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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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How to Earn More Links and Social Shares: Insights From 759 Content Marketing Campaigns

Posted by kerryjones

Is there a formula for wildly successful content marketing campaigns? It’s a question we ponder a lot at the Fractl office.

We do have our own tried-and-true formula that we continually tweak based on our observations of what does and doesn’t succeed. To help us spot trends that shape this formula, we collect data about every content marketing campaign we create for our clients. But we don’t keep this data to ourselves – sharing our internal data with the marketing community helps others create better content based on what’s worked for us.

We did this a few years ago using a set of 345 campaigns, and now that we have double the number of our campaigns under our belt, we dug into our data again. This time, the sample size was 759 campaigns that launched between 2013 and 2017.

As part of our analysis, we looked at the relationship between campaign performance, measured by the number of placements and social shares a campaign earned, and the campaign’s attributes, including emotionality, the target audience size, and timeliness. "Placement" or “pickup” refers to any time a campaign received media coverage. In link building lingo, a placement may refer to a link that is dofollow, cocitation or nofollow; we also count client mentions without links as placements.

Campaign performance was grouped into three buckets:

High success: more than 100 placements and/or 20,000 social shares

Moderate success: Between 20–100 placements and/or between 1,000 and 20,000 social shares

Low success: Fewer than 20 placements and/or fewer than 1,000 social shares

What sets apart our top performing campaigns

Our campaigns that were either emotionally resonant or surprising were significantly more likely to yield a high volume of media placements and social shares than content that does not include these elements.

The chart below shows the prevalence of three factors across the different campaign performance groups.

As you can see, emotions and an element of surprise were far more common in campaigns that performed extremely well.

Seventy percent of high success campaigns had an emotional hook compared to 45% of moderate success and 25% of low success campaigns.

Seventy-six percent of high success campaigns were surprising compared to 54% of moderate success and 47% of low success campaigns.

There wasn’t as great of a difference when it came to whether or not campaigns were broadly appealing. We believe on its own this isn’t enough to hit a home run, but it’s telling that this trait was nearly ubiquitous among the top performers:

Almost all of our high success campaigns (96%) had broad appeal, compared to 81% of moderate success and 86% of low success campaigns.

Let’s take a closer look at how each of these three factors correlated to campaign performance.

An emotional hook

Campaigns with an emotional hook earned 70% more media pickups and 127% more social shares on average than campaigns that lacked emotional resonance.

Creating an emotional response in viewers is crucial for driving sharing and engagement. This is clearly demonstrated by our campaign data, with emotional resonance being a key factor in our top campaigns and emotional campaigns performing far better on average than non-emotional campaigns.

In our research on viral emotions, we found certain emotional reactions are best for getting content to spread:

Keep it positive. Creating a purely positive emotional reaction works best for garnering attention and igniting shares. Why is this? People want to share things that make others feel good.

Put the audience on an emotional rollercoaster. Complex emotional responses are also extremely effective for striking the right emotional chord. Consider pairing contrasting emotions, such as hope and despair or admiration and sadness, to pack the greatest emotional punch.

Pair negative emotions with surprise. Avoid rousing strictly negative feelings. Surprise is crucial if you’re hitting the audience with a negative emotion, such as fear or anger.

An element of surprise

Surprising campaigns earned 39% more media pickups and 108% more social shares than campaigns that weren’t surprising.

Surprise doesn’t necessarily mean shocking. Novelty, or newness, can also elicit feelings of surprise; incorporating information that isn’t widely known or new data are effective ways to play into this because it triggers a feeling of “I didn’t already know this,” which draws interest and encourages sharing the new information with others.

Furthermore, surprise or novelty can greatly improve your outreach efforts. Since newness is a pillar of newsworthiness, publishers are eager to get their hands on exclusive stories. This is why offering the media something never published before is essential for effective PR outreach.

Broad appeal

As I mentioned previously, broad appeal on its own isn’t going to have a huge impact on campaign success. However, universal appeal still plays a role in getting a campaign in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Campaigns that appealed to a wide audience earned 38% more media pickups and 96% more social shares on average than campaigns created for a niche demographic.

Creating broadly appealing versus niche-focused content is a choice of fishing in a big pond or a little pond. You’ll have a larger volume of outreach targets and greater potential audience reach with a broadly appealing campaign. On the other hand, niche campaigns have limited reach because they’re much harder to get picked up by widely-read general news sites that want stories with mass appeal. Instead, you can only pitch the handful of publishers that cover the niche topic.

For this reason, we often create tangential content, or content about a popular topic related to a client’s vertical, for many of our clients whose goals include a high volume of links and media mentions. This being said, it’s possible to get a ton of media attention and engagement with niche-focused campaigns, which I explore later in this post.

When a combination of emotions, surprise, and broad appeal was present in a campaign, it supercharged the results.

So we know emotions and surprise work well on their own. However, when these factors were paired together with a broadly appealing topic, we saw even greater success.

Campaigns that were both emotional and surprising earned 199 pickups and 23,730 social shares on average. Incorporating all three made the biggest impact on the average results; campaigns that were emotional, surprising, and broadly appealing earned 207 pickups and 25,017 social shares on average.

We know audiences are drawn to emotionally resonant, universally appealing, and surprising content, but these traits play a big role in campaign success before the public even sees the content – they’re crucial for getting your outreach pitch read and acted upon.

Content with these three traits has strong headline potential, which publishers immediately pick up on when they read a pitch. In other words, it’s going to be easy for publishers to write an irresistible headline if they publish your campaign. Without a great headline, it’s much harder to draw clicks and views to a story, which are required initial steps for getting others to link to and share the content.

Can’t picture how a single headline can be emotional, surprising, and have mass appeal? Here are examples of headlines from our campaigns that hit all of these factors:

Drinking from a refillable water bottle could be worse than licking a dog toy

More American high school students smoke pot than binge drink, report says

Here’s which states post the nastiest tweets [From this campaign]

Online fast food calculator reveals how long you need to run or swim to be guilt-free (and it's more than you think)

The surprising reason why most men cheat

If you were browsing your social feeds and came across any of those headlines, they’d be hard to resist clicking, right? Here’s a look at the campaign behind that last headline.

Campaign example: The surprising reason why most men cheat

Client vertical: Online pharmacy

The campaign

We went straight to the source to conduct a survey of people who have cheated on a significant other. This was clearly an emotionally charged subject that would intrigue a large segment of the population. Furthermore, the campaign offered a fresh take on a topic commonly discussed to the point of oversaturation by big publishers that cover relationships. By coming at it from from the angle of “from the mouth of a cheater,” which isn’t often covered and definitely not in a data-centered way, the campaign had a strong surprise and novelty factor that went over well with both publishers and audiences.

The results? 175 placements, including features on Fox News, The New York Post, Cosmopolitan, and Men’s Health, and nearly 40,000 social shares.

Pro Tip: When you pitch an idea to a publisher, they picture potential headlines. It shouldn’t be overly complicated to communicate that your idea is emotional, surprising, and broadly appealing. Try the headline test: Consider how all three factors would fit into a headline by writing a few mock headlines that concisely capture the selling points of the campaign. Does it make for the perfect eye-catching headline?

How you can still score big without emotions and surprise

Of course, there are exceptions to the rules. Here’s how you can still earn a lot of media pickups and social shares with content that’s neither emotional nor surprising.

Exception #1: Target one or more niche groups

Our high performing campaigns that appealed to a certain demographic or fan base were less likely to be emotionally resonant or surprising than those that appealed to a wide audience.

Successful niche campaigns were mostly educational and informative rather than purely entertaining, and many of these campaigns were data heavy. It’s no surprise that passionate niche groups are eager to learn more about the topics they care about.

Campaign example: The rise of the freelance worker

Client vertical: HR and payroll services

The campaign

We analyzed 400,000 freelancer resumes to uncover new insights about the freelancing economy. While this topic isn’t universally appealing, it did have overlapping appeal within several niche audiences, such as HR and recruitment, freelance employees, and the general business community, which led to 269 placements including Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Fox News, plus more than 20,000 social shares.

Pro Tip: If your campaign topic appeals to several niche groups, you can increase your chances for media coverage on a variety of niche publishers, thus expanding your potential reach.

Exception #2: Incorporate "geo-bait"

Based on our data, we found that campaigns that were absent of an emotional hook or element of surprise but did have a strong geographic angle still performed quite well.

Since our identities are closely tied to where we come from and where we live, campaigns based on geographical areas (countries, cities, states, regions) play into the audiences’ egos. In Fractl terms, we call this “geo-bait.”

Campaign example: Which states use the most solar power?

Client vertical: Home improvement

The campaign

Using data from the US Department of Energy, we looked at which states were producing the most solar energy and installing the most solar panels. There wasn’t much surprising data here, as environmentally progressive states topped the rankings (hello, California), but incorporating fresh data and featuring a ranking of solar-friendly states helped this campaign earn more than 200 placements. In addition to the geo-bait angle, this topic had strong appeal to the environmental niche, which helped it get picked up by green publishers.

Pro Tip: Geo-bait campaigns are especially appealing when they compare or rank multiple places.

Other key factors that affect campaign performance

Adding three magical elements into your content won’t automatically lead to success. A handful of other variables can make or break your campaign, some of which will be out of your control. So which variables in your control can increase your chances for success?

Exceptional outreach

Even the best content will fail to get any coverage if your outreach game is weak. This means absolutely no mass pitching your campaign to a long list of publishers. Not only do you need to choose the right targets for outreach (a.k.a. publishers that actually publish stories about your campaign topic), you need to choose the right person at that publication (a.k.a. the person who regularly writes about the topic). That way, you're not alienating writers with irrelevant pitches. You also need to send compelling, personalized outreach pitches to each target (don’t worry, we have a checklist for that). By sending solid pitches, they're more likely to open your emails in the future.

Credibility

You’ll quickly lose trust with publishers (and audiences) if your campaign includes questionable data and inaccuracies. Make credibility a top priority for your work and you’ll have an easier time becoming a trustworthy content creator and maintaining your trustworthiness in the long term.

First, you need to only use authoritative sources and data in your campaign.

What’s a good source?

Government websites and databases

Higher education sites

Peer-reviewed journals

Notable publishers with stringent editorial standards

What’s not a good source?

Websites lacking editorial oversight (in other words, contributors can automatically publish content without an editor’s review)

Branded websites

User-generated content

Studies backed by corporate

Second, your campaign won’t be trusted if it’s riddled with errors. Our editorial team ensures campaigns don’t get released into the wild with glaring grammatical and factual mistakes. Include editorial guidelines and a quality assurance check within your production process to keep campaigns error-free.

One final word of advice: evaluate whether a campaign concept will be emotionally resonant, surprising, and broadly appealing before you move it into production. Our ideation guide sheds light on how we do this by scoring our ideas based on a 5-point grading rubric.

What trends have you noticed about your most successful content marketing campaigns? I’d love to hear how your observations confirm or differ from what I’ve shared.

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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Is It True That Google Will Penalize A Review/Product Type Rich Snippet Placed On The Homepage?

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In episode 166 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked whether Google will penalize a review/product type rich snippet that is placed on the homepage of a website.

