Click on the video above to watch Episode 188 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: 188. Oh, and we're live while I'm sitting here mumbling.
All right, welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts. This is the episode where I forget where I'm at, but actually it's Episode 188. I'm glad everybody's here. Let's go down the … Run through real quick and say hi to everybody.
Chris, how you doing today?
Chris: Doing good, glad to be here.
Adam: Good deal. Hernan, how you doing?
Hernan: I'm doing really well actually. I'm super excited for what's coming, looking forward, too, for the announcements for today, but it's going to be super fun.
Adam: Yes, yes. All right, Marco, how about yourself, how are you doing, man?
Marco: Today's secret words are Youtube views, and Google My Business Auto Poster.
Bradley, how you doing, man?
Bradley: What's up, man? I'm happy to be here. We've got only a handful of questions on today so I guess we'll spend extra time answering them, unless you guys want to post more questions so it's a [crosstalk 00:01:02].
Adam: Good deal. I was about to say, yeah, it's like, we can have one more where we get to dive in more. The last few have been right up to the limit so we're going to do some quick announcements, everybody, but first off if you're new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thanks for watching. If you're watching this live, that's awesome. If you're catching the replay, that's cool, too. If you're not sure where to go or what the next step is, we generally advise people to go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com, it's a great place to get started and then just keep coming to these Hump Day Hangouts, show up, ask questions.
If you can't attend them live, you can always ask questions early. Come check out the replay, put it to use and that's what we've got a lot of really good feedback over the past several years that we've been doing this. People just consistently coming and asking questions and it's SEO, digital marketing, anything to do with your business, it's fair game and if we don't have the answer for you, we'll certainly point you in the right direction.
What Hernan was hinting at, I think we'll start there. We wanted to let you guys know that Semantic Mastery is going to be having a small gathering. We're going to be having our first live event in October of this year in the Washington, DC area. That's the factual stuff. We're going to have more details to come but, one, it's going to be awesome and then, two, we want to let people who listen and subscribe to us to have the first chance to know about this.
Hernan: Yeah, I think so, too, and I'm really looking forward to it because the experiences that we have had at live events have been amazing. Meeting, getting to know new people and getting to know a lot of Mastermind members that we have come together in live events. We have been thinking of doing this for quite a while and now, we have decided to go ahead and do it.
I think that we're going to have some more information for you guys soon in terms of the actual speakers, as Adam was saying. We're still finding the venue and a bunch of other things, but initially, if you want to get a really, really super specific, super special early bird discount, go ahead and contact support@semanticmastery.com. Just put on the subject, put “Live Event.” The Live Event has a name already, I don't know if I can disclose it.
Bradley: Yeah, can we say.
Adam: Yeah, let's do it.
Hernan: Okay, so Bradley, you want to say it?
Marco: It's PoFu, man, what else could it be?
Bradley: PoFu Live.
Hernan: Yeah, yeah, the event name is PoFu Live 2018. If you want to attend, just write to support@semanticmastery.com with the subject “PoFu Live 2018” and we give you something really, really special so there's going to be a lot of more information coming it.
Adam: Yeah, definitely. It's going to be October. The main days are October 20, 21st, but the reason we're bringing this up now, one, we want to let everyone know about it. We know it takes some planning to attend these events, but we mean it. If you take advantage of this, like this week that we're announcing it, we're going to give you a special, very, very, truly special never seen again discount, if you're willing to grab it and go so looking forward to that. It's going to be a small group, we're capping this …
Bradley: It's only going to be 25 slots.
Bradley: Yeah, and it's not going to be super expensive either, guys, 'cause this is our first live event, so we're going to keep it smaller. It'd be a ton of content and also the networking is really where the true value comes from anyways, but we're going to keep it small and affordable, 'cause we want to … We kind of want to test this for ourselves for the first time as well and we're going to have some VIP stuff for potentially, a VIP upgrade which will be really cool.
I went to an event last year, the SEO Rock Stars event that was really good and went to a … I guess they host like a VIP event the day before the actual training and normal meet up days. It was fabulous and it was really good just to network with those other people that also upgraded to the VIP tickets and talk and just develop those business relationships. That's really where the true value comes from these type of events, so we hope that some of you will come join us.
Adam: Definitely, good deal.
A couple other quick announcements on the tails of that, that's the big one. Check it out. If you're interested, please send us a support ticket. We're pumped to have people. We've met a few people at small gatherings we've done. The last one in Portland and it's just amazing to meet people, to be able to help out and then just that idea generation that you just don't get unless you're in person.
Anyways, July 4th, we're going to have some cool specials. We're working on an awesome bundle for people. We'll be coming out with that. It's going to put together some of our best training, some of our … I can't even say enough to like, ah. Anyways, stay tuned, it's going to be really good. Then we're working on the Done For You services. We got some additional Done For You services coming out around …
Have we already said what it's based around? I don't want to give away too much here.
Bradley: The GMB Pro Training.
Adam: Yeah, yeah, we got some stuff coming out with that. We're working on that, you guys, and as soon as we have a date, we'll be sharing that information. If you haven't yet, check out Local GMB Pro, this is already changing how a lot of people are offering some services to their clients and it's … Bradley, I'll let you … I see you nodding your head, so you know what I'm talking about.
Bradley: Yeah, we just had a post in the Facebook group. I don't know if it was this morning or maybe last night but somebody was like, “I just started applying this method to one of my …” I don't know if it's a Lead Gen or a client guy or it's a client of theirs or what but he was like, “You can call me,” and said, “Son, you're going to have to slow these calls down.” That's a really good problem to have, man. When you get called by your clients that you serve and they're saying, “Hey, you're going to have to slow this shit down, I can't handle the calls,” that's a good problem to have.
Adam: Definitely.
Chris: That's like, it's actually like one of the most common complaints that are quite recurring on Local GMB Pro members.
Bradley: Yeah.
Chris: Too many calls.
