design solutions or SEO design framework, that does that as well as … Your plugin, does it do with that as well?

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Jeffrey: The new one that we have coming out will have the silo functionality.

Adam: In the plugin? Awesome.

Jeffrey: Yep. That way you'll be able to use it on anything that you want. Yeah. I also concur that the sidebar menu is good for feeding the silo as long as you don't overdo the keywords and the titles.

Bradley: Yeah.

Jeffrey: You don't put a lot of stuff a bunch of keywords in the sidebar. You should have the ability to go down the keywords and the titles in your sidebar, it's just going to continue to be the category in the silo that it's in versus using it just contextually.

Bradley: Very good. Let's see, “Do you recommend just one link in the silo page to the next silo page or would a link to the silo head also be advisable? What do you advise reference inclusion or not in the sitemap for silo pages?” Okay. The way that I've always done silos, guys, and we've got like the master on here about that, so I'm curious what he has to say. But typically, if it's in the same silo, if it's a natural occurrence, there's a linking opportunity from one article to another, whether it's a supporting post, it could be a sibling post, it could be a child post. In other words, it could like another subject. As long as it's all in the same silo, if it occurs naturally, I just link to it.

I don't force links unless I'm trying to do something specific. But if there's a mention of another page or post within that same silo that's relevant then I absolutely will link to it. Then, I'll link back up to the silo heading. It just depends. As long as there's internal linking going throughout the entire silo, as far as through my testing it works fine. Again, I don't force a particular link from one post to another unless I'm trying to accomplish something specific.

What do you guys think about that?

Jeffrey: Yeah. I think it's all about referential integrity. So the one thing that you want to do is make sure that you don't … There's two questions that he asked here. I just want to specify that. He was just suggesting, do you recommend just one link to the silo page in the next silo page? Well, first of all, you'd never link over to the next silo. You'd want to use your main navigation to do that.

The reason you do that is that there's something that's called a visual page segmentation algorithm that looks at different portions of the page with more weight. For example, your navigation, your gutters, and sidebars, and your footer are considerably less weight [inaudible 00:30:50] link flow than your contextual primary body text area. So, contextual links carry a lot more weight than navigation links and so if you use a contextual link from one silo to the next it would essentially be bleeding that.

Bradley: Right.

Jeffrey: Your the main navigation, you're okay to do that, but you would use that in your main navigation. It's another topic, it's normal for usability that you have different topics in your site to transfer, to have a person go from one place to the other. So, on that first one, don't link across silos contextually.

Then the second one, you're asking would a link to the silo head also be advisable? We always want to link up to your silo head from your categories in your content. To reference Bradley's point, if you wanted to have, if there's a page in your sibling pages and you want to give a little more weight to, it's okay to internally link for that. Just everything that you do and those child's supporting articles are going to help the category in the silo.

Bradley: Yep. Network Empire called that buoyancy.

Jeffrey: Yes. Yeah.

Bradley: Buoyancy.

Jeffrey: Yeah, that really works.

Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. Keith, I think there's a little bit of an interpretation issue with your question. Just to be clear, if you're talking about linking from one page within a silo to another page within the same silo, or another post within the same silo, that's fine. What Jeffrey said is absolutely correct, which is not to link from one silo to another. I do it occasionally for navigational purposes, for user experience, but I do it with a nofollow link if I'm going to do it. Does that makes sense?

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Next is Scott. What's up, Scott? He says … Well, I guess that's not really a question, so I'll move on.

What Would Be The Best Way To Set Up A Home Improvement/Repair Site Serving 5 Cities?

Jenia's up. What's up, Jenia? She says, “Happy Valentine's Day, crazy Semantics. I love you. I've got another client a few days ago.” Awesome, Jenny. Congratulations. “Got another client few days ago. They are in home improvement, repair niche. They provide services in five nearby cities and offer four service that are related to each other – painting, pressure washing, just examples, doing complete fresh build-out. I am closely following Jeffrey's site architecture.” See? We planted this question for you, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey: I love it. Yeah.

