Click on the video above to watch Episode 70 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
Bradley: Hernan, it’s your cue.
Hernan: Oh, it’s mine. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the episode 70 of the Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 9th of March, 2016 and we are here with the whole crew. I guess Chris just ran away because Adam wasn’t here so I’ll go ahead and say hey to Marco. What’s up, Marco?
Marco: It’s warm and sunny in Costa Rica.
Bradley: Yeah, it’s warm and sunny in Virginia too bitch. [crosstalk 00:00:33] right now.
Hernan: There you go. There you go. Hey Bradley, what’s up? How are you doing, man?
Bradley: I’m doing great, man. It’s 82 degrees out. It’s sunny, it’s absolutely gorgeous. I went out for a run today for about an hour and got soaked up some sun and it’s about damn time. Spring has sprung.
Hernan: Nice, nice.
Marco: Talk to me again next week when it’s zero degrees outside.
Bradley: Yeah, right. Yeah.
Hernan: All right, go ahead.
Bradley: As far as announcements, I think the only thing we were going to talk about prior to getting the right ended questions today was IFTTT version two launching on March 28th, right?
Hernan: The 28th, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. We’re going to let you guys know because you are pretty much subscribed to everything we send so you’re going to get a notice about that but I think we are launching at 10:00 AM EST, if I’m not mistaken, on the 28th and it’s going to be … We hope that it’s going to be a big, big launch so stay tuned. You do not want to miss it so …
Bradley: Yeah and I’ve been neck deep in recording training videos for six days now, six whole days. I’m a bit burned out actually but we … I’ve got … I’ve added 70 videos to the new training already and I’m not done yet and then, we’re going to have at least one webinar and I say at least one so let me qualify that, that doesn’t mean we’re going to do two for sure. That means we’re going to do at least one so we don’t get people saying, “Well, you said at least one, doesn’t that mean more?” We’re going to do at least one webinar for all purchasers. It will be like an advance training webinar, kind of like we did with the first version where we had three webinars. I don’t think that’s going to be necessary this time because the new training is so comprehensive.
A lot of the stuff that we ended up getting a lot of questions from from the first training is now covered in the new training and that’s why there’s already 70 videos and I’m not done yet and plus all of the stuff that Hernan’s doing which he’s doing the two bonuses plus the user’s portion of it so it’s going to be absolutely enormous. This product, guys, it’s just ridiculous and we’re going to launch it at a very low price for a few days and then, it’ll go up for about five days and then, it’s going to go to its final resting place which will be a much, much higher price, more than double. You guys, if you’re going to jump on it, I highly recommend you get it in the first five days where it’s at a low price because otherwise, you’re going to pay … As a matter of fact, when we first launched it, it’ll be about 25% of what the final price will be so I would say get it when it launches on March 28th or else you’ll be paying four times as much, no exceptions so …
Hernan: Yeah and also, have in mind guys that even when you … When it’s going to the final resting price, it’s still ten times the value of that so if you …
Bradley: Oh my God.
Hernan: Yeah, so if you get it early, you’re going to get a ton, a ton, a ton of value so … We’re making sure that’s the case so jump ahead while you can.
Bradley: Yup.
Marco: Just to make a comment on this, we were told that IFTTT version one was a $500 to $600 course in and of itself and people who have used it and applied it and are ranking with it know what the value is in that course. Well, what’s coming in version two actually outdoes version one.
Bradley: Yes, that’s right.
Marco: You’re getting all of that value so if IFTTT version one should have been priced at $500 to $600, the version that you’re getting now should be at the $1,000 price range but everyone is going to get a good deal, just make sure you jump in at the beginning or … You know how it goes, you miss the boat.
Bradley: Yup. Okay well, it looks like we’ve got some questions. Since our fearless producer, Adam, isn’t here today, we don’t have a whole lot [inaudible 00:04:32]. He usually has all the … All these other announcements and stuff so I’ve got nothing.
Hernan: No, I think we’re fine. We’re ready to jump into questions.
Tips on How to Start a Content Marketing Business
Bradley: All right, let’s do it then. Let’s get into it. Okay, I’m going to lock the screen on me and just so you know, without IFTTT, with IFTTT. I like that. All right, so we’re going to go right in there. Mark O’Collins says, “Hey guys, hope that you’re doing great.” Thanks, Mark. “Bradley, I’m sure I’ve heard you mention that you saw content marketing services basically offering curated blog syndication. If this is right, could you give me a few tips for this? I would like to build up some money by offering this service to SEO agencies so I have cash coming in and then I can re-invest back into a real lead gen business with the Mastermind and other tools, etc. Thanks.”
Yes Mark, in fact the first thing I’m going to mention is that we have entire course about exactly this. It’s called Curation Mastery and it’s an add-on service that is like part of … Part of all the SEO quotes that I give to any client is content marketing. It’s just part of it because it’s part of SEO now is content marketing and so, curating is a way to curate content. It’s a much more efficient way to generate content. It’s usually much higher quality content than trying to use writers unless you have like your own staff writers that are skilled … That are particularly knowledgeable about the topics that they’re writing.
The problem is that that’s very, very expensive and so … It’s difficult to find writers about … Especially when you’re doing client work that are knowledgeable about whatever the client’s industry is because you have to find multiple writers then because not … One writer is not going to be knowledgeable about multiple topics for the most part and if they are, they’re going to be really, really expensive so it’s not really cost effective. It’s hard to mark that up and make money but with curation, all you need to do is train somebody how … Or do it yourself which I certainly don’t recommend but you can … Just learn how to find and identify good content on the web and then, put it together.
You combine resources, you find … Locate resources and then, combine them into curated posts that you can really publish with injecting your own opinion or some additional content in with the curated sections or pieces of content and then you re-publish. As long as you’re crediting or citing, attributing the source of where you’ve … You’re pulling snippets of content from, then that’s perfectly fine to do. In fact, Google likes it and the thing is is you can find other … You don’t have to be an expert in a particular topic to be able to identify content from experts. You do have to know how to locate it and then put it together properly.
