Click on the video above to watch Episode 106 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: We’re live.
Adam: All right everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, episode 106, the episode where we’re no longer together. But we’ll just go down the line and say hi, anyway. Hey Chris, how’s it going man?
Chris: Doing good.
Adam: And Hernan? What’s up?
Hernan: Hey, everybody. Hey. It’s really good to be here. I miss you guys. I hope we kill it. I’m not hoping. I just waited so that we can like this year … So that we can hang out real, real soon.
Adam: Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Marco, I got to ask you, man. How’s the weather?
Marco: I’m still in paradise, man. I left Panama and came back to paradise, so win-win.
Adam: Yeah.
Hernan: I heard it’s raining ashes.
Marco: It was for a few days. It’s been okay lately, but it makes no difference. It just makes the ground more fertile, so anything you plant … You could plant your own garden, get plenty of vegetables. It’s win-win, man. You can’t lose, right? Weather, rain …
Adam: I love that. There’s a volcano and, “Yeah, you can grow a good garden.”
Chris: Yeah.
Marco: Plenty of ash. Fertilizer.
Adam: Good deal. Good deal. Well, Bradley, how’s it going?
Bradley: Good. Glad to be home. Although I came back to kind of cold weather. It sucks, but other than that, I’m just glad to be home.
Adam: That’s good. It keeps you inside, and it keeps you busy, right?
Bradley: Keeps me working, yeah.
Adam: All right. Well, just a few short announcements and we’ll get rolling today, everybody. We wanted to let you know … Obviously Local Kingpin is still available, and I’m going to let Bradley talk a little bit about this, how it ties in, but we just talked to Justin Sardi not too long ago. I’m sure a lot of your guys know him, or have heard of him, or maybe even taken one of his courses. He’s going to be having a limited opening for his video ads crash course. This is the third version. He’s been updating it for … Man, I don’t even … I took … I bought the one like two years ago, or 18 months ago?
But I think it was even before that. I know I talked to Bradley about this, but Bradley, you thought this would be a good tie-in with Local Kingpin, right?
Bradley: Yeah. I haven’t been through the most recent update though, so I don’t know. As long as he covers local stuff in there. I think he did in the first release of “Video Ads Crash Course Three”. Yeah, it’s so much more in-depth into specifically YouTube ads than what I was able to cover in Local Kingpin. Which, by the way, that’s not complete yet. The video ads section inside of local kingpin isn’t done yet. I’m waiting to get my second case study really rolling, which is in a much larger city, so it covers a much broader area, so the targeting is a little bit better.
But that said, if you really want to get good at YouTube ads or AdWords for video, then Justin Sardi’s course is awesome, and he’s relaunching it at $27, or $37 or something ridiculous. It’s totally worth it.
Adam: Awesome. Totally. I liked it. I’m going to get back in, and I’ve been meaning to get to it. This winter, I think I’m going to get started with that again. It was definitely one of those shiny objects that I bought and walked away from, and now I’m kicking myself in the ass.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: Man, YouTube ads are certainly an interesting part of this. Let’s see … After that, we’re going to have some stuff coming up. I’m totally stretching this out for everybody, but we’ve got … Let’s just say, some good deals coming up with Black Friday. We’re going to be doing our own version. I’ll leave it at that right now, and say we got some really cool stuff.
I know Hernan wants to say something.
Hernan: Oh yeah. We’re going to have a ton of cool stuff.
Adam: Awesome. All right, and speaking of AdWords and paid ads, and some traffic, and while we’re here … Hopefully everybody can see the hat, and see what it says. If you want one of these hats, just leave a comment during the show today, and tell us what you think you could do … What’s the best thing you could do with AdWords, video YouTube ads. Tell us what your master plan is, and we’re going to pick one of those comments, and we’ll send you a hat for free.
Bradley: Sweet. All you got to do is participate?
Adam: Yeah. Just be active and be here. Yeah. With that, though, let’s do this.
Bradley: All right. Well, that said, let me grab the screen, and I’m just going to show the whole screen again as usual, and you guys can see Godzilla in the bottom right corner here, scratching his chest or something. All right. Just a minute. Let me zoom in a little bit, and we’ll get started.
Okay. Mark O’Connell’s up and he’s always here every week. We appreciate that, Mark, and for that I’ll plus-one it. He says, “Hi guys, I don’t have a question, just a comment.” Okay. “Sorry if it’s not applicable, because I know this is for questions, but I just wanted to thank Marco for choosing me for a Drive Stack on the big 104. It was awesome and unexpected. I wanted to message Marco via Google+ but didn’t want to bother him, as I would imagine he is busy trying to make Google beg for mercy. I wouldn’t want to intrude on that, and didn’t want to do it last week, because you guys were celebrating. I already thanked Adam.”
Well, awesome Mark. We appreciate you always showing up and participating anyways. Your comments are always welcome, so thank you.
Branded Email Vs. Gmail In IFTTT Rings
Dean is up next. He says, “Hi guys. I hope you don’t feel too rough after Panama.” I did. Quick story, I was … I left Panama last Friday, and flew back to Miami and spent the night in Miami, and I was in the Miami airport in the morning to fly back to Virginia. All of a sudden I got this awful pain in my abdomen. It felt like appendicitis or kidney stones. I wasn’t sure what it was … And I was in Miami, trying to fly back to Virginia, and so I ended up flying back to Virginia praying that my appendix wouldn’t burst on the plane.