Bradley: “Using SEO design framework in the SEO Ultimate Plus plugin. By the way, recommend SEO bootcamp to anybody.” I agree. “What would be the best way to set up their site. How would I structure it to rank for each service in different cities. Seems like having too many landing pages each service in each city wouldn't be the way to go. Potentially looking to set on multi-location businesses on G Maps. Semantics, any thoughts? Jeffrey, I love you, bro.”

Jeffrey: All right, man. I'll let you guys go first on this one because this is really your alley here. But I'm going to stay in my lane as far as the local stuff because I haven't really haven't done that much locally. I'll let you elaborate.

Bradley: I used to always do a separate landing page for each service on the sites. But I've kind of gotten away from doing that as much anymore to where I've done more or less recently. I've had some mixed results with it though. In some cases, I've had really good success; in other cases, it's been more difficult than I had planned to set up service pages and in location pages.

In other words, because, like you said, if they've got four services and they're going to do five cities, then they'd have to duplicate those four service pages for each city optimized that way. Right? You'd end up with 20 pages on the site that are about the same four services, the only thing different about those pages would be, basically, the local modifier.

Again, I kind of got away from doing that because the site starts to get bloated with too many … Especially when you've got a company that offers a bunch of services or they cover a large geographic area, then you end up with a ton of just duplicate pages, basically. I don't like duplicate content on the same domain.

Typically, what I've been doing more recently is I create service-based pages where it explains what the services are and then, and I know this isn't true silo structure, but I put a … we provide these services in the following locations basically like a bullet menu, somewhere within the content of that that service page. That then links over to the individual location pages that talks about all the services that they serve from that or that they provide from that one location.

So it is basically cross-linking between silos. But basically, I have a location silo and then I have a services silo. I found that in some cases that works really well; in other cases, it doesn't work as well. But I find it to be more logical in explaining it to the customer, the client, and also just in managing the site.

That's what I would suggest doing, but I want to hear what you guys have say.

Jeffrey: Yeah. That's a great solution, honestly, because when you're using services and your building comes out of like 2,000 word article, if you're really doing that that gives you opportunity to answer questions in there as well and really do power things. As long as you have those shingles, those groups of words that are referring to the different cities that you're in and you're building out city pages from those and maybe they have different essentially Google My business, or at least if you're setting each page basically, if you have postcards there verifying GMB for that different city, that's going to work with others like your many silos.

But it's the services and stuff that's really going to get the ranking and they're going to know where you're searching from anyways they're going to be targeting you using password. They're going to know where you're typing in that search from. If your site has enough top weight from those service pages to being deep, then you're going to get that ranked.

Male: Yeah. I think that he would be giving the Google My Business listing in every location and then linking as the URL from each of those two the city page on the website, on the money site. So, the city one GMB links to the city page on the money site, and then each one of those city pages, just like you're saying, Bradley, links out to the individual services, which would be in-depth article for that service and that should rank those pages in all those places.

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Bradley: Yup. That's exactly what I was saying. The service pages are basically like in-depth and discusses all the services or specifically one service, if they want to silo the services. But then somewhere, like let's say, this guy says five, five cities, it would be like a bullet list or a little menu or something that would state “we provide this service in these five locations” and in those link out to those individual location pages. Each location pages might be a standalone page that lists all four services, but there'd be like a paragraph about each service or whatever. The relevancy is coming from the actual service page and it's just referencing. It's almost like a reciprocal link between location and service silos. It tends to work and I just find it more logical and easier to manage.

Jeffrey: Absolutely.

What Do You Think Of The Revenue Model Where You Get Half The Price On the First Three Months And Get The Full Price On The Rest Of The Months?

Bradley: Cool. Winner, I got that one right. Okay. All right. Cool. Let's see what's next. Mohammad's up. He says, “Hey guys, I'm close to getting meetings from my video emails.” I know he's been working at this hard. Mohammad, he's in our mastermind and he's been working at the Video LeadGen Email System for several weeks now. So, he's honing it to, specifically, his own business guys. That's awesome. That's what persistence will do for you. He's definitely going to do well, I can tell.

He says, “Hey guys, I'm close to getting meetings from my video emails. The prospects aren't really cold no more and they're already advertising. I asked an SEO close to me who focuses on a different niche and he said that with his clients he starts his first three months half off and the rest are full price.” Okay. “Do you think this is worth trying? I was considering it, but when I say he's an SEO, I mean SEO because he doesn't know about syndication, drive stacks or anything, so his costs are lower.”