You can train a virtual assistant to do that and that’s what the Curation Mastery course is all about because my … As part of my local SEO agency or my local marketing agency is I’ve got some curators on staff that essentially curate for my clients. They curate blog posts, publish posts to my client’s blogs which then syndicate to the IFTTT networks and it’s just part of the SEO service that I provide. Depending on the client, it can be anywhere between one post per week. Some clients are as little as one post every two weeks but that’s usually just for like someone like the real small mom and pop type contractors or service agencies but for a lot of my clients, we post two or three times per week.
Like I will pay my curators … Depending on what their curating for, I pay my curators anywhere between I’d say $10 to $20 per post that they curate and then I charge my clients anywhere between $30 to $40 per post to curate. Some clients are paying like for three posts per week, it’s roughly $500 a month because it comes out to be about $480 and that’s part of an overall SEO plan. If I’m charging them like $800 a month for SEO services, then on the itemized invoice or at least on the itemized proposal that I originally sent them, it shows content marketing services at three posts per week at $40 per post so it’s a $120 a week. $480 out of that $800 might be for content marketing.
Again, I’m only paying between $10 to $20 per post to have it curated. It’s about a … It’s anywhere between like a 70% to a 100% markup that I’m making on that and I’m not doing the work, my VAs are … My curators are. It’s a great service to provide because content marketing is in such demand right now and businesses need to be content marketing but they don’t have the time or the desire to do it themselves and so …
Marco:Hey, Bradley.
Bradley: Yes, go ahead.
Marco: I dropped a link at the top and I tagged Mark on it but if he’s in the Mastermind then he already gets that course for the price of the membership.
Bradley: Yup, it’s been cleared and he’s not and that’s why he’s trying to generate some revenue so …
Marco: Okay, cool. He’s tagged on it, I sent them to the page where we offer the Curation Mastery course.
Bradley: Very good, thank you. Yeah, Mark. I mean, it’s a great service because it’s in high demand and again, it’s something that you could train VAs to do and all you need to do is manage it. You go out and find the clients or the customers or people that need the content marketing services and then, make the proposal and then, delegate the work to your VAs and just manage it. Once you train a couple of VAs, a curator … A good curator can curate for pretty much any topic because all they need to know how to do is how to curate. They don’t need to know how to … Be an expert in any topic. You can train one or two or three, however big you want to grow your content marketing agency and basically, you’re outsourcing all the work. It’s arbitrage. You find the work, you put the workers in place to do it and you charge a premium, a markup, on what you’re paying out for labor and you just collect the difference. All you got to do is manage it. That’s very hands off and that’s what I like about it.
When I first have a … When I first send a new client to or have a new client that I’m doing content marketing services, I get my curators to, every time they publish a post, to send me the link to the post so I can review it especially if it’s a new industry that they’re not familiar with so that I can review the post. Usually, I’ll review about, I don’t know, six to eight, maybe even 10 posts depending on how much editing I need to suggest and I’ll look at the post and I’ll just record a screencast video and say, “Okay, here’s what I would have done. Here’s how you could have improved this. Blah, blah, blah.” We go through that process several times. Like I said, it could be five, six times usually on average but sometimes, as many as 10 times if I’m dealing with a new curator or if it’s a brand new topic, whatever. Then, we really dial in how I want them to curate the post and then obviously, make sure that the clients are happy with it too and then, I let them go. I turn them loose.
I don’t even review them after that because everything just works out and I just collect money. It’s a great service to add which you’re already doing and it’s something that’s hands off. Remember guys, SEO is performance-based. You get paid for whether or not you can write properties and that kind of thing. Content marketing is an action-based service like you’re paying for the activity. I mean, you’re getting paid for the activity. It’s not a results-driven business, it’s an activity-driven business. In other words, you’re basically … Because it’s something that needs to be done, you’re getting paid for the activity of generating or publishing posts for that client but it doesn’t … There is obviously a cause and effect. If you’re doing it properly and you’re doing it for SEO purposes, it should help you to rank as well.
Regardless, content marketing especially when you tell them, “Hey, this is also going to be updating all your social media which you should be doing anyways.” You say that to the client, the customer, “Hey, you should be updating all your social media regularly. If you’re not, use your blog to do it. We’ll connect everything for you, all you got to do is publish content to your blog and it will automatically update all your social media channels, upsell them on an IFTTT network obviously and then, now you’ve got constant consistent updates going out across all your social media properties.” Hopefully that helps, Mark.
Updates on Kuratur and Tips in Dealing with Down IFTTT Properties
Ed says … Okay, I’ve read the first part, Ed. That’s fine. I have to get with my VAs and find out if that was just an isolated incident or whatever with RebelMouse but with Kuratur, if Kuratur is giving you a hard time, don’t worry about it, skip it. Don’t waste any time with it, guys.
By the way, Paper.li is not being included in the second IFTTT v2. There’s too many issues with it. It doesn’t work all the time. It’s a pain in the ass to setup so we’re excluding it. IFTTT version two is going to be more streamlined in that anything that is real buggy or gives a lot of issues, we just omit it entirely because we’re tired of answering support tickets about properties that aren’t working that has nothing to do with the IFTTT training, it has to do with the properties themselves. We’ve omitted anything that gives us grief so that you guys don’t deal with them either because there’s just way too much productivity time lost for you guys as well as for us over properties that are buggy or are a pain in the ass so Paper.Li is being completely omitted. Kuratur, guys, check on it. If you want … If you really want to use Kuratur, check on it once a week or so, if it’s up, go add your properties to it. Add your RSS feeds. If it’s down, forget it, move on. There’s too many other good properties you can use.
Hernan: Usually, the best properties are the ones that fail the least or they are down the least. That’s part of the reason they are good. I mean, if you would have … If you check on a website and it’s down two out of three of the times that you check, like Blog.com for example, that also means that your link or whatever you’re doing to that property, it’s also going to be down. That means the visitor cannot check it out or the [inaudible 00:14:48] cannot check it out. That’s giving you the warning that you shouldn’t be messing or you shouldn’t be wasting your time with that property because it’s going to be down anyways so …
Bradley: Yeah and for Blog.com for example, like I said it’s been six days now I’m recording videos for the new IFTTT version two and Blog.com … When you guys get the new version, you’ll see, I repeat, about 15 times throughout the Blog.com training video that if it’s down, skip it.
Hernan: Right.
