Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 77

Click on the video above to watch Episode 43 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: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 27th of April, 2016 and we are on episode 77. Hernan is still out and about so we’ve got the four of us here today. We’ll go down the line like we usually do and say hello so we’ll start with you Chris, what’s going on?

Chris: Nothing much, doing excellent here. How you doing?

Adam: Not bad, not bad. I’m actually getting sunshine now which is nice. We almost had snow which is … It’s hard to believe it’s almost May.

Chris: Yeah.

Adam: Speaking of weather. Marco, how’s it going?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s up? It’s about to rain in Costa Rica, man. Unbelievable. It’s nice and warm still, it’s about 80 degrees so I can stand the rain when it’s 80.

Adam: Yeah, fair enough. All right, Bradley. How about you? How are things going in Virginia?

Bradley: Good man, I’m just glad to be here. Got something to do with my daughter tonight, it’s called Desserts with Dads at their school.

Adam: That sounds awesome.

Bradley: I’m going to go pick her up and take her to get a cupcake at her school with all her little friends and it’s going to be fun.

Adam: That sounds great.

Chris: [crosstalk 00:01:04].

Bradley: [crosstalk 00:01:05] rolling through this Hump Day Hangout so that I can go to do that later.

Adam: Cupcakes just sounds good so I’m onboard, yeah. We just got one quick announcement, real quick. I wanted to remind everybody that the webinar, the first one for IFTTT 2.0 for all the members is going to be tomorrow at 3:30 EST. If you are part of that, then you’ve gotten an e-mail. There’s also a link in the private Facebook group. If you’re on the border and you haven’t joined yet, by all means, join us. I’ll drop the link in here and if you joined today, you’ll still be able to make the webinar.

Bradley: The first webinar is it’s not just an update webinar, it’s also the monetization webinar where we’re going to talk about various ways to monetize networks.

Adam: All right, I think that’s it. Let’s get started.

Bradley: Let’s do it. Let me grab the screen. That was the only announcement we have? It seems like we’re awfully light today. Well, that’s cool. Let’s roll. Let’s get it done.

Schema Markup Without Physical Location

Mark O’Connell says, “Hey guys, got one for you. If I’m creating a national website and won’t be having a physical location for all locations, does that mean I can’t use Schema Markup? I heard you say it wont’ validate it doesn’t have a physical address. Is there a way to still use it or is there no way to still use it for the same as attributor, something like that for example. Am I totally screwed? Thanks.”

Mark, I don’t know whether it will validate or not. Just play with it, like take your structured data’s code or … Whether you’re going to use microdata or JSON-LD markup. It depends and just generate the code that you wan to use and then, go add it to the site and then just check it with the structured data testing tool. See if it will validate. If it comes back and it validates, then use it. It certainly won’t hurt. If it comes back invalidated, well you can still leave it on your site if you want, don’t know that it will have much of a benefit if it’s invalid code but you can just play with it.

I was actually just working on a site earlier today and I was playing with some different formats to get some structured data on a site that wasn’t WordPress so I was kind of playing around, trying to get it to work and I had to keep testing in the structured data testing tool but it eventually validated once I found the right configuration. I am not real good at that kind of code. That’s all I do is just trial and error until I get it to validate the way that I want it to and then, it works. Marco, you got something to say about that?

Marco: Yeah, I’m not sure what it is that he’s trying to validate. If it’s a name, address or phone number, it probably won’t validate for something in another state and I don’t know, another county or anything like that but [same as 00:03:47], you should have no problem validating same as as long as you use the proper structure.

Bradley: Yeah, the proper markup.

Marco: Correct.

Bradley: That’s all I would do is just … You can try to work it in and just see. If it comes back with errors within your div tags or whatever because it says that it’s missing elements, then that’s what I’m talking about is that you just have to keep playing with it until you get it to work where it comes back without any error messages and then, yeah you can leave it.

RYS Academy Strategy Only Ranks Google Docs?

Okay, Randy M says, “It seems that RYS Academy is best used if you want to rank some Google Docs in the SERPS. However, if your goal is to rank some other type of site, it wouldn’t be so effective. At other forms, the best SEO would be called for. Comments?” Well Randy, first of all, that’s quite an assumption to make if you haven’t actually been through the training because if you had gone to through training, you’d know that we actually use Google Drive files as well to rank websites and Google Maps listings. I’ve done it with both. Excuse me for a second, I got a phone call coming in apparently. Let me pause this for a minute.

Adam: [crosstalk 00:05:05].