The exact question was:

I remember I read somewhere that putting a review/product type rich-snippet data on your homepage (instead of an organization/webpage/article type) is not good, cause google will penalize you somehow? I mean a review/product type schema which shows those review stars below your listing on the SERPs (for better CTR). Is this true or just a gossip?

Is It True That Google Will Penalize A Review/Product Type Rich Snippet Placed On The Homepage? published first on your-t1-blog-url

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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Are There Any Benefits Of Subfolders In Terms Of Link Juice?

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In episode 166 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked about the benefits of using subfolders in terms of link juice.

The exact question was:

I had read an article recently about the advantages of Sub-directories for link juice over sub-domains. The following is the link:

How Subdomains and Subfolders Affect SEO

Should we just go ahead and just build out subdomains or can there be any benefits to subfolders?

Are There Any Benefits Of Subfolders In Terms Of Link Juice? published first on your-t1-blog-url

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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An Introduction to Google Tag Manager

Posted by Angela_Petteys

Digital marketing thrives on data. No matter what type of site you have, whether it’s a large e-commerce site, a personal website, or a site for a small business, it’s essential to understand how people interact with your site. Google Analytics can provide a lot of the important insights you’re looking for, but when used alone, it does have its limitations. But by tagging your site and using Google Tag Manager in conjunction with Google Analytics, you’re able to collect much more data than you can otherwise.

Tags are snippets of code which are added to a site to collect information and send it to third parties. You can use tags for all sorts of purposes, including scroll tracking, monitoring form submissions, conducting surveys, generating heat maps, remarketing, or tracking how people arrive at your site. They’re also used to monitor specific events like file downloads, clicks on certain links, or items being removed from a shopping cart.

Sites commonly use several different tags and the amount of code needed to create them all can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to add or edit tags by going directly into the site’s source code. Google Tag Manager is a tool with a user-friendly, web-based interface that simplifies the process of working with tags. With GTM, you’re able to add, edit, and disable tags without having to touch the source code.

While GTM is, obviously, a Google product, it’s hardly limited to just working with tags for other Google services like AdWords or Analytics. You can use it to manage many different third-party tags, including Twitter, Bing Ads, Crazy Egg, and Hotjar, just to name a few. If there’s another tag which doesn’t have a template in GTM, you can add your own custom code. There are only a few types of tags GTM doesn’t work well with.

The pros and cons of GTM

Lessens reliance on web devs

By far, the biggest benefit to Google Tag Manager is that it makes it easier for marketers to implement tags without having to rely on web developers to do it for them. Developers are usually busy with other high-priority projects, so tagging often ends up on the back burner. But since Google Tag Manager helps you avoid touching the source code, marketers can quickly add and make changes to tags on their own. This is a big advantage if, for example, you only need to use a tag to collect data for a very brief amount of time. Without GTM, there’s a good chance that it would take longer for the tag to be added than it would actually be live for.

Still requires some technical implementation

Although GTM helps reduce the reliance on developers, it doesn’t completely eliminate it. You’ll still need someone to add the container code to each page of your site. And while GTM has plenty of tag templates to choose from which are easy enough for a non-developer to work with, more complex customized tags will likely require the help of someone who really understands coding. If you have existing tags that were manually added to your site’s source code, those will need to be removed first so that you don’t end up with duplicate data.

Most businesses can benefit from using it

Businesses of any size can potentially benefit from GTM. Since GTM makes it so much easier to add and edit tags without a developer, it’s great for smaller businesses that might have limited access to technical support. And since sites for enterprise-level businesses can easily use dozens of tags, GTM makes it easier to manage them all and improves site speed by helping them load more efficiently.

Tags can slow down site speed if fired synchronously

One issue with traditional tracking tags is that if they fire synchronously, they can slow down site speeds. When tags fire synchronously, one tag being slow to load slows down all the other tags that are waiting on it. And the longer a site takes to load, the more likely it is that people will leave without converting. But tags created in GTM load asynchronously by default, meaning each tag can fire anytime it’s ready to. If you need to control the order in which your tags are fired, there is tag sequencing and firing priority functionality to let you do that.

Can be used for AMP sites and mobile apps, as well

You’re not even limited to just using GTM with standard websites. GTM can also be used to manage tags for AMP sites and mobile apps. In the case of mobile apps, GTM can be a huge help since it lets you add and edit your tags without having to issue an updated version of your app, which users might not be quick to actually download. In some respects, using GTM for AMP sites or mobile apps is pretty similar to using it for a regular website, but they do have their differences. In this guide, we’re going to focus on using GTM for web.

Components of tags & GTM

On the surface, tags and tag managers are pretty straightforward. But before you can start working with them, there are a few main concepts you’ll need to know about.

Containers

When you start working with GTM, the first thing you’ll need to do is create a container. A container essentially “holds” all the tags for your site.

After creating a new container, GTM gives you some code to add to your site. This is your container code and it will need to be added to the source code so it displays on each page of your site. Some CMSes, such as WordPress, have plugins to help add the container code for you, but you may need to contact your web developer to have it added. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to add, edit, disable, or remove your tags as needed through GTM.

Triggers

Each tag on a site needs to serve a specific purpose. Maybe you want to have a tag send information when someone downloads a file, when an outbound link is clicked, or when a form is submitted. These sorts of events are known as triggers and all tags need to have at least one trigger assigned to it; otherwise, it’s not going to do anything.

Triggers can be broken down into two main components: events and filters. When you go to configure a trigger in GTM, you’ll be given a long list of types of triggers to choose from. These are your events. Once you choose an event, you’ll be able to set up your filter.

Filters can be divided further down into three parts: variables, operators, and values. We’ll talk more about variables in just a minute, but in this case, it refers to the type of variable involved. The operator tells the tag whether an event needs to equal (or if it should be greater or less than a certain value, contain a certain value, etc.) And of course, the value is the condition which needs to be met. Even though the word “value” is typically used in reference to numbers and prices, remember that in this case, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a numerical value. In many cases, your value will be something like a URL or a keyword.

For example, let’s say I wanted to see how many people were reading the blog content on my site in depth. I could create a tag with a Scroll Depth event trigger that should fire when the vertical scroll depth reaches 75%. If I wanted this to fire on every page of my site, I could leave the “All Pages” option selected in the trigger configuration box and I wouldn’t have to create any further filters. But since I’m focusing on blog content, I’d choose “Some Pages” and create the filter “Page URL” “Contains” “fakewebsitename.com/blog.”

There might also be some circumstances when you don’t want a tag to fire. In this case, you can create a blocking trigger to prevent it from firing on those occasions. GTM prioritizes blocking triggers over other types of triggers, so if you have a blocking trigger that contradicts a condition set by another trigger, Google Tag Manager will follow what’s specified by the blocking trigger. For instance, if you have a tag that’s set to fire on all of your pages, but there are a few pages you’d like to have excluded from that, you can just use a blocking trigger to prevent it from firing on those few pages.

Variables & constants

While tags depend on triggers, triggers depend on variables. Variables contain the value a trigger needs to evaluate to know whether or not it should fire. The tag compares the value of the variable to the value defined in the trigger and if the variable meets the conditions of the trigger, the tag will fire.

Tags also use variables to collect information that can be passed onto the data layer as a user interacts with the site. A common example of this would be if a tag was set to fire when a person adds a certain amount of products to their shopping cart.

Variables can often be reused between tags. One of the most popular tips for using GTM is to create constant variables with the ID numbers or tracking codes you’ll need to use more than once. For example, if you’ll need to use your Google Analytics property ID number in multiple tags, you could just create a constant string variable with the value being your ID number. That way, instead of repeatedly having to look up and enter your ID number, you could just select the variable name.

When using GTM, you’ll be working with two different types of variables: built-in variables and user-defined variables. Built-in variables are some of the most commonly used types of variables, so Google went ahead and made them easy to access in GTM.

Once you select a built-in variable, you’ll be able to configure its settings however you’d like. Note that these are just a few of the built-in variables for regular web containers. You can find more built-in variables by clicking the “Configure” button. If you’re using GTM for AMP sites or mobile apps, you may see different options to choose from.

If you need another type of variable that’s not included as a built-in variable, you can create a user-defined variable. When you go to add a user-defined variable, you’ll be given a list of types of variables to choose from. For more information on each type of variables, Simo Ahava has a very helpful guide to different variable types.

Variables can be created from the GTM dashboard by clicking on the “Variable” option on the left side menu. You can also create them while you’re creating a tag by clicking on the button next to the field that looks like a Lego block with a plus sign on it.

Data layers

Tags need information to know whether or not they should fire, but how (or where) do they get that information? One way they could find it is by checking the page’s HTML structure, but that’s really not an ideal solution. When tags need to search through HTML to find what they’re looking for, it can take longer for them to fire. And if the site’s HTML structure changes over time, tags can break. Besides, there are certain types of information a tag might need which won’t be found in a page’s HTML, like a transaction total.

A data layer is a JavaScript object which keeps the information tags need separate from the rest of your site’s code. Since tags don’t have to spend time searching through the HTML to find the information they need, this is another way GTM can help improve site speed. Instead, everything they’re looking for can be found in one place and it’s readily available when the page loads.

Technically, data layers are optional. You don’t have to specifically define one yourself; GTM can initiate one for you. But if you want to use GTM to track specific events, you’ll need to have a data layer.

To start off with, a new data layer object will look like this:

When adding a data layer, the object needs to be placed before the GTM container code. If the data layer object is placed after the container code, GTM won’t be able to access the information in it and the data layer will basically reset after loading.

Once the data layer object has been added to a page’s code, the brackets in the second line can be populated with information, variables, and events. Some types of information can be written directly into the data layer, but other types of information can be pushed into the data layer dynamically as a user interacts with your site, such as if someone downloads a file or if they add a certain amount of products to their shopping cart.

Working with GTM

Creating accounts and containers

To get started, go to tagmanager.google.com and create an account. Under “Setup Account,” enter the name of the company whose site is being managed and hit “Continue.”

Next, you’ll set up your container. Enter your domain name as the container name, choose which type of page or app it will be used on, and click “Create.” If you choose iOS or Android, you’ll also have to specify whether you’re using Firebase SDK or a legacy SDK.

Note that I specifically said to use the company name as the account name and the site’s domain for the container name. In theory, you can name these anything you want. This is just how Google recommends naming them as a best practice. Generally speaking, one of the best things you can do when working with GTM is make sure everything is named very clearly. Otherwise, it’s very easy for mistakes to be made.

Multiple GTM accounts can be managed within a single GTM account, but Google advises creating one container per domain. You don’t have to create separate containers for each individual tag or for every individual page on a site; all tags can all be placed within one container.

For most companies and organizations, one container is all they’ll need. But in the case of a company that has subsidiaries or owns separate businesses, the website for each subsidiary/business should get its own container and all the containers can be managed from one main GTM account. If a site has a subdomain that is treated separately from the main domain, the subdomain should also be given its own container.

When a marketing agency is managing tags on behalf of a company, Google recommends that the company create their own GTM account, then add the agency’s Google account as a user. This way, the agency can access GTM, but it’s easy for the company to revoke access should they decide to change agencies.