Bradley: Don’t send us a support ticket telling us the blog is down, it’s not working. Don’t do that because we’re going to … We’ll either going to ignore it or we’re going to send you a link to the training video that says 15 times to skip it if it’s not up because it’s a very … It’s probably down … The blog is probably down 60% of the time. If it’s up and it’s available when you’re creating a network, build the property, create account but if it’s down, skip it, move on. I can’t tell you guys how many times we’ve had people say, “Well, I’ve spent the last four hours trying to get this one recipe to work and it won’t work, can you please help me? I’m going to pull my hair out.” Well, why did you spend four hours doing that? Why don’t you just move on to something else that’s more productive? That’s my point.
We’re going to … I tried to push that across through the training as much as possible, guys. You want to be efficient with your time. When we’ve got as many properties as we do that we can use within the networks, if something is down when you’re creating a network, just move on. Just move on. If you’ve got some time three weeks down the road or whatever, go back and look and see if it’s available to create and add it in your network then. If not, just skip it. You think I actually go back and add properties that weren’t available with networks that are completed? No. I just … Whatever is available when I’m creating networks, that’s what gets created and then I move on and that’s … I don’t go back.
If you guys … If it’s a branded network and you guys are building up branded network and it’s really important to you that that one property works, that’s fine but just go check it every so often. If it’s available to use at one point, then quickly build it. Just know that it’s probably going to go down again. All right, next question.
What are Some Good Social Network Auto-Account Creators?
Harry says, “Love your stuff. Awesome.” Harry, I will plus one that. “Do you know any social network auto account creators with lifetime license? Some okay monthly options I found … ” Okay, there’s … Harry, I don’t know of any because we use virtual assistants that do everything manually. Unless one of you guys have a suggestion? Any of you?
Marco: No, I don’t have a suggestion because I do the same thing. Manual over just auto creation all the way.
Hernan: Yeah and there is a reason for that, Harry. It doesn’t matter how advanced the tool that you are trying to use is, at the end of the day, it’s a tool and it will leave a footprint. Again, it’s the same with … The same happens [inaudible 00:17:37] the best quality network stays or a property stays is because it’s being heavily moderated. That’s why they are [inaudible 17:47]. They usually get deleted real, real fast if you’re using some sort of an auto creator. It doesn’t … I mean, you can use them. Of course, you can use them but not the way they are intended to be used on the IFTTT training, at least, for branded accounts so …
Bradley: Yeah. What Hernan’s getting at, Harry, is that you can speed up the process of creating IFTTT networks the way that we teach by using an account creator but there are some inherent faults with those that I found over the years and we’ve tested all of them. I mean, I haven’t tested these two. We’ve tested a lot of them, let’s put it that way. The problem is that a lot of times, like the usernames and things like that, they look spammy, whatever, even if you can customize that. Once the networks are created, you still got to log back into them and you still got to customize all of them, complete the profile by either the biography, add the profile image, you still got to interlink everything which the … The software tools cannot do.
One of the things that you guys are going to learn in the new version of IFTTT SEO Academy is that I am using Google authorization authorizing through Google … The Google app or Twitter, every single account that were possible so that there’s that interconnection. They’re connected apps now with Google and with Twitter were possible so that it looks a hell of a lot more real because software tools are apps … Applications that create … Or bots that create accounts will not authorize via Google or Twitter. All they will do is create accounts using e-mail and password. If you can go that extra step and authorize with the Google account and Twitter account, now you’ve got accounts that are tightly knit together with connections that look 100% real instead of faked. They’re hell of a lot more likely to stay … To be given more weight, number one and number two, last longer and less likely to be terminated.
Hernan: Yeah and also to add to what you’re saying, Bradley. The actual social [inaudible 00:20:00] or the social signup was designed to communicate with APIs and whatever to make it easier for the user to signup. If you can click a button and instantly be using that platform just by logging in or signing up by using Twitter, that’s usually what people does. That’s what [crosstalk 00:20:20] …
Marco: [crosstalk 00:20:20].
Hernan: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what we’re trying to emulate with the IFTTT when creating personas, etc. so it’s spot on.
Bradley: That’s right. When you look at your Google account dashboard, for example and you look at your connected apps and 12 of the 20 properties in the IFTTT network are actually connected apps to Google, some of them being social data partners. That’s damn strong. That identity now is really strong in Google’s mind because it’s connected throughout … Across multiple social media, some of which, are social data hub partners. If that looks … That’s not spammy at all, guys. Spammy connections are ones that don’t have any app connections at all so just keep that in mind. Honestly Harry, I can’t … You can use some of these tools to kind of create the accounts upfront which will save you just a little bit of time but you still got to go in and do all the other things in order to meet our specifications. If you want to do your own thing, certainly you’re welcome to do so.
How Does Imacros, Sukuli or Selinium Work?
“Also, do you have any experience with or would you advise using iMacro or one of those other things?” I personally have never used them. Other than I’ve got an iMacro that I had somebody develop for me for my work for doing some site cleanup stuff on the lead gadget sites that I build but other than that, no. Again, just because I have … I have virtual assistants to do that. If you’re good at creating iMacros and you want to create an iMacro that can setup accounts and things like that, that might actually be a pretty good way to do it because you could actually create an iMacro to do all the steps that the IFTTT training shows you, you know what I mean? Like which would be to complete the profiles and all that. You can create an iMacro to do that. Certainly, it’s not something I’m going to create but if you’re good with that kind of stuff, you certainly could and I don’t see anything wrong with that because you’re still … At that point, you’d be still be completing all the profiles as we suggest.
Recommended Tool for All-in1 Social Monitoring
“What lifetime free software would you suggest for an all-in-one social monitoring reporting?” Serpspace.com. That’s not lifetime … That’s not free but it’s cheap. It’s inexpensive.
Hernan: I think you can … Can you get a couple of accounts for free or … Yeah, it’s [near free 00:22:34], Harry.
Bradley: It’s $5 for 100 properties per month [inaudible 00:22:38]. It’s $5 per 100 properties so if you want to monitor 500 properties, it’s $25 a month. Go check out Serpspace.com, S-E-R-Pspace.com and you can monitor all your IFTTT network properties and everything in there. It’s dirt cheap and I can’t suggest anything else because obviously, we’re just going to suggest Serpspace and honestly, I don’t know anything else that does it really.