Bradley: I’m getting hammered by sales calls again for a stupid citation business directory that I setup, business directory listing. Yeah. Anyways Randy, again, in the local case study that I did for RYS Academy, I ranked the maps listing using nothing other than RYS methods and I often use an example of my SEO for a Virginia site that I’ve ranked that was nothing but RYS methods. That was kind of an assumption that you’re making that is incorrect to begin with. I think, Marco, you said you were going to comment on something?

Marco: Well yeah, no. What I wanted to say is that that seems like a statement to me rather than something that that’s founded on testing because everything that we do is founded on tests. Whatever we do. When we made RYS Academy public, we sold it because it had solid backup for everything that we had done which included ranking websites, ranking profiles. I mean, we could literally do anything and everything we wanted with it.

In addition to that, we show people inside RYS how to map their own domain to … I don’t want to give away the fun but we show you how to … Exactly how to rank your website if that’s what you’re looking to do, money site, affiliate site, whatever it is that you want to do, we show you exactly how to do it. All you have to do is take a look at the advanced webinars.

He’s welcome to post at RYS Academy if he is a member of RYS Academy, he should be in the Facebook group and I will be happy to discuss this with him indepth inside the Facebook group. What’s inside RYS Academy, stays inside RYS Academy and all I’m saying is … I mean, you can take and rank anything you want with it, period.

Bradley: Yeah. Yeah and it’s actually … It’s incredibly effective and it seems like it’s only becoming even more effective which is crazy to be honest with you. I’m actually working on a case study for Mastermind members, it’s just going to be a short one but then, I talked about on our last Mastermind webinar that I was going to possibly setup a local case study … Another local case study. I’ve shared the industry and everything that I was going to be doing it for using nothing but Google Properties and I actually started working on that yesterday. Probably within a couple of weeks, I’ll have some examples. That’s another reason to be a member of Mastermind because you’ll get to see that live case study using nothing but Google sites or Google Properties.

IFTTT Networks and Trust Flow

Dean says, “Hi guys, would you say IFTTT networks in general increase the main website’s trust flow?” Well, they can Dean. They can but you certainly have to do the correct things to make that happen. “Just having an IFTTT network in itself is not going to increase trust flow because that’s what … Would be cool. We’re looking at the Semantic Mastery website which uses a lot of networks and the trust flow [at root 00:08:00] is seven and the citation 25. If I have 2,012 [Penguin hit 00:08:05] site that has a higher trust than that which is worth asking why and I think a lot of people would benefit from the info.”

All right, well I can answer briefly that we don’t really work too much on monitoring and managing the trust flow on our main website for Semantic Mastery because that’s not how we … We don’t drive the majority of the traffic to our website through search so there’s a difference. There’s also a lot of people linked to us without us having any control over that so first of all, that’s a battle that happens that we would have to constantly stay on top of and if it was … If we were trying to drive traffic through SEO mainly, then that would be different but most of the traffic we generate is through social media and Youtube and that kind of thing.

That’s one thing, we’re not monitoring. Plus, the other thing is again, we haven’t had … We don’t have control over other people linking to us. Now, when I’m working on a client site or a lead gen site or an affiliate site or something like that, typically I’m going to be manipulating search or trying to manipulate the trust flow metrics in order to help it to rank better so that I have … To manipulate search results through my … Through manipulating trust flow if that makes sense, the topical trust flow. That’s typically when I will be working on that kind of stuff. Now, that said I think Marco you said you were going to have a comment on that as well?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, when we actually did the trust flow test for RYS Academy, we got one of our sub-domains up to 40+ trust flow. I can’t remember the topical trust flow but it was in the 30s and then, we never did anything after it because as you said, it’s not something that we concentrate on since most of our traffic is not an organic … Well, it is organic in [crosstalk 00:09:56] …

Bradley: It’s not an organic search.

Marco: Yeah, it’s not organic search through Google and so, the things that we have concentrated on as far as ranking, we have developed enough trust, not maybe trust flow which is a Majestic metric that we can’t control and we have no idea how it’s working but we’ve developed enough trust rank and topical trust to organically rank up in the things that we go after. The thing to remember here is that on a lot of the things that we do, a lot of the affiliate and the money sites that we have and everything else.

We manipulate trust flow and topical trust flow but we wouldn’t reveal it in public, we wouldn’t reveal what we do with that. I mean, we’ll reserve that for our Mastermind and our Masterclass especially our case studies and that’s because there are many who will listen in and then, they will go in and they’ll take a look and try to see how to take you down, how to affect your ranking so that they can improve theirs, they will try to negatively affect your SEO. I mean, you found it. Every time you make a URL public, it gets the index, right?

Bradley: Yeah, that’s right.

