Friday, March 16, 2018

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 175

Click on the video above to watch Episode 175 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

 

Announcement

Adam: All right. We are live everybody, welcome to episode 175 of Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 14th of March 2018 also known as Pie Day. I sadly don’t have a pie …

3.14.

Adam: Oh, it’s a math joke, I get it. Hey. Do bring a little nerdiness to the Hump Day Hangouts this week. Let’s go through and say hi to everybody real quick. We’re going to do some quick analysis and then start answering your questions. Let’s see if we can get a hold of Chris. Are you there?

Chris: Yeah, I’m here. Hi guys.

Adam: Yeah, how is it going? I think you’re about what, 12 hours off from us.

Chris: No idea, like it’s 4:00 AM here.

Adam: Well, good on to you.

Chris: It’s always fun to be in Bali.

Adam: All right, good stuff. Hernan, how are you doing men?

Hernan: I’m good, I’m excited to be here, I’m excited to be with you next week on FHL, I’m excited for what’s coming, so good times.

Adam: Yeah and if anybody is going to be at Final Hacking Live in Orlando, let us know. We’ll try to meet up. I know we’ve got a few of mastermind members going and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some others going. Raise your hands, let us know and me and Hernan will meet up with you. Let’s see, who’s next? Marco, how is it going?

Marco: What’s up dude?

Adam: Can’t complain dude. I’m living here in the snow, I’m sure you’re nice and comfortable. How’s the weather down there?

Marco: It’s ground hard day men. It’s warm, sunny, can’t beat it men.

Adam: Fair enough, fair enough. Bradley, how about yourself?

Bradley: I’m happy to be here men. Things are good, ready to answer some questions though.

Adam: Well, not too fast. We’ve said it, just recently we were talking about, we did the presale for a local PR pro and a couple of people, rather several people got in early at a pretty awesome price. That’s going to be launching towards the end of the month. You’ve recorded the training for that and we still had a few questions though as far as – because we don’t have a finalized page, we don’t have all the details on there. What is like the thing we should be telling people because I can tell people but you’re the one who actually did the training.

Bradley: Okay, so what are the benefits. Quick rankings, it’s about 90% outsourced, virtually almost all of it is outsourced. You have to do the keyword research but the message that I teach are using like the actual press release distribution services writers. Like you don’t even have to write the damn press release, all you’ve got to do is come up with the handful of bullet points which are just basic details for all press releases which I typically provide like who, what, when, where, perhaps a why or a how and then a quote and that’s it, that’s all you’ve got to include.

You can get incredible results for maps ranking. I mean that’s primarily what the course is about, it’s about ranking and the maps pack if you’re doing the local. It applies to stuff outside of local too but I specifically developed the local PR product because of what I was doing for my own lead gen business and my client, SEO agency and just getting incredible results. As I mentioned in the training, out of 15 properties that I applied this strategy too, 12 of them ranked in the three pack within six press releases. I would publish press release about once every two weeks.

That would be within 12 weeks. 80% of all properties that I applied distribution which is 12 out of 15, I was able to rank in the three pack in six press releases or less, which is insane. Several of them were actually done what I call one hit wonders. The results are typical guys but they are for lower less competitive areas especially or less competitive keywords, one or the other or both. One single press release done right can actually push you in the maps pack. I mean, from not being in the three pack at all to being in the maps pack or even number one position.

I showed a couple of examples in the webinars that we did which is all part of the training now where that one hit wonder worked. I’ve got several more examples that I just didn’t show of that. again, the benefit is that it’s incredibly useful, it’s powerful, it’s effective and it can be done quickly without a lot of work. I even tested this across various types of web properties. We tried single page landing pages. Like, in other words, the website that was attached or connected to the Google my business listing was just a single page website. No silo structure, no blog, no IFTTT syndication network, no drive stat.

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I was able to rank those in the three pack. Obviously, the sites that I had the more traditional structure too, like silo structure, content, we had the entity validation syndication network, drive stats, all of that, those responded eve better if that makes sense. What I wanted to do was test just how powerful press releases alone could be. I actually ran that across multiple properties or applied that method across multiple properties that where literally had no business ranking at all because they had basically no content.

Like the first project that I applied it to was just a landing page, the click phone was a landing page. It wasn’t even work based which means you can’t manipulate beyond page SEO. It’s very limited and click phones is just what you can do for SEO purposes yet I was able to rank a landing page with a video and [inaudible 00:05:35] form and three bullet points literally in the three pack with two press releases. Again, that’s why I say guys, this is incredibly powerful if you’re doing client work, if you’re doing lead gens stuff for your own self and it’s a great source of revenue because on the low end –

I charge on the low end as a foot in the door strategy with press releases, I charge 300 bucks to do a press release for a client and that’s on the low end. Even if you’re paying 150 bucks, that 100% mark up to have somebody else do the work for you. All you’ve got to do is sell it, if that makes sense. There’s a lot of opportunities there guys, it’s a great, great program for just getting really quick results. Marco and I and Rob, the three of us are putting our heads together to talk about developing another course specifically for Google my business.