Adam: Which we're not making this up, you guys. Seriously, this sounds like one of those like, “Well, my client just pissed off too many calls…” Legitimately, people are like, “Yeah, we need to figure out, can you help me with … We need to hire someone to deal with calls.” It's crazy, we've actually had people saying that, so …
Bradley: That's crazy.
Marco: I'm glad that there's actually people backing up what I've been saying about the attorney that I've been doing … in New York, where she has had to hire two people to take the phone calls and a third one part-time. I mean that's the volume of calls that she's getting. She actually told me, “Look, we need to find a way to cut this down. We need …” I said, “No, hire more people.” You don't slow the calls down, you hire more people and make more money.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: Yup, awesome, which I don't know … This is good. This wasn't a question but, man, if that's a service you can offer on top of this. The people who are doing this and using the Local GMB Pro methods, if you've got the processes in place or not, and you should, to help somebody grow their business like that, hey, I can show you how to deal with these calls. I can provide the Done For You service to deal with these calls. I can do a script.
There are so many additional things you can do and it's not just upselling. It's providing a lot of value to your clients and they may actually be worried, like, “God, what do I do?” Marco was saying, “How do I deal with … How do I lower calls?” No, don't do that. Here's how you deal with all these calls and turn it into more revenue for your business.
Marco: That's right, you have to …
Adam: Lots of opportunities.
Marco: You act as a business consultant and not just a marketing person.
Adam: Yeah, and then talk about a trusted adviser role, I mean that's golden.
Marco: Yeah.
Adam: In so many ways and not just to get … It's not all about the money. It's easier to work with clients, anyways, win-win.
All right, before we jump into … Any more announcements from anybody or are we ready to get rolling?
Marco: No, just a couple, just a couple. We can get Real Youtube views to your videos. That will be rolling out very shortly, as soon as we have ordering ready, the ordering platform and the different tiers, the different number of views that they can order. We have that ready and the GMB Pro, the Auto posting service, that's ready to go, but that's going to be rolled … It's likely that both services will be rolled out to our Mastermind members and the Local GMB Pro members first.
We'll offer them special pricing just because we always take care of our membership. We always say, “Membership has its privileges,” and we like to show our members love by just giving them, just special ways to order to lower their cost so that they can pass it on to their clients or, again, as I was saying, just make more money, just figure out ways that you can make more money with all of the ways that we find to give you things at a lower cost.
Those two are coming. Guys, be on the lookout. If you're already in Local GMB Pro or in our Mastermind, then you will be contacted first. If you're not in those groups, I'm still wondering, why the fuck you're not in. I'll leave it at that.
Bradley: All right, that's good.
Bradley: Sorry, guys, I was peeking at my email while I was waiting. Are we good on … Can we go ahead and get in questions?
Adam: Yeah, let's do this.
Marco: Yup.
Bradley: Yeah, guys, it's funny, 'cause I just started testing our new Youtube Views platform today actually. I haven't had time 'cause I've been dealing with developing content and so I'm actually anxious to see how good it's doing. We've got a lot of the beta testers that are coming back with just crazy results for the Youtube stuff, too, which is great because it just makes it so much easier.
I mean I've been using Youtube ads to drive traffic to … for local videos, to help local videos rank for, well, probably over a year now, but this makes it easier because it's just a real quick easy interface to go in and set up the campaign. It just makes it super simple and it's a lot less time than it takes to set up a Youtube ad. I'm anxious to see how well this works and, again, we've got a lot of people that have already been talking about how good it's been working for them so I'm super excited to see how well that works.
First question up, David Kennedy. He says, “I received an email for a Facebook Group for webinar Local GMB Pro but when I clicked the link to join for the webinar, the error I get says, ‘Content not available.'”
Okay, David, first of all, for these types of stuff, just use support, please. That's what support is for, support@semanticmastery.com. Again, support@semanticmastery.com, just submit a support ticket. We'll make sure we get you sorted.
Next, the webinar's not going to be … The link for the webinar's not available yet. We don't give that out until like right before the webinar and there's a reason for that, but again, just contact support. We'll get you set up, okay.
How Do You Make Use Of A Driving Directions Map For SEO?
Mike is next. He says, “How do you actually use Driving Directions Map for SEO?” There are ways to … It's just to add local relevancy, right. I mean think about it. If typically for a point of sale business, which is a storefront business, a business where customers come to the business location, then it would make sense if you were trying to rank in the local maps back to three pack four like very close in proximity areas or locations. Like adjacent towns, for example, then let's say you're the only … You have a business that's the only business in three or four towns, in surrounding towns.
Even if it's not the only business, if you want to try to get your listing, your maps listing to rank when somebody's searching for like an adjacent town, so whatever your keyword, service keyword is plus the location modifier and it's an adjacent town. One of the ways that you can try to get ranked in there is to have, add that local relevancy from that area to the location where you're physically located. In that case, the driving directions map would be good to create posts or pages on the site or just content that talks about the area that you want to rank in with a driving direction from there to your store location, right.
Because, again, it's just about, it's Google code. Google's going to come read the page and it's going to see driving directions map. It's going to see content on the page about that particular location, right, the location that you'd like to rank in and then it's going to see a driving directions map from that location to your business address, right. There's a reason, it's just a way to feed additional relevancy into Google is to like … Location relevancy, excuse me.
Now the opposite would be for service area businesses, right. For service area businesses, you'd go from the bus- Like the business goes to the customer location and that's typically how most of my projects are set up because I deal with contractors primarily. On those, even if you have the physical location hidden, you would still just go grab the city center and do driving directions from the city center where the business is physically located. The driving direction would be from that location to the customer locations which would be just city centers of the locations that you'd like to rank in.
That's pretty much the easy over level or, excuse me, high-level overview of how you can use it. Now, there's a lot more that can be done than just that, but we can't certainly get into all of that and here on Hump Day Hangouts but that's a good question. Again, for driving directions, driving directions are really just a great way to add additional location relevancy to pages and/or posts, okay.
Bradley: Yeah.
How Do You Choose Between Simple And Complex Silo Structure?