Marco: On your test so we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to reveal exactly what we’re working on. What we will tell you is that if you apply the techniques that we show you through IFTTT version 2.0 in the Masterclass and in the Mastermind, in RYS Academy and everything else that we do, Dean, you’re going to rank. It might not show on your trust flow but I wouldn’t worry about it because I would worry more about topical trust flow. I think people are worried too much about the negative factors and the algorithm, like the [Google Dance 00:11:43], Penguin, Panda, however else, Pigeon, Hummingbird, RankBrain and when it all comes down to it, it has nothing to do with it.

It has to do with whether you’re building quality links from trusted sources because when you do that, then you’re affecting the co-citation, co-occurrences, the seasonal, the [freshness 00:12:06], the trust rank, the topical trust, quality signals, distance rank and the ranking. This one ends up in a ranking score which is how Google is determining where you’re going to rank. Everything that you do the right way or the wrong way is going to influence your ranking score.

What’s your ranking score? We don’t know and we have no way of knowing because Google isn’t making that public but we do know that among the top three things that affect search engine rankings is still links, the knowledge links from trusted sources and how far you are from trusted sources. What we’ve been teaching people through IFTTT v1 and now, v2.0 is exactly how to go in, I call it the Google [Tickle 00:12:54] and tickle Google the right ways so that you benefit from it and how to stay away from doing things that are going to affect you negatively.

Google Voice Number for GMB Listings

Bradley: Okay. Ryan says, “Hey Bradley, is it okay to use a Google Voice number to Google My Business listing? This is for a real business of services for the surrounding area that would light a few map listings setup. Thanks.” As far as I know, you can Ryan. I haven’t had any issues with it. I’ve had a Google Voice number for my local consulting agency now for well since 2012 so four years and it’s still valid and I still use it all the time so I can’t imagine it being an issue.

I’ve never used a Google My Business phone number for a … Or excuse me, a Google voice number for a Google My Business listing only because I was always concerned that if Google decided that they were going to take that away or close it for whatever reason, they’ll stop your Google Voice service or they terminated that particular account or whatever, then I would be screwed and I’d have to go update all of my citations. All the citations out on the web, the phone number would have to be changed which is a nightmare in itself.

I always just rent a number from a virtual phone number rental place. I use CallFire mainly for that kind of stuff. I’ve used other services as well, [Twilio 00:14:15], Vumber, Phone.com, several other services but mostly, CallFire.com. As far as I know, yeah. You should be able to use a Google Voice number for that. Just keep that in mind that if Google ever decides for whatever reason that they’re going to shut that number down or that service down, you’re going to be left to have to update a bunch of citations. Just keep that in mind.

Power up Basic Branded IFTTT Network

John says, “During the IFTTT training, you recommended that powering up your branded network which was confusing because I thought [boarding links 00:14:44] AKA SERP Space was only for [tier 2 00:14:47] properties.” I’m not sure what gave you that impression, John, because it’s not. I don’t believe it says that anywhere on the sales page. The link boarding services out of SERP space is for IFTTT networks or PBNs, that’s all. We just don’t … We just will not accept … We’re not going to build link direct to your money site. It’s got to be built to your one links and beyond.

Marco: Yeah, I think that’s where the confusion came in that we will go to T1 branded because our guy, Ross, in doing this, he has a lot of experience. He’s been doing it for awhile and he’s really effective but if you’re doing it yourself and you don’t know what you’re doing, then stay away from T1. That’s where you jump out to T2 if you’re testing but know, by all means, if you’re experienced with link building and using all the link building tools then go ahead in T1, it can [stand the abuse 00:15:40].

Bradley: Yeah. He says, “My question is other than posting at a higher frequency from the money blog to feed the branded network, is there anything else besides that in tiers and hitting those with signals. Do you suggest that in order to safely power up the basic branded network?” Yeah, again if you’re … If you know how to … If you’re skilled with the tool or you have access to linked networks, that kind of thing, you can use those to power up your tier 1 network or you can hire us to do it. You can use SAPE links for example or if you have a private blog network, you can use those.

I wouldn’t … I always recommend not using private … PBN sites unless they’re themed really well and they’re very tightly … Very closely related to what they’re going to be linking to so in other words, the topic is very closely related to the sites that they’re going to be linking to. Most PBNs aren’t built correctly according to their standards now because they’re not themed well enough. A lot of people still have PBNs, I know I do. I’ve got hundred of sites that are still up that aren’t being utilized like they were three, four years ago because they’re not themed so well.

