Click on the video above to watch Episode 172 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
Adam: All right. We are live. Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts episode 172. Today is the 21st of February 2018. We have got a show for you. Well, we got it. We always do. We also got some quick announcements and then we're going to get into it. Real quick. We're going to take a sec to say hi to everybody. I'll start as I see it. Chris, how's it going?
Chris: Doing good here. Full on flowy here. Cool again. We'll see. Time to head out to warmth again.
Adam: Fair enough. Hey, Hernan. What's up?
Hernan: Hey, guys. Really excited for what's coming for the mastermind. I've been recording some stuff for the mastermind, some VSLs, and recording some training as well on Facebook Ads. It's going to be really good.
Adam: Cool. I got to know and I'm going to do this live. I probably shouldn't have put you on the spot, but why is your camera so close?
Hernan: Why? It's not that close now. It could be closer. Do you want to see it?
Adam: No. I'm good. I'm good. Marco, how's it going?
Marco: What's up, man? I'm good. I'm good. Beautiful weather.
Adam: Not too hot, not too cold?
Adam: Outstanding. All right. Bradley, how about you man? How you doing?
Bradley: I'm happy to be here. We got a lot to talk about. I saw a bunch of questions and I'm pretty excited. I'm trying to get some good traction on the mastermind projects, and I just started this week working back on our agency build, which has kind of been pulled on hold for a like when I was getting the CrossFit side of stuff up. I'm really super excited about it. I pulled a lot of data and stuff. I'm going to start updating the mastermind training for the agency stuff too within the next week. I also added a bunch of new Bing Ads stuff, although I have to rerecord all of them because there was no audio.
Spent an hour and a half recording training videos, six of them, uploaded all of them, and then found out there was no audio to any of them. I've got to redo that. I'll probably do that Thursday or Friday. Oh, one other thing I want to mention and Adam, I know you've got the details on this, but we've been testing a LinkedIn lead gen service that's 100% done for you. It's completely done manually, but it's done by a team where they basically take over your LinkedIn profile, and then they just go out and start contacting the type of people that you tell me you want to contact. Then they do the messaging and everything until it gets to a positive reply from the contacts.
Then we take over. Like I go back into my account, I take over the conversation at that point. It's doing really well, and we're having a webinar with the developers of that service on I think Monday. We just got two more LinkedIn leads today for our new agency. It's crushing it. It's doing really, really well. I'm super impressed with that. We're going to be talking about on a webinar I think on Monday, is that right?
Adam: Yeah, Monday at 3:30 P.M. I just put the link on the page. If you're watching this on a replay, hopefully you see this before Monday. That'll be in the show description. Be there if you're interested in that. It looks like a pretty awesome way to do this. Obviously we're already getting results, and then they're going to be able to show us a little bit more about what they're doing.
Bradley: One thing I would just mention guys if you're just starting out in this business, you don't have … Let's put it this way. This is more of an agency level service. Just keep that in mind because I don't want anybody wasting their time or coming and being disappointed. If you're just getting started in this business, it may not be for … It could be. I'm just letting you know it's more of an agency level service because there is an expense to it, but it's certainly working. I've been testing it now for about six weeks and I'm super impressed.
Hernan: I mean this could work if you also want to expand your line of work to another type of marketplace or to another type of service as well, and you want to actually get leads from that specific space come in. This could actually work without you having to guess the whole advertising game, which we really advice on. This could be a hands-free approach to lead gen, which is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Switching gears slightly, just to let everybody know, we're gearing up for a Local PR Pro. The recording of those webinars is going to start on March 1st and Bradley is actually going to be adding some bonus material there I believe Friday, right?
Bradley: Friday. Yeah.
Adam: So everybody knows, we're going to start the training on March 1st, but you can get access now at a discount. Big, big discount. I'm going to pop that information on the page. That'll be in the description as well. If you're interested in using Local Press Release methods to get some awesome page one results, stuff like that, for either your business or your clients, then that's a hell of a time to sign up for it. In addition to that, well, you already talked about the MasterMind, Bradley.
I'm just going to say if you're interested in taking things up a notch, you want to join the mastermind, you want to get Syndication Academy for free, get a lot of those other training for free, check it out. I'm going to pop that link on the page as well. I'm not going to waste my time explaining all of it, but you can go through and see all the stuff we offer. We got a hell of a lot of stuff going on in 2018. If you're interested now or later, go check it out and we'll be there.
Bradley: I saw, what is it, Greg's comment on the top. You know, it's funny, Adam. When we first fired the webinar just now, I'm about to ask you the same thing. Is that a Playboy shirt?
Adam: No. Here we If you guys are in Upstate New York and you want to drink some good beer, go to Lucky Harris.
Adam: Yeah. It's my friend's brewery up here in New York. Yeah, I got to work on my promos. I got to get …
Bradley: You mean you're not representing like me?
Adam: There you go. All right. Well, I think that's about it. As far as announcements, do we have anything else you guys?
Bradley: I think we're good.
Marco: Let's do it.
Adam: I saw Marco. What'd you put on the page there?
Marco: It's coming. It's coming.
Adam: All right. All right. Sneaky. Sneaky. All right. Let's get into it.
Bradley: All right. Can somebody double check and make sure that I put the video on the page and it's working?
Adam: Let me check right now.
Bradley: I think it is, but yeah. It must be because somebody commented on your shirt.
Adam: Good.
How Do You Convince A Client To Agree On Your Proposed SEO Consultation Fee?