I ended up going straight from the airport to the emergency room, and I was in the emergency room for four and a half hours. Got a CT scan, and all this crap, just to find out it was a kidney infection. I was pissed, because I was like, “Man, I spent four hours in ER. I probably spent a couple thousand dollars.” Then I started thinking, “Why am I complaining about finding out that I’m okay?”
I was like, “Damn, I went there and I don’t even have nothing.” But it could have been the other way. It could have been … It was terrible, though, coming back. I think it’s because we drank and ate too much while we were in Panama. What do you guys think?
Hernan: I think that might be the case, Bradley.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: I think that’s it. I feel much better. I was just pissed off because I was in this weird wing terminal in Miami. I thought I had it bad.
Bradley: Yeah. It sucked dude, because I mean it hurt like a son of a gun too, and it was like … The doctors said, “Oh, well. Just take some Aleve and take it easy for a couple days.” I was like, “Dammit.” Anyways. Everything’s good now, so.
Marco: You can never eat and drink too much.
Bradley: Yeah, apparently you can. Apparently my kidney thought otherwise.
Marco: Yeah. You know what Sid Fletcher would say.
Bradley: Yeah. “You’re going to hurt your … ” No, I’m kidding. All right.
Marco: It’s the ceviche.
No, it shouldn’t be. Let’s see. “I do see through their Google account they have access to Google drive etc and the account shows connected sites and apps so I’m assuming its not a problem just the same as having a Gmail?”
Yeah. Because once you’ve registered a Gmail with Google, like for example, your recovery email, you should be able to log in with that email address as the username, if that makes sense. If you’ve connected your web mail account with your Gmail account, especially as the recovery email, then I’m pretty sure you can log in using the web mail address as the username, and Google recognizes that as being one and the same, if that makes sense. It shouldn’t be an issue.
“They have given me a branded email from their Gmail setup myname@theircompany.com and I have made myself an owner of their google my business local page, brand page and youtube account so will my new persona email get all the credit and trust an ifttt ring brings just the same as if i had setup a separate Gmail for them?”
Yeah. Again, it doesn’t make any difference, Dean. It doesn’t make any difference. Because whether … As long as that web mail account is connected to that Google account, and all of the pages and drive and all that stuff, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s still the same Google account, whether it’s using a web mail or a Gmail. It doesn’t matter. Okay?
Adding RYS Drive Stack
Lori’s up. It’s been a while since she’s commented. What’s up Lori? She says, “Hi guys! I hope you enjoyed your time in Panama plotting and planning against Google.” And we did. “We have a law client that we made an RYS drive stack for. We’re trying for a pretty competitive keyword phrase, so we would like to add additional drive stacks. When you do that, do you use the same G-Drive account, or start fresh with a new account? I followed Bradley’s local case study, but they aren’t ranking as high as we would like. I’ve listened to a lot of the advanced strategy webinars too, but can’t seem to find where you talk about adding additional content to an already existing G-Drive stack.
“Also, the main keyword terms were initially ranking on page one of Google, even as high as position three, and then gradually have dropped to page three, and have stayed there. We finished the stack in early May and then started back link building in early July. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.” Okay, Lori, I’m going to let Marco talk about that, because he’s more the expert on that.
Marco: Yeah. Don’t put more than one gstack per Drive account. It overburdens the script, and Google will shut you down, period. That’s just the way it is. You can create persona accounts, and each persona account can be an employee of the company. You can make that persona associated with the company. Of course, it’s natural to share files and folders. Am I giving away too much?
Bradley: Maybe.
Marco: Lori? Reach out to me in private.
Bradley: Yeah, or in the RYS group, Facebook group.
Marco: I don’t want to continue with this. Or, if you’re going to order, just reach out to me, and I’ll let you know what to do. Because I don’t want to give it away, that’s why I’m here. I started to, sorry.
Bradley: Yeah. Just remember, you can add the other accounts under the share function, so you can still access everything from still one login, if that makes sense.
Marco: Right. Yeah.
Bradley: “Also, the main keyword terms were initially ranking on page one of Google, even as high as position three and then gradually have dropped to page three, and stayed there.” Okay, Lori. There’s really no way for me to give you any advice on that question. I wish I could, but there’s … So many different variables would have to be looked at for us to give any sort of advice on how … What could be causing the problem. That is such a broad question, in that we need a hell of a lot more details or access to the site for a site audit. If that’s something that you would want to have done, if you’re in the masterclass, you provide site audit services as part of the masterclass training. You’re more than welcome to post there, and we could take a look, if you’re willing to share the URL within the webinar, just to the attendees, basically.
That’s up to you. If you’re not comfortable with that, then I completely understand. But we could get a lot more in-depth on that stuff in the masterclass, than we could here. You could even give us some more details. All right?
Marco: Yeah. Lori’s been with us, I mean, for quite a long time.
Bradley: Yes.
Marco: She has purchased from us. I’ll give you 15 minutes of my time, Lori, just to get you set up and in the right direction, as far as what you need to do. Then you can go ahead and order from our RYS. He rocks it. Do it … Let’s do it that way.
Bradley: Okay.
Marco: Just so I can get you headed in the right direction.
Bradley: Very, very generous of you Marco.
Advantage of SSL (HTTPS) In Affiliate Sites
Michael’s up. He says, “Hi. I am still wondering if I should go with the https version of my site. I have 15 pages with the www version, and then three pages that have both versions indexed so I need to choose one direction to go. Staying with www would be easiest.”