Am I going to get rid of all of them? No, I am actually getting rid of quite a few of them as they … I just let them expire as the domain goes up for registration again but a lot of them, I still have that I’m using is tier 2 links. In other words, I use those PBNs to build links to to your one properties or citations or anything else that’s a tier 1 link so … Because some of them still have SEO value even though they’re not themed properly so they’re not topically relevant and just per se, the whole domain isn’t themed well so it doesn’t have one central topic that governs the entire site. Those links still have some value although I wouldn’t link directly to a money site. Anything that you have access to like that, John, would be helpful. Spam tools, private blog networks, SAPE links …

Marco: RYS Academy.

Bradley: RYS Academy, yeah. Anything that you have or you can hire us to do it and that’s what our link building service is for.

Flavor.me Excluded in IFTTT V.2

Greg says, “I’m wondering what changes prompt of Flavors.me will not be included in IFTTT v2. Thanks.” Greg, that would be a great question for Hernan. Unfortunately, he’s not here. We have an update webinar tomorrow though so maybe if I can get a chance to chat with him prior to tomorrow, I’ll have an answer for that on tomorrow’s update webinar because I’m curious as well, Flavors.me is a good site and I’m wondering why he did not include that when he updated that training but there’s got to be reason for it. If not, we’ll add it back in. Maybe it got missed, I don’t know. I’ll have to confirm with Hernan but if not, we’ll add it back in to the training because that’s, in part, what the updates are for.

Syndicating Content to SameAs Schema PBN Sites

Ryan says, “Let’s say I had a really powerful PBN or a powerful set that’s possibly declared as a SameAs using SCHEMA, would you recommend syndicating blog content to this property even though it is not branded the same as your main money site? I would provide proper attribution, however I’m wondering if there would be some downside to doing this, kind of like using Blogger for example but a non-branded, powerful T1 site. Thanks.” I wouldn’t do that with same as, Ryan. With the same as attributor, it’s supposed to be pointing … It’s like a canonical. It’s pointing to other properties that are identifying you as you as you or the brand as the brand. This sounds like you’re trying to spam same as for some sort of SEO benefit.

Well, in my opinion, it wouldn’t benefit you at all if you’re pointing … You’re canonicalizing or giving credit … You’re saying … Using the same as attributor to point to something that’s non-branded. Then to me, that seems like it’s just clearly structured data spam so I wouldn’t recommend doing it. I mean, I haven’t tested that, I don’t know, maybe … Personally, I wouldn’t do it because I would be afraid or concerned of it’d be considered as structured data spam. I mean, just common sense will tell you that it is anyways. Even if there was some minor SEO benefit from it, short-term, chances are it would become an issue very quickly. It probably sooner than later because it’s not something that actually … Like same as attributor is supposed to be pointing to extensions of your brand, saying, “Hey, this is us over here as well.” It’s a way to validate identity.

Marco: If it’s that powerful, then he can just drop an IFTTT syndication network around it to get some content curation going and some links going to his tier 1 and I think that he would get even more benefit doing it that way than just formatting a same as attributor.

IFTTT Backlinks for Surgical Niche Sites

Bradley: Yeah. Kevin says, “Hey, guys. If I’m in the surgical niche, are our IFTTT back links enough to rank or would I need also normal health sites/ health PBN links going to the pages I want to rank as well?” That’s too difficult for us to answer, Kevin, without looking … I mean, chances are if you’re in a competitive niche, I don’t know that … Or surgical niche is, I guess in some terms it would be but if you’re in a … If it is competitive, if it’s a competitive niche that you knew you’re likely going to need more than just your IFTTT network, there are several things that you can do for competitive niches that … In addition to your IFTTT networks that will help.

One of those being increase your frequency of publishing and make sure that you’re writing or curating really good posts for your blog because that’s going to be powerful and do it consistently. Like I said, increase your frequency of publishing. That’s going to help powering up your IFTTT network, it’s going to help your branded network and then yeah, if you have a health … Access to a health PBN or health links, then you can point directly to your money pages but if, again just like I mentioned earlier, if you have a PBN that’s not themed so well, then use that to boost your IFTTT network properties. Chances are you might … You’re going to need more than that.

Like for example, I’ve been talking a lot about this lately, I’ve been using the Blue Chip Backlinks in order to find topically relevant domains that I can purchase for just the cost of registration and I can very quickly rebuild the old content on those domains using the Archive.org downloader which is right inside the Blue Chip Backlinks dashboard, upload it to the server that I pointed the domain to and I’ve rebuilt the old site and all I got to do is go in and hack an HTML link back to my money site and that’s it. It’s not like installing WordPress and then have to create posts and all these other stuff, that’s what I’ve been doing to power up beyond just the IFTTT networks.

