Click on the video above to watch Episode 179 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
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The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
Bradley: I'm going to steal Adam's line. Hello. Hey, everybody. This is Bradley Benner with the Semantic Mastery and this is Hump Day Hangouts Episode, I believe, 178. Hard to believe. Anyways, hi. It's sunny and warm in Virginia, finally. Well, it's getting there and I'm glad for that. We've got Hernan and Marco on. We're not going to ask Marco about the weather because I'm tired of hearing about it, but how are you doing, Hernan?
Hernan: Good, man. It's good to be here, excited for what's coming. It's kind of a … I think there's going to be a big storm here in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, Estrella. So, it's good. It's good to be here.
Bradley: Awesome. Marco, how are you doing, man?
Marco: Investigating how to ranking Google more better.
Bradley: More better. It's awesome. Yeah, guys, we've got a few things we're going to tease you with this morning because you know how we like to do that. So we're going to do … or today, excuse me, we're going to tease you with a couple things. I guess, I'll hand it over to you first, Hernan, because you wanted to talk about the updated Battleplan V2.
Hernan: Yep. Yeah, that's right. In fact, one of the usual announcements that we do is that we tell you, guys, to go get the Battleplan because that's like step number one if you're new to Semantic Mastery. But for the first time in a couple of months, I would say, probably a year, I would say to hold off, to not do that because we're actually revamping it. We're rewriting and there's a lot of it in it that still works like a charm so you could totally get it now, and apply today, and you will get a lot of good stuff, good results. But we have tweaked some stuff and treat some orders of different things to reflect better, what are the changes that we have been finding out and whatnot. So, we're still reviewing it. There's going to be probably another two weeks before we launch it or something like that. And so, yeah, I'm really excited about that. It's going to be, as usual, a launch price that's a no-brainer. So, stay in touch. Stay tuned because it's got to be really, really good.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. We're looking forward to launching that because, obviously, within a year and stuff has changed, we've added some new things to our standard operating procedure like press releases, for example. So, all that kind of stuff is in the new Battleplan, guys. Also, next month in May, we're going to be actually launching another product called Local GMB Pro which is going to be fabulous because Marco and Rob are back at it again. They've been in the lab testing basically getting results for clients or their own assets, whatever, entirely 100% within the GMB dashboard. I don't know if you, guys, are paying attention to what's going on inside of the GMB dashboard, but a lot of changes have occurred in just the recent months and weeks.
For example, like services tabs are now starting the show up to where you can add products, and services, and pricing, and description of them, and all that kind of stuff. There's the messaging tab. There's … I mean there's all these things that you can do now and they're like the GMB websites which I was playing with today which is freaking fabulous GMB post, like all the stuff that Google is giving us, that are free tools to use inside the GMB dashboard. What Rob and Marco have been finding out is by using those tools and doing everything that Google gives to us, taking advantage of everything that Google gives to us inside that dashboard, they're able to generate some incredible results that has absolutely nothing to do with ranking or traditional SEO. It's like all that shit that we've filled our heads with over the last many years, guys, forget about all of it because it can be done 100% inside of GMB without needing to know all that stuff.
So you, guys, are seeing me make mistakes like … or you, guys, will be, those of you that purchased, of course, will be seeing me make mistakes and kind of fumbled my way through stuff which I think is a hell of a lot more genuine and more useful. Personally, as a student of many internet marketing products myself, usually, when you see the polished finished product, it's usually just all the stuff that worked well, right? And so, but a lot of times, if you run into an issue like a challenge, or a roadblock, or something that's not covered in the training then it can literally stop your progress dead in its tracks. I know, that's happened to me many times because I've run into something that wasn't addressed in the training because the training only shows everything that works. So, I like this style of training and that I'm learning it as I'm recording the case study videos that you, guys, can see like mistakes and how I get … how I correct them and how I find workaround stuff.
Anyways, that all said, what's amazing is I got a call from the customer, the client, yesterday or might have been two days ago now and he was like … he's funny, but the way he talks, he's like, “Yo, bro, I got so many calls over the weekend from the map's listing like I don't even see it ranked and I don't know how I'm getting the calls but they're coming through.” And so, I went and looked at the GMB insights data which is like analytics inside the GMB dashboard, and you can absolutely see how much traffic. His new, brand new GMB listing has already received. You can see phone calls, the clicks to driving directions, all that kind of stuff. It's amazing because he's not ranked at all like anywhere.
It's brand new listing, guys, yet just because I'm in there optimizing the way that Marco and Rob are teaching me and utilizing all the products that GMB gives us, he's already generating leads from this listing that under normal SEO standards, I wouldn't be generating leads with this listing for at least a month, right, long enough to get everything built out, submit a press release, syndication network, drive stack, all the stuff that we typically do, not doing any of that. This is all 100% done inside that GMB dashboard so far. And so, I let Marco talk on that for just minute. I'm going to grab the screen and just show you guys a quick … like I said, I was going to tease you, but a quick peek inside the site.
Marco: Well, what I want to do to tell them also is when was the map finally verified?
Bradley: Well, it was verified about two weeks ago or more, about three weeks ago, but there was a strange trouble with it, there was a duplicate listing that was [inaudible 00:07:31].