I’ll let Marco talk a little bit more about that. when you combine the press release strategy along with what we’re going to be talking about in the GMB course as well as the RYS stuff with drive stacks. It’s basically like, there’s nothing we can’t crack into. Not three packs that we can’t get into. You know what I mean, so.

Chris: Yeah men. The thing about that is competition. It’s like who cares? I posted the image that I’ve shared in our groups, it’s an attorney that I’m working for in New York City. I wish I could show more but I’m under a non-disclosure agreement but if you guys go and look, those are results just from within the Google my business listing. No links, no nothing, no IYS. Imagine if I decide – well, she has to pay more of course. She has decided she wants more but press releases to this and press release is to a drive spec that’s hooked up to the GMB, that’s hooked up to the website.

There are so many things. I always tell people, think outside the box and just imagine the different scenarios where you can go in and just take over. Now again as you said, results aren’t typical but we’re targeting another major metropolitan area for a highly competitive keyword. This is personal injury attorney New York City and those are the results. For the other one that we’re doing which will be disclosed when the course is released, it is 200% month to month, that’s the increase in traffic that we’re getting. We’re basically, we’re going to come up with the course and of course we’ll figure out a way to hook it all together.

Right now, you get into local PR pro and you can get results like you said, one to six press releases and that’s like right now. You go, you get the course, you do what you’re supposed to do. Don’t cut corners, don’t start doing your own stuff until you apply it and get something that’s going to work, right. Once you get it working you can start testing and do whatever you want but please, first follo0w the training. At any rate, you follow the training, you get that going and then you can after even more competitive theories.

Take down the competition, they won’t know what you’re doing because it’s really hard to track this, it’s really hard to see where it’s all coming from. It’s all Google, it’s all Google, that’s what I love about all this. It’s working inside Google and using Google to my advantage and that’s what we’re going to be working on.

Adam: That’s the new SEO buddy.

Marco: That’s it men. Give Google all it wants and you get rewarded.

Adam: That’s right, good deal. We wanted to touch base real quick because Bradley I think you, yes you wrapped up that PPC module and the mastermind, right?

Bradley: Well, the main push forward yeah. I mean it’s going to continue to be updated throughout the course of the year. We just did the local project so far. Right now because we shifted into the prospecting module, I’m setting up some phones and stuff for the national project. Once we’re outside of that, once we got the prospecting phone is all set up and things then I’m going to start driving outwards traffic or PPC traffic into those phones. I will also be adding a bunch of additional training the PPC modules for national campaigns. Right now what we have is the local campaign.

Adam: Cool. Coming up as Bradley said is the prospecting which was really fortunate. One, a lot of people are interested, obviously everyone wants to get either more or better clients. Then I was just talking to a new mastermind member on our on boarding consulting call, I’m not going to say who it is but I know he’s watching and we were talking about the shiny object syndrome. We’re having all these training and not taking action. Something that the mastermind we’re going to start doing is we’re grouping people together for little masterminds so that they can talk about what they’re doing.

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People who are working in similar areas and have these more in-depth discussions because they not only get to talk to us and talk to each other as a large group but then going in and being accountable. You know that hey, maybe if you’re having a tough time taking action but you’re committing to hey, I’m going to make this project work and I’ve got to come back here in a week and tell everyone what I did.

Hernan: Report back, yeah. Yeah, I mean, sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just saying reporting back – because here’s the thing. How often do you make a commitment to yourself? I’m saying this to everybody in general because I do it a lot. How often do you make commitments to yourself and it’s easy to break because nobody else knows about to, you know what I mean? When you make a commitment to other people, we tend to keep them more often, or at least if you have any integrity to do. A lot of times that’s why I publicly announce stuff because it forces me to follow through and so an accountability group will do that for a lot of people.

Bradley: That’s fine. I just want to let people know about that, you can do that on your own. We wanted to implement that for a mastermind. We’re going to be doing that regularly to get people hooked up, plugged in and get them even more involved in their projects and other people’s projects because that’s what it’s all about, it’s learning and growing. Anyways, I don’t want to take too much longer. Do you guys have anything else more for me to go over, so we hop into it.

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Bradley: Alrighty.

Hernan: Let’s do it, let me grab the screen. You know what, I can do the picture thing, let me play with that for one moment. Just a minute guys. Is it working yet? Can you all hear me?

Bradley: Yeah, sorry. I got a little delay with Hangouts today but no it is not.

Hernan: Okay, here we go. Now we’re good, I made it work. Look at that. I know that gives you an extreme headache just looking at that stupid picture and picture thing. It’s like Alice in wonderland.

Bradley: Okay, are you guys ready? Does everything look good now, finally?

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Looking good.

Hernan: Here we go.

Can You Recommend A Good Strategy To Use Ad To Get Traffic?

Adam: Okay. Andy T, what’s up Andy. He says hey BBM team, good day. Can you recommend a good strategy to use ads to get traffics? I’m working on affiliate website and I’m not sure Facebook ads is more suitable for me. Kindly recommend a good advertising course if you have any, thanks. Well, I’m always going to lean towards ad wars and YouTube just because that’s what I do. I don’t do Facebook stuff, there’s a ton of good traffic there. Hernan’s a ninja in that kind of stuff but I can just speak from, like for affiliate stuff, I’ve had really good success with YouTube ads because they’re so cheap.