Then, at least, whatever I’m point at, the domains are … They’re 100% relevant to what I need and then, I’m … They’re re-built so it’s not like I’m using spammy content. If they were, at some point, real websites and they weren’t just private blog network sites then now, I’ve got a link coming from a real site with real content pointing to my money site. It’s not … Obviously, IFTTT networks is my foundation but if there’s something that needs some additional boost, there’s multiple ways to get it.

Best Links to Optimize RSS Feeds

All right, one other quick question if that’s okay. “One link loading to an RSS feeds of ours, do we just hit them with GSR or they needed to be cleaner links, say a layer of GSA?” Yeah, I wouldn’t be spamming your RSS feeds because that puts direct links back to your money site. Just keep that in mind.

I would use a layer … If you’re going to do that, like again, what I would recommend doing is something cleaner if you’re going to do that. I typically don’t build links to RSS feeds but some people do and I know, Hernan, he’s done some testing with that and he could comment on that if he were here so maybe we’ll bring that up again another week. Hernan is actually not having Flavors.me. “Hey, check this out. At the moment of recording the videos, it was actually really funky so I decided to add it later as an update with that and About.me, [500px 00:24:09] and Behance tool as a hub.” Well, About.me is already on there so Hernan must be watching, he just can’t participate.

Adam: No, I’m talking to him right now on the site.

Bradley: Yeah, About.me is already in the training so if he wants … Maybe Flavors.me, if it’s back up, we can add it to the training within the next week or so.

Cleanest Approach for Adding Tiers/Networks for Multi-Location Stores

All right, next one. John says, “I have a client with multiple store locations, a headquarter’s office in a large metro using WP multi-site with one domain plus city/store mini-sites inside folders, not sub-domains. As with any multi-location client, the HQ office or brand doesn’t want their office location listed because it creates map confusion with the stores plus the HQ doesn’t want local walk-in traffic like a store would. The tier 1 branded headquarter network domain is currently a primary source of RSS IFTTT content, I’m just wondering what the cleanest approach is for adding tiers or network for the cities where each store is located. Do you recommend building a tier 1 branded network for each city’s location page site or just run location specific content for each city through the main?“

All right, this question comes up with slight subtle differences. Every single week, I swear. Maybe Adam, if you could make a note, we’ll try to maybe make a frequently asked question out of this because I feel like we answer this question every week. That’s fine, it just comes up though it’s slightly different … It’s asked slightly differently every time but it’s pretty much the same answer. All right, so if you’ve got sub-domain sites or sub-directory sites, really that makes no difference. Those details really make no difference to the question that you’re asking. The question is do each one of your individual city sites, the individual sites for each city location or each store location. Should they each get their own network or should you just do more content through the one main blog that right now is populating the branded network with one branded network? Okay, we talked about this, I think, at length last week as well.

If you have … What I suggest doing is trying to use just one branded network first and use your main domain … Your root domain is your main blog if that happens to be on the root domain as your content distribution engine in which you can build links from that blog to all of your individual location sites so each separate site that you have but if you find that you’re not getting the movement that you want … Well see, here’s the thing and I remember specifically talking about this last week, if you have 10 sub-domains or in your case, sub-directories, again that makes no difference to this method. It’s either way, whether it’s sub-directory or sub-domain, it’s the same thing in my opinion. At least for this particular discussion. You can build links from your main blog to all those 10 different sub-domain sites and see if it … Some of them, we’re going to have some probably substantial movement from just that alone, some them aren’t.

The ones that don’t, they’re going to require some additional work. Those are the ones that I would go out and put … Let’s say out of 10, four of them … Four of them actually responded very well to the blog post that you were posting through your main blog on your root domain but six of them … A couple of them had some slight movement but wasn’t great and a couple of them didn’t really budge at all. What I would is prioritize which ones are the most important to you and then, start building individual IFTTT rings. They’re branded rings with the modification that they’re made location specific. In other words, you can share the same brand but you need to add a local modifier, geographical modifier to that particular brand name or whatever in order to make that network unique to that particular area. If that makes sense. Only add additional networks if needed to the sites that aren’t responding as well or as quickly maybe perhaps as you would like them to. Then, start building networks around that.

I always try to do the least amount of work possible to achieve the results that I want and then, I find out like if I tried to do the least amount of work possible and I’m not getting the results that I want, then I’ll start to add to it. That’s what I say so instead of going right off the bat and saying, “Okay, I’m going to build a new IFTTT network for every location site,” don’t do that. Start just posting to your main blog, monitor results. You’re going to see some movement across some of the sites that’s going to be more aggressive or faster then it is across other sites. The ones that are slower and you want to speed up, those are the ones that I would focus on, adding location specific rings to. Hopefully, that makes sense.