I mean, you could try, Mohammad. You can try, you can test different sort of offers and things like that. I was talking to somebody yesterday actually about video SEO stuff, because I do a lot of video SEO stuff, it's just the frontend service guys. I know some people create their own entire livelihoods or businesses from video SEO, that's great. I don't. I use it just to get my foot in the door and then I upsell them on other services – Maps, SEO, PR services, reputation, all that other stuff.

I do a lot of testing with, or I make a lot of offers like doing video spam campaigns essentially for prospects upfront and don't even charge them for it. A lot of the times it's just to get my foot in the door, to get the conversation going, to prove to them that I know what the hell I'm doing. Then once I've earned some trust, then I can introduce higher price services or priced services to begin with, if that's the case. I've had really good success with that and so it works for me.

I know some people say that's blasphemy, don't give away shit and all that. Do what works for you, Mohammad. That's something maybe worth testing, is trying and see. What I would do is I wouldn't go full on that I'm going to create my marketing campaign around this offer until you've tested it a few times to see is it something that's sustainable. Can you provide decent service for half price for three months, get results in an upsell them or lock them into a higher price contract or whatever monthly fee at that point? Try it first, test it see if it's a viable option for your business before like going all-in, is what I'm trying to say.

Opinions, guys, please.

Marco: It's a tough one. We've all been there where we're trying to close a client. To me, I never liked to undersell myself. I guess I thought too highly of myself, even in the beginning. I've never offered a discount. The only time I did it was just recently just to lam this attorney, but it wasn't really offering a lesser price.

What I did is I told her, “Look, this is what we're going to do. If the results are there, I'm going to provide leads and then it will be X amount,” I'm not going to say the amount, because it's ridiculous with what she's paying me for actually, like five minutes worth of work. But, yeah, as a foot in the door tactic where you want to show what you could do, I wouldn't go three months because I mean that's the difference between eating and not eating, dude. I would say, “Look, you give me 30 days and you could even start some Facebook Ads, get some quick stuff going in there and then you raise the price to normal,” which is what I did. “If I do what I say I'm going to do, then this is going to be the price.”

Since it was an attorney, I recorded the entire teleconference because I don't want her saying later on, “Well, that wasn't in the con or whatever.” This is a binding contract because it's on video. It's recorded. You can't get out of it. If you're going to do that, make sure that you have something that's binding and that you can lock them in for that higher rate and that they pay that higher rate. That would be my recommendation to you.

Bradley: Yup. I agree with Marco. I think three months is a bit long. That's a long time to be doing work for half price. Because what happens if you produce results in three months and they decide they don't want you anymore because they've already got, they're getting leads and that kind of stuff? I mean, stranger things have happened. That's part of the reason I like to do the video spam stuff a lot in the frontend because I can get results within 30 days almost every time. I target longtail, and you guys know, we poke keywords, find stuff that's easy to rank for. That's just to wow the client and then once I've wowed the client, then I lock them into whatever.

I don't do contracts. It's always month-to-month for my business because if I'm producing results they should be happy to pay me; if I'm not, then we should be able to part ways. So, I don't ever do contracts, but typically I'm able to get results within 30 days by doing something like video spam and in showing it to them and they're like, “Wow. This guy knows what he's doing,” and then I end getting the deal.

Okay. Good question, Mohammad. Nigel's up. What's up, Nigel? He said some nice things and then he says, “Thanks for the intro to socio blitz or social blitz, or whatever it is.” That's ABS product. “Jeffrey, great bootcamp. Looking forward to consult once I understand a bit more.” Nigel's been here a lot, Jeffrey, just so you know. He comes every week and asked a lot of questions.

Jeffrey: Awesome.

Does The Ultimate SEO Plugin Capable Of Completely Managing Curated Content And RSS Syndication Or Do We Need To Use It In Conjunction With WP RSS Plugin Or SM RSS?

Bradley: He's a good guy. “Can the Ultimate SEO Plugin completely manage curated content and RSS syndication or do I need to use in conjunction with WP RSS Plugin or Semantic Mastery RSS Plugin? FYI, site plan is to have a big plan and master blog feed.”