After creating your container, accept the GTM terms of service and you’ll be given your container code.

Once the container code has been added, you’re able to start creating tags. But before you get started, it’s a good idea to take some time to figure out exactly which tags you want to add. Even though there aren’t any limits to the amount of tags you can put in a container, for best performance, Google advises keeping the amount of tags you use to a minimum. If you’re migrating your tags to GTM from another tag manager or are making the switch from tags coded in your source code, this is a good time to review the tags currently on your site. In many cases, sites have tags that are associated with services they’re no longer using or were used to track things that aren’t being monitored anymore, so this is a good opportunity to "clean house," so to speak.

Creating a tag

When you create or select a container, the first thing you’ll see is the GTM dashboard. We’ll eventually get around to talking about almost everything you see here, but let’s begin by creating a tag. Click “Add a New Tag” to open up a window where you’ll be able to name and configure your tag.

Before we go any further into the process of creating tags, remember to name your tags very clearly. Since sites often use several different tags, you won’t want there to be any confusion about which tag does what. Google’s recommended tag naming convention is: Tag Type - Detail - Location. For example, a Google Analytics tag that tracks form submissions on a Contact Us page would be named “GA - Form Submission - Contact Us.” Including the location of a tag in its name is a good idea because it helps distinguish it from similar tags on other pages. So if I had other GA form submission tags on my site, specifying that this one is on the Contact Us page would help me avoid editing the wrong one by mistake.

Putting the tag type at the beginning of a tag name also helps keep your tags organized. GTM lists tags alphabetically, so if you’re creating multiple tags for the same service or tool, all of those tags will all be grouped together and easy to find.

Now, back to creating a tag. When you click “Add a new tag” on the dashboard, this is the window you’ll see. Choose “Tag Configuration” and you’ll be given a long list of tag templates, which includes many of the most commonly used types of tags. If any of these are what you’re looking for, click on it and enter the information requested. If you don’t see the type of tag you want to create listed, choose “Custom HTML” to add your own code.

Since the exact information you’ll need to provide will vary depending on which type of tag you’re working with, I can’t possibly go into how to make every single type of tag. But as an example, let’s say I wanted to notify Google Analytics anytime someone views my pricing page. After choosing Universal Analytics, this is what I’d see:

All I would need to do is choose “Page View” from the “Track Type” dropdown menu, then enter the variable with my Google Analytics account information. If I hadn’t created that variable ahead of time, I could make one now by clicking the dropdown menu under “Google Analytics Settings” and choosing “New Variable.”

If I wanted to make changes to the tag firing sequence or create a firing schedule, I could do that by clicking on the “Advanced Settings” option. Click outside the tag configuration window to go back to the previous screen.

Next, you’ll need to create at least one trigger. Click the “Triggering” box underneath “Tag Configuration” to get started. If you don’t have a previously created trigger to choose from in the list that opens up, click the + sign in the upper right corner of the window. This will bring up a new window where you’ll be asked to name your new trigger. Do that and click on the “Tag Configuration” box so see a list of trigger types. In my case, I’d choose “Page View.”

Since I only want my tag to fire on one page, I’d choose “Some Page Views,” then create a filter specifying that the page URL needs to equal the URL of my pricing page. If I had another filter to add, I could click the plus (+) button next to the filter to set one up. If I had created multiple filters for this tag and later decided to get rid of one of them, all I’d have to do is hit the subtract (–) button next to the filter in question. When you’re done, click outside the window to exit.

Once your tag and trigger have been configured, save it and you can either keep working by creating more tags or you can preview your tag and make sure it’s working correctly before publishing it.

Previewing, debugging, and publishing tags

GTM’s “Preview & Debug” mode lets you test tags before publication so that you can make sure everything is working correctly and that you won’t have any errors throwing off your data.

To enter “Preview & Debug,” click the “Preview” button in the upper right corner of the GTM dashboard and you’ll see an orange banner notifying you that you are now in “Preview” mode. Next, open the site you’re tagging. If you already have your site open in another tab, refresh the page and you should see a “Debug” panel at the bottom of your screen. (Don’t worry, visitors to your site won’t be able to see it.)

The “Debug” panel shows all sorts of detailed information about your tags, triggers, and data layer. On the left side of the panel is an event timeline summary, which outlines all the events that occur in the data layer. At a minimum, you should be seeing at least three events listed here: Page View, DOM Ready, and Window Loaded. It’s OK to see more than three events, but if any of those three are missing, there’s a problem that needs to be fixed.

When you click on any of the events in your timeline, you’ll see all the tags which are set to fire when that event occurs. Click on any of the tags to see more detailed information about its triggers, properties, and if there are any blocking triggers associated with it.

As you work in “Preview & Debug” mode, you’re the only one who can see the information about your tags. But let’s say you’re working as part of a team on a tagging project and you find an issue you want to bring to another person’s attention. There is a way to do that. Switch back over to your GTM dashboard and look at the orange banner. On the right, there’s a “Share Preview” button. Click on it and you’ll bring up a box where you can enter the URL of the page in question. This will generate a preview link you can use to send to another person.

If you’re having a hard time getting “Preview & Debug” to work correctly, Analytics Mania has a great guide to solving some of the most common reasons why this happens.

Even after a tag has been published, Google still makes it easy to go back and check to make sure there aren’t any problems. Google Tag Assistant is a free Chrome extension and once it’s installed, you can visit any page on your site and it will tell you if your tags are firing correctly or if there are any improvements that could be made. GTA uses a three color system to indicate its findings: green, blue, and red. Green means all of your tags are working, blue means GTA has suggestions for how a tag could be improved, and red means it’s not working.

Once it appears that all of your tags are firing correctly, you can go ahead and publish them. From the GTM dashboard, hit the “Submit” button in the upper right corner and you’ll be asked to review your changes. If everything looks OK, enter a name and description for your new container version and publish it.

When you publish changes in GTM, it creates a new version of your container. If there’s ever a problem and you have to revert to an earlier version of your container, all you have to do is click the “Versions” button at the top of the GTM dashboard, choose the version you’d like to revert to from the list, click “Action,” then “Publish.”

If you’re migrating your tags from another tag manager or from hard-coded tags on your site, Google advises setting up all of your tags in GTM, then removing your old tags all at once and publishing the GTM container with your new tags as quickly as possible. You might have a very small gap in your data collection, but there shouldn’t be any more issues after your new tags are live.

Workspaces, workspace changes, and activity history

If you have multiple people working on a tagging project at the same time, workspaces can help make life a little easier. Even if you’re not collaborating with others, sometimes having the option to create separate workspaces can still be very helpful.

In older versions of GTM, all edits had to be made in a common container draft. If one person or team finished adding tags before another person/team, they couldn’t publish their new tags without also publishing the other team’s tags-in-progress. But with workspaces, multiple users can work on tagging at the same time without interfering with each other’s work.

Each workspace uses the current published container version as a basis, but tags in each workspace can be edited, previewed, debugged, and even published independently from the tags in other workspaces. If you’re working with the free version of GTM, you can have up to three different workspaces, one default workspace and two others, but if you use Google Tag Manager 360, you can create an unlimited amount of workspaces.

When one workspace is published, it creates a new version of the container. If there are any other workspaces with unpublished changes saved in them, the user(s) working in those spaces will see a notice saying that they need to update the workspace. Updating the workspace syncs the changes in the container to their workspace. While it’s not required to do so to continue working, it’s generally best to stay on top of updates so that you’re not working with an outdated version of the container.

After syncing changes in a workspace, you’ll be notified if there are any conflicts which need to be resolved. If any conflicts exist, you’ll be asked to review them and either ignore the conflict or copy the change. When you copy the change, the field in question in your workspace will be overwritten with the information from the latest container version.

If necessary, you can set user permissions on workspaces to prevent users from making unwanted changes. For example, if you had a developer working on some really complicated custom tags, the developer might want to create a separate workspace to work in and limit the user permissions so that only they can make changes to it. This way, marketers will be able to go in and make changes without accidentally making changes to the custom tags.

Another great thing about GTM, particularly if you have more than one person working on tagging, is that it lets you see which changes were made, when they were made, and who made them. On the dashboard, you’ll see a Workspace Changes section, which outlines some of the most recent changes that have been made to tags and triggers. If mistakes any mistakes have been made, you can use the “Abandon Change” option to delete those changes. Beneath Workspace Changes, there’s Activity History, which shows all activity on a GTM account.

Additional resources

Google Tag Manager has a lot to offer, but learning how to use it in depth can be pretty overwhelming. This guide helped introduce you to the tool, but there’s still a lot more to learn if you want to use GTM to its full potential. LunaMetrics and Simo Ahava have written about GTM very extensively, so they’re excellent places to start if you have any questions or want to learn more. Of course, Google also has a lot of helpful information. Even if you’re not a developer, Google’s Tag Manager Guide for Developers is worth taking a look at since it does a great job of explaining some of the concepts related to GTM and has a lot of good information about how to use it. With all these resources, you should have all the information you need to get the most out of GTM.

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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Can You Share Any Tips For Finding Local SEO Clients?

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In episode 166 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked for tips for finding local SEO clients.

The exact question was:

Can you share any tips for finding local SEO clients? Need a few recurring payments to get the ball rolling…any tips would be appreciated. thanks

Can You Share Any Tips For Finding Local SEO Clients? published first on your-t1-blog-url

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168

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Click on the video above to watch Episode 168 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Adam: Hey everybody. We are here and live for Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 168. It’s the 24th of January 2018. I’m still working on getting the year correct. I find myself typing 2017 a lot. Anyways, moving right along, we’re going to say hello to everybody and then get into things. Left to right, from me, Marco, how’s it going, man?

Marco: What’s up, dude? You got me first. Latinos are first today. All right. I’m good, man. Nice and sunny, warm. Warm.

Adam: Outstanding. Yeah. Obviously, it’s not warm here. Let’s see, we got Rob with us today. Rob, I’m guessing it’s not too warm where you’re at either, is it?

Rob: Oh, no. It’s icy and snowy. Kids were out, two-hour delay today, so it’s definitely not warm.

Adam: Gotcha. Wow. All right. Bradley, how about you?

Bradley: I’m happy. I’m here. I’m ready to answer some questions. The weather did get cold again. I was just talking to Stan and Rob, it’s nuts because it was like 5 degrees for like a week here and then it went to 70 degrees like almost overnight. It was 70 degrees for like three days and now it’s back to 30 again. It sucks right now, this time of year.

Adam: Well, speaking of questions, I got one for you, Bradley. Earlier this week, obviously, everyone here doing the Hump Day Hangout knows that we launched the Video Lead-Gen System training, but I know a lot of people, we had questions, they weren’t sure exactly what it was about it. Of course, we came out with the weave … Stuff we’ve been using for a long time and kind of developing and Bradley’s built onto a lot of that.

As far as a question, do you mind taking just a couple minutes and kind of explain to people, because I think this will answer a lot of questions like, who is it for, kind of what was your approach to it, and what might be the benefits to somebody?