3rd Party Tool to Schedule Monthly Website Stat Report from Analytics

All right, Jay [Aldred 00:29:03]. Hey Jay, I’m going to plus one you just because you haven’t commented here in awhile. He says, “I have a client that has asked me to provide and do analytic reports and suggestions for all of their customers. Have you used any third party tools that allow you to create report templates and scheduled reports so that all I need to do is review the data and make suggestions?” I don’t do any of that as far as analytics. Like my level of reporting to my clients for analytics is just a matter of taking screenshots of their analytics. Most of them … A few of my clients have access to the analytics so they can actually log-in but the majority of them, they don’t even ask for them. I just send them a Google Analytics screenshot everyday or excuse me, every month. I know there were some of the … One of the tools, the SEO Suite, SEO Suite Tools by … Shit, I can’t remember the name of it now. They have … Clint Butler, one of our members. He …

Adam: The Power Suite?

Bradley: Yeah, Power Suite. That’s it. SEO Power Suite. I hear they’ve got great reporting options. I’ve heard some really good things about them. I think they’re pretty expensive but it’s really good. Have you any experience with that, Adam?

Adam: Yeah, but it’s been like a year or so. If Clint wants to say something, I’ll let him speak because I know he uses it regularly.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: [G Sheets 00:30:18].

Bradley: G Sheets.

Marco: G Sheets. You can get them as add-on and hook it up to Analytics and you can run the points and you can actually schedule the reports, you can get any information that you want that’s available in your analytics, into your G Sheets and then you can go ahead and produce whatever report and then, data and suggestions you need [crosstalk 00:30:40].

Bradley: That’s free, I bet.

Marco: Of course, it is. It’s Drive. RYS Academy, man.

Bradley: Very cool. I’m going to have to look into that actually because that’s kind of cool.

Adam: Yeah, I’m trying to think … If you want to home roll it, you could do something with SAPE here because they can work with Drive objects and then, probably hook it into Analytics but anyways, that’s another option.

Bradley: Yeah, SEO Power Suite was the one that was I thinking of. I know that we’ve had … That come up in the Mastermind a couple of times and I’ve watched some of the discussions in the Mastermind and I think there’s a general consensus that that’s one of the better reporting suites, software suites.

Boosting Google My Business Page Rank with Keyword + Neighboring City

Ryan says, “I’ve got a business ranking apps for the city it’s located in and it also shows up in map results for a neighboring city, just not in the top three. Could building a few links to the site using keyword plus neighboring city as anchor text boost the map’s position or does anchor text only affect organic results?” No. As far as I know, it will also affect maps because I’ve been able to do that as well.

That and then also, if you can add in … What I would do is … On the money site, what I’m saying is I’ve done the same thing, Ryan, where I’ve added backlinks to the site. Also, to some of the citations with the other city name, the neighboring city, the adjacent city that I want to rank better for in maps. I’ve seen results with that but the other thing is is I also make sure that I’m blogging from the main site and including blog posts targeting that neighboring city so that I’m getting content on the site that’s … Then, linking to the … Like the homepage from within the content body or whatever so that there … I’m creating that relevancy between that other location and my main site through the content on the blog which then gets syndicated to the IFTTT network so just keep that in mind. There are two things you can do. Build some keyword anchor text links to your site using the geographic modifier as part of the anchor text. Yes, that will help but also, creating relevant content, relevant to that city I mean or that other location.

Just doing that consistently. It takes some time, guys, depending on how competitive it is. It’s just a few posts and you’ll start to see some significant different results especially if you’re already showing up in maps, maybe not in the top three but if you’re already given impression in maps for that other city name, keyword plus city, then it means you’re already … Google already detects some relevancy there anyways so you all need to do is nudge it along a bit. You can do that by … You can do that with on the page just by creating content optimized for that other location. All right, this is John, can’t remember his last name but his name is John [inaudible 00:33:35].

He says, “All I have to say is thank you and success. I followed what you guys said and I am seeing a huge increase in traffic. Listen to these guys, they’re awesome.” That’s sweet, I’m going to plus one that. “Adam, three words: [dollar, shave, club 00:33:50].” [crosstalk 00:33:53]?

Adam: I have no comment.

Chris: [crosstalk 00:33:57]? I’m kind of disappointed.

Adam: Yeah, there’s no meaning for that.

