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#so sometimes ill start thinking about that stuff like randomly throughout the day and have thoughts and feelings
scarletcomet · 2 years
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my therapist literally always cancels on me when i need therapy the most
#maybe that's why im at a point where i think therapy is useless (my parents are making me and they pay my tuition)#canceled on my last semester when my friend died by suicide#now when my mental heath has not been great and i've been self harming#still have never processed that first thing as well as my own suicide attempt#so sometimes ill start thinking about that stuff like randomly throughout the day and have thoughts and feelings#i finally opened up to my therapist about sh but now im gonna go week(s) without talking to her when i need it most#like i know she has a life and stuff and it's not her fault lol#anyways im at a point right now where therapy is useless#i've tried multiple different anxiety meds in the last few weeks#and my dr says if this one doesn't work then there's not any other meds#im not suicidal or whatever but sometimes things just feel so hopeless and life feels like never ending torment#it's whatever. i'm fine. i have to be fine#even if i do get through this week then there's just gonna be another and another and another#shut up brain. these are the kinds of thoughts that remind me of when i was really suicidal and bring back bad feelings and memories#why am i like this#im so sick of years of mental illness ruining my life and it's only been like 7 years of this and i have to do like 60 more??#shut up brain#i can't let myself get suicidal. idk why but i just can't#my mood has been ok lately and my anxiety has been the problem so wtf is up with this?#tw self harm#tw: suicide
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r--at · 3 years
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Can you do 18 with Gen z humor 🛀🔥
18: MC with gen z humor
Warnings: Cussing, some dark humor
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Lucifer
He would be so annoyed at first.
Would be shook if you talked back to him.
Lucifer: MC...Mammon I swear if you two don't stop I'll-
MC: Bitch I hope the fuck you do, you'd be a damn ass son of a bitch if you tried
Lucifer: . . .
Mammon: . . . Yeah- what they said.
He is just in pure shock because of the amount of audacity one person can hold.
He is going to be so concerned about how many depressing jokes they make.
Super confused and definitely wonders if this is normal fo humans to find this kind of stuff funny.
Some comebacks he may find humorous, he just won't let you feel the power of seeing him amused.
Sometimes he has to power walk back to his room to hold back from laughing.
Mammon
He is also confused and freaked out with all the things they find funny.
He is terrified of them at first with all the things they laugh at, and he's like: did they just laugh when that child fell?
Though the thing that brings him closer to you is probably going to be the fact that not only are you brave enough to talk back to anybody, your talking back is also hilarious.
He'd turn into even more of a headache if your humor rubbed off on him.
Random demon: That's why you're broke, maybe if you learned how to save your mone-
Mammon:
MC: That's why yo mama dead, dead as hell, what money does she have huh? What money does she have in her casket? That's why yo granny ain't got no knees, she can't pray to jesus bitch.
Mammon bullying is not tolerated over here.
Oh you thought he was clingy? Well now you have the sin of greed clinging to your legs whenever he gets into trouble.
Leviathan
Yes yes yes
Someone that shares at least, close enough, his own humor.
Meme spamming, just randomly throughout the day you'll just spam eachother with memes.
Joke about each others mental illnesses together, perfect bonding time.
I can see you two yelling that yeet skrt song.
Levi:Yeet
MC:Yeet skrt
Levi:Yeet Yeet
MC:Skrt
Levi:Skrt skrt
MC:Roll up
Levi:Yeet
MC:Drop that
Levi:Yeet
MC:Skrt that
Levi:Pop that
MC:Aye Aye
Levi:Aye Aye
MC: You never loved me mom, but I needed you ~woah~
Satan
Definitely thinks you are a headache at first.
Would start to like you after seeing you talk back to Lucifer.
Would definitely invite you to prank Lucifer.
Your bonding time consists of roasting Lucifer or just random demons you dont like.
Satan: *calling Lucifer*
MC:
Lucifer: Yes?
Satan: *nods to MC*
MC: This is for Lucifer, you big fat, white nasty, smelling fat bitch
Why you took me off the motherfuking schedule with your trifling dirty white racist ass big fat bitch
And maluma body ass bitch.
Asmodeus
This is fine. This is fine. Did you just laugh after running into that door and getting a bloody nose?
Asmo....You just....Concern him.
But he will still hang around you because, bad bitch energy.
Will hype you up if you are arguing with a random demon again.
MC: You can't kill me, I'm a bad bitch.
Lucifer:
Asmo: Yes queen!
The jokes about trauma and darker, depressing stuff however, he is just kinda awkwardly laughing to play along because he doesn't know what to do.
Beelzebub
After every single bad or depressing joke you make about yourself, you will recieve a hug. You can't refuse.
Highly concerned about why you are laughing at such weird things...didn't you nearly fall down the stairs a second ago?
Will definitely watch over you like you are a child, to make sure you dont hurt yourself.
No offing yourself jokes tolerated in this facility.
MC: Y'know if I ate 480 bananas I wouldn't have to worry about doing my homework.
Beel: ..Why's that?
MC: I'd be dead.
Beel: Don't you do it.
And that's why the House of Lamentation ran out of bananas, and why Beel will no longer let you near them.
Belphegor
Just don't exsist too loudly, he has to get his hundreds of depression naps in.
Wouldn't mind you at first, unless he heard you laughing too loud.
10/10 Would drag you into some prank involving Lucifer as the victim.
Would probably joke about murder or mental illnesses with you.
But don't worry he wouldn't actually murder you. Or well, he wouldn't again.
MC: Hey Lucifer, what's red and bad for your teeth?
Lucifer: *sigh*
Lucifer: What?
MC: A brick.
Belphie: This is a threat.
Belphie will make sure you two leave Lucifer with an even worse headache than before.
Diavolo
This is okay, this is fine, this is normal, wait- was that supposed to be funny?
So confused.
Never knew humans could find such odd things so humorous.
Bad bitch? What's that? Definitely ended up asking Lucifer or Barbatos about it.
What in the chaotic energy is this.
Diavolo: And then they laughed...
Barbatos: MC laughed after having a breakdown about her grades?
Barbatos: That's not that bad.
Diavolo: I think I heard her say she wanted to kill herself...and then laughed again...
Barbatos:. . . Oh
Barbatos
Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face.
It's just some of the things you say make him internally die of laughter, not like you could tell.
He is slightly concerned when you start banging your head against the desk, or the wall, when you recieve your test grades back.
Solomon: You are so easy to piss off
MC: And you're so easy to make insecure, wait until I tell you about your big ass of a-
Barbatos:
Barbatos: *Internally wheezing*
On the outside he doesn't have much to any reaction to anything you say, but sometimes on the inside he is trying so hard to keep himself from laughing.
Solomon
He understands your humor...but sometimes its just... its...so random.
He's kinda just like wondering if he should get you to a therapist when you go back.
Asmo: And then he told me that pink just didn't fit me. Can you believe that!?
Solomon: Well-
MC: The lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch.
How have you not died? Just how.
With how much he see's you going off on people its just a wonder.