Marco: Yeah, but, I mean, when did everything get corrected and when-
Bradley: Thursday.
Marco: Last Thursday.
Bradley: Thursday last week. So less than a week ago.
Marco: And then in during that time, you can already see results.
Bradley: Yeah, over the weekend, this past weekend, he said he received, I think, six or eight calls or something like that. If you go look, it shows a calls. It only shows four from the weekend and four calls prior to that weekend. So I'm not sure how those other four calls got there. But he said he got six or eight calls, something like that, over the weekend and the insights are showing it.
Marco: So, here's the deal. Those will only register the click-to-call from their cellphone when they click the phone and call the company directly. They won't register like when they see the listing …
Marco: And call.
Bradley: Yeah, yeah.
Marco: Right? But, I mean, the results are there and they're undeniable, number one, from insights and just from the client being so excited or sometimes so overwhelmed that they'll say, “I have so many calls. What the hell do I do? What am I supposed to do?” I wasn't the … the experience that I've had and, now, we're going on the third month and I'm going to raise my rates again for the third or fourth month is … I just got … do 600% of traffic. Traffic went up 600% from the insights that we got … this is month to month. So from last month to this month and it's incredible that the number one, it shows visits, organic visits and it shows what happens with the GMB. So everything is right there and you know. Like my thing for years and years has always been I never guarantee rankings because I know that Google is a fickle mistress, right?
I know that Google will do whatever it wants to do. But I've always said … I will either get your results or you leave. I put it that … that's my pitch. If we boil it all down, my pitch is, “Dude, I'm going to get you. I'm going to make you money. If I don't, then you don't have to pay me anymore. You could just walk away. No contracts, no nothing.” This is a way to make sure that you'll be able to come through with that guarantee that you're giving your client of making your client money. So, I think this is just … I don't know, just another way that we found like exploiting Google's love for itself.
Bradley: Yeah. What's great about it, guys, is like I said, this … the training is going to be entirely about how to use just GMB assets and that's it. Obviously, you can incorporate other stuff, other traditional SEO, and local SEO stuff that we also know works, right? So, for example, syndication networks help validate the entity drive stats, press releases, all that stuff, but the goal with the GMB Pro course is to teach you how to get results strictly in the GMB environment. If you want to add the other stuff, it's only going to make you … help you to get results faster and maintain them for longer, you know what, even … and so far I don't have a history of knowing like if I got to continue that activity or what for this because this is new to me, too. But my point is even in really competitive stuff, you'll be able to get results because you'll be doing stuff that's generating activity, that has … it's completely independent of rankings. That's my point.
Like it's amazing because … and, again, I was telling Marco I'm curious as to how … what I think is going on is that people that are in a particular area, remember, this is all local stuff, right? So people that are in an area that Google knows your history, if you're … if you've got a Google account and it's … you're tied to your phone, Google knows where you are at all times. They know what stores you like, what kind of searches you do. They know everything about you. And so, even though the rank trackers might not show the listings as ranking in maps because there's some random IP … it might even be a localized IP, but it has no search history, that kind of stuff. It's no profile attached to it whereas somebody that's in that area does have a profile, that's got an accrued search history. They might have … they might be an in-market, they might be in market for a particular service. And so Google knows all of this.
Hernan: Yeah, yeah.
Bradley: Questions now, what do you think?
Hernan: Yeah.
Marco: Sam's up. Sam Bailey.
Bradley: All right, let's do it. Let me grab the screen.
Hernan: Sam the man.
Is There An SEO Benefit To Using The Parent Page Feature In WordPress For Subcategories?
Bradley: Okay, Sam, what's up, buddy? He says, “Question about the site structure. I'm using virtual silo structure. If I have a page that links to one or more subcategory pages, is there an SEO benefit to using the parent page feature in WordPress for this?” Well, okay, remember, if you're using a complex silo structure, that's how you create subcategory pages, right? So think about that, Sam. If you're using a complex silo structure where you have top-level category which is also a page, which is a parent page, then you have subcategories which are also pages but those are child pages which means you have to select the parent page and the right-hand sidebar of the page, WYSIWYG editor-type thing. You select the parent page and then posts are obviously post. Those go into either categories or subcategories, right? And so, that's the hierarchy of how you use a complex silo structure.
So, if you're doing complex silo structures, yes, you would have … you would assign a parent page. Whether you're using physical silos or virtual silos, and all that means, guys, in case anybody's confused about that is whether you're showing the silo structure in the URL. That is determined by your permalink settings in WordPress. If you're using permalink … the post name settings then that's a virtual silo because it's not … the hierarchy is not displayed in the URL. It's only showing the post or page slug. So it's rootdomain.com/post or page slug, right? So that's the post name permalink structure. If you're using category post-name permalink structure, that will show physical silo structure, right? So that'll show the hierarchy in the actual URL.
I've always preferred it that way. To me, it's more logical. That way, however, it makes no difference as far as SEO. I've tested it both ways in the virtual silo. In fact, I would even probably suggest or recommend going with the virtual silo method because you can run into some funny slug or URL things that happen when trying to do the complex silo structure and using the category post-name, permalink. That makes sense. So, Sam, just because I don't want you to be confused here. If you're doing a complex silo then you have to use the parent page or sign a parent page from subcategories which will be pages, okay, if you're using a simple silo structure than now because typically you wouldn't … usually you're just going to have categories and impost so there wouldn't be a need for a subcategory, okay? If you have subcategories, it's typically because you're using a complex silo structure. So hopefully that answers the question. If it doesn't, Sam, try to repost it with a little bit more detail, okay?