Bradley: Let’s see. Yeah, it must be his connection. Okay, Bryan says, “Two quick ones: what is best practice for ranking 3 Pack of cities surrounding my client’s main city?” Well, we just answered that Bryan. Just refer to the last question and the answer. “How do I get in the ranks for more keywords in 3 Pack for his main city? Thanks.” Again, more content on the site. Make that part of your … Bryan, for getting the rank for more keywords, there’s a few different strategies. I’ve talked about that at length recently in one of our either Masterclass or Mastermind webinars but there’s a few things that you can do. Like I said, you could add … First and foremost, just use your blog to add additional content that is targeting those other keywords that you want. That would be my first recommendation. That way you’re adding the content, you can still link from within that content to the pages on your site that you’re trying to rank which will kind of reinforce that whole theme.

Then, the other thing that you can do is you can create other backlinks like we just talked about targeting that new content that you’re going to add so that’s going to reinforce it so there’s your on page and your off page signals and then, there’s some additional off page signals that you can do which I talked about with citations. For every main money site, you’re going to … Especially when you’re trying to rank in local, guys, you can determine what Google thinks are the most important citations, the most important directories to be listed on, the ones that they give the most weight to by searching for two out of three data points within the NAP. For example, name, address, phone number. If you go search for the business’s name plus the business’s phone number so business name plus phone number in the Google search bar, then it’s going to return all the listings that Google … Whatever’s on page one, those directories … A lot of times, you’ll see Yelp.

You’ll see depending on the industry, you’ll see like for example, for limo services, you’ll see like Wedding Wire. For restaurants, you’ll see TripAdvisor. There are certain directories that you’ll always see on page one when you do a search like that where you check two data points from the NAP. What I look at is the top two pages so whatever the top 20 results and I’ll just make a note of that so I’ll open up like three different tabs in a browser and I’ll do a search on my business plus phone number then the competitors that I’m researching which whoever’s in position number one in maps and whoever’s in position number two in maps. I’ll search on those and if there’s three people on maps and I’m not in the 3 Pack then I’ll search all three and I’ll do the same thing. I’ll do name plus business name plus phone number. Each tab will open up and I’ll look for each business.

Then, I’ll make a note by just comparing the search results for each one of those businesses, I’ll see several directories on page one and page two that are common across all of those different sites that I’m looking at. Across each competitor’s search results, I’ll see the same directories listed on page one and page two. Those are the ones that I know are the most powerful citations according to Google for that industry in that city because it’s going to be different every time, guys. Even if you … If you pick another industry in the same city, you’re going to see a different set of results that are common across the top three and the same thing goes if you pick another at the same industry but a different city. You’ll still see variations but you’ll end up seeing similarities across the top three always. You’ll always be able to find some. Those are the most powerful ones. Well within those citations, you’re going to use your main keywords as part of the tags or in the description or whatever when you’re building those citations to your money site.

For supporting keywords, to get … To rank for additional keywords in that 3 Pack, then what you should do is for the lesser important citations, the ones that are not considered … Or given as much wait by Google, those are the ones that are back on page three and four and five when you search name plus phone number or name plus address or address plus phone number. Those are the ones that when you go in and optimize the descriptions in those … The business descriptions to target those other supporting keywords instead of your main keywords. That way, you’re still getting the directory listings but you’re targeting other keywords. There are few different ways there that you can actually do that, Bryan. Again, we covered that awhile back so … Somewhat recently in Masterclass or Mastermind.

Marco: Since Adam posted it on there, RYS Academy [crosstalk 00:38:38].

Bradley: Of course. All right. “When is version 2 of RYS Academy coming?” Don’t know, [Gantee 00:38:47]. Gantee, we already covered that. He says, “Has the Google Drive static website is going to be deprecated by August 2016, would it be covering something else in the RYS 2 Academy when it comes?” Yeah, it’s Amazon S3 hosting. I believe that’s in the Update Section inside the training already.

Marco: Yeah, it’s already in there. There are no plans for version 2 because RYS Academy is working even better today than it was when we started.

Bradley: Yep. Jason Clement even says, “RYS is getting stronger, I agree.” Thanks, Jason. That’s what I’ve been noticing too. Hernan, I’m going to plus one him even though he’s out riding camels instead of hanging out with us. Yeah, let’s see. What else do we have …

Tier 1 Not Linking to Branded Network

Earl, “Did I shoot my client in the foot? [I bought 00:39:39] a tier 1 network for blog posting for a local client without mentioning his existing Google Plus page. Now, all the interlink properties are connected to the Personas Google Plus page and not my client’s. I assume this will hurt or at least, not help his chances to rank in the 3 Pack. Should I get one and change all the interconnections to client’s actual Google My Business page? Any other info need to be changed?” Yeah, absolutely. If you had an existing Google Plus page, you can send that to us when you order and you have to send us your page log-in details. We do not and will not accept your main Google account log-in details.