I’m assuming you mean, “Staying with www that doesn’t include the https,” because I think that’s what you’re talking about. The protocol. Because either you have SSL, or you don’t. Typically, in a question like this, I would expect somebody to be asking about the difference between HTTP and https. In this case, you’re mixing two different concepts, here. I’m not 100% sure where you’re going at, with this. Anyways. “How much advantage is there doing this if my site is a simple affiliate site? There are no products to sell or visitors’ info to gather.”
I don’t know why you’d have https then. If you’re not … If you don’t even have a contact form on your site, there’s really no reason for that. If anybody else wants to comment on that, I’m happy to hear some other opinions on that. But if you’re not collecting any sort of data from the site, like any contact details or anything, where nobody has to submit a web form for anything, then I don’t really see the point of having the SSL certificate.
Hernan: Yeah. I would say kind of what you’re saying, Bradley. I’m seeing more and more big websites turning into SSL, but that’s because they manage sensitive accounts.
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: It doesn’t have to be right now that, as it were a couple of … Maybe a year back, or maybe a couple of months back, that you need to handle sensitive data like credit cards numbers. Now, every time you handle any kind of data, you need to have an SSL as per Google instructions. With that said, I haven’t had any data to back it up that an SSL will give you a boost in rankings, for example. If it is, it’s marginal. It’s marginal. It’s another tick on the checklist.
It’s nothing too fancy that it could make or break your SEO in that case, so I wouldn’t have the trouble in case I really, really need it, and in case I really want to be compliant, and I want to start collecting data on my website, as Bradley was saying.
Bradley: Yeah. Yeah, so I again … The question is, you’re talking about two different versions of the URL here, but they’re really not … You can have “www.” whether you have SSL or not. It makes no difference. That’s just your preference in how you display the URL. I recommend that you go with the www. version of it, because that’s treated as if it were sub-domain, so it protects your root domain, in the event that you caught a penalty.
In other words, you could always … If you caught a penalty … If you were using your www. acting as a sub-domain and you caught a penalty, then you could essentially remove the www., or add some … Change the sub-domain to something like blog., or news., or something like that, and recover your site. Now, you’d still have to figure out why your site was slapped, or given a penalty, anyways, and correct that, but you could move the site to a different sub-domain, or just to the root. In other words, remove the www., and you could get your rankings back, or at least remove … The penalty would be temporarily lifted until Google caught back up with you, unless you fixed and resolved the problem that caused it to begin with.
Again, that’s just a personal preference. And adding www., can be done within the WordPress dashboard. You go to Settings, General, and it’s the site address. There’s two fields that you have to edit that, and add the www., to. Then once you click Save, it’ll prompt you to log back in. From that point forward, WordPress should handle all the redirects and canonicals directly, but that doesn’t affect the https, SSL or not, whether it’s using the SSL version of the protocol or not. It makes … That doesn’t handle that.
That’s something else that you have to work with. Again, that can cause some problems. Only 15 pages, that’s not really all that big of a deal. But when you do switch to https, a lot of times, it can screw up CSS, and JavaScript, and stuff like that, so you need to make … I don’t even do all that myself anymore. Whenever I switch a site over, I just hire somebody from Upwork, and they handle all that shit for me, because it’s just too much.
Hernan: Yeah. No. I was about to say that. You need to be consistent. Whether you decide to do https or not, you need to be consistent. Everything should be pointed at one URL, because you can have HTTP domain.com, HTTP www.domain.com, https domain.com, and they’re all different URLs, you know what I mean?
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: You need to be consistent. Whether you use https or not, and whether you use …, which I concur with Bradley in this case, using www, which I concur with Bradley in this case, using www … I’ve seen on some spammy niches that people will use w15, or ww3, or ww4, ww7. That’s the iteration number seven of that website that keeps getting spam, and keeps being [inaudible 00:17:30], so it’s crazy. But I mean, you need to be consistent whether you decide to do it, or not. That was my point.
Bradley: Again, for something like a small site like that where you’re not collecting any data, I wouldn’t have even implemented SSL. It’s just too much additional work. But, if you’ve already done it … If you’ve already pulled the trigger, then make sure you get your site cleaned up, and all of the scripts and everything are all reading correctly, and that’s something, again … I can’t really advise you on that, because I don’t do it. I just hire somebody from Upwork. That kind of stuff makes my head hurt.
301 Redirects From Web 2.0s Pointing To The Money Site
Healthy Living says, “Just a thought. If we use 301 URL redirects from a web 2.0 to the money site, would that be bad?” I’m assuming you mean embedding a 301 redirected URL into the content body of a post or something on a web 2.0? I’m assuming that’s what you mean, because how would you redirect a web 2.0 URL? I’m not 100% clear on this. Is somebody else interpreting this differently from me?
Hernan: No. I think that you’re right. It’s hard to do a 301, unless you do some sort of meta-refresh. That’s another story. If you do a meta-refresh, you have some web 2.0 properties-
Bradley: I don’t even think … I think this … I think that’s way beyond what they were asking about, though. If you can edit the HTML of a … Or the [HEAD 00:18:53] section, like in Tumblr, sometimes you can do that. I don’t know if you can still do meta-refreshes there. But like Weebly, you could do a meta-refresh. Blogger, we were able to hack that in as well. But put a meta-refresh code, and then the whole web 2.0 will do it. But doing a 301 redirect from a web 2.0, I don’t know how to do that, other than using a 301 redirected URL as your link within the content of a post, which would be like a goo.gl, or a Bitly link, or something like that. Really, I don’t see the purpose of that, either.