When Will You Release The New Course Local GMB Pro?
Bradley: Perfect. Those videos are old and they still apply. There's nothing to change about that. John, what's up, John? He says, “Hi, I listen to your Hump Day Hangouts every week.” Thanks, man. I appreciate that. He says, “Plus one for you, guys. I would like to know when you plan to release your new course Local GMB Pro. Thanks.” Awesome, John. Yeah, that's next month. We're definitely going to be launching that in May. There's no question. That's coming out in May. I mean, I should be done with my part of it within the next week or so other than coming in and updating to show like the incredible results that I'm expecting to get now. Other than that, like mostly … like, again, it's just a process. Once you learn it like … we're talking about even providing a done for your GMB Pro service. It's something we're seriously considering building out a team for that, so. Nobody out there will have that except us at least initially then we'll have a bunch of people come copy us as usual.
Is There A Way To Separate Multiple Tumblr Accounts So They Don't Immediately Get Banned?
All right, Adrian Harper says, “Hey, guys, I have a question regarding Web 2s. I recently bought 50 Tumblr accounts from a gig on Fiverr but they didn't come as separate accounts.” Ooh. “There's the main account and several accounts under that which isn't really good and I don't think about linking to a money site to boost rankings zeros away. Is there a way to separate these accounts so you don't immediately get banned? Also somewhere I read that you were able to log in the numerous Tumblr accounts to add content and personas using Browseo and didn't need any proxies, is this correct? Thanks, guys, and keep up the good work, Adrian.” Okay, Adrian, I'm not 100% sure about the process for transferring an account in Tumblr like a blog from one Tumblr account to another. It's probably possible.
I would just contact Tumblr support to ask them like just pitch it. When you ask them, ask them as if you were transferring a blog to somebody else and just say like, “What's the process for doing that? Is that possible?” Find out if that's possibly because, yeah, I agree with you. If you buy 50 expired Tumblrs and they're all under one account, that's, to me, is useless. Like you might be able to get some out of it, but the problem is if one of your sites gets terminated or banned, it could likely pass to that entire account and you lose everything. I don't know that for sure, guys, because I don't typically set up my accounts that way, but I would assume that that one profile could get banned which would kill all of the blogs under that profile. I don't know if they keep it separate or not, if Tumblr does, okay?
Hernan: Yeah. Yeah, I would assume that you're right. Like if you think like … when in doubt, just don't do it, you know what I'm saying? Like we haven't gone that far as to create several sub accounts within the same Tumblr account, but just … if in doubt, just in case, do it.
So, there are always dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people on the same IP. Think about it. And so, all logged in to the same type of accounts and it doesn't flag everybody's account because it's the same IP. So it's no longer an IP issue. It's not like it used to be anyways. Why it's important? Why you can do that with Browseo? Here's the thing, if you were to go clear Firefox through the normal clear cache and cookies process, and run CCleaner, and do all that stuff, and then log in to an account with a fresh browser like virgin white, fresh browser, that looks unnatural. So if you do that and then you log back out, clean your cache and cookies, and then log back in through the same IP to another account with a fresh browser and you do that a couple of times, you can absolutely flag your IP for that kind of activity, for spammy activity which could cause accounts to be terminated or to be … requiring verification, all that kind of stuff because you're sending a lot of unnatural signals to that platform that you keep logging in to with the fresh browser under new accounts.
Does that make sense? However, if you've got Browseo or any tool that does that, I think another one is called Ghost Browser or something like that, whatever tool you have or app that will do that for you, you can still log in underneath the same IP but each browsing session keeps its history. So there's cookies that are accrued and there's history as to what sites have been visited and what searches have been done, and that what links have been clicked on, and that kind of stuff. And so, those kind of histories and those cookies that accrue start to build up a profile even if it's under the same IP, it doesn't matter because each IP or each profile is going to have a slightly different history. That looks natural because people do that but people don't … typically, people don't clear your browser every time they log in and think about a public WiFi not 15 people in any public WiFi spot are going to clear all their cache and cookies and then log in to their account from that same IP. Does that makes sense?
But there could be 15 people logged in to Tumblr from the same IP because they're all … but they're all different accounts. So my point is, is just acting more natural is the way to do it even if it's from the same IP. That's why I use Browseo all the time but I even … I have some select accounts that are assigned to dedicated proxies that I still use today because they've been set up and they've accrued browsing history over the last two years now, really. But all my new accounts that I set up in Browseo, they're all just run right through my IP guys. I don't care about the IP problem anymore because I'm building up profiles that have their own history, in their own search habits, in their own likes and themes and all of that stuff, and it's all done through my same IP which is okay in my opinion. I've never had any problems with it. Does anybody have anything to say differently about that?