Hernan: No, in fact that was initially was Adam’s idea to be monitoring that and he developed his own tool because he couldn’t find anything and that ended up being the network manager of Serpspace. I just left a link so that you can sign up. It’s free to open an account and then, we’re going to be adding some … You can get the network … I mean, you can get access to the network manager over there and you can get access to the marketplace, etc. Go open an account, it’s free.
How to Properly Use Hangout Millionaire Video with GSA and FCS Links?
Bradley: “Hi, do you suggest using GSA and FCS on tier 1 Youtube?” Correct, you can for tier 1 Youtube. “I wouldn’t do it for money sites. Only on tier 2 and tier 4 for a website?” Yeah, that’s correct. You got it, Harry. “You said remix vids must change a lot if on the same channel, Hangout Millionaire changes the vids a little and you called it spam in one episode.” Well, yes and no. Guys, I don’t think spam is a bad word. It’s got a negative connotation, I know that but like I’m perfectly happy and okay with spamming stuff. It’s just part of what we do as SEOs so I’m not afraid to use the word spam. Hangout Millionaire can actually be used for even money videos, guys. There’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, a lot of my … I do a lot of video SEO for … Or I do wholesale video SEO services to a video production company near me and I do a lot of that for them. They’ll often send me the video that they want me to rank and I will push it out through Hangout Millionaire so that I can target multiple keywords with the same video with no additional work. It doesn’t take me anymore time than it does to upload or to live stream one video manually through Wirecast or XSplit which is something we’ve been playing with recently. It’s like another version of Wirecast but it’s cheaper and it’s pretty damn cool. It’s called XSplit.
If I upload manually, it takes me just as much as if I send it through Hangout Millionaire and end up having it go … Target five different keywords with the same video. All it does is it adds … Because it’s live stream, every single video file is unique and what it does is an opening slide with an Mp3 track in the beginning and then a closing slide with an mp3 track at the end which after they’ve been live streamed, you can go into the Youtube channel and go edit that video and use the Youtube editor to actually trim that first opening slide and mp3 section out so that it’s literally just a video that you wanted uploaded, uploaded or live stream to the channel without that kind of like what I call spammy clip in the beginning. You can trim that out is my point.
I’ll leave the spammy clip at the end because usually it’s just a call to action slide anyways with an mp3 audio track on it. I’ll usually leave the back … Back clip on it but the spammy one upfront, I usually trim that out and I’ll just use Hangout Millionaire to syndicate that same video or live stream that same video multiple times and it’s a [unique 00:26:08] file enough that it doesn’t cause any problems. “How does this help for using additional supporting business on the same channel?” Like I just mentioned, if you’ve got … You can take the same video … I don’t recommend doing it in mass like 15, 20 times but if you’re doing five, six, seven, eight times that you want to use the same video and target multiple keywords, related keywords, long tail keywords, whatever, you can do it like that. I do that all the time.
What I like about that, guys, is they might pay me just for one video but I’ll go ahead and use Hangout Millionaire … To rank one video, I mean but I’ll use Hangout Millionaire to target five keywords and I tell them upfront, “Here’s the five keywords I’m going to target. I’m going to get you ranked for one of them.” I’ll end up using Hangout Millionaire to rank … To try ranking five videos and maybe two or three keywords ranked out of the five. Now, I look like a rock star. I don’t charge them any extra for it, it wasn’t any extra work. They don’t know that, they think that they’re just getting a hell of a lot of extra value for the same price. It keeps them happy and it’s no extra work on my part. If you want, you can always charge them more for it, I’m just telling you my strategy. It works well.
Should We Use a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog for Branded Network?
Greg says, “Hey guys.” Okay Greg, I read some of these questions in another one of the groups and first of all, I’m going to preface what I’m about to say with everything that you have to ask is answered in version two for sure which is coming out on March 28th. I went through painstaking process of making sure that everything could … No … Nothing could be left unanswered because we’ve, over the last year, had so many questions about stuff which I thought IFTTT SEO Academy version one is one of the most detailed IM courses on the market but apparently, there was a lot of questions that came up that I hope were answered in the new version. That said, also guys, you have some editorial freedom with your network builds like God, I wish some of you guys would … I wish you guys would sometimes realize that we give you a framework but you are free to make changes and think about it logically.
Like when you’re building a network and I talk about in the first version that it was … I was building a persona network. Why? Because a persona network and a branded network are no different other than a branded network uses a logo for a profile and company graphics for the header images and a company bio instead of a personal bio. That’s it, there’s no difference. The way that all the networks are setup are exactly the same. It’s just whether you use a personal bio or a corporate bio. That’s it, there’s no difference. When I setup the persona network in the first training guys, I said just use the Blogger blog as the main URL. Obviously and I thought this would be logical, common sense but apparently, I was wrong. You would take the main money site you URL and use that as your main website URL for a branded network.
Again, in the new training, I hit you guys over the head with it. Like hammer it home. If it’s a branded network, do this. If it’s a persona network, do this. Again, if it’s a branded network, do this and I swear to God, I say it 20 times through like … Through the first five videos alone. There’s no shortage of me reminding you of that in the upcoming training, guys. That’s just because we get asked these questions many times. Let’s run through, now that I’ve said my piece. “In the IFTTT videos, several times it relates to bookmarking one’s site. You mentioned the put the Blogger link here as the main blog. When you’re making a branded network, should we use our main site as a WordPress site in places that normally call for the Blogger?” Yes, Greg. Yes. Use common sense. If you’re building a branded network, you’re going to want to link your main website blog, you’re going to want to use your main website URL as the main link for each profile. Of course, you would.
Okay, “Instead add your domain as a website so bookmarks [zero 00:30:14] to it.” I’m not sure what you mean there but it doesn’t matter. Just put your main website URL wherever you would normally … Where in the first training we said Blogger URL, put your main money website URL and again, this is all covered in detail in the new one for sure.
What Link Should be Added in Diigo for a Branded Network?