Bradley: Sure. All right. The Video Lead-Gen System is, basically, it’s an expansion to the Video Email Prospecting training stuff that I put together many years ago that I’ve shared with the Hump Day Hangouts group, as well as many other groups for free. It’s just like expanded training on that where I go into a lot more in depth because the training, the idea, the concept is to use video emails or videos within emails to prospect for landing clients or, if you’re doing lead gen, for landing service providers.

It’s a very unique way of just doing outreach and making yourself stand above the crowd, above the noise. Right? Business owners, as many of you guys probably already know, because you are business owners, online business owners, you probably, if you’ve registered your business ever like with Google My Business listing, you have a Maps page or whatever, and you’re basically a local business, you might be an internet-based business, but you’re still registered as a local business, well then, you probably already know that you get hammered with solicitations all the time via email, cold emails, spam all day long.

How do you separate yourself? How do you stand above that noise? How do you stand out above all these other like spammers out there? I mean, so the way that I found it that worked really well for me when I started building my agency was video-based email. I still use a variation of that now, even though I don’t do like targeted prospecting like that so much anymore, because I do more of a rifle … excuse me … a shotgun approach, which is like a mass prospecting. That’s what I’m doing with my new agencies more of the mass approach-

Adam: But that’s still using video. Right?

Bradley: That’s still video-based, but it’s a lot longer of a kind of a … from the time that they interact with me to the time where they … excuse me … the time that they interact with some digital property. Right? They interact somewhere online with one of my web assets, whether it’s an ad, an email or whatever, there’s a long process between the shotgun approach to when they actually have a conversation with me, if we even ever get to that point.

With video email, it’s a lot more direct. In other words, it’s reaching out very, very precisely to very specific prospects that you’ve hand-selected or you’ve had a virtual assistant do it, which is what I recommend, and then drafting, creating some video-based emails where you’re basically giving them an audit or an analysis of their digital presence.

It doesn’t matter what kind of service you provide. Right? It could be SEO, social media, PPC, lead gen, anything, content marketing services, anything at all, Google Map services. Whatever it is that you do, you can, if you’re looking for clients or you’re looking for lead gen service providers, you can approach prospects this way and kind of explain to them what it is that you’ve got, what you’re seeing, how they can make their presence better online, again, with whatever service that you provide.

Just explain how, conceptually, and ask for a phone conversation. Right? Just ask to begin a dialogue with them. It works really, really well. My numbers were consistently between 30 to 40%. So, an average of 35% is what I would get a response rate. For every 10 emails, I would send I would get three to four replies back and that was like clockwork.

Like I said, even though I’m not doing specifically prospecting that way now, still to this day, when I get a referral, which I get referrals quite often, when I get a referral, I start a conversation or a dialogue with the potential prospect that was referred to me and I do the same thing. I use the exact same process. It’s not a cold contact for me at that point because they were referred, but I still use the exact same video audit process that I share in the Video Lead-Gen System for basically pitching them, showing them, what I see and then giving them a proposal at the same time.

It works really, really well. I close probably eight out of 10 proposals that I submit now using the video email system. It’s the same system.

Adam: Nice. As part of this, too, I wanted to say it’s a win-win, in my mind, value proposition because even if you’re already doing something then this is just going to take your percentages up.

Bradley: Right.

Adam: In my mind, this even, you know, it’s kind of a cliché, this only got you one more client. But I mean, on the low end, if you’re just getting started, man, this is a really good way, and I’m speaking from experience, to get in front of somebody and get that response. We hear from people a lot, too, who are, “Man, I’m not hearing back from anyone. I’ve sent emails.” This is a guaranteed way to start getting some replies. Then, if you have a system you can incorporate this into it and really pump things up. In terms of paying for itself, that’s about as simple as it gets.

Actually, you were going to do a bonus for people, weren’t you, Bradley?

Bradley: Yeah. I don’t know if we really highlighted that on the sales page or whatever. Guys, we didn’t do like some crazy launch on this and all that. But, yeah, I’m doing a bonus webinar. Did we already schedule that? I think we did, didn’t we?

Adam: Yes. I believe it is February 15th.

Bradley: Okay. February 15th, we’re going to do a bonus webinar, guys, where I’m going to walk through a process of how … Well, first of all, you can ask questions during that, for implementation, Q&A, that kind of stuff. At the same time, I’m going to be revealing a process for how to find hot prospects from YouTube that you can search by industry, you can search by location. Find people that are spending money, that aren’t getting the results that they should be for the money that they’re spending, that you can then prospect them in a very simple and very direct way, which can help you to land those clients. It’s like a freaking gold mine. It really is.

I’m going to be talking about that, specifically outlying how to do that, and showing you guys live on the webinar. Number two, also, I’m going to be going much more in-depth on the outsourcing process for how to outsource this entire process, both the video email prospecting or lead-gen system, the preparation of creating, having somebody outsourcing the vast majority of that work. There’s a portion of it that you’re likely going to have to do regardless, but the majority of it can be outsourced. Also, outsourcing the YouTube prospecting, where to find leads on YouTube and how to find them. That can be outsourced as well. We’re going to be covering all of that.

Adam: Outstanding. Cool. All right. Now if anyone has any questions, please feel free, this is a great time today to ask. Or you can contact us, hop in the Facebook group, if you’re a member there; if not, join it. Or you can shoot an email to [email protected]. Real quick before we hop into questions, I know we’re starting, I think, to wind down the time on this, but, Marco, the charity drive is still going on, right?

Marco: It’s still going on. It will go on until Friday. We have to close it Friday because the school year starts February 5th. It starts that week. We have to get everything together and get the money where it’s supposed to go, and get the supplies back, and get it all to the kids so that they’re all ready to go by the time they have to go to school. So, we’re winding down school year 2018, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t go forward with this because I’m thinking that, I mean, we can make this a year-long thing for school year 2019.

I mean, the cause is fabulous. I know we had an offer from someone, a very kind offer to mentor some of the kids in coding. If they’re interested in coding, this person is willing to give up his time and mentor some of these children, which is fabulous, because I spoke before, a tutor two hours a week, it has been shown is all a kid needs to get on the right track and really succeed in school.

On top of that, you get a mentor and play someone who has been there and done it and can show you the way, which is kind of what we do, right? Consultants are like mentors to their clients. So the same effect happens where you mentor the person, you show them, well, these are the things that you can run into, these are the problems that you can run into, encoding in this case. I think that’s fabulous. We might even be able to set up like a mentoring type of website for anyone willing to donate their skills for these kids, as they go along in their education they’re going to need it.

I mean, this is growing. I’m so happy, man. I can’t begin to say how happy and how appreciative I am of the people who have already donated. So, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I know that kids will be the ones that benefit and will be the most thankful.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you everybody who donated. We really do appreciate it. Without further ado, I guess, Bradley, let’s get into it.

Bradley: Let’s rock and roll. All right. Grab the screen. I tried to do the picture-in-picture thing today, but Google wasn’t recognizing minicam for some reason, so sorry.

What Are The Reasons Why Some Queries Do Not Appear On The Country-Specific Google Search Site?

Okay. All right. Giuseppe is up first. He says, “I created a Google site and also a WordPress.com in Italian with backlinks to my money site. They both rank in Google.com but don’t rank in Google.it. I can’t find them, searched to the end of all the results that Google.it gave me and didn’t find them. They are both indexed. If I copy and paste some of the text, Google finds them. But if I search for the main keyword, Google doesn’t show them, not even at the last page. Why can I find them on Google.com with my main keyword but can’t with the same keyword on Google.it? The G site was created five months ago with original content; the WordPress.com a few weeks ago. Italians search on Google.it, not on Google.com … excuse, Italians search on Google.it.

Okay. That’s a really good question. I’m going to probably defer that one to Marco. He’s probably got the best answer for that because I’m not sure, because everything I’ve ever done has always been on Google.com, so I can’t really explain what’s going on there. Do you have any insight, Marco?

Marco: No, I don’t. Because anything that we’ve ever done to target like Spanish, the .es or in the case of Costa Rica, the co.cr is done through .com. Maybe some of the link building that you need to do. I know that there has to be a WordPress.com in Italian and so maybe you need to do that. I know that there’s a Google.it, so maybe everything has to be set up through Google.it rather than Google.com. I don’t know if it was set up that way.

I ran into this problem in Canada. I could get it to rank for Google.com but not Google.ca as well. I mean, I don’t know if he has a full … Does he say he has a full IFTTT?

Bradley: I don’t think he’s mentioned that at all. He says he created a Google site in WordPress.com. That’s all he’s talking about.

Marco: Yeah. To me, there’s not enough for Google to associate, even if it’s in Italian, the WordPress … Let me see, they both rank in Google.com. The G site, you may have to build it in Google.it. I don’t know if that’s possible. It should be and everything that you relate to it should be Google.it. I mean, the link building, if you do a drive stack, which we won’t do in Italian, but it should be done in Google.it if possible, so that Google picks up that relevant, the Google shortened links. I don’t know if the Google shortener, it’s Google.gl but you can shorten any local, anything local that you can add to it would also help.

Other than that, I really don’t know because I’ve never needed to, like, for ranking in Spanish, it’s always done through .com and it works to Spanish for whatever reason.

Bradley: Yeah. I wonder if you could insert like iframe in some like local event feeds or something like that into the site, and that would help to get the bots come crawl a bit more and hopefully get it indexed. Well, I mean, I know you’re saying it’s indexed, but for some reason it’s being filtered out. It’s not showing in the universal search results for Google.it.

Again, these are all just assumptions or speculations on my part, because I don’t know, I’ve never done anything outside of Google.com. But I mean there’s various things I would test to try to get it into the .it to where it’s showing up. You know what I mean? So that might be something you could do, is try to inject like some local event feeds or something like that. Or even topically relevant event feeds or something like that that you can iframe in.

I don’t know if you’re in Syndication Academy, but I showed on the last update webinar how to … You can even take RSS feeds from sites, local sites or in any site within an Italian, period, and take the RSS feed and iframe that into a page on your WordPress.com site, for example. Right? Then, you could use that to kind of just help to force relevancy and for the bots to make the association.

I mean, that’s something that you could try. I don’t know that that’s going to work for you, but that’s something that you could try.

Marco: He could also try the YouTube.it extension for iframing videos.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: He’ll have to play with the code a little bit, but I know that YouTube has the .it extension. He can try that. Anything local, yeah. If you’re going for local, you have to have local relevance.

Bradley: Yeah. Adding language-specific relevance could help. I mean, at least my assumption is it would, but with limited experience outside of Google.com, these are all just wild ass guesses, really.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, we’re just guessing.

Can You Repurpose Existing IFTTT Sites And Point Them To Another Site?

Bradley: Keith Goodwin. What’s up, buddy? I’ve had four people reach out to me in the last couple weeks, Keith, asking me for the super spun article that service provider that I mentioned and I keep referring them to you. Hopefully, you’re getting some orders coming through, man. Quick question … By the way, anybody that needs ever a super spun article, Keith Goodwin is the man to do it. He’s got a great service. It’s really, really good. I’ve been using it for years. I haven’t used it quite sometime because I don’t do all that spam stuff anymore, but when I did I used the hell out of it.