Marco: No, not about that but I do as far as the original question. You should be able to transfer the different accounts and the different blogs. You have to go into Tumblr and create the new account that you're going to transfer to, and then you send an email from the blog that you're looking to transfer to that new account to join right to that email to join your blog and then you can make that person an admin, and then you can eliminate yourself from … I'm pretty sure Google it because I'm sure that somewhere in YouTube or somewhere in Google, it will be explained exactly how's that. But the gist of it, if I remember it correctly, that's how it's done. I did it before with some stuff that I got crossed up. I added about five different blogs and that's how I did it. I just added … started a new one and figured out how to transfer the ownership, but you don't really transfer ownership. You make someone an admin and then you eliminate yourself from that. By doing that, it makes that new blog or that new Tumblr account the administrator.
How Do You Explain A One-Off Onboarding Or Setup Fee To A New Client?
Okay, Pete, what's up, buddy? He says, “Hey, guys, when you were talking to a potential new client, do you put in the proposal a one-off onboarding or setup fee? If so, how do you explain what the fee is for and why do you charge the fee? Thanks in advance.” It depends on what I'm doing, Pete. But, yeah, there's usually setup fees involved. It depends on … again, it depends on each one of the services. So, for example, like for Google My Business or maps SEO, I always charge a maps optimization or maps set up an optimization fee, right?
I charge $697, I believe, for that which includes the GMB set up an optimization. If it's not already set up, then I set it up. Typically, it's set up and I've just got to optimize it. Bing and in Yahoo!, in fact, I really even kind of took Yahoo! out of it to where I'm really just now doing Bing in GMB for the same price, right, $697. That's what I charge. But then my local monthly SEO charges for any at … the lowest I would charge for local maps is 500 bucks a month for maintaining. So like I'll charge $697 set up and $500 a month. If I got somebody with two locations, a lot of the times I'll charge them $400 per location per month. So it's 800 bucks for two. That's just kind of how I do stuff like I … I don't charge as much as a lot of the other people do for my services, but when it comes to setup fees, it just depends on what it is.
Like, for example, I also do reputational marketing stuff now because it's just so stupid easy to fulfill, right? The app does all the work. All you got to do is sell it. And so like I'll charge somebody like 99 bucks as a setup fee because it takes me or a VA about 20 minutes to input data into the system and that's it. And so I make $100 on a setup fee and then I'll charge maybe $200 a month or something like that on just the reputation stuff but I typically try to roll all of that into a larger SEO package, anyways, okay? But, yeah, I mean, guys, I'm always transparent about my charges to my clients. Like I tell them exactly what everything is for. Like I don't ever try to inflate prices here and there to kind of hide stuff. I just flat out tell them what it is and I explain why that I'm charging for that and why it's necessary.
Again, like I said, the way that I present my services to my clients, it's in a very transparent way so that I honestly feel like I earned their trust by just explaining everything in such detail if that makes sense. So, anyways, that's my two cents. You, guys, have any additional input on that?
Hernan: Yeah, real quick, I do the same that you do, Bradley, in terms of I tell them, “Hey, this is what it's going to charge like and what I'm going to charge, and then these are the tools that I'm going to use, and this is the final … like the tally, if you want,” But, yeah, I definitely break that down for the clients and I'm completely 100% transparent as you were saying as well.
Marco: No, I totally agree. You have to be transparent. But then, again, if you position yourself correctly, you should also raise your prices accordingly. I mean, you know your market, you know your local market, Bradley, and you know what it is. I would never charge the same thing to someone, let's say, in an area like where you are like, let's say, in Georgetown, for example, where I know, I mean, that the money is just way different. A Beverly Hills Dennis, I'm going to hit him over the head as opposed to just a local Dennis that's just trying to get people in the door, right, so that he can then sell them on whatever services it is that he has. So you have to know. If you know your market and you position yourself accordingly then you could usually could charge a little bit more but, definitely, transparent as far as the tools, as far as using … you have to pay your staff. You have expenses also.
Bradley: Yep.
Marco: If you're transparent with all of that then you should be okay. I mean, markup … you have to charge what you feel you're worth. That's how I think. You have to charge for your services and if you're that good then you should charge for that. You should charge a premium. Most other businesses and most other experts do.
What Are Possible Reasons Why A Gmail Account Used In GSites And Drive Stacks Got Suspended?
Bradley: I agree. Okay. D is, “Hey, guys, a few days ago, my Gmail account got suspended. It was my persona account for one of my affiliate sites and the account was around nine months old. I had a branded IFTTT network and drive stack attached to this account. I need the words of wisdom from you, guys, on this issue. Before that, I want to tell you a few things. I had content in the drive files without attribution and all of these documents were created a few months back.” Okay, so if it was like straight up copied content from somewhere without attribution, well, that typically hasn't created a problem, but Marco can comment on that.
Marco: No, that's never been a problem.
Bradley: Yeah, it's never been a problem.
Marco: No, we're still doing it the same way, not a problem.
Bradley: He says, “A few days ago, I created a new G-site for link building and I framed a few of my Google Docs and spreadsheets, and I went to Fiverr, and ordered two contextual backlinks packages with one 5,000 links and with one 2,000 links to my new G-site.” Again, although, I never recommend buying backlinks packages from Fiverr because those templates are used over, and over, and over again, so it's definitely a footprint thing. Well, I'm sure there's some providers there that are decent, but I just don't recommend it. But I don't think that's the problem either, the backlinks to your G-site. Marco, do you they feel differently?