Okay, Sam Bailey's up. He says, “In a video, you once said that simple silo structure would be sufficient for most sites. What determines whether you opt for simple silo structure versus complex? Thanks as always.”
Hey, Sam, how are you doing? By the way, we met Sam in Portland. He said … As far as simple silo structure, I always recommend using that, if possible, because complex silo structure, I mean just as the name implies, it can be very complex. If you're using just the virtual silo method as opposed to a visible silo method, which means you're leaving your permalink structure to just post name inside of WordPress instead of category/post name then you can get away with using complex silo structure without it is quite as difficult to reconcile like some funky URL things that happen with complex silos.
However, again, for most local sites that I deal with because of I … If you guys are aware, I typically do very hyperlocal sites, like on subdomains to where that site, the whole site is optimized for pretty much one city, right, one area. Then if I want to expand into another area or if the contractor covers another area then we build another location base site for that additional area or each additional area, if that makes sense. We don't have to really worry about having a complex silo structure.
A complex silo structure would be the type of site that I would build if I was building a site that covers a large geographic area or if it covered a … and guys, I'm speaking in local business terms, right. A complex silo would … I would apply a complex silo to a website if it covered a large service area or if it had a lot of different products and/or services, right, or a combination of both, okay.
For most sites, because like I said, I try to keep them hyper-local, focused on for just one particular area, there's no need for that. I recommend doing a simple sized structure, just 'cause it's easier to build. There's less stuff. There's less internal linking that needs to be done. You can still, again, for a lot of local sites, you don't need that kind of stuff. You don't need a site to be that complicated, okay.
Now, again, there are times where that's going to be necessary and some clients don't want a bunch of separate maps listings and subdomain sites and things like that or maybe the site's already been built out and they've got different locations but they're based on pages and things like that. Those are times that maybe a complex silo would be better.
Again, I just recommend, if you can get away with just using simple silo, do that, because it's easier to set up, it's easier to maintain, it's easier to understand. Complex silo structure, though, if it's necessary, then you absolutely can use that. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying, just keep in mind that it does require a bit more planning to properly design the site, okay, and like stacking keywords and creating your silos with the hierarchies. Remember, with the complex silo structure, you've got top-level categories and then sub-categories and then posts.
You're going three levels deep within a silo and a top-level silo and in subcategories, you can add as many sub categories as you want so that's what you call width to a silo, right. Depth would be adding additional content and any particular subcategory, so continuing to boost, add relevant content in any one category or subcategory, that's what you would call adding depth to the site. Adding width would be adding additional silos or additional sub-categories in one silo.
Anyways, again, that's why I said it can … As you can tell, even the explanation can become complicated so go back through, Sam, and look at the two videos that I did several years ago. I recorded several videos about simple silo structure and complex silo structure. You can find them on our Youtube channel and then just determine what you think is going to be best for your specific situation based upon what you learn from those videos, okay.
How Do You Correct NAP/Citation On A Local WordPress Website If You Have A GMB Listing?
Next, Peter from Poland. He says, “What is the best way to have the correct NAP citation on a local WordPress website and all other sites if I had a GMB listing?”
If you have the GMB listing, just … He says, “Do I just copy and paste the text directly from the GMB listing exactly and paste it in my WordPress site?” Okay, Peter from Poland, if you're doing stuff in the US, then I recommend going to the USPS.com, which is the United States Postal Service.com and go over here to look up a ZIP code and then you go find by address or cities … Yeah, I think it's found by address and then you put in the actual address of your, the GMB listing. Just copy it, street address, paste it in, city, state, ZIP code, postal code, paste it in and then click Find.
A lot of times, even if I take over a client like if I've got a client that had an existing GMB, but they had displayed incorrectly or they post … They added their … They didn't have the correct standardized address format, I'll go in and update it in Google My Business. Then I'll even do, sometimes … It's not sometimes … I'll do a citation clean up a campaign to go have all the existing citations on the web updated to the correct standardized format. It's only because that's the way that the addresses are supposed to be listed.
I would recommend, first making sure you have the standardized address format, then I would go in and update the GMB. If it's not correct, I would update it in GMB and then I would … Your Google My Business Profile and then I would go and start a post, using that exact same format for all of your citations. If you have existing citations that are incorrect, I would recommend that you update those before building new citations. That's always the better thing to do, instead of diluting bad data, fix the bad data, right.
Then as far as your website, really, the only thing you need to do on your website if it's a service area business where the … and I just talked about this … where the business goes to the customers, there's really no reason for you to display the address on your website. You can still post it using structured data, right, so that would be going to the HTML header of the site, if you're using JSON-LD, structured data mark up and we've got a structured data generator in Serve Space if you want to use that to generate the code that goes in the HTML header.
If you do have a point of sale business or a storefront then you could take … You could still add the JSON-LD, local business markup which I highly recommend that you do, regardless of what type of business you have. Then you could also just use a little footer widget or sidebar widget where it lists your name, address, and phone number as well. Right there, that can just be flat out plain text, it doesn't have to be formatted any particular way, because all the correct …
The location relevancy is in the JSON-LD and the header of the site. Google's going to come read that via the code and it will be fine. It doesn't need to be displayed on your site unless, like I said, you have a storefront and you want your customers to be able to see it. In which case, you just put it in the sidebar, the widget, or on the contact page or whatever. Also, I would recommend that you would then also take your map, your GMB map and get the embed code for that and embed that into your sidebar or footer of your website as well, so you have your actual GMB map embedded on your site, too. Okay?
Good question, though.
How Important Is Data Consistency In Terms Of Ranking To Google Maps?
Any tips about not having to correct NAP or no NAP on a website can have an effect?
Yeah, if it's incorrect. Incorrect data will kill maps ranking, guys. Inconsistent data, right. Actually, if it's incorrect, but it's consistently incorrect everywhere, you'll rank better than just having … than having correct but inconsistent data. Does that make sense?