I mean, you can, just to give you some URL variations, I guess. But yeah, if you could clarify that, maybe, what it is that you’re asking specifically, we might be able to give you a better answer, okay?
Boosting PBN Links
Well, put an IFTTT ring around your PBN, and then blast your IFTTT ring with GSA Search Engine Ranker. Think about that. If you’re using a PBN to link to your money site, or to link to your branded IFTTT ring around your money site, then if you don’t … If you’re worried about hitting your PBNs direct with GSA … And I can understand that, then put an IFTTT ring around your PBN. Then you can hit the ring around your PBN with GSA Search Engine Ranker links. Does that make sense?
That way, you’re not hitting your PBN directly. There’s at least one buffer site between your PBNs and your GSA spam, and it would be at least three hops away from your money site, if you’re abusing your PBNs to point links to your IFTTT ring around your money site, your branded IFTTT ring, if that makes sense. If you’re building back links directly from your PBN to your money site, and you’re building links from GSA Search Engine Ranker to an IFTTT ring around your PBN, now your GSA links are still going to be one, two … Yeah, three hops away.
If you’re doing it … If you’re building PBN links to your branded ring, now your GSA links are four hops away from your money site, so you’d be perfectly fine to do that.
Anyway, hopefully that was helpful. “PPS, I didn’t get the new IFTTT.com website changes that you talked about in the SEO academy group.” I’m not sure what you mean, other than there’s new interface changes. Maybe you’re saying you don’t understand it. I don’t … I’m not 100% sure what the question is there, but I know next Wednesday, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern will be the next update webinar for IFTTT SEO academy, and there’s a lot to cover next week so we’re going to cover all that stuff. The new applets, the new interface that everybody hates, I get that. IFTTT is acting like Google … Google+ I mean, in that they’re changing the interface and nobody likes it.
But it is what it is. We’re going to cover that, and we’re going to cover some interesting issues that have popped up with some other things recently. That’s all going to be covered next Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. You can find the link inside the Facebook group for the event. In the Events tab, okay?
Branded Link Wheels For Multiple Locations
Yeah, Jamie. We talk about this often. It’s a good question, but yeah. We’ve talked about this many times. What I always like to do, is especially, if you are … If it’s the same brand, typically the way that I set things up is, if I’m going to be creating city-specific sites, I’ll build them on sub-domains of the root domain. Whatever the brand … I usually will have branded domains for the company, which will be the root domain, and if I’m going to make location-specific sites, then I’ll add sub-domains with the city name as the sub-domain. Then I’ll install WordPress and put up the pages, but not usually a blog on those sites. Because I can use the root domain as the blog, because it’s the same brand, just like you mentioned, Jamie.
If it’s the same brand, then you can put the blog on the root domain, and then build links to all of the four location sites, the four individual location sites, by just blogging from the root domain. That’s a hell of a lot simpler to manage. Does that make sense? Because if you … I mean, you could do a separate blog on each separate site, if you’re doing that. You could. And you could have a separate ring for each, and you may need to do that. But typically, what I will do is create the one branded ring, IFTTT ring, right? And I’ll blog from the root domain blog, and use the blog post to build links to all of the sub-domain sites, or all of the individual locations.
You might not have sub-domain sites, maybe you have individual location pages. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Either way, you could still build links to the location sites or pages from the blog with one IFTTT ring. However, if you find that there’s a … Like for example, say out of the four locations that you have, one of them is not responding as well to the IFTTT blogging strategy as the other three. This is just hypothetical, guys, but let’s just say that one of them is not responding as well. Then you could always go out and create a separate IFTTT ring specific for that one location. It can be the same brand, but then you can add the city name into the sub-domains for when you’re creating the IFTTT ring.
It could be a location-specific branded ring, if that makes sense. Then you could hit that one ring, specifically, with posts for that one location, to help give it a boost. But always try to rank with the minimum amount of work that it takes, guys. For that reason, don’t … It’s a great question, Jamie, because you don’t want to jump … You don’t want to go out and build four IFTTT rings, when you don’t need to. Chances are, you can probably get away with just one, and again, if any one particular location is not responding as well as you’d like it to, then you can always build a location-specific ring for that.
Email List Platform
Okay. Andrew Walker. He’s back. He’s starting to become a regular occurrence. That’s awesome, Andrew. This is a good question. I read this earlier. He says, “Hey guys, my question is about what platform to use to start building an email list. Which would you all recommend, GetResponse or ClickFunnels? I’ve been using GetResponse for a little while now and its pretty nice. However, I just got hipped to ClickFunnels and I’m hearing some really great things about it. Thanks.”
Andrew, I can tell you personally, because I know … I’m kind of helping Andrew get set up. He’s a local business guy. Advanced-pcs.com. He does IT work and stuff like that. Anyways, I can tell you that ClickFunnels is my preferred method, and you … But it’s not exactly an auto-responder. They have auto-responder capabilities inside, if you use an SMTP mail-ordering service like SendGrid or Mandrill, or something like that, so it’s a bit geeky to set up. But if you were going to be … In your case, I would say you need at least $97 a month to use ClickFunnels. It’s $100 a month. I know for GetResponse, you’re probably only paying about $20 month, something around that number.