Bradley: All right. Mohammad's up first. What's up, Mohammad? He says, “Hey, guys. I'm still …” Let's go ahead and zoom in a little bit more. “Guys, I'm still working on my video email leads. Just one big nuanced question here, I'm talking to a realtor about $2K a month for general consulting. Although things seem to be going great, today he flipped the script by instead offering a revenue share model. His reasoning was if I was so good at what I do, I gave him references, and I could measure every call and lead, there would be no good reason not to revenue share. Now in theory he's right.
I could theoretically make more than $2K a month with revenue share, but I wouldn't be able to focus on the SEO and Maps part and I'm not in a financial position to handle cost. Also, I wouldn't be able to ascertain which sales are mine because I can't use a call center. Plus, with something like real estate, is revenue share even possible? There isn't even a straight line to contact like in contracting there's buyer research and all that.” Okay. First of all, my experience with realtors was not really a revenue share, but they can give you like a referral fee for referring leads as far as I know. It's probably different state by state, Mohammad.
If I'm correct, I think you're in Canada, so the rules maybe very different. I know in the State of Virginia they were not allowed to do revenue share. Realtors are not allowed to do that. It's against the realtor whatever, code of ethics or whatever it is. They can give you a referral fee though. It's like a flat fee or it can even be basically like a percentage and stuff like that, but they have to name it as such, like as a referral fee, if that makes sense. I think Walt was commenting on the top of the page on your question or your issue here, your scenario, Mohammad. I think Walt's got some pretty good advice about revenue share is …
Because if their sales process sucks, their follow up sucks, all that kind of stuff, then you're still getting paid to generate the lead, and it's their fault that they're not closing the lead. Does that make sense? You're still making the money because you're doing your job. They're just not doing theirs, which is closing the leads, closing the sales, turning the leads into closed sales. If you go right in your revenue share and you're not aware of that, you wouldn't know that until you got into the end campaign and you've already spent money, set up the assets, done all this other stuff, and then you find out that they're terrible closers. Right?
What do you do? You've already wasted all that time and effort and money. I only recommend going into an equity share or revenue share position with a client after you've built a relationship with them and you've proven your end and they've proven their end. That they can turn the leads that you send to them into closed sales, at which time it would make sense to approach them. I would go back to the client or the prospect and basically pitch that to them that way and say, “Listen, we need to earn each other's trust here.” Maybe you do some sort of a discount on for … I don't typically recommend that, but maybe workout …
If you have to get the deal closed, you might want to do something like, “Okay. Look, let's compromise and give me this set amount for this much time to get results. Then after that we'll renegotiate and talk about equity share or revenue share model,” if that make sense. It's going to be different on a case by case basis, and again I don't have a lot of experience with realtors. I got out of that industry rather quickly because I realized that they were a real pain in the ass to work with. The good news is you can pretty much customize any sort of offer or engagement to work for both of you, but I would not recommend getting in the revenue share right off the bat.
Marco: I would add, Bradley, if I may that he needs to make this realtor aware that he has hard costs, and that the hard costs are high at the beginning of any internet marketing campaign. Whether they are or not, it makes no difference. You have hard costs. Also, what are your hard costs? Some are around 65% to 70% of that $2,000. You can go with that. It's around 80%. I invest around 80% of the initial fee for the first three, four months until I get it humming and then my costs are reduced as I produce more results, and as everything gets to where it's supposed to be.
Bradley: Streamlined.
Marco: Sure. You have fees. Whatever you want to make those hard costs. They can be whatever you want. You can make a list that's a mile long of what your costs are. Even if you don't have staff, you should tell them you have staff that you have to pay to do the work. I mean you're the manager. You're the expert. You're guiding these people, but they have to be paying. All of these campaigns, all of these different things, they have to be paid. I would still get him on that monthly. It won't be reduced. Okay. I'll go hard costs plus the lead gen aspect that Bradley talked about whether it's a finder fee, whatever the fuck they want to call it, whatever.
If it's legal to call it, that's what you call it. You'll end up making more anyway to where eventually you get to that point where, “Okay, now we know each other. You know I can produce results. I know that you can close the leads. Now let's talk about that rev share,” and maybe you drop some of that monthly fee, but I would never drop all of it because you still have to be paid for the work that you're doing one way or the other.
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: If I can add real quick to what my partners here are saying, which I completely totally agree with them. I never usually go into a full on rev share right off the bat. The good thing is that you can kind of negotiate a little bit. You can set up a set up fee, right? You can set up a set up fee. Because on that case, the guy, the client is putting their money where their mouth is, right? You're not working for free, which is the main point of all of this.
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: You can charge a set up and a lower retainer, and you can still have a revenue share position. You're still getting some money in, right, to pay for your costs because at the end of the day your time will be there, but you also, as Marco was currently saying, you might also have fixed costs. You can negotiate a little bit. I like to do it the higher the revenue share, the lower I can go with my retainer up to a point, right? For example, for Facebook Ads campaign. Just an example, I don't charge less than two grand, but it depends on how much money you're spending on advertising, right, and what kind of results that you want to have. There's also this trust factor.
Bradley: Right. Put some skin on the game on his end too. I mean he's asking you to take all the risks right now, Mohammad. You've got to meet somewhere in the middle, which would be considered a compromise. Another term for it, Stephen Covey calls it a third alternative where you guys can come up perhaps with an agreement that works out well for both of you that's not really like a let's meet in the middle, but let's come up with a third alternative like some of this scenarios that we're just proposed such as maybe perhaps a retainer with some revenue share, a lower revenue share percentage or lower referral fee.
Again in Virginia you can't call it revenue share with realtors, but anyways, maybe a lower revenue share fee, but some upfront costs obviously or retainer so that it is covering your time. Again then it's both of you who are committing some skin to the game if that makes sense. Great question, Mohammad.