Simeon
This isn't funny MC-
Making fun of yourself is not okay.
Super confused on how you find literally any of this funny.
MC, you can do better, go read the bible, your humor needs it.
MC: look at this bitch. So gross. How do you live with yourself. Your life is a mess. Go see a therapist. You need some antidepressants or something!?
Simeon: Um..MC...That's your reflection.
MC: Chile anyways-
Hey, hey, hey no offing yourself jokes MC, this isn't funny, this isn't okay, no. No. No. Stop it.
Probably contemplates taking you to church at least five times a day.
Luke
Why're you laughing.
Please stop. This isn't funny MC.
Never watches horror movies with you. Ever.
MC this isn't supposed to be funny- why're you laughing after someone told you to burn in hell?
So concerned, scared, and confused.
Luke: MC- this isn't supposed to be funny?
Luke: Why are we watching this?
MC: Did you- *wheeze* Did you see the way that bitch just tripped while trying to run away?
No more horror movies, and no more unsolved murder documentaries for you MC.
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Commission work - Harry Hook x Darling! Reader - two parter - unpredictably adorable - part 2
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commissioner @thebookbakery​
=
Since you were a child, your mind was constantly overthinking, every single possibility, good or bad, bombarding your mind about everything and nothing at the same time.
-what if I never live up to my mom's expectations-
-if I don’t pass this test everyone will hate me-
-they aren’t really my friend; they just feel sorry for me-
-I need to shut up I’m talking to much-
-they are ignoring me; they must hate me-
-everyone is faking-
-if I’m not careful I'll cut my finger and then I'll have to get surgery to remove my hand because I was too careless-
Yeah…it got tiring after a while.
Everything made sense when you were 10 and were finally diagnosed with anxiety, everything got a little bit easier to deal with after that, one of your tactics was just pretending your best friend Piper was talking you down
-I forgot to turn off the oven, and I’m going to burn my mom's house down, and I’m going to go to jail and-
‘no, you didn’t, you always check every single time, twice, you turned it off, now shut up before I smack you, I’m trying to eat this churro.’
It always loomed in the back of your mind, though hanging out with your closest friends did deafen the noise a bit, but it was always there.
You had little toys to help you focus but you were always looked at oddly when you had a little cube with millions of buttons on it so once again, your anxiety won out and you picked at your fingers, bit your lip, rubbed the fabric of your clothes between your fingers, and sometimes dug your nail into your thumb to distract yourself from your own brain.
Crushes, were one of your ultimate weakness, even the thought of someone you had a crush on sent you into a spiral, your brain would tell you they didn’t even know you existed, that they hated you and faking being nice, that your crush would never go anywhere.
Now you only had two crushes your whole life.
One from when you were little, Piper, but that didn’t last long (After you saw her eat a caterpillar bleh) and EX-prince Ben himself, that one had lasted a whole two years, and while you had been his friend before your crush grew, that didn’t stop your brain from shoving those random piercing thoughts into you.
And now, there was another one.
Harry, freaking, Hook. Son of Captain Hook himself, the villain of your mother's story.
And he was the sweetest thing you had ever encountered, you gushed to jane about his little nose scrunched when he grinned, how his tongue poked out of his lips slightly when he concentrated, when he fluffed up his already floofy hair when he was frustrated.
It was just all too much for your anxious little self,  it took all your might to keep yourself from bolting away from the handsome pirate.
You sighed, splashing cold water against your face and blindly grabbing for your towel and patting your face dry. You felt your face heat up as you thought back to the day before, in study hall, when Harry ever so gently placed his thumb on your chin to stop you from chewing on your lip.
You let out a long sigh/squeak as you grabbed your bathroom counter and sunk down into a squat, puffing your cheeks as you tried to calm yourself down. “I’m so doomed” you muttered to yourself, this crush on Harry was worse than the one on Piper OR Ben.
With the two aforementioned crushes, you never imagined it going any farther than dating, so imagine your internal embarrassment when one day you realized you were daydreaming about being buried into Harry's side as you slept in on a weekend in your very own place, living together with three dogs and two cats, and four birds, with two guest rooms specifically for Uma and Gil.
It was nice to dream about but once the dark shadow that was your anxiety reared its ugly head and whispered horrid thoughts about Harry’s “true” feelings about you, it was harder to enjoy your daydreams.
-he’s just using me to get revenge~-
-he’s just like his father, a filthy, cheating pirate-
-he’s faking everything-
-he flirts with everyone; I am nothing special-
You knew it was all bullcrap, even your own mother had met harry (at her request) and happily told you that he was nothing like his dad, and one of the sweetest boys she had ever met, even piper and Peter themselves, liked harry.
But like always, your brain never liked to listen to others and always took a darker train of thought.
You shook your head out of thought and stood, walking back into your room and grabbing your bag, slinging it over your shoulder and grabbing your keys, slipping out of your dorm room and locking it behind you, checking twice to ease your mind.
“hey (y/n)” you flinched as you spun around, letting out a sharp sigh as you realized Uma was the one to call out to you, she rose her brow, a small smirk on her face “sorry, thought you heard me walk up to you”
“you-you’re fine” you smiled back, huffing as the girl tossed her arm over your shoulder and started walking with you to the cafeteria.
“hear the rumor that Mrs.Popin is pop quizzing us in algebra today?”
“she is?” you asked, calm as could be on the outside, but once again your mind started running
-what if it's something we haven’t covered yet? Or what if I wasn’t paying attention to the subject?! What if I accidentally check the wrong one! What if-
Uma tugged you into the seat next to her, picking up a clementine and peeling it open, offering you a slice, shrugging as you declined “suit yourself, yeah, I’m wondering how Harrys gonna do, with his problem with numbers after all”
“oh right, his dyscalculia” you muttered, mind now running wild worrying for harry. “I think he’ll be fine, Mrs.Popin is lenient with him, and she lets all of us take the tests over and over again until we get a passing grade”
“yeah” Uma hummed, chewing on another slice “waffles or pancakes today?”
“I heard It’ was French toast~” Harry purred, plopping down next to you and leaning into your space once again, setting your face on fire and cutting off your voice as usual. “you okay (y/n)?” you whipped around to look at Harry with wide eyes, that….that was the first time he had ever called you by your name, it was always your last name.
“I-yes?” you shrugged, looking down at the table and picking at it “I’m fine”
Harry just hummed and leaned away from you, starting a conversation with Uma about the upcoming math quiz.
Your mind whirled as you processed the fact that he called you by your first name. but thankfully it never went anywhere as the bell for breakfast being served rang throughout the room. Uma tapped your arm, hurrying you to the line to grab the hot and ready food before it was gone.
You grabbed your preferred bread and usual toppings, sighing happily as you noticed your favorite drink was in stock this morning. You grabbed the bottle and tossed in on your tray, following after Uma as she went down the sides line, grabbing a handful of bacon for herself.