“Quick question on repurposing existing IFTTT Networks. If I have a client that stops paying, can I repurpose existing IFTTT sites and use them to point at another site?” Sure, you can.

“Is this more successful than starting fresh again?” Yes, it is, because they’re aged accounts. If you do 100% retheme, what I mean by that is, if you change the main topic, the primary topic of whatever that network was for, then I don’t know, I don’t have any hard data to prove this, but I’ve got literally hundreds of IFTTT networks, guys, and many of them were built … I mean, remember I started doing this method back in 2012, so I’ve still got networks that are still alive and kicking today, syndicating today that were built in 2012. Some of those networks have been rethemed, completely rethemed three and four or five times, no kidding, over the years because whatever project they were being used on ended up, you know, we terminated the project or whatever the case may be.

A lot of them were PBN networks. In other words, they were syndication networks around PBN sites that then later became video broadcasting sites, and then later that, you know, all these different things. A lot of times those networks get repurposed. I still think that they’re better than a brand new one because there’s age there, the accounts have been aged or seasoned, so to speak. That’s why … and I know, like I said, I just had, in fact, when we started building a few months ago when I started working on our new contractor marketing agency, I went through my old list of PBN stuff because I let so many of them go. I let a lot of them just expire because I don’t really do that, use PBNs anymore. I ended up with 95 syndication networks that were abandoned, that were just sitting there dormant, but they were all still alive. Some of them had properties that were terminated and stuff like that.

I ended up having one of my VAs go through and she went in and started reconnecting everything, updating everything, turning on applets. It took her three weeks. She got, I think, 50 or 55 of the networks connected to our YouTube channel for that project. We still got about another 40 or 45 in queue that are just on hold, that are just sitting there waiting for me to bring her back over to do that.

My point in telling you all this is that, yes, they can be repurposed. Absolutely, they can be. If you keep them with the same theme, then they’re going to be more powerful than if you retheme them. But again, my experience with an aged network is regardless of whether it’s rethemed or not it’s still more powerful than a brand new one.

Yeah, guys, I bet a lot of you, any of you that have been using the syndication networks for any period of time, you probably have syndication networks out there that aren’t being utilized to their full potential, like on projects maybe that you’ve abandoned or whatever, so go repurpose them, put them to stuff, put them towards projects that you are still working on or current projects, because really there’s no reason.

I mean, again, I let so many of them just go and then once I started going through my drive files and taking inventory of stuff that was available, I mean, could you imagine buying 95 syndication networks, how much that would cost or how long it would take you to build them? I had all these just sitting around. So, definitely, definitely repurpose them if you’re not using them. Okay.

Yeah, if it’s anything for clients, guys, well, first of all, if the client bought the network, I do not repurpose it. If I built supplemental networks to help rank their properties but they wasn’t stuff that they purchased, then yes, I’ll repurpose those. But if they purchased a network from me and I built it for them or I had it built for them and it was branded for them, then I don’t repurpose, I don’t reclaim that network. It’s theirs. They paid for it, it’s their asset.

Just to be clear on that, guys. I’m not saying if a client decides they don’t need me anymore that I go take their network back and then repurpose it, because that’s not what I do. It’s theirs. It’s done. They keep it. Okay? It’s only networks that I’ve used or built to help rank stuff that they haven’t owned, so to speak, that I’ll repurpose.

All right. That’s a great question, Keith.

How Long Should You Wait Before Calling Back People Who Watched The Video From Your Video Emails?

Mohammed is up. What’s up, Mohammed? He says, “Hey guys, I’m starting to use video emails, and some emails are read and clicked on very fast. BB says to call as soon as they watch the video. But wouldn’t it be weird to them if I called 15 minutes after sending the email in the first place?”

Yeah, it could be. But who cares? It’s up to you, Mohammed. I’ve been real transparent about the fact that I can’t stand cold calling. It is still a cold call but it’s warmer when you just saw engagement on your email that you sent them because you know damn well that you’re top of mind to them. Right? That��s why … I mean, I did it when I was hungry enough guys, when I needed the money bad enough, I would cold call. Right now I just don’t want to do it.

Here’s my process, just to be real clear. If I really needed it, then what I would do is set up notifications. Again, guys, this is covered in the Video Lead-Gen Systems training, but whatever email tracking software or application I’m using you can usually set up notifications to where when somebody opens an email or performs an action within an email or whatever you can set up notifications however you want, but you get notified. You get notified via email, via SMS, text. There’s a number of ways you can get notified.

If you’re hungry enough, you really need clients like yesterday. Right? Then when somebody opens an email, like, I would set up notification on link click, is what I would do. I would have link click, which the link click would be tied to the video that’s embedded in the email. Right? It’s either a still image or it’s a gif image, either way it’s linked to the actual video, the YouTube URL or to the landing page URL if you’re sending them to a landing page. Either way when somebody clicks that video image or gif in the middle of the email, that triggers a notification.

So now you know that they’re getting your message. If you’ve got an eight- or a 10-minute audit video and somebody clicks, then I would wait about 10 or 15 minutes and call and say, “Hey, Mr. Mohamed. I was just calling because I sent a video, an email to,” and you mention the owner’s name.

You should have that anyways. You should get all of that stuff on the front-end when you’re developing your contact list, which I go through that how important that is, especially with this particular process. You got to really know who it is you’re emailing to and try to get the decision-makers email if possible. Then, you call the number.

If it’s a gatekeeper you just say, “Hey, I just sent a video via email to and I’m following up to find out if they had a chance to watch it.” A lot of times you’ll get the person on the phone that just clicked it because they’re the ones sitting at the desk. But if not, you get a gatekeeper, again, if they put you through or if not, they might put you on hold and say, “Hey, we got some guy calling saying that he just sent you a video.” It’s a bit odd, you’re right, for the prospect. Right? Because they’re like, “Holy shit, I just clicked the email open and he’s calling already?”

By the way, this is one of the ways I could tell if it was a prospect that I wanted to work with or kind of like you could test whether the prospect was honest or not, was if you were to call, like I said I used to do it when I was hungry enough, but if I would see the notification on the link click, which means I know they’re watching the video, then I would call and they would answer the phone. I would say, “Hey, this is Bradley Benner. I just sent you an email a few minutes ago,” or earlier today, is what I would say. “I sent you an email earlier today that contained a video and I was just following up to find out if you had a chance to watch it.”

If they say no, then I already know that they’re lying and they’re probably somebody … They don’t have any integrity, right? A lot of times that’s just a defense mechanism. It’s just like, no, I don’t want to be sold to, so I’m going to say no. But you know that they just watched it because you could see it, right? You could see it in the email tracking software.

If they say, “Oh, wow.” I’ve had people say, “Wow. That’s really funny. I literally just watched the video like 10 minutes ago.” I’d be like, “Huh, that’s a coincidence. Well, now that I’ve got you on the phone, do you have a couple minutes?” Anyways, it’s just a great way to break the ice.

Now the other side of this, which I just was getting at was the fact that I don’t like to cold call anymore. Now what I’ll do, and I mentioned to this to you, Mohammed, in the thread in the mastermind, is if I see a bunch of activity through the email tracking, whether a bunch of opens, long duration. In other words, that they dwelled on the email for quite some time. It was open for a while, link clicks or forwards. Right? If I see a lot of engagement or activity around that particular email, I’ll send a follow-up email, a very specific message with the follow-up email. “Hey, I’m just checking in to see if you had a chance to watch the video.”

You know they have. You can already see the activity. Right? But you’d just say “I was just checking in to follow up. I’d really like to schedule a brief call with you, if at all possible, if you have any questions,” blah blah blah. That’s a little bit more non-confrontational, but as I mentioned to you, Mohammed, in the mastermind, there are a lot of people that are genuinely interested in what you have to offer but they still won’t make the first step, they won’t take the initiative.

Those are the types of people that a couple follow-up emails maybe what it takes to push them over the edge to call you or it might take you being the one to take the initiative and make the call. It depends on how hungry you are.

Marco: If I can just-

Bradley: Go ahead, yeah.

Marco: If I can just interject. Another way that he could be less pushy and it’s something that I’ve used in the past is instead of saying, “Have you had a chance to watch the video,” he can always say, “I think there was a glitch in my email,” or whatever in the software, frame it any kind of way, “Did you get the video?” It puts them more at ease because you’re not saying, “Have you had a chance to watch the video?” Damn, I just got the video. It’s like, “Did you get the video?” and it’s the same way. If they say no, you know they’re lying. No integrity. If they say yes, then you can go through the process, “Oh, great,” and then you can go into, now you have them on the phone and now you can start that what we talked about again in the mastermind.

Mohammed, congratulations. You’re active. You’re making full use of the money that you’re investing on your business. But then you can go into that conversational, getting all that information that you need from this client so that you can lead them down the path to closing.

Bradley: Yep. I mean, that’s a great question, Mohammed, because really the timing is everything. Like Marco said, you don’t have to phrase it the way that I did. That’s just the way I did it commonly. But, yeah. I mean, you could even say like, “Hey, I’m just following up because I was concerned that there was a … maybe potentially the email I sent earlier didn’t get delivered.” The point is you know at that moment that whether they’ve watched or not; and if they have, then you’re top of mind already.

That’s what I love about the video emails, especially if you do what I mentioned about doing like a picture-in-picture, so that your face is shown throughout the entire audit. Or if nothing else, at least in the beginning doing a brief introduction where they get to see your face so that they know who you are. It’s almost like they’ve had a chance to meet you. So the call is a much warmer call than just a straight-out cold call and so they’re a lot more receptive. Okay.

Is It Better To Funnel Users To The Contact Page, Or Have CTAs/Contact Forms On Multiple Pages To Improve Conversion In A Local Business Website?

The second part of this is, “In terms of conversion optimization for a local business, is it better to funnel users to the contact page, or have CTAs/contact forms on multiple pages?” Well, for most local business sites, I try to have a contact form and a big call to action, like a phone number on all pages, like usually contact forms in both the sidebar and/or the footer, as well as the contact button, which is typically a tap to call button on mobile and just a big phone number on desktop view of the website. That should be present on all sites, preferably at the top so that on mobile it’s one of the first things that pops up when the site loads. That’s typically what I do, is have those.

Now, as far as contact page, I don’t usually push anybody to a contact page. If I’m driving traffic to a local business site, depending on how I’m driving traffic, I’m usually going to have just a landing page set up. If I’m driving traffic to my WordPress site, which has been SEOed and stuff like that, then I still try to set up the pages in a landing page format. In other words, I like to use those types of local business themes and things like that to have the lead gen form and everything prominent at all times. Okay.

If I’m doing PPC stuff, it’s going to be a very specific landing page. If it’s SEO, it could be direct to just a page, but again generally, I’m going to be using some sort of theme or contact forms or something to where it’s always present. I don’t want to make it difficult for anybody to contact me, or my client, if that makes sense. Right? You want to make it blaringly easy for them to be able to do anything. You’d like to submit their information or call from any point on the website.

Where Can I Find A Course That Teaches A Press Release Method Using Customer Reviews?

Okay. Good questions. Robyn says … By the way, hi, Robyn. She says, “Hey there, Hump Day hangouts. Bradley, you have mentioned that your favorite method for press releases is using customer reviews. My PR attempts at this have not been successful. Can you point me in the direction of who has this training?”