In Diigo, Under the “Me Elsewhere”, where after putting in Twitter, Blogger, etc. at the bottom, it has one line for other link. You put in your Google+ profile about URL and said this other link should be used for the URL where all the 15 links wind up. For a branded network, should this be the profile or page? Would all those 15 links end up on the Google+ business page?” Yes, Greg. The Google+ business page will have all the links too. If you want to use your Google+ business page URL, use your Google+ business page URL. Use your about me URL, use your Gravatar URL, use your Youtube about page. Just use whatever you want. Use whatever you want. I just made that as a recommendation.
Guys, you have freedom to be able to make decisions on your own. Please use whatever you want, I just recommend linking to somewhere what we call a semantic hub which is where there are all of your other profile links are linked … Are listed on that page. Google+ about page, if you’re using a Google+ brand page. If you’re using a Google+ local page, there is no link section. Youtube about page is another semantic hub, Gravatar, About.me. About.me is not covered in the first one. I know that’s the next question coming. What’s this about .me, it’s not in the training? Well, it is in version two. Gravatar, there are multiple phases that we call semantic hubs. You can create an semantic hub out of a Google doc, out of a OneNote doc, out of an Evernote note and anywhere that you can put all of your links. You could link to your WordPress blog, your WordPress.com, your Blogger blog, your Tumbler blog if you put your profile links in the widget area in the sidebar. That’s all I’m saying, guys. You have freedom to be able to put whatever you want, wherever you want. Those were just guidelines because I had to put something there.
Hernan: Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you, Bradley but many of these new strategies like the semantic strategies, etc. They have been developed … We have been developing them over the past maybe six to eight months and one of the good things about v2 in my opinion is that people can actually get access to a community where you can get … Of course, you can get troubleshooting and support or whatever but the main point there is that we got a ton of feedback and new ways of using IFTTT syndication strategies in creative ways for things that we were initially thinking that it will work. I think that’s the best way to go. Creativity has a ton to do with the success that our students are having with v1 and that’s why the v2 version of it has the community embedded on it.
Bradley: The last part of that question is, “In the other link line, should I put my branded website URL?” Yes, Greg. You can put that … You can put any link you want there. You make the decision as to what is the, in your opinion, is the most important URL. I just put a recommendation to link to a semantic hub page because you’d be pushing juice to another page where there would be all of your other profile links. It’s this whole interlinking thing but if you want to put your branded website URL there, you’re … Absolutely, you can do that. If you want to push that juice over to your main website instead of to a hub, a semantic hub and that … You have that freedom to do so. Just … You need to … I can’t tell you what is the most important link or how to prioritize your link building, I can just give you suggestions and I did give you a suggestion and that was to use a semantic hub but you’re more than free to link to your website URL if you’d like. It’s entirely up to you.
Hernan: Yeah. In fact, on some cases, we had some people developing networks that they … Personas network that they weren’t necessarily attached to a money site or they were attached to a money site as a 2.0. Say that’s a Blogger, that’s a blog in WordPress.com, that will be your main money site. Even if it’s part of the network, you know what I mean? It will strongly depend on the case. In your case, so maybe your person is a big Twitter fan and you can put your Twitter profile over there as being your main profile online and that could work really well.
What URL to Enter When Triggering the RSS Feed in an IFTTT Branded Network?
Bradley: Yup. All right, so for this next question, “For a branded network, can Instapaper, Pinboard and other properties, what URL do we enter when trying to trigger the RSS feed?” Well, if it’s a branded network, you’re going to use your money site RSS feed. The trigger point … In a branded network, you’re either using your main website, your money site, blog as the content distribution engine or your branded Youtube channel as a content distribution engine. If you’re setting up recipes for your tier 1 branded network, tier 1 means it’s being triggered from your content source which would be your main money site so your blog’s URL, your money site blog URL.
By the way, Instapaper guys is, in my opinion, useless unless you’re going to manually log-in to Instapaper and like the submitted or saved items. I talk about this, again, about a dozen times in the new training because Instapaper used to have an RSS feed output, they do no longer have that. The new Instapaper accounts don’t have an RSS feed output, all they have is a … Now, they have a public profile page which they didn’t before but in order for your saved items to be listed on your public profile page, you have to log-in to Instapaper and manually like, press a button, it’s a little heart icon and that makes it appear on your public profile page.
For that reason, I recommend just skipping it altogether unless you’re only managing like one network for your own business or something in which case just log-in once a week or once every two weeks, put it on a Google calendar recurring events that it reminds you to log-in and just go right on down the line and click the little heart icon next to each item. Otherwise, skip it because it doesn’t give you an RSS feed output anymore. In my opinion, it’s worthless. I’m certainly not going to log-in to Instapaper and click a bunch of heart icons so I’m just going to admit them from my networks. However, it is in the new training because I know some of you are going to want to use it. Just use your money site RSS feed.
“Pinboard looks great but I have about 10 questions I want to check. Yes or no. A few setup issues.” That’s because Pinboard wasn’t covered in the first training so I’m not going to go over that right here, it’s in the next training. Just fumble your way through it, it’s just like any other property. I would either just wait until the new training comes out to setup Pinboard or just play with the options which you think are right. I can’t … Certainly can’t go through it right here because that’s part of our training.
What are the Best Keyword Analysis Tool?
All right, Randy says, “Which service software do you recommend is the best keyword analysis tool?” Well, I don’t know anymore. I don’t really do a whole lot of keyword analysis anymore. I just use what Power Suggest spits out. Like honestly, my favorite tool for analyzing keywords is Google Trends and that’s where I start with all keyword research is I go to Google Trends, I setup the geographic location … The area that I want to pull data from which is usually United States or I’ll go to state level or even regional or even city level sometimes but for the most part, I would just go with US data. Then, I look at the top terms, related terms historically and then, I look at the rising terms and I collect the keywords and related phrases out of those results.
Then, I go drill down on each of those results using Power Suggest Pro and I get a ton of really good long tails and then I go clean that list manually. It’s a bit of a process but I’ll go clean that list, get rid of the keywords that don’t make sense or the ones that have modifiers that don’t make sense to the project I’m working on. What I’m left with is usually several hundred keywords that I … Are closely related to the [seed 00:38:39] term and then I build my campaigns around that. I really don’t go check metrics anymore. If I do, I’ll just use the Google keyword planner and that’s not an SEO tool, guys, but that’s just so I can get an idea of if there’s any traffic metrics on it. If not, I don’t care. I still use Power Suggest or Google suggested keyword phrases as a … For my campaigns whether they show metrics or not in the keyword planner.