It’s up to you. If you don’t mind spending the extra money, then yeah. Keeping everything under one dashboard, which you can do with ClickFunnels, would be sweet, because you’d get much better landing pages than you do with GetResponse. At least in my opinion, it’s so much easier to set them up, and they look good, all that kind of stuff. And you can handle all of the mailing from within … Oh, wait a minute, let me rephrase that. In order to use ClickFunnels’ mailing service as an auto-responder, you have to have Actionetics, and Actionetics is only part of their enterprise suite. That’s $300 a month. $297 a month.
Adam: Yeah. You’ve got to make sure it’s worth it, but yeah. It’s kind of interesting …
Bradley: Yeah. In his case … In Andrew’s case, it wouldn’t be. I can tell.
Adam: Yeah. For most people, especially if … Your comment is starting out, then yeah. That’s not it.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: But if you can do it, you can … You can also use … Just so people know, you can also get … If you can get that Amazon SES account approved … Which you can’t always, but that’s free. Then that lets you, if you don’t use an outside service, you can’t customize your emails in ClickFunnels, because they don’t want you sending out stuff from their servers. But once you do that, that would be one of the next steps up. We’re also looking at a couple different providers too, Andrew, so maybe we could come back and give you some more information. I think Bradley can tell you. Obviously, you guys are talking offline,
There’s some additional stuff we’re looking at. We’re checking out ConvertKit right now, and we’ve been using Paywebber, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and I think-
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: That’s it. But Chris and Hernan might have some input here too.
Bradley: Yeah, I would just mention to Andrew. Like I said, Andrew, I forgot. I started to tell you … But even the $97 a month version of ClickFunnels doesn’t give you email capabilities. It will give you an email notification from each funnel, but you can’t use it as an auto-responder, so it’s … Really in your case, you don’t need an Enterprise account for your local business. That would be kind of like way overkill, and an expense. You don’t need that, either. Stick with GetResponse for now, and that would be fine.
Anybody else want to comment? That’s fine if you want.
Hernan: Yeah. I wanted to say real quick. I’m sorry.
Chris: He’s eating.
Hernan: I wanted to say real quick that … Yeah. I was. Sorry. I wanted to say real quick that, GetResponse, for the time being … We pretty much use them all. MailChimp, AWeber or GetResponse. We keep on using GetResponse and AWeber. We’re migrating. If you want to start doing some more advanced stuff, like tagging people based on how they behave, based on what actions they take … For example let’s say that somebody doesn’t visit your website, I don’t know, in three months. You can send them a coupon, those kind of things. In reality, GetResponse will suffice for now, since I assume you’re starting now. At some point, you want to go for something more advanced like, for example, ActiveCampaign, which will be pretty much the same expense.
There are of course more complex tools out there, but ClickFunnels is a landing page builder, and a funnel builder. It doesn’t have to do with email marketing, while it is an added tool, and I’m pretty sure Bradley’s helping you out with ClickFunnels, but again, that’s a landing page builder. That’s not … The main functionality of ClickFunnels, it is from Actionetics, in my opinion. GetResponse will suffice for now, in my opinion. At some point, if your list grows a lot, which I know it will with Bradley’s help, you may want to turn into something more advanced. [More ninja 00:30:09], maybe.
Bradley: Yeah, but even GetResponse has automations and stuff. You can set up tags and all that stuff with automations. You just need to learn how to do it, that’s all. I’m sure ActiveCampaign or … What is it? ConvertKit, might be better, but I’m just letting you know. There are automa- … You can create automations inside of GetResponse, now, too.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: I don’t think you need to change anything, Andrew. I’d leave it just the way it is, for now.
Adam: Now, because I’m drinking the Kool-Aid so heavily from ClickFunnels, I do want to say though, if people get to that point, there are some really cool things you can do with ClickFunnels. By all means, that’s some of the things you can do. I’m not saying all of this is exclusive to ClickFunnels, but you can start tying in actions, as well as other things. Integrations into ClickFunnels is crazy, it’s almost like Zapier, where they have tons of integrations you can use.
New Trigger Channels In IFTTT
Bradley: Yeah. Greg’s up. He says, “Welcome back to reality guys, except for Marco. Hey, Have you guys tested or can suggest any new trigger channels that might work in an IFTTT network ring yet?” Well, yeah. You can use Twitter. That’s what Twitter SEO Academy is really about. That and much more, but you can use Twitter to trigger. You can use any one of the blog properti- … I mean, you can pretty much use any property. Any channel will not … Well, not any channel, but most of the channels that we use, the ones that we use for marketing and stuff like that … A lot of those can be used as triggers also. The problem is, is when you use the other properties as triggers, what does the resulting post look like on the other side?
Whatever you’re syndicating to, from that trigger point, what does it look like over there at the syndication point? What does it look like? A lot of times, they come out kind of funny. In fact, I played around with, a couple years ago, a lot with trying to set up WordPress triggers or Tumblr triggers and Blogger triggers. Some interesting, weird stuff happens with those triggers, sometimes. That’s why I always resorted back to just using RSS triggers, because RSS triggers seem to be the most consistent over time, where I consistently had difficulty with using other properties as triggers. Although, like I said, Twitter can be a trigger. You could use a Facebook page. I mean, pretty much almost any one of the properties that we typically talk about in the Academy can be used as a trigger.
You just got to go in and play with your own recipes, Greg. I highly encourage everybody to try other recipes, and to play around in there. We just give you the recipes that we know that work consistently over time, but you’re more than welcome to play with it, Greg, and test. But again, I would set up a test network that you can play around with triggers and stuff. That way you’re not destroying branded network properties when something goes wrong, if that makes sense. Good question though.