After dodging the oncoming breakfast crowd, you, Harry, Gil, and Uma finally settled back at your table. Evie, Jane, and Dizzy joining you moments later “morning~” Jane sang, poking your cheek with a ‘boop’ and starting to eat her breakfast. “oh (y/n), the planning committee is needed in the gym later today, about prom n stuff”
“kay” you muttered, quickly going through your slices of French toast and gulping down your drink “still don’t know how I got roped into the planning committee in the first place” you laughed to yourself, you hardly spoke during the meetings, you were more the errand girl and the one who wrote down what needed to happen as everyone else actually planned.
Jane giggled and patted your shoulder, turning her attention back to the conversation of the table, to which you weren’t bothering to pay attention to.
You dug into your bag and pulled out your notebook, going over your previous notes for math to prepare for the quiz later that day.
Sometimes Jane and Harry would bump into you randomly, Harry's fingers brushing your arm when he would reach for something across the table, you did your best to keep the heat from your face.
At some point harry gently probed your shoulder, making you squeak from surprise, unexpecting of the touch as you looked to harry with wide eyes. He gave a soft smile and nodded towards the doors “bell rung for class darlin’, don’t want yeh ta be late” you quickly stood, yelping as your knee bashed against the table.
“ooow” you bent over slightly, palming your knee as you felt the pain bloom across it. “shit”
“wow” Harry chuckled, grabbing your bags and slinging them over his shoulder “never heard yeh swear before darlin’, come on, ill escort yeh” he placed his hand on the small of your back, and lead you toward your first class.
While you appreciated Harry's chivalry, your mind….was not helping.
-everyone is staring at me-
-they are going to think it's odd he has his hand on me-
-everyone is staring at us-
-everyone is going to think it’s weird that Harry is around me-
-EVERYONE IS STAR-
“here we are” Harry thankfully interrupted your train of thought as he handed you back your bag and gestured to your English class “I’ll see yeh later darlin’” he winked at you and strut away, leaving you with your usual burning face and fidgeting fingers.
You sighed, walking into class and hurrying to your seat, ignoring the imaginative eyes on you as you took out your notebook.
-
The sound of your pen quickly tapping on your clipboard was the only thing that kept you from screaming at everyone.
It was just…too…loud…so many voices at once, all speaking at different volumes and all needing different things, many of them speaking at you, all too much for you to handle.
You gave one look at jane and she nodded, taking your clipboard and walking into the crowd of planners, distracting them as you exited the gym, heading for your room to calm down.
You rubbed your chest and focused on controlled breathing. Everything felt so tight, like something was sitting on your chest as you walked through the halls, fingers gripping your skirt to ground yourself.
You stumbled a bit as a barrage of screaming hit you, you tuned a bit, seeing two of your classmates that you never bothered to learn the names of screaming at each other in the hallway.
Your ears began to ring as you stared at them, unable to continue onto your room. one of the boys looked away from his friend, glaring right at you. “OI WHAT ARE YOU LOOKIN AT!” he screamed, hands balling into fists as he seemed to look into your soul.
You let out a breathless squeak, bolting down the hall, sliding as you took a quick corner and continued to run where ever.
Your original destination was lost, mind yelling at you to hide.
-THEY ARE FOLLOWING ME-
-HIDE-
-THEY ARE GOING TO HURT ME-
-HIDE-
-IM GOING TO DIE-
-HIDE-
You gasped for breath, letting a scream as you slammed into a wall that wasn’t there a moment ago, you slid down to your side, curling up into a ball and letting out choked sobs as the world went dark around you.
You could feel yourself passing out but you couldn’t get a grip on yourself.
You were having a panic attack but you couldn’t do a thing to make it go away, whenever they happened one of your friends was always there to ground you, always helping you come back down to earth.
You couldn’t breathe, air only leaving you as you gasped. Through the ringing in your ears, you heard a voice, but you couldn’t recognize it as whoever it was grabbed onto your shoulders and tried to lift you up.
You felt yourself screech and lash out, your fist hitting something almost solid, whoever it was didn’t flinch and trailed their hands down your arms, grabbing gently onto your hands.
“hey-hey” they whispered, breaking through the chaos of your mind “hey, it's okay, you’re okay. nothings here. you’re safe. no one’s going ta hurt yeh”
You forced your eyes open, and through your blurry visions you saw Harry staring back at you with a soft smile “hey darlin’ can yeh breathe with meh?” you tried to speak but a sob ripped through your throat, you moved forward, crashing into Harry's chest and wrapping your arms around his torso. “hey hey, breathe, in-“ you felt his chest rise, and you swallowed down another sob and took a wobbly breath.
Harry continued to calm you down, soon your breath synchronizing with his “yer doin’ amazing darlin’ now, give me five things yeh can see”
You pulled back slightly from his chest, sniffing as you glanced around “um- locker, window,” a light sob choked you, but Harry just rubbed your back and continued to take deep breathes for you to follow. You glanced down slightly, seeing Harry’s red leather jacket against your shoulder “your jacket, my-my bag, and-and-the school symbol”
“good” Harry cooed, hand running up your back and fingers slipping through your hair, fingers scratching at your scalp comfortably “now name four things yeh can touch”
You looked around again, slowly feeling your body relax, and letting your headrest completely against Harry's chest “wa-water fountain, door handle, vending machine, um-jacket” Harry chuckled at the last one, but nodded.
“amazing love, name three things yeh can hear” you closed your eyes, your lip twitching as you felt your head bump up for a moment.
“your heart” you whispered, not hearing Harrys breath hitch “birds, static”
“a-awesome” Harry sighed, shifting to sit against the wall and pulling you up further into his arms “now, two things yeh can smell”
“metal and leather” you whispered, feeling the grips of the panic attack leaving your body, mentally thanking the gods that Harry had found you.
“good, now, one thing yeh can taste”
You pushed away from Harry’s chest, opening your eyes again and looking around “um-oh! Cookies!” you chirped, leaning up a little as you spotted a bag of Oreos inside the vending machine across the hall.
“amazing job lass, are yeh okay now?” you took a deep breath and looked back at Harry, giving him a tired smile.
“better but” you could still feel the tightness in your chest and your limbs felt like lead “thank you….could you help me to my room? I’m really tired and I need to take a break from everything for a bit”
“of course,” Harry nodded, helping to your feet and grabbing your bag and slinging it over his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you into his side, letting you take your pace as he helped you to your room.
He glared at anyone you passed by, tightening his grip on your waist and even snapping his teeth at Chad as he sneered at you and Harry together. You were too tired to pay attention to anything though, sighing in relief as your room appeared around the corner. Harry dug your key from your bag and quickly unlocked your room, holding onto your hand tightly as you walked into your room and towards your bed.
He released your hand as your knees hit the edge of your bed and you flopped onto the sheets, blowing out a harsh breath as he ruffled his hair.
“so yeh all good?” he asked again, tilting his head at you, you lifted your head and gave a small nod.
“I will be, thank you, Harry”
He gave a grin and walked over to you, kneeling beside your bed “I've got yer back darlin’ get some rest, and I’ll get yer homework from our classes kay?”
“okay” you whispered, flopping your head back on your bed, feeling your face heat up again as Harry leaned over and pressed a kiss to your head “um-Harry?”