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Jeffrey: Yeah. Unfortunately, ours does not do that yet. There's no RSS functionality inside of our plugin at this time. We're looking into something like that. So you're going to have to use, I would suggest using a Semantic Mastery RSS by all means.

Marco: That's an interesting question. It seems like it was planted again. We're really just discussing how to incorporate the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin into SEO so that we could have both functionalities in it. Now that's a talk that that needs to happen.

Jeffrey: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, because it's a wide open category. That's really how you marry the on and off page together. We just haven't gotten to that yet. You guys have mastered that, so definitely, it'll be something I would like to have a discussion about.

Recommended WP Plugins For SEO, Affiliate Marketing & List Building

Bradley: The next question is recommendations for must-have WordPress plugins for SEO. Obviously, the Ultimate SEO Plugin. Right? Number one. List building and affiliate? Well, I don't do any Amazon thing, so I can't give you any recommendations. Maybe somebody here can. For list building or affiliate stuff, for list building, just any sort of good opt-in form or plugin, or whatever … I've been doing a lot of stuff with Thrive themes recently. Thrives got a lot of really good plugins and themes and landing page builders and all that stuff. So, Thrive is a good one.

But really just find something that you like. I try to keep my plugins to an absolute bare minimum on the sites that I build, guys. I have just a handful that I use over and over again, unless I need a plug-in for something very specific, in which case I'll do. But since most the stuff I do is local, I literally use the same stuff over and over again. Maybe that's something we can do, is a blog post or something is kind of like each one of us, what our favorite plugins are or something like that. Maybe we'll make a note of that, Nigel.

What do you guys think? Do you guys have any suggestions on Amazon or … One other thing real quick, affiliate plugins, I'm not sure what you mean by that other than just a good cloaking plugin. I use Pretty Links Pro. That's what I use. I've tried a bunch of different affiliate link cloaking plugins and stuff and I just always end up resorting back to Pretty Link Pro. Works for me. It's inexpensive. You can buy a developer license for like 100 bucks. You can use it on I think unlimited sites. So that's what I use.

Also, on Amazon, I don't ever do any Amazon stuff.

Jeffrey: Hey, Bradley, also we have inside on SEO Ultimate plus. We do have a link masking option.

Bradley: Oh, you do?

Jeffrey: It is inside of that. You can actually use it for two things. You can use it to, when you're linking, anytime you're linking outside of a page, or anytime you have links down the very bottom, you'll be able to look and see if you want to make that basically a link that is hidden where the bots won't be able to follow it and you can do redirects with it. So it's actually built-in SEO Ultimate Plus. It's been there for four years. Tony was going to say something about an RSS plugin.

Tony:Yeah. RSS Masher for curated content, it's also got a WordPress plugin that seems to work pretty good. It's great for pulling in and blending feeds from authorities in your market. I don't really use it on the money site, but it's great for the second tier for pulling in relevant content and then injecting your links side by side with content from the authorities in the marketplace so you can take advantage of the little co-citation. That one works better than anything I've used before, honestly, RSS masher.

Bradley: We've had Lisa Allen on for, I mean, two or three times already. We should have her back.

Tony:Rank feeder.

Bradley: Yeah.

Male: Yeah, that's great.

Male: Isn't it RSS masher also?

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Bradley: No. RSS masher is Damon Nelson's product. RSS master is good for mashing content that you're going to be using to distribute to be published. I've said that many times before. It's good because you can inject affiliate links. You can inject into the feed itself, which is awesome. There's basically like a WYSIWYG editor inside the RSS masher dashboard where you can inject links NAP, if you're doing local stuff. Basically, it's like a citation that you can inject. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with it. The more powerful SEO tool, however … See? RSS masher is good for, like I said, for mashing feeds or splicing blending for feeds and in using that to republish because it comes out looking nice and the stuff that you can inject.

For co-citation though, and just creating, just using RSS's to create co-citation, and it's incredibly powerful as Lisa Allen's Rank feeder. People said. “Well, which one would you use?” Both. [Inaudible 00:48:54] Both of them, absolutely.