Marco: I've never seen this kind of behavior before and we've thrown the kitchen sink at drive stacks. It may have been that he linked directly to the G-site, but we've done that also. Like this isn't in the right context for me to be able to see. Did we do the drive stack? If so, then I can reach out and see what was done. I mean, but if it's someone else's drive stack, I can't say because I don't know what type of garbage they did. If you did it yourself, did you follow our training or who's training did you follow? I mean, there's so many things that are possible here that I could go on, and on, and on, and we'd never get to an answer.
Bradley: Yeah and one question I would have was … and I'm not doubting that it truly is suspended but I'm just throwing this out there for everybody's benefit. There's been times where I've had blogger accounts, for example, specifically from syndication networks where like a blog blogger account says it's been suspended for violations of terms of service or whatever. All it was, was … it was showing the blogger blog is being suspended, but all it was, was the Gmail account associated with that blogger blog had to be re-verified through a phone verification. After re-verifying the account which sometimes is difficult, then blogger blog, all of a sudden, the suspension is lifted and it's back live again on the web as soon as you verify the account. So all I'm saying, the reason why I bring that up is because is it indeed a suspension which I'm pretty sure that you've already confirmed that or is it just that you have to re-verify the account.
Marco: The only thing I've ever seen go wrong and get us a suspension is when we ran the script and it was pulling in too many files which is just too many Google resources that you're using up for free and then that will get your G-site terminated. It'll get the G-site suspended and you won't … it's really hard to recover it, but the drive stack was still intact. So it's just a matter of slowing down the script and the way that it runs and then just redoing a G-site and just doing it all over again, not the Gmail account. This is what's surprising that the Gmail account getting suspended not from a drive stack, I don't know. It may have triggered a re-verification like you said.
Bradley: That's what I would think it would be is that more and more … I mean, because, honestly, that's typically the only thing that happens is that an account gets locked for re-verification and all of the sub-accounts or tools, the apps that Google allows you to have with an account, they all get basically temporarily suspended until you can re-verify. Sometimes it's impossible re-verifying. I've lost stuff because of it, but other times, I've been able to re-verify and everything comes back. So that's what I'm assuming it may be without more detail. All right. Nigel's up. Nigel just recently joined the mastermind after coming here for months and asking many questions and taking action. He got himself to a position where he joined a mastermind, it's freaking fabulous.
Nigel, you and Mohammed back to back, look at that, that's awesome because both of you have taken very similar paths in that. You've come here and asked a bunch of questions every single week and you've applied taken action on what you've learned and it's propelled you to the point that you could come join the mastermind which will help you to grow your businesses even faster. So both of you, I'm proud of both of you, seriously. I've said that to you, Mohammed, but not so much to you, Nigel. We certainly appreciate you joining the mastermind. We will be there to help you in any way we can, okay? [Newly Minted MM 00:34:18] status, “It feels great. Thank you for the warm welcome, truly been awesome so far and looking forward to posting results soon.” We're looking forward to you posting them.
That video email, nice, I got my money's worth for this month already. So you must have picked Video Lead-Gen System as the bonus or whatever. That's awesome. Just keep in mind, guys, that as part of the prospecting module, we're going to flash that out a hell of a lot more and we're going to end up updating that product and in launching that with a proper launch. So, I think, Hernan, you might want to get this ready, but I think we still have the pre-sale for Video Lead-Gen System available. If it's still available, people can still get in now when we go to launch it, once it's relaunched with all the new training that's going to be added. It's going to be at least 500 bucks.
Hernan: Yeah I've been actually start for [inaudible 00:35:08] let me confirm that with you, Bradley.
Bradley: I think it's vlgs.semanticmastery.com, I think. But, anyways …
Hernan: Yeah, I want to make sure that it's still open in the back if that makes sense.
Bradley: Okay, I got it. Anyways, that way …
Marco: Can I just add for a second? We're giving you tons of notice that we're going to raise the price. We always give you tons of notice that we're going to raise the price. Please don't come back in a month, two months, or three months, or however long and say, “You raise the price. Now, I can't buy it at the launch price.” The launch price is what it is. The pre-launch price is what it is, and then it goes up to the price where we established. Why do we do that? Because we want you, people who follow us, people who are members, we want you to have a first crack at it at a price where it's comfortable but it's worth so much more than what we charge that we just can't give it away for free, sorry. It takes too much time too much effort. It takes too much work to put all the stuff together and we can't give it away. It's worth what it's worth. It's going up to where it's going.
Hernan: Yep. I just posted on the event page. So you better like you better … yeah, you said, I said while it lasts because, I don't know, somebody could find out and we might close it.
Marco: Yeah.
Where Can I Find A Document On Basic Metadata And Tag Configuration?
Bradley: That's true. Like I said, we're going to be launching that in April, May, June … June, I believe. Yeah, I believe we talked about that this week, guys, didn't we? I think we're going to relaunch that in June, so. All right. Anyways, where can I … back to Nigel's question. “Where can I find the document on basic metadata and tag configuration without going too far down the rabbit hole? Basically, I want to clear an easy way to provide, I want a clear and easy way to provide some value to prospects that I audit. I had a prospects report come back with metadata and tag issues, and I would have loved to offer some generic DIY info for free like put this kind of information in here without going all Jeffrey Smith SEO Bootcamp on them. Any direction you can provide a solid guide template would be invaluable.”