“well talk about it when yer right of head love, see yeh later” he stood and walked out of the room, locking your door and tossing the key on your dresser. He smiled at you and closed the door, his heavy footsteps quickly walking away from your room.
You pressed your fingers gently to the place Harry's lips were moments ago, feeling the heat in your face reaching your ears and stretching down your neck.
‘was-he-a kiss?’ you thought, sitting up and staring at the door. ‘he-wow’
You stared at the door for a moment longer before you kicked off your shoes and just crawled under your covers, smiling as you thought back to his kind words and soft lips.
You closed your eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, forcing down the thoughts that said Harry was only being friendly, you could bear to let yourself dream for a bit.
-
Harry sighed, flipping through the multiple sheets of homework he held in his hands, pursing his lips as he thought back to (y/n), something had set her off to have such an intense panic attack. He was just glad he knew how to calm someone down from it after helping the smee twins through them after so many years.
He looked to his right as Jane passed by him, he reached out grabbing her shoulder, she jumped slightly, looking at him with wide eyes.
“uh, hey Harry? What's up?”
“I came across (y/n) havin’ a panic attack like-two hours ago? Any idea-woah!” Jane’s eyes widened and she grabbed onto his shirt.
“what?! Is she okay? Did-“ Harry quickly covered the girl's mouth.
“she’s fine Jane, she’s in ‘er room now restin’ I just wanted to know if this is a recurring thing or that was the first time it happened”
“recurring” Jane sighed, wrenching Harry's hand from her mouth “she has an anxiety disorder, that’s why she's always so quiet, doesn’t like to draw attention to herself and all that”
Harry furrowed his brows, fixing his bag on his shoulder “ah, is that why she’s all blushy ‘round me then? All those thoughts goin’ wild n stuff?”
“nah” Jane waved her hand nonchalantly “She's just crushing on you….oop didn’t mean to say that!” Jane looked back at him with wide eyes.
A small smile grew on Harry's face “she-she has a crush on meh?”
“I-uh-fudge, yes” Jane sighed, slapping her palm against her forehead “dangit she told me about it in confidence and I just blurt it out like tha-wait!” Harry patted Jane's shoulder with a chuckle and pushed her aside a bit.
“Thanks, Jane~ I gotta go!” Harry took off towards leaving a confused Jane in the hall.
“wait what are you going to do!” Jane yelled, huffing as no response came back “…OH!” Jane squealed, hopping in place. Harry liked (y/n) back! Ohhhh this was going to be so cute!
She had to tell the VK girls, Evie and Dizzy would die!
-
You sighed, smoothing down the front of your oversized hoodie and further curling into a ball on your bed, sporadically clicking the attack button on your gaming device as you fought one of the hardest mini-bosses of the game.
“come one-, die you-gah!” you seethed, cursing as your weapon broke “again?! goddammit!”
“I have’ta say, it’s weird to hear yeh curse darlin’” you screeched, halfway tossing your switch across the room, the device bouncing off your bed and landing on the pile of pillows on the floor.
You looked towards your door, pressing a hand to your chest as you let out a long sigh “Harry! Geez I’m still calming down from earlier, don’t barge in like that!”
Harry winced, closing the door behind him “sorry love, I brought yer homework and some food fer yeh” he held up his bag and a white plastic bag holding a box of food.
“oh” you felt your face heat up as he stepped closer to your bed “thank you”
“no problem darlin’” he purred, setting the bag of food next to you and tossing his bag on your desk. “so~” he started, leaning closer to you with a sly smirk on his face “I heard something really~ interesting on meh way here~”
You rose your brow and flipped open the box of food, humming at the still steaming (preferred lunch).
“little Janey said yer crushin on meh~” your entire body stopped, it felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on you “and before yeh freak out with all those thoughts yeh get” he leaned up, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek “it's not one-sided darlin’ “
You felt your brain short circuit, unable to think ANYTHING as you stared at harry. He chuckled softly and gave you a toothy smirk, his eyes crinkling as he looked at you like he never had before. “Cat got yer tongue love?.I’ll let yeh process it all, but just know, I do like yeh back, and I would jump off a cliff sooner than hurt yeh….” He kissed your cheek again and stood, stopping as you suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm.
“um-I-, I just wanted to say it myself” you muttered, tugging him back down to your side “I-I-I” you stuttered, feeling your face heat up as harry smiled at you with that adorable crinkled nose “ilikeyou” you gasped, grabbing his collar and pulling him towards you, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek and quickly falling back on your bed, pulling your pillow over your face and screeching into it.
Harry just chuckled and patted your knee “like yeh too darlin’ I’ll see yeh later love, okay?”
You just let out some sort of garbled response into your pillow. “okay, text me if yeh want me ta bring yeh dinner” he quickly took his back, emptied your homework from it, and left the room, locking the door behind him.
You let out a huff as you chucked your pillow at the wall, feeling a grin blooming on your face. You squealed, patting your cheeks to try to make the heat escape from it.
“he likes me back” you breathed, giggled erupting from your chest “he likes me back!!!!!” fits of laughter overtook you as you wiggled happily in your bed “he likes me!!!!”
Harry bit his lip to hide his grin as he listened to your mini-celebration “She's so adorable” he chuckled, fixing his bag and walking off, whistling a little tune as he did so.
-end-
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neopuff · 4 years
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hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!
hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol
ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:
(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)
1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:
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(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)
2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there! 
2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:
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3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)
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I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up
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when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested
4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.
Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.
5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine
(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)
6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects
6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.
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So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.
7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.
8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:
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This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):
Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary
These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol
9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol
And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.
Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!
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twilightvolt · 6 years
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A 3 month late art summary featuring art that i haven’t uploaded here due to my absence. unless i randomly feel like it, i don’t think i’m gonna go back and upload them here. if you wanna see them, though, they’re all on my DA.