Site Architecture And Content For Google Maps Site
Scott’s up. He says, “I’m trying to optimize a website for Google Maps. The business has four categories selected within GMB. I want to create four pages on the website, and optimize for those terms. How would you suggest to implement in-site architecture and what content would you include in the pages?” Scott, I actually read this question earlier, and this is something that I could even diagram out. I’m not going to do it on Hump Day Hangouts, but if you want to post that question over on the masterclass page, we got masterclass in about 30 minutes. I can actually diagram it out there for you.
Pretty much, you just want to have four silos, or the top of the silos, so four categories, in other words, on your site. Categories and pages. A separate page, which can also create a corresponding category, and then for each one of those categories within the Google My Business, that you have listed on the Google My Business page … You create four different categories, and then from there you can add supporting … In a simple silo structure, which is what I would recommend. Complex silo structure is usually overkill for local stuff. I would use a simple silo structure, and then from that, you just would create supporting posts for each one of those categories. That’s it. As many supporting posts as it takes to rank.
You make sure that you always link from the supporting post up to the silo landing page. Make sure that you place that post in the proper, correct category, the correct silo. That’s really all you need to do. Make sure that you’re also syndicating to that Google My Business page, the local … Excuse me, the local page, or brand page, depending on how you have it set up. I guess it’s a local page, because you talked about Maps. If you want me to diagram it out, I’d be happy to do so. That’ll be in masterclass, and you can post that on the event page, and we’ll get to it in about 25 minutes.
Transferring Ranking From .mob Site To The New Site
JaMina’s up. “Hey guys. One of my clients has a .mob website that is separate from his old website and it ranks very well in his industry. He has just had a brand new responsive website created. How can I help him keep or transfer his mobile rankings from his .mob site? Also, if he points the old HTML website at the new responsive website, will it help the new website rank for the keywords the old website was ranking for? Thanks, guys.” I guess you’re talking about, he had a separate mobile website? Is that … I’m assuming that’s what she means. I’ve never … I don’t really have an experience redirecting mobile websites to see if it helps an existing site. Do any of you guys have experience with that?
Chris: Not here.
Hernan: No. No.
Bradley: Yeah. Typically, that’s a separate mobile website. That’s what she’s …
Hernan: Mobile rankings. Yeah. The only thing that I can think of is 301. 301 the .mob to the new m., or the new responsive website. But I haven’t worked with .mob, I mean, sorry.
Bradley: Yeah. I’ve never done a separate mobile websi- … I mean, I’ve built mobile websites. I’ve done that, but I’ve never … I’ve never tried redirecting from separate mobile websites to newer, responsive … I’ve never done any of that. Honestly, I don’t want to throw out some bullshit answers, JaMina, to your question, because I would be doing you wrong if that were the case. I don’t know. I would play with it. You could test it. For example, if it’s on a dot- … If you had a whole separate mobile website, then chances are, there’s some separate pages. What you could do is go in and edit a couple of the pages, for example, to do a 301 redirect, or a meta-refresh or whatever, over to the new responsive website to the corresponding pages.
Then just monitor it. Don’t do the whole site. What I’m saying is, go in and select a couple pages from the mobile site, and redirect those back to the corresponding pages on the new responsive design site. Just monitor those pages on the new site, versus the other pages on the site that don’t have the redirect set up from the mobile site, and see if those new page … Those pages that do have the redirects perform better than the others, or just moni- … Just observe what they do, the behavior of those pages. Then you’ll know. Say you got 12 pages on the site, and you’ve got three of them with redirects from the mobile site.
You can watch those three, and compare those to the other nine pages on the site, and see which one … Observe what they do, and then you can play around with that and see if it has a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect at all.
I mean, that’s what I would do. That’s typically how I determine what’s going to work and what’s not. It’s just by testing, and that’s what I would recommend you do here. I wouldn’t redirect the whole thing, though, because then you’re not … When you could … If you could do it on a page-by-page basis, temporarily, just to monitor what it does.
By the way, if you redirect from an old site, in this case the old HTML website to the new responsive-to-web … “If he points the old HTML website at the new responsive website, will it help the new website rank for the keywords that the old website is ranking for?” It can yes, as long as the page that you’re redirecting to the new page … As long as the content is similar, or the same. It could be the same, but been updated, or it has to be very similar. Because remember, if your old site was ranking well, it’s not 100% because of back links as to why it’s ranked. There’s also the on-page factor.
As long as your new site is in that … In particular, in a page-by-page basis, is … The on-page SEO is comparable to what the old site was, then yes. It should respond really well to that redirect, because there’s no … But if the new site … And I’m assuming the new site is optimized properly, but if it isn’t, and if there’s a significant difference between the pages, it may not help at all, or may give it just a very marginal boost, if that makes sense. Guys, remember, that’s … Whenever you’re redirecting from an existing site that’s ranking well to a new site, you want to make sure that the pages are optimized similarly, like the on-page optimization is similar, or comparable, to what the old site was.
If it could be improved upon, that’s great. Then improve upon it. But what I’m saying is, you don’t want a huge drastic change, and then you redirect from the old to the new, and expect it to replace the slot that the old site took in the search results because it typically isn’t going to happen that way. There will be some dancing, anyways, and you got to let all that stuff settle in, JaMina.