Well, no. Actually, I pretty much just developed that on my own. By the way, nobody has this training. I used a combination of things to create the process that we’re using is our front-end service for our new marketing agency right now, which is a combination of reputation videos or their David Sprague’s rep videos. We don’t have an affiliate link for it.

However, I do have the link to where you can join it because I’ve actually reached out the support on several occasions because of people PMing me asking me for it. I think it’s repvideos.com/new. I think that’s it. That’ll take you over to where you can order it. It’s only like 100 bucks a month, guys, and you get like 25 videos per month that you can create, which is insane because super easy to create these videos. They look good. To us, they’re a dime a dozen. Right, guys? To us in the internet marketing space, we see this kind of stuff all the time, so it’s not impressive.

But to local businesses, it can be impressive, these videos. It’s just a good foot in the door strategy anyways. So, what I do is a combination of the review videos, which is basically highlighting a review from Yelp, Google, Facebook, or any number of other business directories. It highlights a review. Then from there, I just submit or publish a press release announcing the receipt of the review commercial or review testimonial video from a happy customer. Right?

I can’t go into it much further than that, Robyn, because the PR course, the press release training course is where this method is detailed and much greater… It’s explained in much greater detail, excuse me. We’re going to be launching that at the end of February. Okay? At first, we’re going to be doing that over a couple of webinars. The first webinar for that is going to be on March 1st. Sometime in the middle of February, guys, we’re going to actually be talking more a lot about the press release stuff and the strategy that I’m using for that, which the review commercial stuff or using reviews is really just … It’s really just an excuse.

In my opinion, it’s just an excuse to publish another press release. Every time a client gets a new testimonial or new review submitted on any one of the review sites that we have notifications set up for, it’s just another excuse for us to be able to publish a press release. We just use the videos as kind of a way to … It’s just kind of like a one-two punch thing. All right. Good question.

Now, Robyn, again, coming out in next month, we’re going to be doing the press release for, PRs for local maps ranking. All right. I’m going to be going in great detail how to use this review method, as well as something really ninja that I’ve kind of played with as I’ve developed this press release method out that just is absolutely crushing it right now. It’s crazy. We can get into the maps pack as well as two or three organic listings within about 72 hours using a very specific method that I’m going to be teaching.

Which is Better In Terms Of For Lead Generation: Peter Drew’s Google Site Generator Or Mass Page Generator?

Okay. Randy says, “If you had to choose between Peter Drew’s Google site generator and a mass page generator for lead generation, which would you choose?” That’s a good question, Randy. It really depends, because, see, I used Peter … For lead generation, probably a mass page generator. The only reason I say that is because, as I’ve mentioned many, many, many times on Hump Day Hangouts, I use Peter Drew’s Google site generator as a link building, like a link network building tool. In other words, I use the Google sites to build links to other Google sites, really.

Usually, we get a drive stack built with a G site, with a Google site, for whatever project and then use the Google site generator to build Google sites that create a link network that links to the primary Google site within the drive stack. It’s just a way to basically use Google properties to backlink Google properties. I’m not actually using the Google site generator sites for lead gen or to rank. Sometimes they do rank, but I don’t ever plan on it. That’s just icing, that’s just gravy at that point.

We’ve had so many people come on Hump Day Hangouts over the last few months saying, “I use Google site generator and none of the sites rank,” “This is crap. It doesn’t work,” blah, blah, blah. That’s why I keep saying, “Guys, that’s not how I’ve been using. I use it as a link building tool.” If you’re going to be trying to do like lead generation with these sites, then a mass page generator would be, if you’re asking me, if I had to choose, I would choose a mass page generator for lead gen and Peter Drew’s Google’s site generator for boosting existing assets. That make sense.

Marco: If I may, and of course I’m biased, why would you go with any of those for lead generation when you can get into RYS Academy Reloaded. Get what we’re using for lead generation. Rob is here with us and he’s having some awesome success generating leads just by using G sites and not necessarily Peter Drew’s methods or mass page generator methods, but RYS Reloaded methods. Again, I’m biased. It’s my course. Rob helped me. He’s the co-creator of the course. But I would put that up against anybody’s whatever as far as generating power, as far as generating ranking, wherever you want it to go and then see what’s what. I mean, that’s just my recommendation. Go get into RYS Reloaded Academy, Rank Your Shit Reloaded Academy.

Bradley: The man has spoken. Rob, are you still on? Do you want to chat about that at all?

Rob: Yeah. I agree with Marco completely. I’ve never seen anything that can, as far as lead gen goes and being able to get power and get them quickly and then just to throw a little teaser out there as well. We’ve got some of the automation to build mass pages within Google as well inside RYS Reloaded. With the little extra webinars we’ve shared in the Facebook group we can actually start mass building them ourselves and silo them out with some automation. We’re already working on that site actually using Google properties in Google sites to set up a mass page builder out there.

Is There Any Value To Purchasing Aged Ready-Made Flippa Websites With Some Higher DA/PA Content Versus Building A Brand New Site On A New Domain?

Bradley: All right. Thank you. Nigel’s up. What’s up, buddy? He’s been asking lots of questions recently. We appreciate you, Nigel. He says, “Thanks, gents. Is there any value to purchasing aged, ready-made Flippa websites with some higher DA/PA content and alleged traffic versus building a brand new site on a new domain? Any advice on what to look for? I realize there is a risk, but looking to shrink some of the waiting time.”

It’s funny you mentioned that, Nigel, because, I don’t remember who I was talking to. Damn. I was talking to somebody within just the last few weeks that that’s what they’re doing. They don’t build PBNs anymore. They buy sites with traffic from Flippa or any one of the number of marketplaces, even eBay. They’re buying sites from eBay that have traffic, that they’re basically generating revenue with these sites right out of the gate, and they’re using those as PBNs.

They’re buying genuine sites with real traffic that are producing real revenue, whether it’s Adsense clicks or affiliate stuff or e-com or whatever. They’re buying these sites. They say, “Yeah. It’s an investment, but they’re automatically, already generating revenue when they buy them.” And any links that they used are like as PBNs. If they’re build links from those sites, those links are so much more powerful because the sites are valid, genuine sites that receive genuine traffic. I mean, yeah, there’s absolutely some validity to that method, if you want to do it. It’s not something I’ve done, but I thought it was a brilliant idea when he was telling me about it. If you have some funds for that kind of stuff, dude, I would absolutely try it.

Do you guys have any comment on that?

Marco: The problem with that is getting into a bidding war, right?

Bradley: That’s true.

Marco: Where it’s just not going to be cost-effective. You’re better off going and building your own and then starting from scratch. But if you could get it at the right price, yeah, you’re ahead of the game.

Rob: Yeah, definitely. I would say do your due diligence. There’s some really good stuff out there. I’ll try to find the link. I mean, it’s kind of insider from the people who run this. I think it was from the Empire Flippers, but they had a really good article couple years back on how to do due diligence on buying sites like this. If that’s the way you want to go, I mean, it makes sense that actually just kind of set off a couple ideas in my head. I think it’s an interesting idea and it makes sense, too.

Of course, probably I would move in this direction. What do you guys think about that? If I was going to go out now and do something and I needed something now as opposed to building the site up over time, that’s definitely a direction I would look at.

Can You Use Multiple RYS Stacks On Different Pages Of A Domain?

Bradley: Yeah. Okay, second question. “Can you use multiple RYS stacks on different pages of a domain and if so how much would be too much? Any best practice guidelines would be appreciated.” Marco and Rob, that’s your question.

Marco: Yeah. That’s a great question, because we talked about it yesterday when we dueled with Jeffrey Smith in the war room. We did a webinar for his guys. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do this. The way I would do it is I would keep the RYS stack, the additional one part of the main stack, build a page on the G site that targets the page that you want to push up for that keyword. You should do it at either the top level, you can do a top level category or you could push a post where it’s going to go from the bottom up or you’re going to feed the top down. Whichever way you want to do it, if you’re just going to add iframes, so that you can carry all that relevance. There’s a million different ways that this can be done. But the main thing about this is that you want to power up your main stack with additional folders.

How much is too much? We have yet to see anything inside drive being too much. As long as you’re carrying relevance over to your Google My Business listing over to your money site to that page, or from the stack adding the links to that page that … Say, it’s stuck on page two and it just won’t budge, hitting it with a drive stack, whether you hit supporting post, whether you hit the top of the silo, I mean, we call it the spiderweb silo for a reason, right? You could do basically anything you want with it and the relevance will carry over. So, totally, I don’t see any risk in that.

Bradley: Agreed. The reason I’m over in pocket for a second, guys, is I’m looking for … Where the hell is the search function? There it is. I’m looking for something. Give me one moment to answer the next question.

Marco: Yeah. I think Rob has a comment on this.

Bradley: Please, Rob.

Rob: I could jump in while you’re searching there. As far as can you use multiple RYS stacks and if too much, it’s kind of asking how long is a piece of string. Right? I mean, I think the question becomes how little can you do to get your results? I wouldn’t suggest go out there and build 40 stacks for every single page on your site because it’s just overkill. But we’ve tested and, like Marco was saying, you can build up your main stack by putting in different folders and then build stacks to individual pages and silo pages on your site till you get to the point where it’s almost mirroring your site.

Bradley: Yeah. We call that theme-mirroring.

Rob: Yeah. You can just do the same thing just inside Google. I mean, the same type of ideas that apply outside can also apply inside the Google properties as well. In theme mirror, you can silo, you can interlink. You can do the same things. I think just because sometimes we think we’re inside the belly of the beast that it’s a little different. The part that’s different is you can get away with more with the part that’s different.

Is It Important To Assign A Unique Description When Creating The JASON-LD Schema For Each Page Of A Website?

Bradley: Yeah. Agreed. All right, next question. M.J. says “When creating the JSON-LD schema for each page of a website, the “Description” should be unique for that page?” Well, I would say, yeah. I mean, here’s the thing, M.J., I don’t do specific JSON-LD for each page of a website. There are certain pages that I will markup, but I don’t do a separate one for each page. I don’t know why you would do that, maybe e-commerce or something, I don’t know. I’m going to get some opinions here in just a moment.

What I mean by I might have different JSON-LD markup for different pages is if, for example, I have a multi-location site and so each location page will have its own local business markup, and then maybe there’s an organization markup on, not an individual location page, but locations, plural, page where it shows all locations. In fact, I just went on the mastermind, the February newsletter is specifically about a method that I’ve been using for all my multi-location sites that works really, really well. Once again, it uses a Google site. It’s just a great way to boost stuff.

That said, as far as … If you have the description of a website, for example, for, again I’m going to use a local business markup, and it’s the and you have that JSON-LD inserted into the head, the head section, the HTML header of the site and its site-wide, then that description is going to be the same across every page, unless you specifically have a page on your site that you …

Here’s an example, guys. There’s a header and footer plug-in called SOGO Add Scripts or something like that, header and footer or whatever. It’s a plugin that I typically use for this kind of stuff, unless I’m using tag manager. But if I’m just doing it via WordPress, then I’ll do the header footer plug-in. I’ll put the JSON-LD markup in the global header settings, but then on each individual page or post, because of that plug-in, there’s a box that you can check to disable global script, header script. Then, you can inject a specific page script or post script for that matter into that page.