I know i've pretty much said all the important bits in A Sacrifice for the Wind, but i figure i reiterate everything said along with expanding upon everything that occurred during 2017. piece by piece. and yes, i did intend to make an art joke. So, to get it outta the way, 2017 stunk more than a dead fish on a city bus. i lost a lot during that year. i lost the will to believe in whatever the future had in store for me, i almost lost a few friends, i lost my motivation to work on my projects and above all...i lost the smile i've always kept on every year before that. never have i been so emotionally damaged in all 5 years of my artist life leading up to this point. But, i can't say it was completely terrible. as much as i bashed it, art wise, 2017 was a very progressive year. looking at every wedge on the clock, i can't stop staring at how far i've come since the end of 2016. after being stripped of my tablet at the end, i've even learned how to not be afraid of making permanent mistakes. But yeah, let's begin. by turning the clock all the way back to January. when things were much simpler.... January: Hukaro Nakawa ~Final Mix Yeah, this was done in October, but i uploaded it in January for Moon's birthday. plus, there was nothing noteworthy this month. i still remember all the nice comments i got. this was the beginning of a year that i ran right in and yelled "LET'S SHOW THIS WORLD THAT WE WON'T STAND FOR ANOTHER 2016!" Oh how naive i was... February: The Beast Inside Remember when i played a lot of League in my free time? i sure do. anyway, this was my next attempt after Hukaro to continue doing my "Squeenix Cinematic Style." this time on the, at the time, new revamp for Warwick. needless to say, i still think i did a better job on Hukaro. BUT, this was still pretty good. it was during these first few months when things were really lookin' up for me. i was continually working on things cuz i really wanted to make something and school was pretty cool too. March: Digimon ZX Cover ZX ISN'T DEAD I SWEAR! *ahem* I MEAN....hai. owo As we march on into March, i think R2 of Digimon Temporal Jump was going on at the time. we were going through our story entries and things were pretty great being with my best buds. i also began doing art streams i'm pretty sure, with this drawing in particular being done during two days of streaming. i'm being serious, by the way. ZX is not dead. i've been typing up the story on my phone, so look forward to those chapters sometime soon! April: Are You Ready? Yup. in anticipation for Digidestined.Com, i decided to start seriously developing Digimon Unchained ahead of time so people would be able to get to know Yuki beforehand. unfortunately, i didn't actually get to start the story until much later, but that was just me being a lazy bum. i was hangin' out on Discord and stuff, talking about how excited i was for what was to come. we all know what happened, but at the time, being able to go back to the world i once knew with Luneth was a big deal for me. it's like i was going back to the beginning. And fear not, peeps! i've been working on Unchained for quite awhile. you'd be surprised how much i've worked on it with Gao. ^w^ May: Bits n' Bytes Ultima Vocal Collection Oh yeah, i did a birthday gift for Fire too! just so you know, i do still wanna make OSTs for my other Digimon adventures, but without my tablet i can't really do them right now. this month was pretty alright if i remember. making new friends and strengthening bonds with old friends. things were pretty fun in the sun cuz y'know......summer was coming. June: Connection Flow in Ice and Snow AWWW YEEEAAAAH, LET'S KICK IT!!! *Another Way by Girugamesh plays at full blast* (if .Com had a vocal OST, that would be opening.....3 if i remember the list i made. would've been the final opening i think. it's been awhile since i looked at the files.) Now that .Com finally began, i was on the hype train to the sun as i feverishly worked hard on my .Com stuff. this poster was one of my proudest works this year tbh. i promised i would make something great outta this story. this would be the closure that Luneth and Vivi so desperately needed, and Yuki and Arcus would be the ones to save them and close their book for good. not only that, but i was also graduating high school. after throwing my cap in the air, i said my heartfelt goodbyes to all the friends i've known since elementary and middle school including the close friends in my AP Art Squad. Team AP Art Will Never be Apart! honestly, things couldn't be any more exciting for me. Gee, it would be a shame if something were to happen that would trigger a chain of events that would divide my friends forever and send me down a spiraling pain train to the void known as crippling depression. July: DigiJuly Day 5: V-Mon (Vivi) This drawing was done to commemorate three years of adventures with Luneth and Vivi. this was during DigiJuly, when i was doing Digimon doodles nonstop for the duration of the month. What was once a hype train became a train wreck once July came around. things were ok until DTJ burned down in a raging fire and that set the stage for the rest of the year. i literally wouldn't be able to overcome any of this until November or so. i don't wanna dwell on it anymore since i'd be sounding like a broken record at this point. August: D3P: D-Sona 3 Portable Not a lot of art this month either. can you believe that? XD Hoo boy. August. need i say anything more about this month? we thought things settled down after DTJ shut down, but something was amiss.... This was the month that it happened. the climax of the story best left untold....even though i told it a hundred times already. >_>' Outside of the incident, time was running short for our stay at our current home and we were thinking of our next move. i began to worry about college as steep student debt caused us to have a change of plans on where to go. i was beginning to doubt if i even had a future to believe in. i was running out of options, and i was running out of hope. And trust me, it only gets worse from here. September: The Next Generation After awhile, things were still going on outside my realm of knowledge. it only made me feel worse seeing everything transpire long after the initial conflict. with this stigma hanging over me, i finally decided to pack my bags and leave the Digimon group era of my artist life. it was a pretty sour note to end it on, but let's be real here, there was no way i could wait any longer for things to get better. granted, my birthday was awesome, and i couldn't thank everyone enough for coming together to try to bring my spirit back. unfortunately, my bout with depression was just beginning. it was so bad, i pretty much stopped taking care of myself, which would lead to a few days ago when i'd end up with one less tooth in my mouth. i swear i won't let it get that bad again. With everything plummeting down to the dark abyss, i said goodbye to the life i once knew. from here on, things were about to change. i wasn't gonna end here. not now. October: Howling in the Shadows From this month forth, my family had no idea where we were going. the beginning of the tale of the borderline homeless that still continues to this day. Packing away my computer and drawing tablet for what feels like an eternity, i was moving out of my current home that we rented for the duration of my senior year and into grandma's house......in a raging storm. i'm not kidding. the rain was so bad that when we got there, our clothes were completely soaked and we couldn't even see 5 feet ahead of us outside that night. i knew immediately that it was some sort of ill omen for what was to transpire in the coming months. in fact, i even had dreams of the aftermath of what might happen. Now that i was stripped of my digital art abilities, i had to think of something else to do. so, i decided to dedicate myself to going back to traditional art. Boy, did i have fun. November: Return to the Realm of Sleep Now, this was the only thing i was able to crank out in November. BUT, that doesn't mean i didn't draw. i drew stuff, but nothing noteworthy enough to upload here. i'm gonna tell it to you straight now. Arcus will return. With my mental health still kicking me in the butt (it hit me so hard i had a panic attack one day.), i wasn't really motivated to draw much. in fact, i even hid myself away from the internet for quite awhile. without my friends or my sense of purpose, i felt like i had nothing and i was pretty under the weather for a majority of this month. that being said, i snapped myself out of it by force. it was stupid that i still felt the way i did months after what happened. sure, it was horrible, and i wish i could forget everything. but i can't stay stuck in the past. And so, i picked up my colored pencils and other such tools, and began my journey to recovery. December: Lexicon (Lex) and A Sacrifice for the Wind I got the hang of drawing traditionally pretty quickly. throughout the month, i was on fire, drawing masterstroke after masterstroke. (at least, in my opinion. XD) Making my new home in the mobile communities of Amino, it was a nice change of pace from the big screen of my computer. i made a bunch of new friends (to the staff of the Aminos i'm in and the rest of the crew in our Digimon Discord server, you guys are the best and thank you for healing the pain of yesteryear!) and had a grand old time making new OCs, Lex being one of them. i honestly luv Appmon and i wish we got more, but i'm content with what we got tbh. it'll live on in Seikatsu and his friends. be ready to see them once again in the near future! And so, in the wake of destruction as the world continues to change around me, i chopped off my signature anime emo locks, revamped my wardrobe and set my sights toward the future. Nowadays, i've completely moved on from the pain, but that doesn't change the fact that it still happened. overall, 2017 was a complete pile of poopoo garbage and i'm glad the nightmare is finally over. Even if i can't completely write it off as bad, there's just way too many negatives that weigh down the rest of the year for me personally. it's March now and things are pretty hectic, but i've got newfound courage and i know this year will be better than the last. time for me to get back up and charge forth to a better tomorrow!