Jay's up. Jay, I read your question. Yeah, they should have been set to public on the web. I noticed he's saying it's for Marco, but Marco's going to tell you the same thing. I'm surprised that got delivered without it being public on the web. I'm glad you caught it. Do you have any comments on that, Marco?
Marco: Yes, I do. I'm so glad that he posted this because the done for you user's guide is right at the publisher and getting ready to come hot off the presses. One of the recommendations in there is that although we do have a process in place where the done for you stack gets done, and we do have a manual Q and A where [inaudible 00:15:45], our original done for you RYSVA goes in there and manually checks. These are human beings and human beings make mistakes. This was just an where the PDFs didn't get set to public. It can happen. Since I know these things can happen, that's actually part of the user's guide. There's a whole bunch of stuff in there that I'm not going to reveal right now.
Just for this question right here, it's in the user's guide. That's coming. There you go. There you go. It's on the screen.
Bradley: That's a pimped cover too man.
Marco: Dude, it's coming. Everything's in there, what you can do, what you should do. We try to put as much into it as possible so that even though you're not in RYS Academy Reloaded, in the Facebook group and you can't ask the questions, you can refer to the user's guide for this type of thing. I'm glad you asked it. Sorry that it got through this way. I've already notified by done for you VA that this cannot happen again. If it does, some heads are going to roll because we can't deliver. This is not the quality that we're used to. This was an oversight. Please excuse me. We'll try for it not to happen again.
Bradley: Jay Turner, the next time if it happens again, I'll hold Marco while you hit him. Okay?
Is There A Specific Timeframe To See A Positive Result On The SEO Efforts You Have Exerted On A Site?
Sam's up next. He says, “I have a page stuck on pages two and three in Google for some target keywords. I've been publishing topical curated posts that link back to the page and syndicating them with IFTTT in hopes to getting the page to move up. My question is is there a point after which you would expect to see positive search movement from doing this after 30 days or something? I'm not sure when I should consider more than that such as ordering a link package to my syndication network, or an RYS Stack.” Yeah, Sam. You actually did the exact same process that I … Well, let me rephrase.
What you did was smart, was wise, because you were trying to accomplish your desired goal, right, with the bare minimum required effort. In other words, using the least amount of resources. If all you're doing is publishing to your syndication network, publishing blog posts from your money site to your syndication network to try to boost the specific page on your site. That's perfectly acceptable. In fact, we encourage and recommend that kind of stuff because a lot of the times you can get the results you want from that alone. However, after a certain point, and it's really going to depend on the industry guys and also depend on your patience level.
Most of us are very impatient. If you've tried that, and you've been publishing posts consistently, and you're not getting over the hump so to speak to your desired results, which if you're stuck on page two or page three, you're obviously not on page one, then yeah, it's time to add some more into the mix. Right? A drive stack is absolutely one of the best things you can do. I also completely always recommend press releases now. You can also do link building to your syndication network, which is incredibly powerful. In fact, you should really be doing that anyways if you're going to be doing a lot of blogging as your primary link building for your money site.
In other words, if you're using your blog to build contextual links within the posts that then gets syndicated out, that are all pointing back up to the pages on your site, that's great. What you want to do is power up that Web 2.0 network, your syndication network. That's what link building is for, right? Also, the RYS Stacks can do that. There's a number of things. You can use press releases to link to your Web 2.0s. There's a number of things that you can do, but certainly if one of your primary methods is going to be blogging through your syndication networks, then I always recommend it even right off the bat is to go ahead and power up your syndication network with the link building package.
Then very strategically if there's like … For example, if you're talking about a specific page on your site that you want to rank, that you've already published let's say, it doesn't matter how many posts, but let's say you've published five posts, blog posts, that are targeting that page on your site. In other words, your primary target URL that you're trying to promote is a page on your site and you're doing it by publishing blog posts and linking to that page within the blog posts. Then what you can do is go to your syndication networks and pull the posts, the syndicated posts, that are all linking back to that page, right?
Pull all of those URLs, those specific post URLs, on all of your Web 2.0 networks, and then build links directly to those URLs. Instead of just building links to your … Now guys just so you're aware, I typically only build links to my homepage URLs of my network properties. Because usually what I'm trying to do is just power up the homepages of them and essentially what I'm really talking about here guys is Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress, right? The three blog properties because they're going to have the blog roll on the front page that's may paginate after 10 posts or 8 posts or whatever it is that we have set. I just typically build a whole bunch of links to the homepage URLs.
The posts when they initially get syndicated from the blog are going to receive all that juice from being posted on the homepage of the blog sites in the Web 2.0 network, right? The syndication network. Once they get pushed off the page eventually after 8 or 10 new posts get published, yes, they lose that link juice because they're not on the homepage anymore, so they're not getting all that inbound link flow from the link building packaged that you've bought, but by then typically they're stabilized in the rankings anyways. I don't usually see much of a drop from that.
Like the pages that I've been trying to target or promote with the blog post even though the blog roll has paginated, right, the blog post is paginated from the blogs, the syndication blogs, it doesn't typically … At least in my experience, it doesn't cost much of a ranking drop if at all. In very specific cases like what we're talking about here, if you want to be very targeted in promoting a specific page on your site, then when you publish blog posts to your money site, then it syndicates out, go extract those post URLs from the syndication network that are ultimately pointing back to the page on your site, and then order a specific link building package for just those post URLs.
Marco: Yeah, it's a great question. Press release to a drive stack aimed at all of that stuff. Watch the happy party.
Does An English Link Counts Or Does It Add Any Value To A French Site?
Bradley: That was a really good question, Sam. Alaa says, I think I said that right, forgive me if I didn't. He says, “Hi, guys. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have our questions answered. My question is if I have a site in let's say French language and I'm located in France, if I get a link from a site in English or any other language than French, does this link count or have any value to better my rankings? Thank you.” Yeah, it should. Look, I don't do any foreign language stuff, but from hearing Marco and Hernan talk about it so much, as far as I know, getting a link from an English site is powerful.