Jeffrey: [Inaudible 00:48:57] page one. We only hit it once a week, you don't want to overuse it. Yeah, rank feeder. It's something I use tactfully. When you use it for the more broader phrases it tends to work better than try to go for exact match. But it works really well for co-citation.

Bradley: It works great. It's a very powerful tool. It's not pretty, I mean, the feed output is ugly. That's why you wouldn't want to use it to syndicate, to publish with. That's why RSS mashers are better. If you're going to be doing content syndication or publishing with blended RSS feeds, RSS mashers is the way to go. But for SEO, Rank Feeder is a better tool. But use them both really. Good question, Nigel.

Is There A Way To Get These Already Published Posts Sent Through The Syndication Network?

All right. Next one. James says, “I have a site that I am currently getting a syndication network built on. I have about one to two months worth of content already published on the blog using your content curation tactics.” Awesome, James. I'll plus one that. “Is there a way to get these already published posts sent through the syndication network? Thanks in advance for the awesome advice.”

We have the premium plugin syndication plugin … excuse me, the Premium Semantic Mastery RSS Plugin will do that. I think you got to be the mastermind to get that though. However, there is this one. Republish old post WordPress. That's what I'm going to do, plugin. I've used this one plugin a bunch and it works. This is it. It says republish old post plugin. They have a premium version, which gives you a lot more granular control. But even the free version works. The pro version is less than 10 bucks, by the way guys. But you get like really granular control over when stuff gets reposted and all that kind of stuff for the pro version, and it's very, very inexpensive.

I highly recommend you check this one out. I'm going to drop it on the page. Unless you're in the mastermind, in which case our plugin will do that. Anybody have any other tools that they recommend for that?

Jeffrey: No. Not off the top my head.

Bradley: Okay. I mean, this is a great, good plugin. I've used it a bunch guys and it works really well because it will just republish old stuff. You can set schedules and you can have it republish every 60 days, or whatever you want. There's a lot of stuff you can do, James. Check it out.

How Do You Rent Two Local Sites From Dental And Elective Surgery Niche?

Clifton says, “I have two local sites. One in the dental niche the other in the elective surgery niche. Both are ranking top five for traffic keywords. How do I get them rented?” Well, find. I mean, it seems like pretty obvious the answer to me find people in that industry and contact them, show them proof that you've got sites that are ranked. Ranking doesn't typically … I mean, I guess it works for some people, but show that you're getting traffic and that you're getting phone calls, if you can, if you've got like a tracking number on there.

Guys, when I first got into doing lead gen sites, I would just set up a voicemail. I'd still get a virtual number and I would just have a go direct to voicemail, but it would still register the calls. That way I could see the analytics and I could show the analytics to prospects that I was trying to lease the site to or sell leads to, depending on what the engagement was with them.

But being able to show traffic statistics or, more importantly, opt-ins, like contact requests, so web form submissions and phone calls. If you can show those, you shouldn't really have any trouble contacting interested parties. Go do a search. Google search for the keyword plus the city and start on page two. Anybody that's on page two, just start contacting them. That's exactly what the whole Video LeadGen System thing is about, contacting clients or prospects, excuse me, that are on page two, if you're selling SEO services, depending on what you're selling really.

Anybody else have an idea?

Jeffrey: No. You nailed it on the whole … Anybody who's not in the top five is a candidate, essentially.

Is It Better To Only Have One Youtube Account Per Google Account?

Bradley: Yeah, that's right. Okay. We're almost out of time, guys. We've got about five minutes left. Rob says, “Is it better to only have one YouTube account per Google account in case the worst should happen YouTube account gets banned?” Thanks, Rob. Well, I mean, no, Rob, it really depends. I mean, for example, I have dozens of channels under my main account, but a lot of those channels I don't do anything particularly spammy with. If I'm going to be doing something particularly spammy with the channel, then yeah, I recommend that you set up a separate Google profile to create that channel under. Then, you can always just assign yourself your main Google profile as a manager so that you can still log in and still manage the account, manage the YouTube channel, upload videos, all that kind of stuff from your own account.