Let me repeat that. If you have incorrect data but it's consistently incorrect everywhere it's published on the web, you'll rank better in maps than if you have correct data but it's inconsistent on the web. Figure that on out, but it's true. Again, data consistency is absolutely paramount to ranking in maps. Okay.
Is there a plugin that helps? I wouldn't recommend any. I just add the JSON-LD code manually to your header. You can do that via WordPress. You can do, use plugins to inject it in your site header. You can edit the theme file in that, add it there. You can also use Google Tag Manager, which is my preferred method and there's training for Google Tag Manager if you go to measureschool.com. Julian has some free Google Tag Manager training on his site there. It's really, really good. It's the same training I went through to learn how to use Google Tag Manager. That's measureschool.com.
Any comments on that, guys?
Marco: Nope, that was perfect.
Bradley: All right.
Why Is It Important To Optimize Images If One Can't See The Result?
It's a good question, Ivan.
I take this … and I mean I've literally set up tests for this and where I've take … ‘Cause you can, by the way, you can optimize an MP4 video, guys, the metadata, just like you can an image. You can add geo data and comments and copyright URLs and things like that, NAP data and all that stuff. You can add metadata to an MP4, right. I've taken the same video, basically, the same file and optimized for the same term and used two different channels that were both brand new and have one … and I've done this on more than one occasion. It's been a few years since I've tested this but when I did test it, it absolutely made a difference.
You optimize one of the MP4 files with the metadata, excuse me, optimize the metadata and then the other I just left blank, no optimization, uploaded those two and guess which one outranked every time? It was always the one that had the optimized metadata. Again, it's been years since I've conducted that specific test, probably, shit, four years now at least, but I've always assumed that that's still the case.
Now, Marco, you could probably shed some light into this, right?
Marco: Yeah, it's one of the things that we'll be covering on Monday's webinar and Ivan is in Local GMB Pro.
Bradley: Perfect.
Marco: I just let him in the group today, I think it was and so anything regarding this images, how to manipulate them, why, we'll cover that on the webinar very thoroughly. See you on Monday, Ivan. We'll answer you then.
Bradley: That's awesome. I mean it's a great question, Ivan, but there is a reason for optimizing the images, guys, with the metadata. Because even if it's stripped out, like for example, with my MP4 example that I was just talking about, you upload it to Youtube but then you don't see that metadata anywhere else, right. I mean it's not like you can go view page source and then see the data that you added to the file before you upload it to Youtube.
However, like I said, several years ago, when I did this test on multiple occasions, every time, it outranked the video that wasn't optimized with the metadata, all things being equal, right? It's difficult to get all things to be equal but I tried to keep it as equal as possible, other than the metadata and every single time, it outranked. Okay.
There's also, like a lot of the other things … and I know that I'm talking about videos now but like something else I haven't tested in years that used to work like crazy and Hernan was telling me about a little hack he saw the other day with Youtube, about being able to upload the transcriptions or for the captions and such. What was the hack you were telling me about the other day?
Hernan: You know that you have those captions, that are automatically generated by Youtube, right, that they are automatically … so that's why it's advisable to actually spell out your keyword a couple of times because Youtube will automatically detect the speech, right. It will have speech recognition so it will go and then create captions, like subtitles out of that. That's one thing and that's automatically created by Youtube, but here's the thing, we are, every week, we're transcribing the episodes from the Hangouts.
Every week, if you go through our website, you will see the transcriptions and that's how we add, we also add timestamps to all of the videos, so they really optimize it. Now, here's the thing, if you upload a video and you're transcribing it, like using something like Rev.com, for example, you can upload that chunk of text, that transcription into Youtube, in the caption section, and there's an option that says, I think it's “Paste and Sync,” or something like that. What it would do is that you paste those … I don't know … 10,000, 12,000, 9,000 words and Youtube automatically will sync that text-
Bradley: That's crazy.
Bradley: That's awesome.
Hernan: Yeah, Google can read the keywords and whatnot so that adds a lot of more weight and we're doing that on every video from now on. Every time the Hangout …
Bradley: Yeah and see that … Years ago, that was one of the things around the same time I was doing a lot of the metadata testing, that was something I tested a lot, too, was at the time, there was no ability to auto sync … That didn't exist, that technology at that time, but there was the ability to upload captions files.
I would spam that, like in other words, I would just add keywords and like calls to action and stuff like that as caption files …
Hernan: Right.
Bradley: Then upload it and that absolutely helped rank the videos, too.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: It was like one of those tricks up the sleeves that we would do. yeah, the fact that if you transcribe a video anyways or even like what we do and then you can add that as an actual transcribed caption file and it auto syncs, that's got to be much more valuable …
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Than letting the auto-captions.
Hernan: Yeah, the auto-captions, and then if you think about the auto-captions are not always correct.
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: The transcription is like … I would say if the caption are like … They're really good, like they're good. They will be 75% correct. The transcription would be 95% correct, because also the people on Rev.com or whatever service you're using, they will make mistakes even for … With technical language and whatnot, but it will be like way …
Bradley: Way better.
Bradley: Yup, very cool.
What Is The Easy Way To See If Your Site Is Gaining Proper Traffic?
Nigel's up. What's up, Nigel? He says, “Good day, gents, can you review how to properly check to see if you are gaining proper traffic? I've heard numerous ways of ranking factors … Numerous ways and ranking factors,” excuse me, “But can you talk through quick and easy check so I don't waste time going down a rabbit hole? Thanks.”
See, to check to see if you're gaining proper traffic, the only thing I would say there would be like analytics. Check Google Insights, call volume, those are like … I mean and web form submits, if that's what you're doing, right. If it's contact forms and things like that. Those would be indications that you're properly gaining traffic or gaining proper traffic, I should say. If you're getting traffic that's converting into leads and/or sales, whatever your conversion goals are, then I would say, that's how you know that you're gaining proper traffic.