Now getting a link from a French site in Google.com in the US might not be as powerful, but I think the other way around is. Can you guys comment on that?
Hernan: Yeah. I agree for too many reasons. You have authority and you have relevancy, right? Marco has been talking a lot about that. We have been talking for a while about this. You have authority, so you can have a really powerful link from an authority website in English, that's authority. If you have let's say links from French websites in France, but not only in France, like all over the place, all over the world, as long as they're in French, they will add up the relevancy that you're looking for. It's a combination of both. I have had good results with links like tier 1 … Not Tier 1, but tier 2 completely in English.
You can literally go ahead and do your syndication network in French because those properties will be found on Google, so you want them to be in French, and they will be syndicated in your content, your blog. Then you can hire our link building services and what not and you can do tier 1 English backlinks to those tier 1 properties in French. It works really, really well. It's still the name of the game that Google is not as advanced as is it in the English speaking market in other markets.
Marco: Not only that, it's just that relevance flows no matter the market. RankBrain understands the relevance between the languages. It knows that it's related content. Whatever you push through, trust, authority, activity on the link and anything else, Google will understand what's flowing through.
Bradley: That's a really good point. Just think about that, a few years ago guys, before really the Semantic Web, the onset of the Semantic Web, and Semantic technologies, and then now RankBrain, and machine learning, and AI, and all that stuff, yeah, there wasn't relevancy. Like if you went from a French website to an English site, there was like really no connection there, like an understanding. As Marco just mentioned like with RankBrain and machine learning, the algorithm now kind of understands what … It knows what's on the French page. It knows what's on the English page. As long as they're topically relevant, then it's going to count. Right?
It's a valid link that should count. That's pretty cool because that's kind of a newer phenomenon. It's not something when I got in the business of SEO was even available. It wasn't possible at that time. It's pretty cool how it's advancing like that. Kind of reminds me of the movie Terminator, right? What's coming?
What Is Your Recommendation For A Service That Gives 5,000 YouTube Views From U.S.-Based Visitors?
Jason's up. What's up, Jason? He says, “Any recommendations for a service to get YouTube views from US base visitors? Maybe like 5,000 views?” Yeah, AdWords, Jason. AdWords. In fact, my installment to the mastermind newsletter for March, which we just sent yesterday to start getting published for it to go out to mastermind members, is exactly about what you're asking is how to …
I talked about using AdWords for ranking videos in Google search, for local videos in Google search using AdWords, right? Because you can buy views directly from Google, which is 100% valid. In fact, they encourage it. They tell you not to buy views unless it's from them, right? You go to AdWords and set up an AdWords for video campaign. You can set your geographic targeting and you can even set your topic targeting or audience targeting, which is really powerful. There's under audience or interest targeting, there's what's called in-market audiences.
If you can find your specific category within in-market audiences, that works really well because what an in-market audience means is somebody has been recently actively searching the web for that type of content. In-market audiences are great for this type kind of stuff. Now if you can't find an in-market audience, it's okay because you can still do topic targeting. Topic targeting just means that they have a history of being interested in a particular topic. There's a history, right? There's historical data where they've shown an interest in a particular topic over time. That's still good, but in in-market audience, it's a hell of a lot sharper.
In other words, it's more acute. They're in the market at that point because they're actively engaged in searching for content around that particular topic, product, service, whatever. Does that make sense? Then you can target your geographic targeting. You can set that very simply as well. You can just select all of US or you can even narrow it down to a city or a radius. All of that. Again that's covered 100%. I even added a video to the mastermind newsletter this month, guys. All that's being covered in the mastermind and in the newsletter. Come join us, Jason. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, guys.
Anytime somebody says you can't buy views for YouTube anymore, they don't understand that that's what AdWords is for, right? It works crazy. You can rank videos in Google search without even doing SEO anymore. Just setting up AdWords and setting up the targeting just like I just mentioned guys. Again it's been step-by-step walk through, working procedure and everything, in the upcoming mastermind newsletter.
Hernan: That's pretty cool. If I may add something to that, Bradley, it's funny that you mentioned that. They should say that buying views outside of YouTube is against terms of service. It's like buying likes outside of Facebook is against their terms of service. That's the exact same scenario that happens with Facebook likes. If you want to buy likes, I don't know, 2,000 likes for a Facebook page, you can do it on Facebook literally and you can get the exact same quality of likes that you can get outside of Facebook. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of funny that these guys are behaving like that.
Not that they're behaving like that, but they're saying this is against our terms of service while you can actually make that happen within the ads network of that platform itself.
Marco: I don't know why you're surprised. Google has always said that they have editorial privilege. They could do anything they want with the rankings. The term is fuck you. You can't do what we say you can't do, but we could do whatever we want even if we say you can't do it or we can't do it because we don't give a shit. You're going to use it anyway. You're going to pay us.
Hernan: I love that position. That position of fuck you. You know what I'm saying? We could do whatever the fuck we want.
Bradley: We got to grab that link and drop it on the page man. It's been on a long time.
Marco: That's ultimately POFU.
Bradley: POFU. Yeah. POFU. #POFU. Last thing about that, Jason, is what's great about it guys is like I always set up my campaigns starting at $.25 per view, but that's just to get the campaign started. Like literally within a matter of two or three days, you'll get … Well, usually within two days you're going to have an average cost per view. It will show you. It's usually much, much less than that, less that $.25. Obviously it's going to depend on the market, but most of the local stuff that I do it's like … Usually my average cost per view for this type of a campaign is around the $.03 to $.06 range. Think about that. That's insane.