If you’ve been watching us for any amount of time, you know that there’s a sandbox period, a probationary period after you do something like that, a redirect, where you don’t want to go in and do a whole bunch of crazy changes during that three-week period after you initiate the redirect. You want to let it settle in, and let the dust settle. Give it some time for everything to solidify where it’s going to be. Then you go back in, and start editing, and adjusting. But you don’t want to do too many changes within a three-week period, because it could sandbox your site.
Allowed Sidebar Links In Tumblr
Kris is up. “Welcome back. I edited the HTML code on my Tumblr theme, and I now have 35 icons in the sidebar linked to the IFTTT networks and citations. How many links in a sidebar of a blog is too much, and did I go overboard with this?” No, I don’t think so, because you’re just reinfor- … As long as they’re all branded properties, it shouldn’t make any difference, Kris. You should see some of our same as attributes in our JSON-LD markup.
We haven’t got … I haven’t been hit with a structured data spam penalty yet. I know some people have, though, so you got to be careful with that, but as far as adding those … I mean, if they’re branded properties, they’re just an extension of your brand. To me, that’s not too much. Any other comments on that, guys?
Hernan: How much is too much, right?
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: I agree. As long as you’re … I mean, you can always go with the most relevant to your particular niche, because in some cases you will get more … Depending on your niche, some networks will be more relevant than the others. But for SEO purposes, I would say have them all. 20, 35, 40 icons doesn’t really matter, as long as you keep that … I think that’s the most cumbersome task, is to keep that list updated. At some point, maybe URLs change. Maybe a website will go 404, whatever. You need to keep that updated, so maybe once a month or something you want to make a sweep through that. It will all depend on how many network you have.
I think, at the end of the day, that’s called a semantic hub. We want that. We want that amount of relevance and brand on that particular domain, like G Plus, Tumblr. Anywhere you can put a list of links would be considered, in my opinion, a semantic hub.
Bradley: One thing, Kris, you can do is go search your brand in Google. The brand name. Then look at all the properties that show up, the third-party properties that show up on page one and two, and just go with those. You want all the big social media sites, whether they show up on page one or two, or not. It doesn’t make a difference. But, chances are, they’re going to anyways, if you search your brand name. But you could just select the ones that Google tells you are the most relevant and the most important to your brand name or business, and use those as your same as attributes if you’re marking up the JSON-LD markup in the header, or in sidebar links, that kind of stuff. You can let Google tell you what it thinks is the most relevant and important to your brand.
Next, he says, “When I get some spammy comments, I remove the URL from comment and edit it to be a positive comment. I figure if they try to spam to get links, I might as well remove the link and use the comment to benefit the page. Do comments help build credibility or should I just block them to save time?” Kris, I’m going to tell you. Honestly, you should just block them. There’s a plugin for WordPress called disable comments. I love that plugin. I use it on every damn site.
If I want comments on a site, then I will use a social media-style comment plugin anyways, because WordPress comments just flat-out suck, and you’ll get spammed to death all the time, anyway. It’s too much work and time, and effort, for such a very small SEO boost which, to be honest with you, I … Somebody else might disagree with me, but I’ve never taken the time to go through and use comments within my own sites to try to see if it’ll give me an SEO boost, because it requires too much time.
Personally, I just use the disable comments plugin for all WordPress sites, so that it removes the native WordPress comment functionality. I would say, save your time, Kris, or use your time better, more wisely, by doing something with your time that’s going to have a greater effect. I can tell you that that would be such a small positive effect, if any at all, that it’s really just not worth it.
Shannon’s complaining because we were one minute late, just so you all know.
Pitching Digital Marketing To Real Estate Brokers
Valerie says, “Trying to sell my house and brokers don’t know and don’t do digital marketing.” I know, Valerie. Isn’t it frustrating? Because realtors are an egotistical bunch. They put their faces on all their marketing materials, and they think they’re good marketers, and they know nothing, or very little, about digital marketing, and it’s like pulling teeth to try to convince realtors that they should be marketing digitally. I don’t know why, because they do spend a lot of money on marketing, but they don’t spend money on digital marketing, at least none of the realtors I’ve ever dealt with. They’ve just been a pain in the ass for me, so I don’t [crosstalk 00:44:57].
Adam: This is … Real quick. I think this is good timing. One, five-minute warning. Two, I think a lot of these were responses to AdWords, the question I asked for the free hat at the beginning, but we can still go through these. There’s some pretty good ones here.
Bradley: Okay. To finish up, I just kind of wanted to vent about that, because I’ve got a lot of experience with realtors, and they’re … They’re an odd bunch. “So I’m starting to market with AdWords, and will also do youtube ads and facebook. Hopefully this will work, and if so, then can expand specialized marketing for unique properties and high priced homes.” That would be awesome, Valerie. Good luck with that. I hope you can have better success at convincing realtors on why it’s important.
But that’s part of the reason I stopped messing with realtors. If you have to convince somebody first that they should be marketing digitally before you’ve even pitched them on your services, you’ve got to sell them twice. You’ve first got to sell them on the fact that they need it, and then you have to sell them on your services. To me, I don’t want to have to do two sales presentations, just to get one … You know what I mean? To the same prospect. That’s too much resistance for me. Trust me, I chased realtors for years. In fact, that was what the … If you guys remember, the vmail, video email little training course that I did, that was for an actual company I’d started for … It was called Broker Brand Marketing. It was for realtors. We were targeting real estate companies for branding, and digital branding. It was just a … It was an uphill battle, so we closed that business.