Hernan: What I’ve been using a lot lately, Randy, is SEMRush. It will give you … It’s a competitor tool, it’s a competition tool. It’s not only for SEO but also for PPC. Now for SEO, the way that I use it is to uncover those keywords that you are ranking for on page two, on page three so that … Because you are saying this will be used to research which keywords you should target for articles in your website. There are a bunch of keywords already that you are already ranking for and SEMRush can tell you which they are. You can filter them out by searches and also based on, for example, position. Let’s say 11 to 25 or 29, those will give you those keywords that you’re already ranking for right on page two, page three, page four.
Then, you can setup new blog posts targeting those keywords and targeting the pages that those keywords are ranking for. You can link internally or if you have a PBN for example. You will be using your IFTTT network for that [matter 00:40:18] so that’s one. Not only that, you can also uncover your competitor’s keywords and what keywords they are using to rank on page one, page two, page three so you can pretty much hijack those keywords. SEMRush will tell you how much of their organic traffic comes from each keyword. Let’s say that you have three keywords, not all of them will bring you the same amount of traffic. I think having that in mind, for example, analytics will show you a ton of [not provided 00:40:53], what master tools will show you a ton of not provided, SEMRush is a good way to pinpoint these keywords that you can’t rank better if you do some onsite SEO.
Bradley: Well, that was the other … I was going to say. As soon as you said SEMRush, the other thing that I do though is I … You guys are probably familiar with Serp Shaker, the Lead Gadget in the ATM which is like an industrial [strength 00:41:20] Serp Shaker and I use those a lot of the times for keyword discovery, those sites. Like for example, if I’m looking into a new niche or a new project, then I will slap up a site using … I use the ATM, Lead Gadget in the ATM and I’ll build a site with 30,000 posts and it takes about an hour to set it up. Now, I’ve got VAs to do that for me and so I’ll just send them a list of keywords and give them a couple of domains and I’ll say, “Go build me a couple of sites.”
Then, I’ll add those sites to Google search console and search console will give me more keyword data than any tool buzz because it takes time. You’ve got to let the site index and then, it will start to perform but what it will do is it will show you inside of search console what your … Which keywords your site was given impressions for and you can even sort by position. It will show you the average position that you were given as impressions for. What I found is that with those types of sites, I can identify keyword phrases that are in Google keyword planner. They’re not in Google Suggest because they haven’t been searched enough, yet there’s somebody … It will show the actual physical like terms and phrases that somebody searched on and where your site appeared given the impressions.
It will show clicks too if you got any click throughs or clicks, it will show you click through rate and number of clicks too but that’s if you’re just checking on the keyword data but you can actually sort to show which pages were ranked too or given impressions for. It doesn’t mean they’re ranked. I mean, for example, it could give you a keyword phrase and it shows that your average position … Let’s say, it’s given like four impressions and your average position might have been like 47 which means you’re way back on page five but it means that your site is … In Google’s eyes, at least in … It’s given some relevancy to that search phrase.
What I found is that what I look for is keyword phrases that have high impression rates because the ones that have high impression rates means that that keyword is getting searched often. What I’ll do is I’ll sort my search console data by impression, not clicks although there’s value in that too but that’s for … More like for identifying where you’re performing well, blah, blah, blah. For specifically for keyword discovery, I’ll sort by impressions and then, I’ll make a list and you can export the file as a CSV and then, I’ll sort by impressions and then, I’ll have now a new list of keyword phrases that may not have turned up in any keyword tool that I know people are actually looking for.
Then, I can work on improving content for my main money site or the Youtube videos that I’m trying to rank or whatever. A lot of the times guys, I’ll build these sites just for keyword discovery … Basically research and discovery. Those kind of sites, in my opinion … Like guys, ATM in a Lead Gadget. If you want to join that, that’s great. It’s incredibly powerful. We’ve got VAs now, two VAs building sites for us now. They build anywhere between 16 to 20 sites per day. It’s insane what we’re being able to generate with that. It’s 30,000 posts per site so you do the math. We’re building as many as 600,000 posts per day. It’s ridiculous.
Anyways, what I’m saying is that the Serp Shaker is a plug-in. It’s a one time fee. If you guys pick that up, we’ve got a link for it at Semanticmastery.com/serpshaker. Then, you can build these sites out for … Even if you didn’t monetize the sites, you can use them specifically for research and discovery which is what I originally started using those for. I still, to this day, use those types of sites for research and discovery but I’m also monetizing those sites now as well so very, very powerful.
Can You Upload a Gdoc in Serp Space?
Jordan says, “I have a ton of DFY, Done For You built by Semantic Mastery Networks and want you lovely folks to maintain them on the service-based site. I’ve already subscribed to the service. Is there a way I can simply upload the G docs?” Yes, Jordan. You can upload the … I’m not sure if you can upload the G docs but you can … Yeah, you can export it as an XLS or CSV or whatever and then, just upload it. Yes, you can. There should be training inside … I don’t … Is there no training in the … You probably wouldn’t know either, would you Hernan?
Hernan: Yeah, there is a video that shows how to do it. If you do not find it, Jordan, it should be right there. If you do not find it, get a support ticket … Send a support ticket to us. However, what I know is that when you get Done For You Network built from us …
Bradley: It should already been importable.
Hernan: Yeah, it should be imported already into [inaudible 00:45:57], Jordan.
Bradley: If you bought … If you’ve got older networks before we integrate … Before we … Now, it’s integrated, yes but if you bought them prior to that then I know you can upload the CSV file or Excel file in it and import all your properties so …
Hernan: Yeah, you can bring it whether you have built it by yourself or that you have somebody else build for you and you can import that by using a CSV. Now, I think there is an instructional video on the network manager [crosstalk 00:46:29].
Bradley: I think there is. If there’s not, just send us a support ticket and we’ll make sure we, number one, send you the link to the video that shows … The training video. Number two, we’ll add it in. I just want to clarify something Hernan said. Hernan said if somebody else built the network, you can upload those too. We actually put a safeguard in place. If somebody else built your network besides us, guys, or besides you and you try to upload a CSV file, it’s going to automatically terminate your account and you’ll be banned for life.