You could set a dollar a day as your targeting option or excuse me, your budget, your ad spend budget. Dollar a day. That's $30 a month, right? Then you could end up with dozens of views per day and at which point … If it's for a local video, like I said, I don't want it to look spammy the amount of views that are coming in. That's when I go on and start fine tuning my daily ads budget, my daily budget amount, as well as what my maximum cost per view bid is. I can also manipulate the targeting options a bit to kind of reduce the views, to get it to a level that seems more … Like a volume of views that's more reasonable, right?
It's crazy what you can do. You really fine tune a campaign for YouTube views. It's great, guys. It's absolutely one of the best things in the world. It makes ranking videos so much easier. It used to be something that I just did as a trick up my sleeve when I needed, but now almost every time I want to rank a video now, one of the first things I do is go set out AdWords campaign for the video. If you set your targeting right, you can actually get some valid traffic that could convert from that too, from the ads themselves. I usually set up the ads with the intent to get them to rank in search, if that make sense, to make the videos to rank in search.
It's great because it's very inexpensive and it's easy to set up, and then Google does all the work for you. Good question, Jason.
Hernan: Hey, Bradley?
Bradley: Yeah?
Hernan: Before we dive into Nigel's question, can I ask you a question?
Bradley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Hernan: You're paying for views after the three second mark, right? Like that's when you pay for a view in YouTube. Am I correct? For a video view? You know what I'm saying? That they skip on and they need to actually view the … How is that working? That's my question.
Bradley: I'd have to look it up. You'd have to look at the YouTube help files. I know if they click the skip ad button or something, then you don't pay for the view. If they don't click it within five seconds, then you do pay for the view I think it is. You'd have to pull it up and look at it, but typically guys, I even take videos that don't … Usually like if it's a lead gen video that I'm trying to rank in Google search, it might not be set up with a real strong call to action at the very beginning of the video because it's like …
Typically when you're doing YouTube advertising especially in stream ads, which is the pre-roll ads, right, the ones that play in front of another video, those are the ones that I use for this type of targeting. What you usually want in those type of ads is a call to action, a very strong call to action, right in the beginning. Because if you can get somebody to click the link right away before that five second mark, you don't pay for it or something like that. I know there's some pretty cool things that you can do with it. If they don't click the link, then you end up paying for the view or if it's something like over 30 seconds …
Again guys you just pull up the YouTube help files. It will explain that. I still do it with the local videos that might not have that strong call to action anyways. I've got multiple campaigns running. I was actually in there optimizing them today. That's why this is fresh on my mind. It's crazy because I've got one that I just set up about three days ago. I've got it set for a dollar a day. It's for a roofing client. Like I've got 168 views in like three days. What's crazy because the video is not even set up to be like a type of video that somebody would want to watch as a pre-roll ad. It's not like that type of a video, but I didn't care.
I just wanted to run in front of people that are in a specific geographic area that have a history, a browsing history, of looking for home improvement or roofing services. Does that make sense? As soon as they watch that, now it's registered in Google and YouTube that there's somebody within a local geographic area that has clicked or watched the video that also has a history, a relevant search history, which is such a huge engagement signal for ranking. Again just look at the help files guys for YouTube about when you're charged for a view. They explain it very clearly. I just don't know it off the top of my head. Sorry.
What Is The Best Practice In Managing Proxies?
It's a great strategy though, guys. I'm telling you. All right. Nigel says, “Proxies. What is the best practice for managing proxies? Is it Firefox using CCleaner each time to switch between accounts or can you recommend a better solution, app or provider? What process do you use?” I use Browseo for anything that I need to use proxies for anymore guys. I talk about this a lot. Browseo, I use it very simple specific process. That's only to have accounts that are assigned to either specific proxies if I need them, although I'm using less and less proxies now guys. I'm doing almost everything through my own IP. Here's why.
This is exactly why. Again this should probably be a frequently asked question if it isn't already guys, if somebody wants to make a note of this. With Browseo, what I'm doing is I'll add an account. There's also Ghost Browser, guys. Again there's so many different functions for these tools. I use it for one thing and one thing only, and that's just to keep browsing sessions open for different profiles if that makes sense. I'm not even using proxies on about 90% of the stuff I do anymore guys. It's all going through my own IP. I've got zero problems with it. Because what I'm doing now is I'll assign an account, a profile to Browseo through my own IP, not a proxy.
Then I open the browser even Chrome or Firefox or both within the Browseo window, and then I start using that profile. I never clear the cache or the cookies. I don't run CCleaner on that because that profile will keep or maintain that search history and the browsing history. It starts to build a profile of a search history. Google, all the sites that I visit, they start to cookie and build a profile for that persona, which is absolutely natural. Why we used to use proxies all the time guys was because we would always be logging into the same browser through the same IP, but through different profiles.
We would have to clean the browser or else it would be very clear that we were mixing profiles. Does that make sense? Whereas with Browseo or Ghost Browser or anyone of the apps that do that, you can log in through your IP to a particular profile, but that profile's going to build its own history. Even though it's on your IP, it doesn't matter. It's because the browsing session is maintained, right? It doesn't get cleared or cleared. Every time you log into that profile, it's just picking back up where it left off the last time. Think about all the public places guys that people go … Public WiFis I mean. They're everywhere now.
There are all the time dozens, sometimes hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of people logged into the same IP. It's really not an issue anymore as long as you're not wiping your tracks clean after every session, which is what we used to do. I used to recommend that. In fact, it was recommended in Syndication Academy. The updated recommendation is to no longer do that because it's not natural guys for you to log into any profile on 100% clean browser every time you log in, and that's what we used to do. Again Nigel, I would recommend that you find an app that you like that provides that solution.