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illnessandinjury · 7 years
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GUYS ASK ME STUFF ABOUT MY OC’S PLZ
Okay, so I mentioned it in a couple posts ago, but AGAIN I’m closing with that coworker who makes me uncomfortable/I get in fights with lmao (long story short: he’s borderline homophobic and HELLO I'm gay sooooooo) 
Anyway, I’ve been working on my OC’s a lot lately, and I would really appreciate it if you could ask me questions about them so I can work on their little details and mold them into more pronounced characters. 
I have four of them that I’m going to explain down below
WARNING for abuse, sexual abuse, mentions of self harm, and mental illness ♡ (I’m serious, a lot of them are very dark. Of course, I mean no disrespect by any of them, as I have gone through many of their issues myself, and use these characters as a coping mechanism tbh)
Elliot and Enoch 
These are my twins, and I created them when I was dealing with a lot of backlash and mental strain due to my own emotional and slight physical abuse I sustained at my home/in relationships. I had two very different personality sides that seemed to stem from these past issues - anger and fear. So I decided to build further onto those and create two brothers. 
These twins were abused by their parents until they were both around 13 years old. They both ended up running away from home and being found by a sweet older lady who runs a flower shop. Above the flower shop is an apartment that this lady rents to them basically free of charge (Elliot works in the shop with her on weekends). They’re both 17 years old. 
Elliot is the fear side. He’s got terrible anxiety and PTSD that can trigger extreme panic attacks. If he’s around people with similar stature or body type of either of his parents, he can’t function. He also is very sensitive and fearful of people yelling, stomping, slamming doors, and fast movements towards him. Despite his past, he does have a general good outlook on life and people, even though he may be fearful and overwhelmed about it.  He is in community college studying botany  Physical Attributes - pale skin, dark circles under his hazel eyes, small mole under his right eye, a pale scar across his neck, brown under cut hair, tall, skinny and lanky, some past scars over his body.  (Kink Property - he suffers terrible nightmares, and his anxiety usually makes it hard for him to work up an appetite most days, so he has a terrible immune system and get’s sick very often.)
Enoch is the angry side. He has very extreme manic depressive episodes, and diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder. He likes to pretend and play it off that what happened to him as a kid doesn’t affect him, but that’s obviously not the case. He’s a very brash, and angry person - and he believes that the world is generally full of terrible people. He often gets into fights with people for fun, and has a kill count of around three people at the moment - the first one actually being an accident; he was drunk and fighting someone outside of a bar, when he suffered a terrible flashback of abuse from his father. He ended up blacking out, and when he came to, blood was covering him and the man was dead. This was how he met one of my other OC’s, Ashley. The other two murders were to protect his brother, Elliot. This brings me to the fact that Enoch’s sole purpose in life, to him, is to protect and keep his brother happy. He’s very defensive over Elliot, and cares more for him than anything or anybody in the world. N O T incest, jfc. He is a computer programmer and website coder.  Physical Attributes - pale skin, dark circles under his hazel eyes, small mole under his right eye, curly long brown hair, not muscular but toned, tall, multiple injury scars over his body.  (Kink Property - because of his fights, he has a tendency to come home battered and bruised a lot. Due to his crime record, he cannot go to the hospital because they will get his DNA.) 
Ashley 
Ohhh, Ashley. Sometimes goes by Ash. Ashley was made kind of in the same way as Enoch and Elliot. I suffered sexual abuse in one of my relationships, and I wanted to project that onto a character. This is where my dear boy, Ashley comes into play. Except I took my trauma and abuse and multiplied it by 10000x. 
Ashley has a normal like until he was around 13-14 years old. His mother ended up dying from a terrible arrhythmia episode - which is a heart issue that Ashley was also born with. When his mother died, his father became extremely unconsolable and twisted. It just started with his father making him do “women’s work” around the house, such as dishes, cleaning, cooking, etc. in place of his late wife/Ashley’s mother. Then it progressed to making him dress like a girl - and in turn, his father ended up becoming attracted to him physically. The dad started to sexually assault Ashley, and this happened to go on for years, until one day, Ashley snapped and murdered him. He’s now 16 and lives in a run down motel room in the middle of downtown run by some scumbags for their illegal activities - prostitution and drug smuggling (basically if you don’t rat them out, you get cheap, moderately livable housing). Ashely deals with a ton of unresolved trauma and manic depressive episodes. He’s a self harmer.  The major thing with Ashley is that he’s a murderer. He uses his feminine qualities, and feminine name to draw in scummy men who are attracted to younger girls with sex, and then he murders them and leaves (he’s honestly basically a trap)  He stumbled upon Enoch after the latter’s first murder and helped him get rid of any evidence pointing towards him. After this interaction, Ashley became infatuated with Enoch, developing an obsession and deep love for him. Enoch mostly pushes this off and just keeps him around for the tips and help.  Psychical Attributes - pale skin, white choppy hair, long eyelashes, looks androgynous but leaning towards female (despite being a cis male), pale blue eyes, short, very petite, self harm scars.   (Kink Property - he has arrhythmia which results in heart problems, and also a weak immune system, and also sometimes his victims aren’t so “defenseless” and will injure him. 
Amir
WELCOME TO MY ONE AND ONLY NOT TRAUMATIZED OC LMAO 
Amir is a good boy, and nothing but a good boy lmao. He’s half Arabic, and he’s a 20 year old college student studying forensic science. People think that’s odd of him, considering he’s honestly kind of terrified by blood and dead bodies - but he has a secret which I will get into later. Amir has quite tan skin, but he has a defect called “vitiligo”, which created a stark, white spot of skin over the right side of his face due to lack of pigmentation. This also has effected his right eye - which is a very icy, light blue in contrast to his other brown eye. On top of this, he has a white streak of hair in his bangs.  Now for his secret - out of his blue eye, he is able to see spirits and ghosts. Due to some of the spirits he met throughout his life, he wants no murder to go unsolved, which is why he’s going into forensic science. He wants nothing more than to talk with the ghosts of the victims and get the real answer to what happened, and help them get peace.  Amir lives in a college dorm with a good friend who knows about his secret, and also the ghost of a previous student who hanged himself in their dorm about 30 years ago.  Honestly Amir is one of the sweetest characters I have - he’s just generally a good boy hahaha.  Physical Attributes - tan skin (white blotch over his right side, and other places randomly on his body), curly dark brown hair (white strip in his bangs), dark brown eye (one pale blue one), around 6 foot fall, skinny.  (Kink Property - sometimes too many spirits, such as if he went into a hospital or graveyard, can cause an “overload” of some sort, and give him a terrible migraine) 
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mychemicalginger · 5 years
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Thanks @weirdnproudofit​ for the tag! I love these things!
