Semantic Mastery

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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 http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: What? We want it? We're live. Yeah, thanks. I'm not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we're live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it's Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we're going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we're going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we're definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You've got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It's going to be a good one. And we'll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We'll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let's say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let's see, I'll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how's it going?

Bradley: I'm good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don't. I'm not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can't do it. I don't know how you guys do it. But so I'm so backed up. It's ridiculous. I've been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I'm just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don't know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we're going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you're not in the Facebook group, join it, I'll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you're subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you'll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it's a bummer you can't join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don't record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn't know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can't Yeah, don't let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You're back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I'm back in Florida I'm super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you're wrong to Get out of here just in time I'm still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I'm good man I'm actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven't smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it's gonna, you know, you can't get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that's awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you're just joining us and you're wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you're in the right place. We're going to dive into your questions. If you've got any questions about digital marketing, we're here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people's questions. But if you can't join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That's going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it's dealing with your on-page SEO whether it's dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that'll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I'm on my laptop, and I'm having a hard time scrolling while I'm looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don't use it enough or who are new and don't know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you've got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren't doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it's really important that people not only understand what's available, but why it's available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I'm going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you're interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn't make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn't make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It's tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I'll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let's do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we're good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn't work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it's been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it's actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it's pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that's the URL anyways, it'll you can buy the pro version, it's like 20 bucks, it's inexpensive, it's really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I'm doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I'm going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we'll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that's just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That's something else that you can do. I know that Marco's got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don't know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don't know if he still can. I'm not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you've got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there's a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that's the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that's my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I've even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I'm taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven't checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn't recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven't tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I'm thinking that Google won't like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you're going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you're going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it's called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn't recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you've got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you're using the same address and it's like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they're going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it's going to the same address but that A and B actually create we're creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you're going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It's going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I'd like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don't have this kind of experience what's your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What's your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you're putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That's typically how I've done it. I've only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He's as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don't have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I'm setting it up for a foreign language, it's pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he's working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it's relevant. So there's you'll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it's that way, then you're not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it's two things that you're targeting that are totally unrelated. And you're trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it's all about entities. And it's all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that's a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn't as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That's not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you're you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don't see any issue with that, because that's, that's pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cause any problem as Hernan said, You're like, I'm assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I'm just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you're going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I've used plugins, that's what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn't have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn't intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there's no doubt. So if you're going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you're probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don't know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can't have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it'll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you're serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don't want to use a separate domain because I don't want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon's up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it's going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you're right and local. It's nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it's going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that's fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that's a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you're trying to your top-level keywords that you're trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there's no reason that you can't still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You're just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it's going to be different if you're in mud lick Kentucky, or if you're going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it's just going to have it so it's any big city in the US, which is why it's so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you're targeting. Now if for example, as as we've seen in the land when we're doing that there's just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there's still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it's what's going to make it or break it, so to speak. It's how you're going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you're trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it's going to pull up everything that's related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we're targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don't work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it's really important to understand the market and what you're after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it's not really what's in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It's understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you're targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don't base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn't matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that's just an indication of how much work and efforts it's going to take to be able to get results for that. That's all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn't design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he's talking about, I'm assuming that what you mean is when he's talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we've been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you're in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that's within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it's a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that's what you're talking about, which again, I can only assume that that's what you're talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it's a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what's up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven't electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it's very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It's not that it can't be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We've done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it's it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I've got just quickly on us on a side I've got a pest control client. It's the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I'm talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they're not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she's been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we're going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you're still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we're going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I've created silos for them. There's, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we're in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there's a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn't about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they're physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it's just because of the relevancy that she's been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that's really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don't recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don't know what you'd be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it's actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you're going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you're that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you're centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it's that relationship where the centroid can be related and we've seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you're targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I've discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it's specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I'm not gonna share of course in here, because it's paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don't know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It's a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it's another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it's ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it's a way to get into the maps pack. I don't know if he's in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that's, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they've ranked in there with it, but it's an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there's nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don't even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you'll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it's a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that's just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I'll do is I'll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I'll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's really come a long way, guys, I can't say it's still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it's in my opinion if you haven't, I don't know. Again, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it's just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it's something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it's something that if you're not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul's up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I've only in all of my years now that I've been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I'm not saying that.

It can't happen. But I've only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I've been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I'm talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I've managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I'm saying. And I've only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I've got many, many of them out there that I've done that with and I've only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here's why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you've got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we're going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I've mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can't you just throw all that stuff out? It's junk mail, and they wouldn't do it because I'd say like, I'm gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There's nothing I need there and they said, doesn't matter. You either come get it or we're going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I've only had two that I've ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I'm actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I've closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that's it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It's ridiculous. And I just don't renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It's very unlikely that you're ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don't know because I haven't had to do it. Since Google's made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I've had to revert or I've had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don't know now because it's changed so much the GMB like how they're handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don't know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn't worry about it, though. It's highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that's the Nate that that's one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it's part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That's why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I'll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that's giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn't do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he's talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I'm relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I'd like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don't skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don't know somebody brought it to Google's attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there's a big GMB spam team right now that's been out there. That's just you know, their, that's their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it's very, I mean, it's easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I've not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn't done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I'm assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I'm assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I've noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that's much better. But if it's not been you know, if it's not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it's being it's being left for for review. I know for a fact that there's an issue with that we've heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee's home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it's a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I'd say a month ago, and it's still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there's just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it's pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What's that the map won't go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it's verified. Your pending verification if it's verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything's there, but it's just whatever change you know, I'm telling you that my the one that I'm talking about specifically.

It's been I've submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it's been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there's no maps listing. And so the GMB post won't show up in a knowledge panel because there's no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn't there. What I'm saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it's in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don't know I don't know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I've had in the past I've had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it's unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it's, if it's still in that pending status, it's not going to publish, which means you can't do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can't help you with that. You just have to wait. I don't know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we're almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It's not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they're only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn't bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there's really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that's, that's just ugly and nobody's going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don't mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don't do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that's what that's for that it's really for beginners. I mean, it's for beginners and it's just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it's a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn't matter. Okay, so haven't gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you're just doing GMB stuff like there's no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that's going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it's very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don't skip on parts don't just do 25% of it and contact us and say that's not working. doesn't work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There's It doesn't mean you're going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That's when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I've had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it's not going live both went live a week after I called that's a good idea. That's something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there's no other questions, guys. I'm good. I think we're gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let's do it. We're close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Semantic Mastery

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