That’s typically what I’ll do for local businesses or business sites that have multiple locations. So that I’ll have a global JSON-LD header, which will be their organization markup, which will be site wide. If the global … excuse me, the organization headquarters is also a local business, then it will have a combination of the organization plus the local business markup in the header site-wide, but then the individual location pages will have their own specific schema. Right? You have to remove the global header script before you can inject the other one. Or else you have double and it kind of ambiguates the data.

Again, I would think description would be either site-wide or if you’re going to be doing on page by page basis, I would, I would make the description more specific to what that page is about. I mean, that’s the whole reason we mark stuff up with structured data, guys, is to explain to machine learning exactly what the page is about. So adding a unique description would be beneficial.

What do you guys think?

Marco: Rob’s the schema guy so I’ll defer to him.

Rob: Yeah. I mean, when you’re putting a schema on there the whole point of the description is to tell exactly what that page is about. Google sees each page as different. I know it’s all builds up to the main site. Currently, we’re kind of sloppy with schema across the web, if you look at sites. They kind of just mark absolutely everything up with the exact same schema, which that’d be like trying to put the exact same H1 tag on every single page on your site. If you think about it in that manner because we understand that a little bit better.

You can tell Google exactly what the page is about. You can tell it what it relates to. You can tell it whether it’s local business organization, whether it’s services, I mean, so you can get really deep. I would say you definitely want to try to be unique for the pages because then you’re feeding that uniqueness, you’re feeding the bot in schema, as well as what’s on your page.

Bradley: Yeah. Just the other side of this, M.J., I was doing some research the other day for it because the organization markup, when you have multiple locations, there is no consensus, unanimous consensus, out there as to how organization markup with multiple locations. I know that’s not what you’re asking about specifically, but there’s no set way or rule of thumb that anybody can point me to on how you should mark that shit up and look the correct way.

I was doing some research again the other day because it changes. Right? The best practice advice changes on that. I ran across this article by SEMrush. This is schema markup for company and corporations. The reason why I pulled this up is specifically because this was the best description I had read thus far about what the @type is in the structured data.

The @type is something that’s relatively newer. Ryan Rodman was the one who pointed that out to us. I wasn’t even aware of it. But this explains what the @type is used for and how to optimize that the best. I found this to be incredibly logical. Again, I don’t know that this is law, that this is the be-all end-all of what the best practices, but I really thought that was the best description of what the @type was that I had read so far in the last few years.

I’m actually using this. I’m setting up basically a sub-domain page. Just an HTML page on a sub-domain for my sites and I’m using that sub-domain as the @type designation. Like the URL, the link that you put as the @type. All that is an HTML page with basically name, address, phone number, an embedded map, It’s basically, it’s just a static page that lists all the company information. It’s like a resource page. That’s what I was looking for, the resource page.

On a corporate domain or local business domain, I just add a sub-domain and then upload an HTML file, which is just a very simple HTML file that lists all the company information, links like … You can mark that up with JSON-LD, guys, at least your same as links and all that kind of stuff and upload just an HTML file to your server on a sub-domain and use that as your @type URL. Basically, it’s just like a resource is telling, “Hey, go reference all the data over here and it will validate the data on the website,” if that makes sense.

I’m going to drop this link on the page for you to bookmark it. I think it’s a great article. We’re almost out of time guys, unfortunately. Holy shit. Was that Wayne? Yeah, of course, it is. Awesome. Good question, M.J.

“Should the main URL be such as company.com or should it be for that specific page.” With the website URL, if you’re marking up each individual page, that’s a good question, I wouldn’t know, I’m not 100% sure on the answer on that either. The @type, I just mentioned, as far as the website URL, if it’s individual page markup, what do you think, Rob? Should it be the individual page so it’s referencing itself or should it be referencing the home, the root domain?

Rob: Could you repeat that again? I was looking at your link and I didn’t hear the whole question.

Bradley: He says, “Also, the website URL, should that be the main URL, such as company.com or should it be for that specific page, company.com/unique page? So, if you have page specific markup, should the website designation within the mark-up be the page itself? Should it point to it, reference itself or should it reference the root domain?

Rob: Well, I mean, I’d have to look to dig and see, I mean, page specific markup-

Bradley: What the use case is?

Rob: Yeah, what you’re trying to call out. If the page is about a service, then you would say that the website for that service on that page you point to the service website. If you’re talking about a service and then you’re saying that’s being provided by X business, then the website of that business would be the business of the main website. It’s all kind of how you write it up. I hate to give … I mean, it’s a vague answer, but kind of how you said as well, there’s no clear-cut way on how to do a lot of this. I’m going to drop a link on here. Actually, it’s the Developer’s Guide actually on Google that tells you how to do schema.

Bradley: Yeah.

Rob: There’s a lot of activity on here and they keep adding more and more. I’ll drop a link to this , the kind of introduction to it. Then over on the left side, you can start to see there’s a piece called Feature Guides, which are the ones that they keep adding to. There was only a few of there to begin with and now it keeps getting bigger and bigger where it’s Google giving you exactly how to markup for different things that they’re seeing.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s the Google developers for a schema markup?

Rob: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. You’re going to drop it on the page, right?

Rob: Yeah. I’m going to try to you, yeah, once I find it. I’ve got a copy now, I just got to find which tab has the page open. But, yeah, I’ll drop it in there.

Bradley: This is it, right? “Introduction to Schema Markup?”

Rob: Yeah. I just dropped them on the page.

Bradley: Yeah.

Rob: If you look on the left there.

Bradley: Yeah.

Rob: You’ll see where it says …

Bradley: Feature guides, right here.

Rob: Yeah. The feature guides. There’s all the different corporate contacts, logo, socials, articles. Whether a page, are you talking about an article, are you talking about a book on a page, are you talking about an event, are you talking about a job posting, a local business? I mean, it kind of depends on what your main theme of that page is as to how you mark up the rest of the page.

Bradley: Yeah.

Rob: Every single page isn’t about the main company, it’s about the service that that page describes.

What Are Some Best Practices In Using IFTTT For A Multilingual Site?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. All right, guys. We’re going to try to run through the next couples because we only got about five or six minutes left. John says, “What is the best practice with IFTTT for a site with two languages on it, French and English? Should I order from you guys, one branded and one personal IFTTT or two branded?”

I would do two branded, one in one language and one on the other. The only thing is if you’re ordering from us, you can only order the one in English because we don’t do them in any other way. You’d have to build the other one yourself or order it and then once you got it back you’d have to go in and update it with content in your specific language.

That’s something else you could do to save at least the time of having you do all the setup. You get all the logins and everything. I would recommend you still do that. You could go in and have … In fact, when you place the order you could state “I’m going to make this particular network a foreign language network.” So if you guys can just build it and either provide them with the seed content that they’ll post when they build it or ask that they don’t post seed content and get and do it yourself. The only problem with that is if you don’t post seed content, a lot of the times when you do go to post, it can lock certain web to accounts.

That’s part of the reason why we try to post seed content when we build them. But that might be something that you could reach out to support at SERP space and basically mention it to them and say, “Look, I would like to build a foreign language syndication network. I know we don’t do that specifically, but if I provided you with one foreign language article from WordPress, one from Blogger, and one from Tumblr to be added as seed content, would you do it?” I’m pretty sure we’d be able to accommodate that. Okay. Yeah. You could have both branded. Right? They could both be branded, just one in English and one in the other language, French or whatever.

Will An Aged Domain With Good Domain Authority And Trust Flow Rank Better If You Link It To A Google Asset Than Linking It To A Self-Hosted Site?

Okay. Peter from Poland. What’s up, Peter from Poland? He says, “If I buy an aged domain with good Domain Authority, Trust Flow and then I slap it on a Google asset like Blogger or Blogspot or similar, will it have better ranking than just using it on a WordPress self-hosted site?” I don’t know. I haven’t tested that much. I have done canonicalizing a Google domain or a Google site. Basically, you can map your own domain to a Google site, right? Then what’s interesting is both sites, your domain will resolve to the Google site, but the Google site will also resolve on its own URL, the sites.google.com URL, which is canonicalized to your domain.

That’s a beautiful thing, guys, in case you didn’t just catch what I said. You can map your own custom domain to a Google site to where your domain resolves to the Google site. It’s like a mass redirect. In other words, your domain shows in the address bar even though it’s displaying the Google site. Yet the Google site will also show if you visit the Google site URL. But if you check the source code, it’s canonicalized to your domain, which means you can spam the shit out of the Google site and it theoretically will boost your domain metrics, but people won’t be able to see it if they’re searching your backlink profile on your domain, if that makes sense.

Although I noticed recently that Majestic is showing canonicals now as backlinks. Have you guys seen that? I don’t know if you all knew that, but Majestic is showing canonicals now in the backlink analysis.

Marco: No, I had not seen that.

Bradley: Yeah. When I saw that I was like, shit, because I literally just within the last week or so I was doing some research on a property and it was one of my own and I saw the canonicals that I had set up in the backlink analysis of Majestic. I was like, “Oh man, there goes my masking.”

I don’t know. Marco or Rob, have either of you tested that? Would it be better to use a domain with authority that’s mapped or just regular old domain?

Marco: I haven’t tested it. I mean, I stopped buying domains with metrics. I don’t bother with it because we do everything from driving G sites. That’s our playground.

Is It Normal For A Lead Gen Blog Syndicated To An IFTTT Network To Have Erratic Rankings?

Bradley: Yeah. Okay, next, Ralph. We got about two minutes, guys. Ralph says, “I am publishing unique content on my blog and it is being syndicated to my IFTTT network. I notice two days after publishing I get about a one page increase in rankings. But the next day the rankings drop back to page four. It’s a local lead gen site and it is about two months old. I publish content three times a week. Is this normal?”

Yes, Ralph. That is actually absolutely normal because, first of all, it’s a new site so your site’s kind of in probationary period. Typically, with new sites new content will rank very quickly, will rank fairly well, very quickly but then it kind of gets like demoted. It’s just the natural Google dance, especially while you’re on probation with your site being as young as it is. As it begins to mature and you begin to establish a topical relevancy, a topical theme and you’re consistent, those initial positionings when you publish will become more consistent and, again, with time and persistence, you should see a nice consistent increase in your rank positioning over time. Okay. But, yes, originally when you first set up something like that it is very volatile. It will do a lot of dancing, a lot of wild swings both positive and negative.

All right. I’m going to answer the last one from Donald before we wrap it up, guys. By the way, Don, how are you doing, buddy? I have not been doing as many emails as I would like to on the mindset series. I apologize. I’m still trying to get settled in my new routine with the coaching CrossFit every day. Just bear with me. I will get back and do more of a regular routine. It’s just I’m trying to work into it.

Has Anyone Tried Using The IFTTT System On An Ebay Store?