Browseo is one that I use because again I don't use it for all the bells and whistles that it has. I use it for a very one specific process, which is what I just mentioned. There are several other options that do the same thing. Just pick one of them for that and start building out your profiles. Again you don't even need proxies for most of that stuff. Anyways, I just want to let you know guys that's a question that comes up often and I totally appreciate the question guys because I used to be adamant about using proxies all the time too, but then I realized that it's really unnecessary. I've really gotten away from using proxies.
I mean there are certainly some spammy stuff I do sometimes that I require profiles through proxies, and I have some that I've built up with their own dedicated or assigned proxies. Now the vast majority, probably 90% of the profiles and the accounts that I worked within are all binded right to my own IP. I really don't care. It hasn't cause one issue for me.
“By the way, I grabbed YouTube Silo Academy. Good Value. Do you still use Video Link Vortex and is it still best strategy?” Video Link Vortex is Bill Cousins' product. It is a great product. It will save you a ton of time if you're using YouTube silo stuff.
If you're doing any sort of silo work, YouTube silo work, you either have to do it manually or the only other option I know is Video Link Vortex that will semi-automate that for you. I highly recommend it if you're going to be doing a lot of videos silo work. Video Link Vortex is kind of a must have. It'll save you a ton of manual work.
Should You Manage Persona Brand YouTube Channel From Your Primary YouTube Account?
“YouTube. Should you manage person brand YouTube channel from your primary YouTube account?” Yeah, you can manage it. If you're going to create the YouTube channel on your persona account, the persona profile owns the channel, which is what I always recommend.
Yes, you can absolutely add you, Nigel, your main Google profile as a manager so that you can manage the account without having to log in to that other account. Does that make sense? You can manage it from your own Google profile. That's absolutely fine. That's what I do guys. I got 40-50 channels that I manage from my main profile. If yes, is there a limit to how many … I think it's 50 channels is the max, but that may have been changed. I don't know. I think it's 50 channels is the max. I probably got close to that in my account now. A lot of them I don't use though. I could eliminate them if I needed to.
Channel gets penalized. How many channels should you manage? I don't think it matters how many you manage because remember the idea … The goals guys to keeping your channel separate is to make sure that the channel owners are separate, which is why I always recommend creating new Google accounts for new YouTube channels so that you are reducing any potential risks. If you create a whole bunch of channels under one account and then that account gets terminated, God forbid, you lose all that stuff. You can be a manager. In other words, let's say you got 50 personas, right? Each has its own YouTube channel.
You can make yourself, Nigel's Google profile as the manager for all 50 of those channels. If you, God forbid, were ever to get your account terminated, it wouldn't kill all those other 50 accounts. It would just kill your account, which had manager access to them, but it wouldn't kill the channels. The channels would still be up. Does that make sense? You could still go access them from their profile accounts. All right? Good question.
Recommendations: VPS Provider / Solution for Tools & Account Mgmt
Recommendation VPS provider solution for tools and account management. Well, I prefer dedicated servers for that kind of stuff guys or like good VPSs and stuff. I use Oplink.net, but I don't know.
You guys have any other recommendations for that? This is the one I like. I've got several servers with these guys here.
Marco: Amazon.
Bradley: You can do EC2, right? Elastic Cloud?
Marco: You could do that. I mean you could do a VPS right on Amazon. You're going to start WordPress. You're going to start to install tools. You could do whatever you want.
Bradley: Yeah, you can do that too. I used to set up Elastic Cloud instances, but it was so geeky and I just got tired of it. I switched everything to Oplink because they set everything up for me now. Anytime I have an issue, I just contact support. They get it taken care of. By the way, the support guy at Oplink, he's very competent, but his communication skill suck just so you know. The tech support guy, his answers are real short. It almost is like am I pissing this guy off? Don't get me wrong, he always gets everything done and he gets it done real fast. I think it's just his personality. If you guys reach out and you ever have any technical issues, don't take it personally.
I think that's just his personality type. That's a great company though because I've got servers with them that I've had for many years. Every time I need a new server, I just go straight to those guys. All right.
What Are Your Thoughts On Automating Post To A Google My Business Page?
Quit This House. “Good day, gents. Happy Wednesday. Thanks for all you do.” Plus one that. “Got a solicitation today from an autoresponder company saying that they can automate posts to Google My Business page. What are your thoughts on this? Should you automate this? What should your theme of messages be? Sales consumer information reviews? Is there IFTTT for this? Thanks.” No. Hey, listen, would you mind …
Hopefully you're hearing this now. If not, would you mind forwarding that email to me? I'd like to look into that to be honest with you. I don't want to give you a recommendation or a suggestion on whether you should pursue that or not without looking at the offer. I'm curious about that because that might be a solution that I would like to actually use myself for my business, right? In my client business. If you want, send it to me, bbanner@semanticmastery.com. Please forward that email to me and I'll take a look at it. I'd be happy to … Since you're going to email it to me, I'll reply to you via email with my thoughts.
Then maybe I can review it again next week for everybody else's benefit. Look at it this way guys, I know using Google My Business post is incredibly powerful. What I don't like about it is you have to go in an update the post every seven days to keep it live, which is why I'm not doing a whole lot of that right now because it requires too much work of going back in all the time and updating posts. If there was a service out there that would automate this for me, where every seven days it would create new posts, then I would absolutely use it. I would need to test it first to see if it's something that I could recommend.
Again please forward that email to me, bbanner@semanticmastery.com, or reach out to me via Google Plus. Let me know, and I'll review it, and I'll let you know. I'm anxious to see what it's about. Any comments on that guys? Marco, I know and Rob have been doing a whole bunch of stuff with that. Have you come across any automated services for that?