But, if God forbid, it was to get slapped or terminated or whatever, and it was to affect the overall profile, I don't think I've ever seen that happen. I've had accounts terminated, but it didn't terminate the Google profile. I have had Google profiles terminated, don't get me wrong, but typically if a YouTube channel gets terminated, it doesn't terminate the Google profile too. However, just to mitigate any potential risk, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

If you're going to be doing something specifically or particularly spammy, excuse me, with them with the YouTube channel, then just create it under a different profile and add yourself as a manager. That way in case it does get the hammer thrown at it, it wouldn't affect your main account because you were just a manager. It would only terminate the account, the profile which was basically a spam account, anyways. Does that make sense?

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Guys, how much risk are you willing to take really? That's why I always recommend, I tell everybody, when you're going to be creating a bunch of syndication networks and all that stuff, just start with a fresh Gmail profile when you're creating the accounts. You can always add yourself as a manager. Okay.

Jeffrey: One other thing, and I'm speaking from experience, make sure you save the video somewhere else in case the ungodly should happen and everything goes out the window. You can just upload the videos to another channel.

Any Thoughts On A Youtube Instream Ad With Just Music And Kinetic Text Video?

Bradley: Yeah. All right. We're almost out of time. Damon says, “Any thoughts on a YouTube InStream Ad with just music and Kinetic Text Video? I am going to test to get attention for real estate listing home valuations. Ever tried it before?” No. Well, I mean, I've got InStream Ad stuff running right now that I've only got running. I mean, it'd be nice to get some clicks and potentially some real leads or something out of it. but I'd do a lot of InStream Ad stuff just to get IP, just so I can buy views directly from YouTube or from Google, essentially.

For example, I mean, I've got a lot of videos that really they're not set up for ad video. They don't have a strong call to action in the very first you know five or 10 seconds and all that, but I still have them set up as InStream Ads just so … But by targeting options as such that when somebody sees it, they're within a specific geographic location and it was either topic or affinity interest targeting so they have a history of being interested in that topic and they're in the specific geographic location that I want the view from. I want that view to register from an IP in that area.

I do that now. I mean, a lot of these campaigns I got running for just $1 a day. But that's one of the tricks that I use to keep my videos ranked. I charge somebody $150 a month to keep a video ranked and I'm paying $1 a day on YouTube ads just to get local IP clicks and it shows the view count going up every month. It works, right? I spend 30 bucks to keep it ranked.

That's what I do. As far as actually converting those, very, very few times that I actually get any real traffic from those, but it's serving its purpose which is to help me keep those videos ranked, if that makes sense.

Any comments on that, guys?

Jeffrey: I would just say that if there's an action that you want to take, it might be worth spending 20 bucks to get a professional voiceover that emphasizes your call to action to lay into that video. A video with just music and flying text, like I said, if you're just going for views, that might work, but if you want people to take an action, then I strongly recommend you hire professional on Fiverr to give a voiceover with a call to action.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. I never switched the link out on the event page, guys. Is that what you're telling me? Adam, you got that sorted, man?

Adam: Yeah, it's good to go.

Bradley: Sorry about that.

Male: Scott T, right above Damon Nelson's question. He's asking, he's looking for tips to rank blogs locally. Right above that, Adam posted our local pro launch.

Bradley: Yeah.

Male: Scott, highly recommended. It's half off right now. So if you want tips, there you go.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, I'm sorry. I didn't switch the link out on the event page. That's my fault. Oh, well, you guys can all watch the replay.

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Adam: They're able to watch it on YouTube. When that happens you can head over YouTube or just start typing in like what the hell are you guys doing, put the right link on here and we'll see.

Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, that was my bad. I apologize, guys. But you can always catch the live on YouTube channel.

Adam: Make sure it plays. Today it was dead, and so there we go.

Bradley: There you go, it's Adam's fault. All right, guys. Well, hey, Jeffrey and Tony, thanks for being here guys.

Tony:Yeah, thanks a lot.

Jeffrey: Yeah. I had a great time, man. Thank you so much.

Bradley: You're welcome.

Jeffrey: You guys take care.

Bradley: All right, guys. We'll see you on the next one.

Adam: All right. Bye everybody.

Bradley: Syndication Academy webinar, guys, starts in like two minutes, so be over there. All right. See you all.

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