As far as how can you get better search results, there are shit ton of ranking factors so you've got to pick your poison. We always try to focus on what's going to move the needle the most with the least amount of effort, right. I mean, 'cause there … I mean, for example, there's CORA. CORA's a great software by Ted Kubaitis, Kubaitis … I can't … I'm sorry if I'm screwing up his last name. Smart guy, dude's super sharp and he built this software called CORA that does like it will search, it will scan all top 100 results in Google and document everything about the websites into this great, this one Excel spreadsheet that's got like a 100 websites worth of data.
Like great, like there's … I don't know. What is it? 350 data points or something that it … or is it more? It's probably like 500 data points now that this … He pools back on the top 100 sites. It's crazy. It's this massive amount of data but what it does is it gives you the ability … The law of corre … It uses correlations to determine how all those top 100 sites are, what all their ranking factors are and, again, it's something silly like 500 data points.
Think about if you had to go in and tune all that, but because that could be overwhelming, he specifically programmed into the CORA reports, the things that have the biggest correlation, the biggest … The most common correlating factors for that particular search phrase. It basically highlights the things that are the most important or that seem to have the most significant impact on ranking for that particular search term.
Those would be the things that you would start with first, right, 'cause those have the greatest chance of moving the needle the most, if that makes sense, okay. Again, it just really depends and as a Mastermind member, Nigel, and as many … Being a member of many of our products, that's what we try to teach is the stuff that's going to move the needle the most with the least amount of effort. Stick to what we're sharing with you and we're teaching you and you should be fine.
I mean, again, you can go down any rabbit hole you want, that's kind of what Marco and Rob do is go down these rabbit holes and then get stuck down there for months at a time, but then they come out with stuff like Local GMB Pro and RYS Academy. That can be you if you want it to be or you can just apply what you're learning and keep focusing on the big stuff. Let us do the testing. You just go out and produce the results for your clients.
You want to comment on that, Marco?
Marco: Yeah, the only thing that I would add to the Search Console in clicks. If you keep an eye on the clicks in Search Console, like right now, or earlier today, I was looking at one where the guy has nearly 100 top 10s and his click-through rate sucks. I mean it's horrible. It was at 01.3 and how can you be, have nearly a 100 top 10s and multiple number one's with great impressions and you're clicks suck. I mean a 103 and no clicks. How do you fix that?
That's what I would add to everything that you said.
Bradley: Yup, and Nigel, as being part of the Mastermind, we did a webinar with Ted a long … It was sometime last year, I believe, about CORA. It might be something you want to check out, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, because again, what's cool about it is you can subscribe for a month and run all the reports for all the sites that you manage and then cancel your subscription. Because it is rather expensive, but it's … Ted is totally cool.
I mean he even said it on the webinar. He's like, “I get it. It's expensive, so subscribe for a month, run all your reports, cancel your subscription. Do all your tuning based upon the reports and when you're ready to run reports again, subscribe again. Run all your reports again.” He was real cool about that. I wouldn't say that unless he did, unless he did. Anyways, you might want to check that out. If you have trouble locating it in the Mastermind members area, just reach out in the Facebook group and one of us will locate it for you and ping you in the group with the replay.
How Do You Properly Embed Images And Videos In Twitter?
I can't tell you a damn thing about Twitter. Can anybody on here tell him anything about Twitter?
Marco: No, not regarding that.
Hernan: Yeah, not regarding that, unfortunately. I honestly don't know why he's getting that. He's shortening, so he's shortening that and he is getting the small image, right, and then I think … I don't know because YOST used to have that option that will show either the big or the small image. I don't even think that's relevant anymore, that's why they took it out. You know what I'm saying?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah, unfortunately, I'm just not a Twitter user and I really have no desire to use Twitter either. I know there's some real SEO value, guys, and possibly traffic and all that. I just never got into Twitter, don't care. Anyways, sorry, Nigel.
How Do You Properly Embed Images And Videos In GMB?
Marco: It's available right now. I think they've gotten into our Slack Chat.
Bradley: It's available now.
Marco: Yes, it's available.
Bradley: Yeah, can you post that in the Mastermind community, too?
Marco: I will. I'm going to drop both in the Local GMB Pro and the Mastermind.
Bradley: Okay, so Nigel, yeah, stop posting manually. It's dirt cheap, man. Use the scheduled post, the GMB poster so you can schedule a post, you can do it in bulk, all that stuff. It's going to make your life a lot easier. It's worth it for … It's not expensive at all. We'll save you a shit ton of time. It's worth it. Your time's worth more than it'll cost you to pay for this, which will make you much more efficient, right. Your time is worth more than that, so …
All right. Yeah, guys, stop doing $5 an hour work. Think about it, guys, you should be doing $100 an hour work, instead of $5 an hour work. Manually posting in GMB is $5 an hour work. How do I know that? Because I've got VAs that I pay to do it. $5 an hour or excuse me, $5 per post. Actually, for $5 per post, you can make a shit ton of money doing GMB posts or you can make a shit ton of money in an hour. The reason I say that is because my … The VA that I trained how to do that, she's been blogging or curating for me for several years now and when I hired her and trained …
Think about that guys. There's no reason why you should be doing this kind of stuff when you can pay somebody to do it.
Hernan: Yeah, and also have in mind that if you could be actually closing a new client or talking with a client and that will bring you a 100, 200, 500 bucks an hour, and if you're doing $5 an hour task, you're not saving $5. You're actually losing $495, right …
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: For each hour that you're doing that. It's not that you're saving money, you're not saving those $5 an hour. You're actually losing all of the opportunity cost that you are not taking action on, so have that in mind.
Bradley: That's right. Opportunity cost, there you go.
How Do You Optimize A Local Italian Deli In A Little Town In The UK?
All right, next, Ramola says, “I just started with a local Italian deli in a little town in the UK. What's your advice as to what my best move is, bearing in mind that this is a very local business at the moment?”
I would say Local GMB Pro is probably your best bet at the moment right now. If you're just getting started and that's out of your price point or whatever, I would say, like, honestly, the best thing that we could suggest that you would do would be to start posting in the Google My Business dashboard regularly. That's going to help to start getting activity and getting some leads coming in for that business and then at which point, you can start developing or adding more traditional stuff that we would recommend.