“Has anyone tried using the IFTTT system on an eBay store? Would it be about the same as doing it with an eCommerce store?” I imagine so. As I mentioned before, I don’t do any e-commerce stuff or eBay stuff, which is funny there’s some douchebag in YouTube left a comment the other day and say, “You do a SEO and don’t do e-com? Ha ha ha.” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean. I just thought it was funny. No, I don’t do any e-com. I can’t imagine it being any different though. If you have eBay as a feed, I don’t see why it couldn’t be used. Even if it doesn’t, you could probably do it manually somehow.

I know none of us really do e-com stuff. Does anybody have experience with doing eBay stores?

Rob: No, I don’t at all. But if it’s the same as anywhere else, like if you can set up maybe, I don’t know, if you get an RSS feed or if you can set up on a sub-domain, that just probably what you want to do, unless there’s something powerful about eBay itself, which I highly doubt. I mean, besides that.

Bradley: The domain itself? Yeah. Don, I can’t help you more than that. It’s just e-commerce is not my thing. I just never had any desire to do it either.

All right, guys. Well, thanks for everybody being here. Sorry we didn’t get to all the questions. We got the most of them though. Pretty good.

We do have mastermind tomorrow and I’ve got some pretty cool updates for the first local project for the CrossFit gym. We’re going to be going over that tomorrow guys. Be there or be square. If you haven’t joined the mastermind yet, do it.

Thanks, Marco, thanks, Adam, thanks, Rob, for being here.

Marco: Bye everyone.

Bradley: Bye guys.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 168 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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donaldmueller97 · 6 years

Text

Google Questions and Answers: A Case Study

Posted by MiriamEllis

Ever since Google rolled out Questions and Answers in mid-2017, I’ve been trying to get a sense of its reception by consumers and brands. Initially restricted to Android Google Maps, this fascinating feature which enables local business owners and the public to answer consumer questions made it to desktop displays this past December, adding yet another data layer to knowledge panels and local finders.

As someone who has worked in Q&A forums for the majority of my digital marketing life, I took an immediate shine to the idea of Google Questions and Answers. Here’s a chance, I thought, for consumers and brands to take meaningful communication to a whole new level, exchanging requests, advice, and help so effortlessly. Here’s an opportunity for businesses to place answers to FAQs right upfront in the SERPs, while also capturing new data about consumer needs and desires. So cool!

But, so far, we seem to be getting off to a slow start. According to a recent, wide-scale GetFiveStars study, 25% of businesses now have questions waiting for them. I decided to hone in on San Francisco and look at 20 busy industries in that city to find out not just how many questions were being asked, but also how many answers were being given, and who was doing the answering. I broke down responders into three groups: Local Guides (LGs), random users (RUs), and owners (Os). I looked at the top 10 businesses ranking in the local finder for each industry:

Industry Number of Questions Number of Answers LGs RUs Os Dentists 1 0 0 0 0 Plumbers 2 0 - - - Chiropractors 0 - - - - Mexican Restaurants 10 23 22 1 - Italian Restaurants 15 20 19 1 - Chinese Restaurants 16 53 49 4 - Car Dealers 4 5 3 2 - Supermarkets 7 27 24 3 - Clothing Stores 4 1 1 - - Florists 1 0 - - - Hotels 44 142 114 28 - Real Estate Agencies 0 - - - - General Contractors 1 0 - - - Cell Phone Stores 14 3 3 - - Yoga Studios 1 0 - - - Banks 1 0 - - - Carpet Cleaning 0 - - - - Hair Salons 1 0 - - - Locksmiths 1 0 - - - Jewelry Stores 0 - - - -

Takeaways from the case study

Here are some patterns and oddities I noticed from looking at 123 questions and 274 answers:

There are more than twice as many answers as questions. While many questions received no answers, others received five, ten, or more.

The Owners column is completely blank. The local businesses I looked at in San Francisco are investing zero effort in answering Google Questions and Answers.

Local Guides are doing the majority of the answering. Of the 274 answers provided, 232 came from users who have been qualified as Local Guides by Google. Why so lopsided? I suspect the answer lies in the fact that Google sends alerts to this group of users when questions get asked, and that they can earn 3 points per answer they give. Acquiring enough points gets you perks like 3 free months of Google Play Music and a 75% discount off Google Play Movies. Unfortunately, what I’m seeing in Google Questions and Answers is that incentivizing replies is leading to a knowledge base of questionable quality. How helpful is it when a consumer asks a hotel if they have in-room hair dryers and 10 local guides jump on the bandwagon with “yep”? Worse yet, I saw quite a few local guides replying “I don’t know,” “maybe,” and even “you should call the business and ask.” Here and there, I saw genuinely helpful answers from the Local Guides, but my overall impression didn’t leave me feeling like I’d stumbled upon a new Google resource of matchless expertise.

Some members of the public seem to be confused about the use of this feature. I noticed people using the answer portion to thank people who replied to their query, rather than simply using the thumbs up widget. Additionally, I saw people leaving reviews/statements, instead of questions: And with a touch of exasperated irony: And to rant:

Some industries are clearly generating far more questions than others. Given how people love to talk about hotels and restaurants, I wasn’t surprised to see them topping the charts in sheer volume of questions and answers. What did surprise me was not seeing more questions being asked of businesses like yoga studios, florists, and hair salons; before I actually did the searches, I might have guessed that pleasant, “chatty” places like these would be receiving lots of queries.

Big brands everywhere are leaving Google Questions and Answers unanswered

I chose San Francisco for my case study because of its general reputation for being hip to new tech, but just in case my limited focus was presenting a false picture of how local businesses are managing this feature, I did some random searches for big brands around the state and around the country.

I found questions lacking owner answers for Whole Foods, Sephora, Taco Bell, Macy’s, Denny’s, Cracker Barrel, Target, and T-Mobile. As I looked around the nation, I noted that Walmart has cumulatively garnered thousands of questions with no brand responses.

But the hands-down winner for a single location lacking official answers is Google in Mountain View. 103 questions as of my lookup and nary an owner answer in sight. Alphabet might want to consider setting a more inspiring example with their own product… unless I’m misunderstanding their vision of how Google Questions and Answers is destined to be used.

Just what is the vision for Google Questions and Answers, I wonder?

As I said at the beginning of this post, it’s early days yet to predict ultimate outcomes. Yet, the current lay of the land for this feature has left me with more questions than answers:

Does Google actually intend questions to be answered by brands, or by the public? From what I’ve seen, owners are largely unaware of or choosing to ignore this feature many months post-launch. As of writing this, businesses are only alerted about incoming questions if they open the Google Maps app on an Android phone or tablet. There is no desktop GMB dashboard section for the feature. It’s not a recipe for wide adoption. Google has always been a fan of a crowdsourcing approach to their data, so they may not be concerned, but that doesn’t mean your business shouldn’t be.

What are the real-time expectations for this feature? I see many users asking questions that needed fast answers, like “are you open now?” while others might support lengthier response times, as in, “I’m planning a trip and want to know what I can walk to from your hotel.” For time-sensitive queries, how does Questions and Answers fit in with Google’s actual chat feature, Google Messaging, also rolled out last summer? Does Google envision different use cases for both features? I wonder if one of the two products will win out over time, while the other gets sunsetted.

What are the real, current risks to brands of non-management? I applauded Mike Blumenthal’s smart suggestion of companies proactively populating the feature with known FAQs and providing expert answers, and I can also see the obvious potential for reputation damage if rants or spam are ignored. That being said, my limited exploration of San Francisco has left me wondering just how many people (companies or consumers) are actually paying attention in most industries. Google Knowledge Panels and the Local Finder pop-ups are nearing an information bloat point. Do you want to book something, look at reviews, live chat, see menus, find deals, get driving directions, make a call? Websites are built with multiple pages to cover all of these possible actions. Sticking them all in a 1” box may not equal the best UX I’ve ever seen, if discovery of features is our goal.

What is the motivation for consumers to use the product? Personally, I’d be more inclined to just pick up the phone to ask any question to which I need a fast answer. I don’t have the confidence that if I queried Whole Foods in the AM as to whether they’ve gotten in organic avocados from California, there’d be a knowledge panel answer in time for my lunch. Further, some of the questions I’ve asked have received useless answers from the public, which seems like a waste of time for all parties. Maybe if the feature picks up momentum, this will change.

Will increasing rates of questions = increasing rates of business responses? According to the GetFiveStars study linked to above, total numbers of questions for the 1700 locations they investigated nearly doubled between November–December of 2017. From my microscopic view of San Francisco, it doesn’t appear to me that the doubling effect also happened for owner answers. Time will tell, but for now, what I’m looking for is question volume reaching such a boiling point that owners feel obligated to jump into management, as they have with reviews. We’re not there yet, but if this feature is a Google keeper, we could get there.

So what should you be doing about Google Questions and Answers?

I’m a fan of early adoption where it makes sense. Speculatively, having an active Questions and Answers presence could end up as a ranking signal. We’ve already seen it theorized that use of another Google asset, Google Posts, may impact local pack rankings. Unquestionably, leaving it up to the public to answer questions about your business with varying degrees of accuracy carries the risk of losing leads and muddying your online presence to the detriment of reputation. If a customer asks if your location has wheelchair access and an unmotivated third party says “I don’t know,” when, in fact, your business is fully ADA-compliant, your lack of an answer becomes negative customer service. Because of this, ignoring the feature isn’t really an option. And, while I wouldn’t prioritize management of Questions and Answers over traditional Google-based reviews at this point, I would suggest:

Do a branded search today and look at your knowledge panel to see if you’ve received any questions. If so, answer them in your best style, as helpfully as possible

Spend half an hour this week translating your company’s 5 most common FAQs into Google Questions and Answers queries and then answering them. Be sure you’re logged into your company’s Google account when you reply, so that your message will be officially stamped with the word “owner.” Whether you proactively post your FAQs while logged into your business’ account is up to you. I think it’s more transparent to do so.

If you’re finding this part of your Knowledge Panel isn’t getting any questions, checking it once a week is likely going to be enough for the present.

If you happen to be marketing a business that is seeing some good Questions and Answers activity, and you have the bandwidth, I’d add checking this to the daily social media rounds you make for the purpose of reputation management. I would predict that if Google determines this feature is a keeper, they’ll eventually start sending email alerts when new queries come in, as they’re now doing with reviews, which should make things easier and minimize the risk of losing a customer with an immediate need. Need to go pro on management right now due to question volume? GetFiveStars just launched an incredibly useful Google Q&A monitoring feature, included in some of their ORM software packages. Looks like a winner!

Do be on the lookout for spam inquiries and responses, and report them if they arise.

If you’re totally new to Google Questions and Answers, this simple infographic will get you going in a flash:

For further tips on using Google Questions and Answers like a pro, I recommend following GetFiveStars’ 3-part series on this topic.

My questions, your answers

My case study is small. Can you help expand our industry’s knowledge base by answering a few questions in the comments to add to the picture of the current rate of adoption/usefulness of Google’s Questions and Answers? Please, let me know:

Have you asked a question using this feature?

Did you receive an answer and was it helpful?

Who answered? The business, a random user, a Local Guide?

Have you come across any examples of business owners doing a good job answering questions?

What are your thoughts on Google Questions and Answers? Is it a winner? Worth your time? Any tips?

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