Hernan: Okay.
Bradley: Just kidding.
Hernan: Okay. It’s going to detect … Yeah, [crosstalk 00:47:00].
Bradley: It will self-destruct. Your computer will blow up.
Hernan: Yeah.
Marco: I want to just take a second and just give a shout out to Jordan [following the rank 00:47:08]. He’s been using our stuff and just killing it. It just goes to show that if you just go through the training, you apply the training, you are going to be successful, man, no matter what you do with it. You just have to do it. I always tell people, man, just go. Just do it, just do it, take action, do something. Don’t just sit there and say, “This stuff doesn’t work, man. It just doesn’t [inaudible 00:47:34] that’s even worse. There’s no way possible that this stuff could work.” You don’t know, you don’t know unless you go and you take some action.
Bradley: Yeah, I’ve seen some jackasses on Black Hat forums that say don’t do the stuff that Bradley Benner and Semantic Mastery tell you to do because it’s going to end up harming your sites. I’ve seen that shit in the … Like the Black Hat forums and like I so wanted to jump in to those threads and be like, “You’re an idiot,” but I don’t.
Marco: They’re just going to take your money. That’s all it’s going to do is they’re just going to take your money. Don’t follow their teaching, come buy our $5 product that won’t do shit for you.
Hernan: Conversely, I’ve also seen a bunch of people having results in those same forums and some threads are really heating up because there are some people actually having results with our stuff and you can see for yourself. If you go for … I don’t know, if you go to Black Hat forum and search for Bradley Benner or IFTTT training, you will see those threads and they can get really heated up because some people like actually are getting results and they are showing it. They are showing respect for the quality of the training. I think that’s … Grant Cardone says if you have 10 haters, go get your 20 so that’s fine.
Bradley: Yeah, Grant Cardone says if you got 10 haters, go get 20 more.
Hernan: Yeah. Go get 20, yeah.
Bradley: Unless you have haters and not doing enough, you’re not making enough waves so …
Hernan: Right.
Bradley: Earl says, “I could use a tool to quickly and cheaply identify … ” Of course, this is that caveat. The modifier. “Identified [inaudible 00:49:07]. For example, an exterior modeling contractor that probably has many dozen of possible keywords, any metro area with major city and 50 to 70 sizable suburbs.” Earl, I … That sounds like a great tool. I don’t know of one so I don’t know what to tell you. If one of you guys have a suggestion, please say so.
Hernan: No, [crosstalk 00:49:26].
Marco: [crosstalk 00:49:26].
Hernan: No.
Bradley: It sounds like a good idea there, maybe we …
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Maybe down the road, we can develop one if somebody else hasn’t. Paul says, “Is Kuratur dead?” Don’t know but if it doesn’t seem to be working … If it’s been down for a couple of weeks, it may be dead. It may come back but I would just move on and not worry about it. We’ve talked about that earlier.
Hernan: Yeah. It’s been dead now, Paul, for a couple of days at least. Because I’ve been diving into the live stream sites and Kuratur is one of the sites that I wanted to add to the training but it’s being dead for awhile now.
Bradley: We omitted Dipity from it too, from the new training too because Dipity is now … It went to a paid … Basically, a paid site. There is a free version but it has a limit to how many bookmarks you can add to it or whatever so like we’re killing that as well. That’s okay, we added other new properties too so …
Hernan: Yes.
Is the GSA and Amazon S3 Redirects Campaign Effective?
Bradley: John says, “I’ve been using IFTTT properties and then building FCS properties is a buffer for GSA and is working great but I’m looking into expanding my reach. You mentioned a few months back about doing GSA campaigns to Amazon S3 redirects. Any update on how effective that has been? What tier is ideal for that strategy? Thanks for any input.” I’ll let Marco and Hernan talk about the S3 redirects. However, I’ve had a lot of really good … Because I haven’t done any of that, what I do with S3 is I host HTML sites on Amazon S3 that I’m using expired domains that I pick up using Bluechip Backlinks that are topically relevant to what I’m going to be linking too and I build out HTML sites and host them on S3 buckets. Then, I spam the living hell out of those. I’m hitting an S3 bucket … You can do it, you don’t need the domain by the way. You can just use the bucket URL as the HTML hosted domain … Like the domain itself would be the bucket URL. You can definitely do that. You don’t need it.
The only thing is I’ve been using expired domains that already have backlinks built to them that are topically relevant and so what I’ll do is I’ll put an HTML site which is just the rebuilt site that used to be on that domain that I get from Archive.org and Bluechip Backlinks will actually import a zip file for you with all the pages and everything. You just basically unpack it or unzip it and then upload it to the bucket and now, you’ve got an HTML … Full HTML site of the old site that’s expired. Then, what I’ll do is I’ll put a series of buffer sites using like FCS or whatever to the HTML site and then, I’ll spam the living hell out of the FCS networks. That way I’m not deluding the topically trust flow of the HTML site that’s hosted on the S3 bucket. I’m putting a layer of decent links between it and then spamming the hell out of those. That’s been working really, really well.
Hernan: Yeah, it is. It’s still working. I don’t know if Johnny is part of the Mastermind though because these are kind of things that we usually talk about on the Mastermind.
Marco: That’s what I was going to say. I would be reluctant to mention anything that we’re doing inside of S3. First of all, because we usually keep that inside the Mastermind and second of all, we’re doing so much crazy stuff in there and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. There are tons of stuff that you … I mean, if you want to go in there, play with it, try it out, best thing that you can do is test, experiment, break it because that’s the only way you’ll know what works and if you can’t break it, then that’s even better because you know it’ll stem whatever abuse you throw at it.
Bradley: We did two videos on how to use Bluechip Backlinks for this kind of stuff and you’re free to see those. I think they’re both public on our Youtube channel. If you just go to Youtube.com/semanticmastery and then search the channel for … Just type bluechip, one word bluechip, you’ll see that there should be two videos there that you can … In fact, I think I even put in a playlist too. You can probably go to our channel and click on the playlist tab and you’ll see a bluechip training or bluechip demo or whatever playlist and take a look at those two videos. It will show you exactly like how we’re doing that. I made those public so you guys can check them out but yeah, I mean, we’re doing a lot of really good stuff and as they said, I can’t go into details to how we’re doing it exactly. I can give you the concept here but the details are in the Mastermind.