All right. So, my only concern with that, Nigel, is remember who your audience is, right? So when you're talking to a prospect in a video audit and you are explaining to them something that they could do that could have a positive impact on their digital presence, you want something that's incredibly easy for them to do that doesn't require a ton of explanation. So I know that's basically what you're asking, how could I have provided some information about metadata and tags that wouldn't confuse them. That's kind of difficult to do especially in a video audit. Now, you could try it with like … if I were to try to create an example for that, I'm sure I could figure out a way to dumb it down quite a bit, but I might do something like talk about how tags are supposed to be kind of descriptive terms about the topic of the post and right, and then there's like a hierarchy and stuff but remember, you don't want to overwhelm them with technical stuff because their eyes will glaze over and though it's like you're speaking a foreign language to them, right?
And so, again, you don't want to get too technical. A lot of the times that the kind of advice or suggestion that I will give in an audit will be something very simple like, “Hey, you don't have your name, address, and phone number listed on your website. That's something that is incredibly powerful for helping you to rank in maps. So, I would recommend that you put a widget in your site or have your webmaster put a widget in the footer or in the sidebar that lists your name, address, and phone number,” stuff like that, something that's very simple that doesn't take a lot of explanation but they could easily do that's going to literally help give them an improvement, right? Like it's going to improve their presence slightly even if not much.
You could give them a tip on optimizing Yelp or some … all I'm saying is like you could give them a tip on optimizing their GMB listing say, “Hey, I'm looking at your Google My Business listing and it looks like you only have your logo and nothing else. You might want to add some optimized images and here's a trick. Name the file names of the images after products and services that you provide. Include local modifiers, your city name, the areas that you service, things like that.” Very, very easy stuff that they can do as far as tags and metadata that's a bit too technical in my opinion to try to explain that to a layman or civilian so to speak. You, guys, have any other suggestions on that?
Marco: No, I totally agree with you. If you start talking about title tags and metadata, you're going to have to show SERPs to show the purpose that they serve, and then that might get the talking into, “Well, am I going to get those kinds of results? Am I going to get those rankings? Am I going to rank for these keywords? And what keywords am I going to …” You don't want the conversation going that way. Then the conversation is going all wrong because you want the conversation to be all about the leads or the results that you're going to get for the person. I mean, you could do it in the video of the person is technical enough, but that's not a conversation that you want to have with someone that you're just taking on as a client. I mean, if you want to do that, let's say, later on as an add-on or whatever, we're going to improve your ad copy, for example, you could say that.
You could compare it to classifieds where you want to stand out from the bunch and and how you can make it stand out. You never want to put the client in a position where they have to kind of try to figure out how they're going to do it because then it's all over. Their eyes would like Bradley said, that they'll roll into the back of their head and they'll start singing … show tunes and you can forget it.
Bradley: That's it. Number two, he says, “I saw a subspace as levels of citations, foundation, hometown, a multimedia in terms of marketing to clients. Is that like month one, two, three strategy? And does dripping citation building actually matter or just better to spread things out?” Well, what I do is like part of my monthly SEO services include citation building but that doesn't mean that I'm building citations every month. I mean, most of the time I do or a lot of the times for my clients now because it's just so much easier is … I'm not going to lie, for most of my clients, I'd used Loganix services, the monthly citation building. I don't even … like and that's only because that service is great and it's 100% managed. I don't have to do anything. All I have to do is input data once and they build citations every month. They do a a mix of structured citations and unstructured citations.
But for some of my clients that are grandfathered into a much lower monthly price, I'm not going to cough up $150 to pays Loganix to do it. So what I'll do is, obviously, I'll do like a package from SerpSpace. I'll do like the foundations which are the … like basically like all the big directories and then I'll get the local citations on top of that, then I'll do the multimedia or the social type citations like another month. It doesn't have to be month one, month two, month three. If it's a newer site that you're trying to get them results then that might be a good strategy. If it's a site that's already doing well like as far as ranking in maps then I don't always do that, like I might build a batch of citations and then wait three months before I build another batch of citations. Because here's the thing, guys, also like I don't know what reporting software or app you're using for that but I use BrightLocal.
BrightLocal is a fabulous service. Again, semanticmastery.com/brightlocal, I think, will take you over there. I've been using it since 2012 when I opened my agency and I use … that's what I use for all my reporting. What I like about BrightLocal is it will do citation tracking. So it'll show you how many citations and it will keep a history of all that so you can see the graph over time going up as far as the number of citations accrued. And so, what I found is doing a batch of citations, let's say, I order 50 new citations to be built. It doesn't matter what type of citation structured, unstructured, foundation, social, it doesn't really matter, hyperlocal, any of those doesn't matter because what happens is I'll get the report back and I'll submit all those URLs for indexing which apparently most indexers aren't working now anyways, and it takes three months for all of them to end up … not all of them end up, get out of 50. I might only have 35 of them that end up getting indexed over the course of three months.