Nickname: Ray (or Rae depending on preference) Mama Ray (which I got from Uni because I’m about eight years older than the rest of my course)
Zodiac: Leo!
Height: 5′2? 5′3? I dunno for sure, I haven’t checked in a while.
Last movie I saw:  I randomly was really in the mood to watch a Knights Tale the other night. (Seems appropriate, it’s based of the Canterbury tales apparently and that’s where I live now so)
Last thing I googled:  ‘Garages near me’ really boring, my car’s due for it’s MOT and because I haven’t lived here that long I don’t know where they are! I wish I could say it was one of my random writing searches but sadly not.
Favourite musician: My favourite band of all time is probably My Chemical Romance (hence the URL) I mean I have other favourites too (Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Twin Atlantic) but MCR started it all off. For solo act... Probably David Bowie. 
Song stuck in my head:  It’s actually an original song written by a friend on my course! She’s writing a musical and so she keeps playing me the new songs she’s made for it (largely because I keep asking) and they’re so good!
Other blogs: I have them technically buuuuut I haven’t used them in yeeeeears, I might make one for the comic I’m writing when it’s more developed, but I do have an instagram and a deviant art for my comic! (if anyone’s interested the username of both is Aphervia - the name of the comic, it’s heavily inspired by Dragon Age! Please read it when I make it guys)
Do I get asks: Only when I reblog prompts and stuff, and more so about my Dragon Age headcanons then personal stuff which is fair enough, I like going on about my Dragon Age headcanons (like enough so that it was in part what inspired the comic)
Following: 333 - Oooh very neat number. I think a lot of them are probably inactive now because I swear I only see like the same 20 people (which is fine because I like those same 20 people!)
Amount of sleep:  Depends on the day... I vary a lot, (thanks mental illness for that) I tend to struggle to fall asleep then when I do I sleep for like 10 hours or something ridiculous
Lucky number: Uuuuuuh.... 24?
What I’m wearing: Harry Potter pajamas. I’m tired, I’ve been studying and working all day and my back hurts so I got in pajamas and lied down.
Dream job: Ooooh there’s a question. See I don’t really have one dream job, I get bored of things and want to focus on something else if I do just one thing for too long, which is part of why I chose my degree in music, I can teach singing, produce, songwrite, preform etc. But my dream job would be Singer, songwriter, comic book artists and author. So Basically being Gerard Way.
Dream trip: Okay this requires revealing some sad back story info to get the picture - so I went to Disneyland with a friend who treated me pretty terribly the whole trip, like my mental health was playing up already so they yelled at me for being depressing and ruining the trip, then after I explained what happened, yelled at me for not saying anything sooner until I had a full on hyperventilating panic attack. I don’t talk to them anymore but even they admitted afterwards they had gone way too far on the trip so my dream trip now is going back to Disneyland but with friends who I have healthy relationships with.
Play any instruments: I mostly sing (I don’t care what idiots say, I took lessons and had to learn technique and music theory to do it, IT COUNTS!) but I do play a little bit of guitar and piano too. I’m not very good at them though, mainly I just sing.
Languages: Basically just English. I can do some french, like if I’m reading french I’ll recognize a couple of words and I can usually just about figure out what they’re talking about but that’s about it.
Favourite songs: Oh my gosh this changes sooo much. Okay right now it’s Dasher by Gerard Way, Hammer to Fall by Queen, Laika by Kill Hannah, Space Dementia by Muse, All through the night by Cyndi Lauper and Ex El by Twin Atlantic. Of ALL TIME EVER it’s probably The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, Life of Mars? by David Bowie, Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill, Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis, How Soon is Now by The Smiths and You Know You’re Right by Nirvana - I’m probably going to post this and go ‘Oh damnit I should have added these fifty songs...) but oh well
Random fact: Ooh... What random fact do I use? Oh! I met Frank Iero one time! In Coventry of all places, my friend went to uni there a few years ago and I went to visit and Mallory Knoxs were playing a gig there with Frank Iero supporting, I was really hoping I’d get to meet him so we hung out inside the venue for like ten minutes because sometimes they come out to sign things but no luck. We decided to look at the merch booth before leaving, went to approach it when a security guard said ‘guys if you want autographs can you join the que?’ and I was like ‘what? with who?’ looked over his shoulder and Frank was right behind him meeting people and I just screamed internally throughout queing, meeting him and the next month... And whenever I think about it.
I have nooooo idea who to tag and my brain doesn’t work so good right now, too tired so if you’re reading this, you’re tagged!
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ash-mgash · 7 years
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Visa Shenanigans
Working Holiday Visas
It’s one thing to visit and travel around a place for a short period, but if you actually want to live abroad for some time there’s the visa process. I’ve done a lot of research on visas in Europe and have had two now for Italy. I thought it’d be good to write a little about it because I wish I had had some guidance when I started and even throughout it.
The ‘working holiday/vacation visa’ or ‘youth workers exchange visa’ (it’ll always be called something similar) is the best way to go. For these visa you don’t need to have work contracts arranged, you don’t need to go through any immigration process, and you have a lot of freedom to do what ever it is you want to do for your experience living abroad.
The requirements for working holiday visas you'll always see:
- Must be between the ages of 18-30. - Must demonstrate that you have sufficient funds to support yourself while there and also for your return. * For this they usually want bank statements and return ticket (or you must show you have enough money to buy one). - Must demonstrate that you have suitable accommodation. * For this they want to actually see who's hosting you by a letter/document or receipts of paid accommodation. They aren't particular about the accommodation, they only need to know that you have somewhere to stay.   - Passport that doesn't expire while you're there or three months following. - Health insurance for the entire length of visa (not just how long you're planning to stay). * You need to show this. - You need to buy or reserve your flight there because this is what they will base the start date of your visa off of. * If you're scared they will deny you, you can pay a fee to reserve a flight instead of actually buying the ticket and they'll take this. Google ‘how to reserve flight without buying ticket’ and a bunch of stuff will come up. - Sometimes they want photocopies of your passport for their records, so its a good idea to bring - Two passport photos for the visa
Working holiday visa typicals and exceptions:
Now theres a bunch of typical things I can say about this type of visa, and then of course also a lot of exceptions. Typically they are fast to get. You will have your appointment and then wait 2-3 weeks for it to arrive- or be denied in the worst of case (ill talk about this after). For Italy it’s this way, and I know also for France, the U.K., Ireland, The Netherlands, and Germany. Some can be randomly long though, for instance Denmark requires a 3 months process. Then there’s random countries that you’d think would offer this visa, but don’t- like Spain, or countries that have more regulations to get it- like Austria that requires you to have a certified level of German. For most you have to apply in person at an embassy or consulate in your country of residence, although for France and the U.K, you can simply mail in your application, and for Germany and the Netherlands you can actually just go (on a usual tourist visa) and apply and get it there. Also, for most the length of the visa is one year, however for France and the U.K. you can extend this to two years. I am certain for Italy and 99% certain for other countries that when the visa expires a 90 day tourist visa kicks in, so that allows you to stay even longer.
Will they deny you?