Marco: No. No. It gets done manually from within the account. I want that. I want Google to see someone actually going in there and doing the work. It's working phenomenally well and I am not going to change anything that's working this well.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I agree with that. I'll be the guinea pig on the automation stuff. I've got plenty of projects that I could apply this to to test it. I will definitely test it out man if you send it to me.
Do You Need To Start From Scratch With The Themes And Plugins Before Building Out A Syndication Network?
AJ says, “I have a website up. Do I need to start from scratch with themes, plugins, before I build the network?” No, sir. Absolutely not. As long as you have an RSS feed on your site, so that whenever you publish blog posts that automatically updates or inserts it into the RSS feed, then you're fine. You don't need to start from scratch and build all that stuff out again. That's absolutely unnecessary.
As long as you have an RSS feed, if you have a WordPress site, you do have an RSS feed. Even if you don't have a WordPress site, a lot of site platforms do. CMSs typically do. If it's HTML or something like that, then likely not, but you could still create one. Which themes do you recommend? Personally if I had to only select one theme developer right now to learn, I would say probably Thrive Themes just because there's so many tools and options and stuff. They've got like landing page builders and what they call Thrive Architect. They have the opt-in and lead gen forms. All this stuff guys. They've got a lot of really good things.
If I was going to start all over again, I would say just the one. There's certainly a learning curve with all their different things, but they've got some really good stuff. They got a lot of really good training for all their stuff too. Anybody else have any suggestions?
Hernan: Yeah. Thrive Themes works because they are mostly conversion based and they are light enough. I mean they're not filled with JavaScript and what not that will actually interfere with your SEO efforts for the most part. Another one that works really well and simple for blog is Genesis. Like the Genesis Theme as it comes out of the box. The good news is that you can start with something super simple and even ugly, and test the water. Test if it would actually rank, and then you can make it pretty. We used to do it the other way around, right? We used to go ahead and install a theme, and make it look perfect and what not, and then build out a website, and then build out the networks.
Then we realized that that was not the way to go. You need to test the market first, and then you dedicate a lot of time to that project. Thrive or Genesis or maybe Avada. Those are my options.
Bradley: Very cool. Yeah, this was answering … This is what I was referencing earlier to Mohammad's question. Thank you, Walt. That's good advice. I totally agree. No. Maybe illegal to go revenue share or referral fee. You must be licensed. Yeah. That's what I was talking about. I can't remember. I think they were allowed to pay a referral fee. If I remember correctly, that was how it had to be worded in the contract because that would essentially be listed … For those of you that have done real estate in the United States, you get what's called a HUD-1 Statement at settlement. That's how I would get paid.
Whenever the house would go to settlement, the deal would go to settlement, on the HUD-1 Statement it would be listed as a referral fee, and it would pay me that way. That was the only way we could do it in the State of Virginia anyways. I totally understand what you're saying. Coffee is for closers. I just want to make sure. Yeah, that's the ABC, right? Glengarry Glen Ross I think it was. Always be closing. Marco, I wouldn't share too much about my business model with a cheap realtor. He would try to lower your monthly bill because you told him that your costs are lower.
Marco: This is just for this instance for Mohammad. I mean he can always walk away. It's not common practice. I don't do it. I won't lower my fee period. I'm at the point where I can say I don't need you. You need me. Why the fuck did you contact me if you're not willing to pay my fee? That's how I talk. It's real talk man. I don't pussy foot with clients with anymore. I don't have to do it. Mohammad is getting started. If he wants this client, if he needs this client, then that's one possible approach. If the guy's cheap, he's going to say no anywhere, then Mohammad can just turn around, “Okay. See you. Let me go see if your competitor wants the deal. Fuck you.”
Bradley: POFU. Did somebody post that? We really need to post that? Damn it. I don't want to waste for the next five minutes looking for the URL. Marco, can you grab that? The POFU link? Drop it on the page for everybody's benefit.
Best Platform For An Online Membership-Based Course
Ryan says, “What is the best platform for an online membership based course?” Okay. We use Value Addon, but for some reason I guess like over the weekend, Value Addon was down, like the archive area was down for a period of time. I don't know. I'm not going to bad mouth Value Addon. All platforms have their ups and downs. I like Value Addon. I've liked it ever since we started using it. I recommend that.
I haven't really used a whole lot of other platforms. We tried using the ClickFunnels membership platform I didn't like that at all. Although I love ClickFunnels, I didn't like the membership platform. We've been using Value Addon for like four years now, and I like it. Anybody else have any other recommendations?
Bradley: The second part of that is why do you guys always do you livestream Q and A on Google instead of YouTube? Because it gives us this wonderful event page. Our livestream is on YouTube, right? We're using YouTube. Google Hangouts on Air is gone. You can only do it through YouTube now, right? It is on YouTube, but we always have our questions and answers on this page because it gives a nice big page here where all the questions can be viewed by everybody instead of that little chat window that's on the right side of the videos. That make sense? Isn't this a much better display than if I was to have the watch page open in YouTube with that little chat window? Does that make sense guys?
Plus we can add images and do all this cool stuff that all of our members like to do like Wayne and Greg. I mean if we brought it over to YouTube, it would be boring. It wouldn't be as fun. I love having these event pages guys. Again we've tried using Webinarjam. I know Marco's using Zoom right now for RYS and he likes it. I prefer to stick right with using YouTube Live and the Google Events page. That's still my preferred method. Maybe it's because old habits die hard.
Marco: I've posted the YouTube link by the way.
Are Content Mastery And RSS Authority Still Relevant And Available?