So my point is you don't have to build every single month because you can build today and three months from now, Google would just start finding some of those citations if that makes sense. One of the things I highly recommend is that you do local data aggregator submissions like the big data aggregator submissions which is Factual, Acxiom, InfoUSA or Express Update, I think it's called, which is part of InfoUSA, and in Neustar/Localeze. There's a couple services that will do that. One of the things I like about BrightLocal is BrightLocal has that for $55 and you have to up … you have to redo it every year, but it's 55 bucks and they'll submit to all four data aggregators. What's great about that is within three to six months like you'll start seeing a bunch of new citations pop up just because your data is listed in the aggregators, right?
And so, again, I like to use BrightLocal for that because it's 55 bucks and they submit all to all for submission … data aggregators for me, okay? So, again, my citation building method really just varies for all new clients that I've signed up within the last probably a year and a half, maybe two years now because my pricing is higher than it was for some of my grandfather clients. They all just get put on the Loganix service because, again, it's something that it's out of sight out of mind. I don't have to worry about it anymore. It's done. I know every single month. They're getting a mix of structured and unstructured citations and then backlinks are being built to those citations, so it's just done for me. It's something I don't have to manage anymore. Does that make sense? Okay
How Do You Get Back In Touch With The Ones That At Least Watched The Video Emails?
All right. Mohammed's up. He says, “Hey, guys.” What's up, Muhammad? “When I first started video emails, I bungled a lot of leads by not calling them and getting a conversation going. How would I get back in touch with the ones that at least watched my video? I was going to call them but given them my emails were months ago, they may be lost. Do I send them the same email again?” No, here's what I would do, Mohammed, and I've done this before. Create a generic video that is talking to all of them. So create … so that way, you're still getting that personalized effect but you don't have to record, you don't have to send them the same video that they've already seen, and you don't have to send a personalized video for each and every person that you're recontacting, right?
So that way you've got one generic video that, now, you can literally mass email out to everybody that engaged with your first video and in those people that re-engage with your new email, they might hit reply back and ask you to send them, “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Can you send it to me again?” Anyways, it just gets the conversation started. So that's what I would do because we save you a ton of time. Just do one generic video and then blast it out to everybody that you … that engaged you the first time but you didn't follow up with correctly and just try to get some engagement out that like sent … recontacting them again, okay?
What Email Marketing Program Do You Recommend?
Okay, Quit This House, he says, “Hey, guys, thanks for all you do to help us.” You're welcome. “Everyone talks about building a list. What email marketing program do you recommend?” Well, I'm using drip.com which is an autoresponder from Leadpages. I've never been a fan of Leadpages, but they're their autoresponder is freaking fabulous. Drip is great at least it is for me. I'm building out my entire prospecting funnel and all the automations, well, about 80% of the automations are handled inside of Drip right now and it's … it inboxes into the primary tab in Gmail which is insane because most of the other autoresponders go to the promotions tab in Gmail. That was the primary reason I started using Drip, was just because it goes to the primary inbox on Gmail. Since then, I've started to learn how to use Drip because I've never been an email marketing guy, but I'm using it now and all the automation that they're called workflows inside of drip, and it's fabulous.
The amount of stuff that you can automate is just insane. That's what we've working on, is an automated prospecting funnel and we're going to be building out an automated onboarding and fulfillment funnel too.
Hernan: Yeah. If I can add to that, we use ActiveCampaign for Semantic Mastery. I use the ActiveCampaign a lot, but it was a wash between Drip and ActiveCampaign, because the main point is that you can automate a lot of stuff.
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: That's the main point, and they're way more powerful than any other kind of responder. In fact, like you get all of that functionality only by going through Infusionsoft, which is like 500 bucks a month or something like that. We use either Drip or ActiveCampaign. Those are the goto solutions.
Bradley: Totally agree. I'm super impressed with it. In fact, I was talking on the Mastermind Webinar last week about the prospecting funnel. I've actually like chick and it scratched it and started over three times from scratch now, because it's just a really complex build. Part of the reason it was over complicated the first couple times is because I was trying to patch together a whole bunch of different apps and services to handle all of the automations. Again, I'm not an email marketing guy. It's not something I've typically done in my career. I was unaware of how much could actually be done within the Drip platform. After wasting literally weeks and dozens and dozens of hours on building out this funnel and it not working or even being too complex for even me to be able to maintain it, that's when I said, “Okay, look, I'm just going to spend a couple days researching Drip and trying to figure out how to use this.”
I made more progress in about three days that way than I had in three weeks prior to just by starting to put everything that I could in the Drip. Again, I'm super impressed with it, I'm really happy with it, and I'm still learning. Inside the Mastermind, we're covering all of that stuff to you, guys. I don't know if you're not in there yet, come join us because all of that's going to be … Like, I'm literally going to be giving all of our Mastermind members the blueprint and step-by-step process instructions for how to build their own prospecting automation funnel. I've even impressed myself with it. Just so you know, it's like that.
How Do You Build Your YouTube Channels?