Hernan: Yup, I’m going to link those two videos if you guys want to check it out and check them out. I’m going to link those two videos on the web space as well.
Bradley: Okay, cool. Yeah, I think there’s a playlist URL now, Hernan. I think I put them in a playlist.
Hernan: Okay.
How to Redirect One Site to the Other Without Loosing the Pages?
Bradley: Justin says he’s a Mastermind member, I think he’s a new Mastermind member. He says, “I have a client that had their tech gurus make a new website for them without taking the old one down. They did a temporary 302 redirect to the same domain name .com/new.” They just put it in a directory, a folder, a subdirectory. “I need to know how I can go about getting their website back to the root without losing all 98 pages.” Well, just clone the subdirectory site. Clone the subdirectory site and then just install it on the root instead. All you got to do is … If it’s on the same host, really I think all you need to do is move the … Move the folder but you’re going to have to update the links throughout the databases and everything.
That’s a … What I would do? Honestly, how I would do it is I would just make a clone of the site in the subdirectory. Then, I would go install that clone on the root and then that’s it. Using some sort of cloning script, I use one called Replicator Pro but you could do it with like MainWP. In fact, if it’s a decent host, you can just call the host or submit a support ticket to the host and tell them, “I want to move from the subdirectory to the root. Can yo handle that for me?” They’ll do it for you.
Hernan: Yeah. You’ll need to 301 if they are ranking the [inaudible 00:55:18]. You will need to 301 them to HTTP://domainname.net or something like that, you know what I mean?
Bradley: Yeah, use something like Screaming Frog domain… Website crawler or Power Mapper or something like that. You can even just do it from the sitemaps. You can literally just go look at the sitemaps on the existing site, export … Copy or you can just do a highlight and copy and paste them in an CSV file or an Excel file, whatever, Google sheet, all of the page URLs and post URLs on the site. Then when you have the hosting companies, what I would do, is just have them move it from the subdirectory to the root and once the root is up, then you would … You’d create an [HT 00:56:01] access file or excuse me, redirect for all the old links to all the new ones and you just put that in the HT access and that’s it. It’d be done. In fact, again, if you got a … If it’s a decent host, all you need to do is submit the URLs to the host and say, “Hey, can you create redirects in HT access for me,” and they’ll do it for you. Although it’s something you should probably know how to do anyways so that’s what I would do.
Hernan: I think we have time for one or maybe two more questions.
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:56:31]. All right.
Hernan: Let’s get one.
Google Knowledge Graph & Sciatica
Bradley: Let’s see. Nice, okay. “Not sure if this is new but I’m seeing interesting medical related graphs today. Google Sciatica even has a downloadable PDF.” Yeah, there’s a lot of really cool stuff going on with Knowledge Graph and Google like … I don’t know if you guys saw recently like Google’s starting to bring like social media, like an update section for branded terms right into the search results pages now so that’s even more reason that you should be blog … Content marketing for clients or for your own money site because when people search for branded terms now, some searches are returning as social media update section on the search results page. It’s pulling in the most recent post from your social sites which is really, really cool.
Hernan: Yeah, it’s cool but I haven’t … This PDF, if you go ahead and search for Sciatica, this PDF … It’s the first time I’ve seen that to be honest and it’s coming from a website. It’s coming from … Well no, it’s coming from [Gstatic.com 00:57:37]. I mean, it’s a Google generated PDF that’s taking over the entire right side of the screen so I think it’s pretty cool. Well, we need to dive into this because this is definitely Google generated. It says sources, mayo clinic and others, learn more so we’re going to dive into these because I think it’s … It goes hand-in-hand with medical searches so …
Bradley: Yeah. John, I see what you’re saying. Older … Like for example, any Instapaper account that I had setup prior to the change they made, the RSS feed still works. I’m not saying that it stopped working, what I’m saying is the new accounts. When you setup new accounts, they don’t give you the RSS feed. You can’t find it by viewing the page source anymore. If you know of a hack where you can find it … Because I spent about, at least, 30 minutes trying to find in the page source how to … Using like the ID and things like that, what this string right here is, this long string after the ID is no longer … Out of all the strings that I found in the page source for the new Instapaper format, I could not find one that worked with the site ID in this format. If you know something I don’t, please share it and I’ll make sure that I add it into the training, the new one, the IFTTT training and I’ll make sure that I give you credit for sharing it with me.
I can tell you, the new … From my experience and I spent about 30 to 40 minutes trying to locate and unhack my own RSS feed out of the new Instapaper layouts and it’s not … It’s not there anymore. With the old Instapaper, you could just right-click view page source and you’d find the /rss in this string. That was in the training but in the new Instapaper, there is no string like this. There is still an ID, a site ID but there’s no RSS and there’s … This portion of it afterwards is unique to each site does not show up anywhere in the actual page source so I can’t figure out how to pull an RSS feed out it. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. If you know something, man, please share it with me. I’ll be happy to give you credit in the training. Okay, I think we’re pretty much done.
Social Votes & Social Signal Service by Dan Anton
“Social votes, [inaudible 00:59:50].” Yeah, Dan Anton Service. I think we have a link for that too, Semanticmastery.com/socialsignals. I think it’s either that … I think it’s that. Hernan, if you can check our spreadsheet.
Hernan: Yeah, I check them.
Bradley: It’s Dan Anton Social Service, Social Signal Service. We have a link for that too. It’s … I highly recommend that one. If you’re going to be buying … Because guys, I’ve tested literally about a dozen social signal services and this is by far the best one. Okay, cool. We got all the questions. I’ll be damned. Hot damn. All right cool, 5:01. We got to wrap it up, I’ve got an interview today … I’m being interviewed so I’ve got to go but thanks everybody for being here. A lot of really good questions today. Hope you guys are looking forward to IFTTT v2 because I’m really looking forward to having it done.
Hernan: It’s looking good. It’s looking good.
Bradley: All right guys, thanks. Hernan and Marco, thanks guys.
Marco: Bye, everyone.
Hernan: Bye, guys.
Bradley: Bye.
Hernan: Bye.
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