Like working on ranking and maps, building citations, doing an RYS drive stack, right. Press releases, syndication networks, setting up the WordPress site, or whatever, whatever their money side is in a blog with a syndication network to help validate the entity, all this stuff that we teach.
Just starting out new right now, guys, I'm telling you the best thing that you can possibly do for local businesses, right now, especially as you're learning all the stuff that you need to learn as a digital marketing consultant, would be to just get active in the GMB dashboard, for your client, right. Make sure there's activity in there and that's going to start to generate some exposure for that business while you're learning all the … or setting up all the other stuff that needs to be done, which I still recommend you do, guys.
I'm not telling you just stop at GMB stuff. I'm saying start with that because that's going to get you the quickest results while you are developing out the rest of the assets for the business.
Okay, would anybody have anything different to say about that.
Hernan: No, I totally …
Marco: No, not different. Go ahead.
Hernan: Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Marco.
Marco: Okay, the only thing that I would add to that is that Local GMB Pro doesn't require any SEO knowledge.
Bradley: That's right.
Bradley: That's right and there are … Don't get me wrong or don't get it wrong, guys, we do … I'm doing a lot of the … Well, most of the training inside the course right now for the case study. Marco and Rob are going to be doing the webinars and so there is SEO training in there but it's not an SEO course, so it's like limited. It's just basically like how we can use some SEO tactics to improve what we're doing inside of GMB but it's not an SEO course, if that makes sense. ‘Cause it doesn't need to be.
Certainly, we can apply some SEO methods, right, to get better results and so that's some of the stuff that I started sharing inside of there already and I've got … Marco and Rob have been doing some tests and I'm doing some testing on my own and so we're just going to keep adding to the course. Highly recommend you get in there Ramola.
What Are Your Thoughts On The Efficacy Of IFTTT Syndication in 2018?
No, it's not. That's a common question that's actually come up again recently a lot and I don't see it as being duplicate content because, remember, if you're only using a branded syndication network for blog syndication. It's a branded syndication network. All you're doing is republishing your content on your branded social media web 2.0 platforms. That is perfectly normal and legit.
Every major blog out there, website, author, writer, contributor does the same thing, right. They publish an article and then they go share it across their social media channels, whether it's a brand or an author or a celebrity or an influencer. That's what they do, so why is what we teach or what we do with syndication networks for local businesses any different? How is that any different? It's not. It's absolutely what Google expects now, right. It's not a duplicate content issue.
Lenoy, I'm not picking on you. That question comes up often, so please don't take that as me being short with you at all. Just think about it logically, why would it be duplicate content? Now, if you start stacking multiple syndication networks, persona based networks, non-branded stuff, that you're syndicating the same content to over and over and over again, that's not a duplicate content issue, but it is an issue. It's a footprint issue. There's a difference, guys.
Hernan: Right.
Bradley: Okay, duplicate content only exists when it's duplicate content on the same domain. It doesn't exist on separate domains, okay. There's a footprint issues, yes, but not duplicate content issues.
Sorry, Hernan, were you going to add to that?
Hernan: Yeah, no, no, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley, and the reality is that you need to treat your tier one networks and … Your tier one, like your branded network as part of your entity, as part of your brand, meaning that you want people to go ahead and convert on those networks if they can … or those profiles if they can take action, but then, you can use those profiles to actually build links. That will be your SEO firewall, as Bradley says, will be as your firewall, and, yeah, it's still super effective and we use attribution links, press releases.
Those websites get only … If we think about duplicate content, those websites get a 100% duplicate content …
Bradley: That's right.
Hernan: Nonetheless, they are big publications, big outlets, Fox News, CNN, all this and that, they're ranking in Google and they are 100% base because you cannot change a comma out of a press release, right. If you think about it, you think it logically, they are all linking back to the source and that's why Google doesn't penalize them because you're not actually stealing content.
The main problem with duplicate content, it's stealing and that's not what we're doing here.
I mean it's like a per match made in heaven those two. Anyways-
Hernan: Yeah, in fact, we might end up going out there and making a bundle. I don't know. That could actually be a good idea.
Bradley: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sounds like, might be a good idea for a holiday promo or something.
Hernan: Oh, yeah. Who knows?
Bradley: If you see for … and like Hernan just said, this was a PR that's being … That was published for the case study that I'm working on for Local GMB Pro and I published this May 22nd and if I click this, you'll see that it's showing about 99 results. That's 99 versions of the exact … or 99 copies of the exact same article, okay. Is that duplicate content? No, we already know, we've proven for a fact, a 100% certain that we can rank stuff with just using press releases and no other link sources.
I've done it many, many, many times. Again, the Local PR Pro course was entirely built around this principle and it's nothing but duplicate content. You produce one press release. It gets picked up and published, republished by hundreds of media sites, as many as 400, 500 media sites, depending on your distribution service and that's four or 500 instances of the exact same article and it doesn't … and it ranks you. It's about, it's all about your linking and like what we call the PR stack and stuff like that.
Again, it's not a duplicate content issue, right. There's a footprint issue when you start syndicating the same content to non-branded properties. That can … Because then that's clearly what … You're doing that clearly to manipulate search engine rankings. For Youtube, it doesn't affect Youtube at all.
By the way. You're asking about the IFTT and spam entry points. Guys, for those that don't understand what Lenoy's asking about, the spam entry point, that means like where can you inject linked spam into the system. If you're talking about like the diagrams that I've drawn for Youtube Silo Academy, you can spam those pretty much anywhere you want, those networks. Anyone, the properties in the networks, anywhere you want, you can inject spam anywhere really, 'cause it doesn't make a difference.
There's no footprint issues with Youtube syndication. The footprint issues come in with blog syndication, because Google will slap your money site if it thinks that you're republishing content to manipulate search, but Google will not slap your Youtube channel if you're republishing Google code, if you're acting as a publisher for Google, which is what you're doing when you syndicate Youtube videos, right, so there's a big difference, guys. Just keep that in mind, Lenoy.