Don’s up next. He says, “I plan on using ads two ways. One, for multiplying leads for lead gen clients, but the other for doing my own affiliate/CPA offers and eventually selling my own products!” Awesome, Don. Congratulations. Don’t tell me what to do, Windows.
Keith is up. “Following Local Kingpin at the moment. Spending more than making with AdWords, but getting better so any more help would not go amiss. Not done any video yet as still learning the basics of AdWords.” Keith, stick with it, buddy. It takes practice. Getting an AdWords campaign up and profitable, it’s not going to happen immediately. That’s why I go through, in Local Kingpin … I really went to great lengths to try to explain the beta campaign structure and how to set it up in negative keywords, so that you reduce your non-relevant clicks.
In other words, you stop wasting money as quickly as possible. And how to optimize the campaigns to where you get profitable quickly. But guys, it’s totally worth it. If you lose a little bit of money in your first 30 days, or even if you just break even … If you continue at it, and you get your campaign optimized, it can be profitable, and it’s just a stream of revenue that requires very little maintenance once you’ve dialed it in, unlike SEO that is a constant struggle.
Hernan: Yeah. Real quick, I want to add that, it took me maybe six months to become profitable campaign on Facebook ads. I didn’t have the guide that you guys have with Bradley showing you step-by-step over the shoulder how to do it, how to become profitable. It’s just a matter of sticking to it. At first, you will burn through money, but that’s investing in your education, the way I see it.
Bradley: That’s right.
Hernan: Keep at it. At some point, you will learn the ropes of AdWords, and bam. You can launch a profitable campaign in a couple of hours, because you will know what to look for, what keys to look for, and what to kill, how to kill, and when to kill it, when it’s not being profitable.
Bradley: That’s right. Wise advice. Hernan’s been doing paid traffic for us for years, and I never did any paid traffic until recently, at least like AdWords stuff, and now I love it. I just wish I’d started five years ago, but it is what it is.
Yeah, guys, Local Kingpin replay should be going on if you were signed up for it, the webinar from yesterday. It was really just a soft pitch. There was some value there, but it was really like, “Hey, if you missed your chance on the launch, here’s … ” We gave a special offer on that. Yeah. If you were on, signed up for the webinar, and you didn’t make it yesterday, you should get the replay link via email.
Number Of FCS Links
All right. I think we got time for one or two more. “How many links with FCS, or whatever spam tool you use, do you guys usually throw at each branded Tier One spam point property in your network for local sites? I don’t want to overkill.” I think Hernan recommends 75 to 125.
Hernan: Yeah. Anything between … Yeah, you can start with 50 and go up to 150, but that’s pushing it. We should send a handful, and do not do them all at once. Just send a handful of links, and see how it goes, and then send another batch, maybe in 20’s, maybe in 30’s depending on your competition. That’s basically what we do.
Bradley: I hate Calendar. It drives me nuts. Yeah. “How many Tier One spam points do you hit?” I hit everything at once. I just send everything over to [inaudible 00:49:58], our link [inaudible 00:50:00] manager, and he handles all that for me. “What is your favorite spam tool to use for powering up your networks?” We use a multitude of them, now. Turbo … What is it? Turbo Web 2.0, I think Rank … I don’t know if it’s called Ranker X. I don’t know, because I don’t handle any of that stuff any more. He does all that for me. But we use FCS Networker, GSA, Turbo Web 2.0. I mean, there’s a lot of them.
Hernan: Everything. Yeah. Everything. That’s the idea. You get diversity by using everything.
Bradley: All right we got time for Skye’s, and then we got to wrap it up, guys. “Kingpin method. I’m using SpyFu to scrape all the domains in geographic locations that have low SEO value. I’m then running a custom program that checks for schema on the website. I’m then sending all of those people an offer for a free website evaluation. I’m then using remarketing to close it, if they don’t sign up with the schema issue as the focal point. I’m also using video ads to help rank videos in organic.” Skye is crushing it. Very good, Skye. Keep it up buddy.
Okay. That’s it. Do you want to pick the hat person now, or what are we doing?
Adam: Yeah. Hernan, we’re there in Slack. Let’s see … If you want to answer one more quick one, me and Hernan were discussing this.
Bradley: Okay. You heard that from Adam. Adam said I could answer one more. Don’s up. He says, “When you are updating new IFTTT properties in your IFTTT group, are you updating the master spreadsheet, or do we need to do that? Because I just have my VA using your sheet as a template.” Yeah, Don, like if I add a new recipe, it goes on the account workbook template, which is the master spreadsheet that we’ve got linked all over the place. That’s updated in real time. If a property’s removed, then I’ll remove it from the … Or if we add a new property, or add a new recipe, then everything’s listed on that spreadsheet.
Did you guys get it worked out?
Adam: We did. We did. Not because it was a first comment, but Valerie, we really liked your comment, your POFU mentality. If they’re not going to do it, you’ll take it into your own hands. Way to take action.
Hernan: Yeah. “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”
Adam: Like it. Send me an email to support, and give me your address and tell me whether you want a medium or a large, and we’ll get that in the mail to you this week.
Bradley: Awesome.
Adam: Cool.
Bradley: Congratulations, Valerie. Okay, guys. Masterclass starts in about eight minutes or so. We’ll see you all over there, those of you that are in it. If you’re not, come join us.
Adam: Awesome. By, everybody.
Bradley: Bye.
Hernan: Bye bye.
Chris: Bye.
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