Bradley: Awesome. POFU guys. Go watch that. If you're easily, well, then you shouldn't be on this webinar anyways really. Is Content Mastery still relevant? We don't have that anymore. You might be talking about Content Kingpin. Content Kingpin, yes, it's absolutely still relevant. It's just about content curation and how to build a business around it if you'd like, which is hands-free content marketing. It could be 100% outsourced and produce revenue. It's how I do all of my content marketing guys. 100% of my content marketing is done through the Content Kingpin process. That's the exact process that I've been using since I think 2012.
I used to do it myself back then, but now I have a team that does all that stuff. It's absolutely still valid. Is RSS Authority Sniper still relevant or available? Yeah, it's still available. I think Lisa Allen updated that recently, the tool, the front end tool, which is the RSS Authority Sniper. I never really cared for that tool much though, although again I think she recently updated it. I think it's got a lot more functionality. I always liked the service, was the backend service, which is Rank Feeder. That's a hugely powerful RSS co-citation tool. It's awesome. It's just an SEO tool, but it's very, very powerful and it's called RankFeedr.
That's like the monthly add on for RSS Authority Sniper. I would buy RSS Authority Sniper just to get access to RankFeedr. Although like I said, RSS Authority Sniper I believe she updated it recently, and I haven't messed with it since it's been updated, so I don't know what the new tool looks like. The back end service, RankFeedr, is amazing. It's great. We're almost out of time.
How Do You Start Building Self Supporting PBN?
These would be self-supporting ads, products, et cetera. Real sites. If you are starting this process, what you would do? Look for expired domains and start producing content? Something else?” If you're creating real sites, that's how you do it nowadays guys. If you're going to do PBNs, that's how you do it. You build real sites that you monetize, you try to rank the PBNs. Guys, you want real sites with real traffic. That's what you want. If you're going to be doing PBNs, that's how you do it. How would I do it? If I could some relevant expired domains that had the same very similar topics on them, then yeah, sure.
I would do that because then you can basically step into some authority, some already generated authority. Right? I also wouldn't be opposed to just starting with my own brand new domains if I had some branding ideas that I wanted. Because if you're going to create your own digital assets, which that's what these will be, then you might want to create some new brands out of it too. It's entirely up to you. I would look for expired domains, but it would probably be a mix of both. What do you guys say?
Marco: If he's looking to push relevance through TLDs, then build a drive stack, build an RYS Drive Stack around each one of these to push all of that relevance through. You push a link over and all of that is going to carry through. What he's actually going to do is he's building a seed set, which is trusted and authoritative because of everything that he's doing to it. The more that he continues to add to his drive stacks, and his websites, and the content and whatever else he's going to add, I think he's sending traffic in and everything else, it's just going to power up his seed set.
Over time and into the future that's what's actually going to work rather than how people are still using the old PBN model.
Bradley: All right. Let's see if we can get through the next two. Up two Greg's picture.
What Are Your Recommendations When Changing Company Or Brand Name?
Chick says, “I'm seriously considering a company name, brand change. What would be better? Creating a new website for the new brand then 301 to the new site when I launch or simply swap out the name on the existing website?” I kind of like the former to be able to build it right from scratch. That's what I would do, Chick, unless you're existing site is exactly how you want it. It also depends on how much work it would be. Like for example, if I had a site that had 150 posts on it, 15 pages, I don't know that I would want to start over.
I might just replace the domain and then rebrand the actual existing site just because it would save a shit ton of work. You could always clone their site and then install it on a new domain. You know what I mean? I mean that's what I do is clone it and put it on a new domain. If it was a smaller site and I wanted to rebrand and kind of start all over like for example, maybe the on-page wasn't right, the structure of the site might not have been right originally or could have been improved upon, then this gives you that opportunity. Again it's a matter of like how much do you want to do. Yeah, 301-ing the old to the new is fine if you want to do that.
If the site needed it, if the structure was poor, then I would do that absolutely. If the structure was fairly sound and there was a lot of content, I'm not sure that I would want to start over from scratch. Just clone it and migrate it to another domain. All right.
Jeff, last question guys, “Bradley, did you already pimp out the Video Lead-Gen System? I got on late. To anyone who's looking for great info, watch BB's Value Addon webinar. Top notch.” Yeah, that Video Lead-Gen System, yeah, we did the bonus webinar for where to find prospects that are hiding in plain site, that are spending money.
Then also we walked through some additional outsourcing. Like guidelines for how to outsource that stuff. Yeah, we did that bonus webinar for all the purchasers. I made that public on purpose, but I only made it public when it was live. Now it's all locked behind the Video Lead-Gen System. You have to be a member of that in order to be able to see that webinar, but I made that webinar public intentionally because I knew it would help a ton of people. Obviously there was a selfish reason too, right, which was hopefully that people would see how much value I gave in that webinar and would go purchase the Video Lead-Gen System. We had 300 views on that webinar in 24 hours.
I know you guys got a lot out of that, but now unfortunately if you guys want to see it, you got to join the system, Video Lead-Gen System. Thank you for the kind words, Jeff. I put a lot into that webinar obviously because I really wanted to help as many people as possible. Anybody that says that they can't find prospects that do video marketing, they're not trying hard enough because there's a real easy way, which I covered in that webinar on how to find prospects that are spending money, that aren't getting results from their videos. You can go in and step in and use the already existing videos, rank it for them, and then make money from them.
Again that's covered inside Video Lead-Gen System. All right guys. 5 o'clock. Got to wrap it up. I don't think we have any other webinar. Oh shit. We got mastermind tomorrow. How can I forget?
Hernan: All right guys.
Bradley: We'll see you guys in mastermind tomorrow, those of you that are there. Those of you that aren't, why aren't you? I'll see you all later. Thanks guys.
Hernan: Bye, everyone.
Adam: Bye.
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