Absolutely, they still work. It's still standard operating procedure. I think it's basically the … It's still a foundation of everything that we do as syndication networks, okay.
It was a great question, by the way. It's good to review this stuff, guys, for new people and even for people that seem to forget why we use them. You know what I mean?
How Do You Remove Spam Domains That Link To Your Site?
That's a good question. “It is a branded domain but I have another one I could use. If I send a redirect from the spam domain to the new domain, will this hurt the new domain?” Yeah, it could. It would if it was just a straight 301 redirect. There are some things that you could do to link what we call link laundering, where you could do like double 301 redirects and such.
As far as like the 404s, that's an easy fix, right, because you can use just a plugin or something like that… Like 404 redirect or something like that that redirects all 404s to a specific page that you set, which can be the home page or whatever. You could do something like that, so you can eliminate the 404 errors rather quickly. That's not a problem.
The inbound 12,000 backlinks are the problem. What you can do … Here's the thing, if you got hit with Japanese spam, why were you a target? Like first of all. Because the thing is even if you were able to clean up those 12,000 backlinks which the only way I would do it … and I know Marco will probably disagree with me on this but would be through disavowed, disavowing those backlinks. I've done it successfully on multiple occasions, recovered sites with penguin penalties using the disavow tool, Google's disavow tool.
I've done it, so I know it works, however, if you were a target for Japanese spam before, who's to say you're not going to get spammed … That domain's not just going to continually get spammed. That would be an ongoing battle, in which case, it might make sense to just replace the domain. I'm not sure that I would want to redirect the old domain to the new one at all because then that's a very simple way to still run spam back to the new domain.
Find out, if it's an ongoing issue, then that would change what I would say, as my recommendation, but if you have another branded or another domain that you could use, sometimes it's better just to start fresh because a cleanup job could be a real bitch. You never know for sure until the penalty gets lifted if you got penalized because of it. You don't really know for sure if you're making progress really, right.
You could work on it for months and that's why I got out of, by the way, the penalty recovery business. I did that for a while but sometimes you work on stuff for months and not recover it and it's just a lot of wasted effort and time, so I got out of doing that.
Marco: Yeah, I've never disavowed links and I'm not about to. I'd rather have a fingernail pulled with pliers than disavow links. What I would do is, first of all, ask yourself, “Is this worth the time that it's going to take to recover it?” Right? “Is it worth the time to test?” If it's not making you money and you just want to recover it because of the domain, why bother? Even if it's branded, I mean, why bother? It would have to be worth my time and effort, right. The money would have to be there.
I would say, that you could take that, push it through a drive stack, a G site to the new domain and your links should come out fine and then you'll actually benefit from those 12K backlinks that they send at you to try to spam you, but it would have to actually be worth it. Because you're either going to have to spend time building a drive stack or if you want it done properly, you're going to have to get one from us.
There's a lot of haters out there. “Often imitated, never duplicated,” is what Wayne said in one of his memes, but I mean it's true. You can get it for a lot cheaper than what we do our drive stacks for but you get what you pay for.
Bradley: Yup, and what Marco said, that's one thing that you can do. Something else would be that I've done that works fairly well, too, when you've got the spam domain with 12,000 inbound links that are shitty links, right, is redirect the … Like set up a HTML page that you host on Amazon and an S3 bucket that has a link to your money site with just one singular link on that page to your money site. I mean it's got content and all that and then what you do is redirect the spam domain to that HTML page. Right, that's something you can do and that's another way to clean it because the Amazon domain can take the abuse, just like the drive stack can, right.
Hernan: Yup.
Bradley: I'm saying that's … The drive stack could be more effective but a quick hit, if you need it until like a drive stack order was complete or something could be just an HTML page. Remember, those HTML pages are great, too, because they're great to use as spam targets for other stuff, too.
Go ahead, Hernan, you want to say something.
Hernan: Yeah, I was about to say that the same applies to if you want to resurrect your Tweet or to a WordPress website or to a … not a Facebook page, because it kind of Facebook and Google, they kind of hate each other, but a Tweet can work. If you are Tweeting out your new domain and you resurrect all of the spam over there, will be a double [inaudible 00:56:16] because you get T.co and then your website.
There's a lot of stuff that you can do to launder that domain, but, yeah, I would strongly suggest that … Usually, it's less time consuming to start over and then maybe at some point if you still want to have that as a side project, maybe at some point it will come back and there you go, you have two powerful domains that you can use.
Bradley: Awesome and, Jordan, as offered for you, as we were able to hit them up about potentially content, content project.
Yeah, Adam's correct. A great asset is a hiring funnel, knowing how to set them up properly to get the best workers. Instead of a content writer, I recommend curating articles anyways. That's pretty much how we do all of our content generation for clients and such is through curation. We have a course that teaches exactly how to do that, which is called Content Kingpin, teaches how to curate, how to outsource that, what to pay when you're outsourcing, how long it should take outsourcers to produce money content, how long it should take them to produce link building content. All of that, best practices for curating, all of that is taught in Content Kingpin.
Outsource Kingpin teaches you how to set up hiring funnels, just hire, screen, train, and manage virtual assistants. It's basically, literally how we built out business with virtual assistants and I think between all of us now, we've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 35, maybe approaching 40 virtual assistants. It's ridiculous but …
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: That's what I'm saying-
Hernan: Yeah, not counting our individual businesses, because then, we will go out and use Outsource Campaign, the method, the Outsource Campaign Method to populate whatever we need. If you're looking for a PA, you can do it. Like without counting our own businesses, like individual businesses, yeah, I would say we're close to 40 VAs
Bradley: Yeah.
Anyways, that beats picture of Marco. No offense, Marco, but … Anyways.
Does Pay Per Call (PPC) Works With Local GMB Pro?