If somebody sends that to us, we automatically reject the order but we do accept Google Plus page log-ins and we even provide you with a video on how to do that, how to create your page log-in that you can send to us at which time we will connect that Google Plus page to the network. However, if the network is already completed, then I would suggest that you’re just going to have to go in and do that yourself but absolutely, you should go in and edit each one of those. You want to swap out the Google Plus that’s connected to your network to the one that you want it to be, your client’s Google My Business page so that whenever you post to your blog or Youtube videos whichever … However you got it setup, it’s going to automatically post to the Google Plus My Business … The Google My Business page, the local page. That activity plus the relevant content and the regular updates are going to give that local page an edge over the competitors which helps it to rank in maps.

At the same time, for the rest of the properties in the network, you want to go in and swap out the link to the correct Google My Business page wherever it’s interlinked. A little bit of a pain in the ass but you can get through that in about 20 to 30 minutes. If you have a clean browser and you got your network spreadsheet open, you can literally get through that in about 20 minutes. “Google Voice will overload and you will not get all the calls, I tried before.” That’s good advice then, John, because I’ve never used it. I’ve always wanted to use a paid service that I had more control over. I know that people have used it in the past but that’s a good thing. If you’re getting that much call volume, then you can afford to pay for a phone number somewhere.

Submit RSS Software

“Does Submit RSS Software feed to a directory or is it only pinging them?” I’m not sure which one you’re talking about, if you’re talking about RSS Submit 5, yeah they actually submit to directories and aggregate them.

Some of them have a bit of a manual aspect now, RSS Submit 5 does but that … What’s good about that is they’re a lot less spammed because there’s a manual aspect to actually submitting so they’re not spammed near as much which means they’re a better place to submit to. I don’t know about Submit RSS Software but the RSS Submit … Because there’s a lot of them out there with very similar names. The ones that we talk about in the training? Those absolutely do submit to the directories because you have to create accounts on a lot of them but they’ve got an account creator like built-in to the software now.

Google Suspends Multi-tier IFTTT Account

Daniel says, “What could be a reason that a Google account created with a multi-tier IFTTT account gets suspended?” Could be a number of things, Daniel. They’re not a 100% foolproof. There are times that they do get terminated unfortunately.

A lot of the times, you’ll notice with the Google accounts like if … What’s crazy is for some reason, sometimes the accounts will go 404. They’ll look like they’ve disappeared and then … If you try to log-in, it’ll just ask you to re-verify the account and once you re-verify the account, all your properties come back up. That’s happened on many occasions. I’m not sure what triggers that but for some reason, you’ll notice that sometimes your Blogger account will be down or something and you’ll go look at the Google Plus or something and it will show a 404, nothing to see here message and then you go and try to log-in to that account and it’ll ask you to re-verify the account which you might have to do. Then once you’ve re-verify, all of those properties come back up. You might want to check that but other than that, I mean sometimes you just lose an account. That’s all there is to it, Daniel. It just happens. It sucks sometimes but it happens.

WordPress Themes with Silo Capabilities

All right, we’re going to answer just a couple of more and then we’re done, guys, which is good because we’re almost at the top anyways. “Do you recommend any WordPress themes which have built-in SEO silo capabilities?” Yeah, the one ultimately silo … It’s the one by SEO Ultimate. SEO Design Framework. SEO Design Framework. That’s the site that’s got built-in silo capabilities. It’s really cool actually. It’s a great, great platform. SEO Design Framework, go check it out. The downloader link to rebuild sites, Bryan, it’s inside of Blue Chip Backlinks. There’s a site rebuilder button inside of Blue Chip Backlinks that will allow you to download the Archive.org HTML pages. I do all that from right inside the dashboard.

Okay, last one. “Free reporting for Google [inaudible 00:44:57].” That’s awesome. “I use SEO Power Suite. I like it a lot and did the clients. Wait for a sale and you can get it for crazy cheap. Use free option until that time.” There, Clint’s … That was the SEO Power Suite that I was talking about and he just confirmed that. Okay, all right. That looks like it, guys. All right, well everybody thanks for being here. We will see you next week for Hump Day Hangouts and we don’t have anything else to talk about, like anything happening before that, do we Adam? Looks like Adam …

Chris: He must be running in the woods.

Bradley: He must have gone running in the woods again. You know what that means, right? Running …

Chris: Yeah. I just saw him eating an apple with oregano.

Bradley: All right, cool. Well, [crosstalk 00:45:47] we have the first IFTTT webinar tomorrow guys, don’t forget. The first update webinar plus monetization methods. That’s at 3:30 PM so we’ll see you guys then, otherwise we’ll see you next week. Thanks for being here. Thanks, guys.