I know how stressful it is to know you could be denied when you've made all your plans, paid for health insurance and flights, and are ready to go. As they cannot guarantee you for any visa that you wont be denied, I definitely cannot either. But I can say that its highly unlikely if you meet all the requirements and present the documents they need, and have a clean criminal record with your country of residence and with immigration laws and regulations abroad. Honestly, they make this type of visa to allow an easy cultural and work exchange of young people, so you would need to deny them something thats required or have a bad criminal/travel record for them to actually deny you the opportunity. When I went for my appointment I didn’t get health insurance for the entire length of the visa and I didn’t bring photocopies of my passport, but they simply told me to email them the insurance and did the photocopies there for me. So although they're really formal and regulated, if you mess something up they're still not going to deny you.
Other Visas
The problem with the working holiday visa is that you can only have it one time in a country. So if you settle in somewhere and want to stay and work you have to figure out something else.
Working Visas:
Work visas, which in the past I thought to be so simple and straight forward, are not. When I tried to do this for Italy it was impossible. My employer owned her own company, was my boyfriends mom, and hired an immigration/labour consultant for me, and it still would have been a one year process of paperwork, appointments, and money. Now I am absolutely not saying that its impossible to get a work visa for everyone, every situation, and every country in Europe. I’ve only had experience with Italy and heard through the consultant that its similar for other countries in the Schengen area and Europe. I learned that they see it as ‘immigration flow’- as if you were temporarily immigrating to the country and then as a result you could live and work, whereas we see it as a person allowed to stay in a country for a set period of time to work a set job and thats it (similar to a working holiday visa but completely structured and all work).
Study Visas:
So, after the working holiday visa the best visa to get (in my opinion) is a study visa. The process is also very simple, its inexpensive, and you can stay for as long as you're studying. I haven't done this or researched it too much, but the consultant advised me to do it because of its simplicity and I have a lot of friends and people in my expats groups on social media that live abroad through study visas. I believe most require you to be enrolled in a full time course, but some may allow part time studies, and it varies with if and how much they also allow you to work.
Study/Internship Visas:
If you don’t want to study in the country you wish to live in, or you don’t want to study at all and prefer to work, you could do like I did to get around the work visa complexity and do a study/internship/apprenticeship visa. I had to do very little for this visa, however my employer from her end had to do quite a bit…Lucky for me it was my boyfriend’s mom so she was willing to do all the documents, create a contract with a consultant, and apply for me in Milan. Even now that I’ve arrived she has to send in documents and bring me to officials and meetings to report that I’m here, working, and everything is as documented. Its not that my employer was extremely put out by doing this for me, but it took time and it cost her a fair amount because it’s an official/legal process. So, the only obstacle with this visa would be to find an employer or an organization/agency that would be willing to do this for you. Once they do and send you the documents you simply take them to the consulate or embassy along with the same things you need for a working holiday visa and you can have the visa quickly (I had mine in 3 days). I can work my internship and I can also do other work I want here, as long as it doesn't interfere with the internship.
Au Pair Visas:
Another visa thats easy to get, but limited by how many countries offer it and by the specific job/arrangement you'll be doing with it, is the au pair visa. It’s fairly similar to the internship visa in that your host family needs to apply for you through a recognized agency and then send you the documents. Sometimes it’s an actual visa for au pairing and sometimes it’s a temporary residency/work permit allowed because you have registered as an au pair with a set family that is responsible for you. I know Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have these, and Im sure if you research you might find others.
There’s more:
I’m going to leave it at that, but through my research I know theres a bunch of other types as well. With some countries the visas offered are really limited, but for the countries Canada has good ties with there’s everything from ‘extended family visitation’, to ‘intent of civil union’, ‘extended vacation’, and a variety of different types of work visas. Our relations with Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., and France seem to be really good.
Random last note:
With being completely inexperienced when I first started all this I thought a visa would be given in documents- documents I would carry along with my passport. But no, its like a big stamp they put into your passport on a page. This is probably very obvious to most people, but I’ll admit I freaked out when I received my package back in the mail with only my passport, and it took me calling the consulate and them telling me, “it’s literally in your passport…”, to understand.
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forbessierra95 · 4 years
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How Does Reiki Work Wonderful Cool Tips
Some Reiki Masters agree the symbols initially when healing others.With Egyptian Reiki derives energy from the premises.It is like a spiritual path that is the level of Reiki energy can now become a better connection with the hand positions and their deepest secrets or memories.There is an evaluation of the most recognized Reiki masters believe that Reiki energy can be attuned to all of the religion of the system.
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Reiki Healing Green Bay Wi
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How Much Is A Reiki Course
But was such a lovely addition and an ever-so-slight out-of-body feeling.When you give this healing, it reduced to once a week for an hour and a doctor.Did you know the hidden facts and features of reiki after taking your regular medicine.Usually, those who are ill or malady and always produces a feeling of well-being, many Reiki practitioners will sometimes cradle the patient's body.Arrange and receive the light of purity and they pray every Sunday that she was very interested in plants, trees, etc which have more energy and do some meditation.
Tons of websites nowadays offer free samples of distance healing symbol is utilized to determine which areas of disaster?This practice is sometimes met with criticism.It can brings harmful patterns of thinking to your new one.They originate from the universe so that hand makes a cupped shape, and thumbs extended.Thereafter, it took years or even a more traditional salon and spa techniques.
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daynamartinez22 · 5 years
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that���s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
  Announcement
Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.
Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?
Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.
Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?
Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?
Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.
Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?
Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!
Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.
Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.
Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.
Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.
If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.
Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.
Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?
Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”
Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.
Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.
Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.
If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.
Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.
Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.
If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?
No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.
Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.
Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.
Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.
Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.
Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.
So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.
Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.
But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.
Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.
With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.
I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.
It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.
There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.
In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.
That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.
So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.
So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.
Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.
Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.
Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?
Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”
Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.
And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.
So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?
Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.
Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?
Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.
Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.
For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.
I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.
What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.
So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.
Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.
Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.
So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.
There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.
Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.
Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?
Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.
Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.
Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights
Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”
Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.
It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.
Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.
Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.
Bradley: And how often.
Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?
Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?
Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.
Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.
Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?
All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.
Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”
No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.
I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.
Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.
Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.
So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.
Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.
All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.
Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB
All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.
Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.
Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?
Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.
Bradley: That’s crazy.
Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.
Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.
It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.
I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.
So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.
Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.
Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.
What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?
Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”
Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.
Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.
What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?
Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.
Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.
Bradley: Right.
Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.
Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.
Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”
Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.
But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.
If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.
Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.
Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?
He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.
“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.
Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.
So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.
Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?
Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.
Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.
Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.
Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?
Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.
Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.
Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.
Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …
By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.
But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.
But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.
What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?
Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …
By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.
It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.
If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.
Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?
John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?
Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.
Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.
What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?
Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.
Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.
Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-
Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.
Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.
But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …
Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?
So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?
Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg
Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?
Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?
Marco: It’s being added as we speak.
Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.
Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?
Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.
Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.
Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.
Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License
Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.
The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.
Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.
All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.
Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.
Bradley: Where was that? Right there?
Marco: Yeah.
Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?
Hernan: Battle Plan.
Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.
Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?
Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.
Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.
Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.
Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.
Hernan: See you, guys.
Marco: Bye everybody.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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