Does Local GMB Pro work for PPC call affiliate offers? I imagine it … I don't know … You mean Pay Per Call Affiliate offers. I imagine it would if you spam a maps address, right, so you get them a GMB verified listing up and you just start posting. If it can generate calls, I don't see why you couldn't do that. In fact, I'm pretty sure Rob was actually monetizing some of his testing GMBs they use for testing purposes that way, if I remember correctly.
Marco: That's exactly right, as long as the affiliate offer is local.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: You should have no issues with this.
Bradley: There you go.
Does Uploading Photo To A GMB Account Carries The Same Effect As Taking Photo On The Spot?
Bob Lell, “I want to use GMB photos for the client website but just realized that when you add photos using the GMB App that you can't download the photos, so is it just as effective to take photos, location on and then upload?” Yes, that's the preferred method actually, Bob. Okay.
PoFu, trying to use equals Vixen. Oh, that's why he did that. That's awesome. Okay, so that just worked out then.
“What about the phone number consistency?” That should absolutely … Israel, the three data points that are the most important are name, address, and phone number, even more so than the URL. For citation consistency, name, address, and phone number, those are the most, the three most important things. Now URLs should also be consistent, but I know for a fact that that is the lesser of the two. Now, having URL consistent, wherever it's mentioned online will help with ranking organically, but for maps, it's mostly name, address, and phone number.
You want, make sure that the name, address, and phone number are consistent, even all the way down to the punctuation. Guys, that's really critical, okay.
All right, let's see, guys, we have to wrap it up. Oh, shit. Let me answer two more.
Do You Use Rich Text Snippets For Non-Directory Sites That Don't Have Headers?
Jim says, “When doing citations on non-directory sites, WordPress blog or Weebly, if the header's unavailable, do you use rich text snippets, or simple use of plain text for the NAP?” The problem is rich text snippets, Jim, will typically get stripped out by any of those platforms. Like if you publish them, even if you go into the HTML editor and you add it and then you save it. As soon as you save or publish it, whichever, as soon as you publish it and you go back and look at it, all that data's been stripped out and it ends up just being straight HTML text. There's really no reason to do it.
My point is, now sometimes, like for example, with WordPress … I don't know about WordPress.com, but I know with Word … Self posted WordPress sites, you can use a plug in that's called Raw HTML and then you could actually inject JSON-LD right into the middle of a page and it will stay. I don't know about WordPress.com, though. I don't think I've tested that there. I don't know if …
Marco, you would probably know. JSON-LD in a WordPress.com post, would that remain or would WordPress.com strip it out?
Marco: I haven't tested so I wouldn't know.
Bradley: I'm pretty sure it strips it out, but you can test it, Jim. You can test adding JSON-LD into the post body of WordPress blog or in Weebly and see if it sticks. I don't think it does. I'm pretty sure we've tested that in the past, I just can't remember specifically. It really doesn't matter, just put it in as any straight text. It's fine. Okay.
It's still … I mentioned, guys … It's still a citation. A citation is just a mention. It doesn't even have to be hyperlinked, guys. It's just a mention and that counts.
These are always the best free webinars for … You could have lost that modifier, Jim, to just the Best Webinars for Local SEO. You didn't have to … I'm giving you a hard time, buddy. Thank you.
What about Master Pets Care?
Don, I'm not sure I understand your … What you're asking here. There's not 28,200,000 results for local pet stores. If that … Well, then it might be for pet stores local. That means there's 28 million results on the page or, excuse me, that have pet stores, local pet … the words pet stores and local somewhere on index page. Does that make sense?
I don't know what you're asking here, Don.
All right, guys, I think we have to wrap it … Oh, I'm sorry, so here, he's clarifying here. “I'm just posting this for the guy asking about maps. This is one of my websites that I'm rebuilding in [inaudible 01:03:02]. It's been down for about eight months total. This just shows the power it can have. It's ranking number one locally still while it's been down.”
You mean the site's been down but you still have … I guess you're saying this website's down but the maps listing is still up. Yeah, they're two different algorithms, right, so you can rank locally, without even having a website, guys. You can rank, absolutely, in maps without even having a website. Okay.
Thoughts On Google Not Recognizing Duplicate Info In Terms Of Citations
Personally, I've been doing just basically the same description. I've never really had an issue because … Again, years ago, I tested that and it made no difference at the time. It may now, it very likely does make a difference now but I typically don't mess with that, but you certainly can, right. Test it, guys. If you test it on your own or if Andrew says it, I trust that what he says is right because he knows what he's talking about. If he says that having different descriptions for business, the citation business descriptions makes them more impactful, I'd trust that and try it and see.
All right, guys, I got to wrap it up. Sorry, we didn't get to everybody's question. I apologize for that.
Marco: Can you get to John's question before we go? ‘Cause he's asking about Local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. He says, “They go so well together, is there a special price for current Google My Business members?” and it was offered.
Bradley: It was part of … Yeah, I mean it was part of the funnel during the initial sale, guys. That was like, I guess, the up sell or whatever, the OTO, which was a significant discount off what the product prices would be separately.
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: That's what a one time offer is but, I don't know, can we work something out for them guys or are we just going to wait to …
Hernan: Yeah, probably. I mean just contact support and we will probably, like since you already invested in Local GMB Pro …
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: There's not going to be … Like that was a real OTO, like a one time offer, but we can potentially work something out for you and if you don't have Local PR Pro or Local GMB Pro, don't get it right now because we're going to launch something special for you guys real soon.
Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure we can do something for you, John, but again, we can't honor the same price that we had in the launch funnel because that would make it not a true OTO and we stand by our word.
Hernan: Yes, sir.
Bradley: Probably work something out for you, John. Just contact us, support@semanticmastery.com, we'll work something out for you.
All right, everybody. Thanks, guys. We appreciate it. We'll see everybody … Actually Mastermind tomorrow. We've got special guests coming on tomorrow. It's going to be quite interesting, so Mastermind members, make sure you're there, okay. Thanks, everybody for hanging out.
Hernan: Thanks, really good.
Marco: Bye, everyone.
Hernan: See you.
Bradley: See you.
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