All right, next, he says, “When you buy your YouTube channels, how much do you build them out, cover pic, link, G+ short description, or both on both G+ profile and YouTube?” It depends on what I'm using them for. We buy a ton of YouTube accounts just straight up for YouTube spam, I honestly don't build those out at all. If it's for a money channel, then yes absolutely because it's about branding, right? If you're building a money channel, then, yeah, you absolutely want to complete the G+ profile, you want to fill out the YouTube channel, the About section, add the links, the interlinking, all that kind of stuff. It depends on what your intent is with that YouTube channel. If it's for spam purposes, no, don't do anything else. Just buy the damn account, that's it. Make sure it's phone verified and that's it, but if you're doing it for a money project, an affiliate project, a client project to legion, for any one of those, then, absolutely, try to complete as many of the Google properties as possible and interlink all of them, okay? That includes blogger too, guys, right?
What Do You Think Of Using Rel=Alternate For SEO Purposes?
Steve, what's up? He says, “Hi, I heard him passing reference last week to linking with rel=”alternate” for SEO purposes. Can you recommend on this? Does it work? What are the best practices and are there any dangers? Is this equivalent the same as markup? Thanks.” To be honest, I've never used it. I'm going to defer to Marco. What can you tell us about it, Marco?
Marco: The only time that I've used the rel=”alternate” tag is when defining language. I've never used it for SEO. I've always used rel=”canonical”. I mean it's something that I would have to try because I've never used it that. I don't think that Google even recommends for you to use and to use rel that way alternate. I think it would have to be canonical. I haven't read anything on it. I know that Mars had something on it. I know that the Google Blog middle of last year had something on it but we use canonical because that's where we see the greatest SEO effect.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, I can't speak on it because I haven't used it at all. We could probably do some research on it.
Hernan: Yeah, sorry, you could use it for language, you could use it for mobile.
Marco: That type of thing?
Hernan: rel=”alternate”? I've never … I mean, I don't see a way where you use it for SEO and it would be real easy to pick out if you started using that for SEO.
Bradley: Yeah, this is a good blog, guys. The Stone Temple blog, these guys have some really good SEO stuff on here too and this one was published in 2016, so about two years ago, May 2016, by Eric Engine. He knows what he's talking about. This might be something you could research, I don't know. Again, I haven't even read this. I just clicked on it just now, but my point is I know the Stone Temple guys typically do a good job of explaining stuff so you might be able to use this here. All I did, guys, was search rel=”alternate” and just start looking through. Look at the dates though, right? You don't want to look at something from 2012. It's probably not relevant now. I mean it may be. You could still look at it, but just judge it based on its freshness factor too, okay?
Is There A Way To Use Google Sites For An Ecommerce Site Where The products Are Set Up To Create A Feed For Google Shopping Ads?
All right, we're going to answer just up to Jordan Fowler's question guys, and we're going to wrap it up because we're almost out of time. I love how Armand says what up with you, yo, booty butt cheeks. I don't know what that means, but it's funny so I'll plus-one it. You guys are the shit. Was wondering if there was a way to use Google Sites for an e-commerce site where the products are set up to create a feed that I could use on Google Shopping ads?” That's a good question. I don't know because I don't do any e-com stuff, but that does sound like it would be pretty powerful. Do you have any experience with that, Marco?
Marco: Yeah, you'd have to use announcement pages to create a feed out of G-sites. I don't know about the new ones. I haven't tried the new ones out. I'm not sure how to get a feed out of that because they don't have announcement pages in the new G-sites, as far as I know, we can't even run the script on the new G-site, so we're talking about the old one, I've seen it done I've seen some really wicked stuff being done with G-sites and e-commerce. Rob and I were talking about that a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, you could totally set it up use announcement pages and create the fee.
How Do You Block Google From Indexing A General Archive Of A Blog?
All right, cool, Greg and Scott, what's up, guys. Jordan, he says, “Okay, my blog page general archive continues to index despite my blocking it in an SEO ultimate plus and putting meta name equals robot's content no index in that page header. I know this is bleeding my otherwise fastidiously created silos. How bad is it hurting my SEO? Any suggestions on getting it to not index?” Okay, just put a nofollow tag in the header that's all you have to do, because that'll stop the bleeding. Even if it's indexed, it doesn't matter. If you have nofollow on it, you're basically telling you will not to follow any of the links, like to pass any PageRank, if that's still a thing. I think it is internally in Google, but it doesn't pass any PageRank through any of the links on that page, if you add a nofollow, it should be to the header. That's correct, Marco, right? I didn't tell them wrong, did I?
Marco: No, you're correct. And yes, PageRank is alive and well inside the algorithm.
Bradley: Right, thought so. Jordan, yeah, that's the easy thing. Whether indexes or not, you can ask Google to honor their no Index but it's up to them. I've seen stuff index that's supposed to be no indexed all the time, but if you put nofollow in that same tag, that same HTML tag, then I think it's just rel=”nofollow”. I'm not sure. You'd have to double check. The entire page, any links on that page will be no followed. It just knows to not pass PageRank to them. Google will still crawl the links, but it just won't pass PageRank, so it won't bleed your silos or your theme, okay? Okay, cool. It looks like we got to most of the questions, guys. We appreciate everybody being here. We don't have any Mastermind this week because I'm hard at work trying to finish the prospecting funnel but …
Hernan: It's going to be good.
Bradley: See you, guys, next week.
Hernan: Sounds good.
Bradley: Thanks, guys.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Bradley: Bye.
Marco: Bye, everyone.
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