You can get like really an expensive view that leads to inexpensive clicks which can lead to inexpensive conversions. Like if you’ve got decent offer or decent opt-in or something like that on your landing pages which are you affiliates bridge page, whatever you want to call them. I prefer YouTube traffic for affiliates, stuff like that. Also, just period, I’m getting a lot of really inexpensive traffic from YouTube right now even for local stuff. I highly recommend that but I’ll let Hernan mention Facebook ads because I know he does a lot of stuff with that.

Hernan: Yeah, definitely and he’s asking about a good advertisement course, you should definitely join the mastermind Andy because we went through the entire decent time month over the past 45-60 days. We went through Ad wars and we went through Facebook back to back and we will keep on doing that. what you need to have in mind is that depending on the network that you’re advertising on people are in one state of the mind or the other, right. Facebook could be great if you’re offering something for free and you want to build an audience. If you’re selling, I don’t know, dog training products as an affiliate then you can really create an audience really, really fast.

The same way with YouTube, people are not actively searching for those keywords. Ad Wars, it’s a completely different ball game because people are actively searching for those keywords, I always say, I’m [inaudible 00:15:02]. I wouldn’t choose either or, you know what I’m saying? Like if you want to build an audience and you want to build a list around any particular subject I would go ahead with both. In my case, in my particular case, I’m having better resource with Facebook but it’s probably better off that I don’t know how well to use YouTube as Bradley is doing. I would combine them and the mostly combined, the better, I think.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, that’s like me saying, yeah Mike, I’m not very good at Facebook ads. It’s because I don’t do them very often. I totally get what you’re saying and I agree with you 100%. One thing I can say Andy is that it’s just crushing it for me right now guys and this is – I feel like I shouldn’t even reveal this but it’s, men, the in-market audiences. If you go into Ad wars and when you select who you’re targeting, there’s an interest drop down. Not topics, not keywords, not placements but there’s an interest dropdown. If you just click on that it’s going to show you in market audiences, then there’s also life events and another one is called infinity audiences.

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The in-market audiences are absolutely crashing it. If you can find, if your affiliate project falls within, if you can find a topic in the in-market audiences that covers it, you’re going to have really good success with that. because I’m crashing it even with local right now, we’re driving traffic from in -market audiences and it’s just incredibly good. What’s crazy about is like the people will, the view retention on the ads that I’m playing for locals’ stuff using the in-market audiences is like 45% or greater. Like the average view duration of the ads which is huge. That’s really big.

When I was doing a lot of affiliate stuff with [inaudible 00:16:53], you’d be lucky to get 25% of the people to make it 30% of the way through the video, if that makes sense. Like it’s just really, really relevant, those in market audiences got Google’s data has become so much more refined for those in market audiences so really, really good. Life events is also something really good for like people getting married or graduating college or moving, things like that. You can find audiences in there for that too. It’s very, very good, I highly recommend it. The only, what I would recommend for like a one-off course for YouTube Ads, hands down the best YouTube ads course I know of is Justin’s Sardi.

I don’t know Adam if somebody could drop a link for that if it’ still valid. Justin’s got a very good course. I know he relaunches that often and updates it often and he does a ton of affiliate marketing with YouTube ads, so you might want to check that out.

Is The Information On The SEO Battle Plan And SEO Bootcamp Still Valid?

Okay, next he says I got a copy of the battle plans since November 2017 and its part of the SEO Boot Camp bonus. Is the information in the copy still valid? For example, I think cloud search is no longer a viable strategy. Right, yeah everything in the battle plan is still valid.

We’re going to be releasing version two in the next few weeks or so, several weeks whatever and there’s obviously some stuff that we’ve added to it. Ground search is still viable under certain circumstances guys. I just don’t recommend sending the traffic directly to your money side anymore from that or any one of those kinds of apps. If you’re going to send traffic, you can still use it in effective way but what I recommend doing is sending it, sending the traffic through like social referral links and things like that.

Again, I’ve covered that before, that actually was covered in one of the webinars we did about cloud search. Yeah, I mean there are still some benefits to that but I just wouldn’t send traffic directly to your money side because a lot of those IPP ranges now are flagged and so the traffic really doesn’t even count, it doesn’t help much if it’s counted at all, so. I would definitely, yeah, the boot camp, excuse me, the battle plan is still valid but me on the lookout the next few weeks when we release an updated version.

Will Google Detect A New Website As Spammy If There Are No Links On It And Now The Link Juice Of Over 2000 Referring Domains Would Come At Once?

Bradley: Okay, marketing help. Number one, I recently found a really strong topical relevant expire domain. I want to use it as a 301 re-direct to my own target website. However, that target website is extremely new, two months old and literally no bit link building on it so far. Well, Google detective [inaudible 00:19:21] has currently no links at all on this website and now the link has only over 2000 referring domains would come in once. On the other hand, if it’s only one re-direct, we’re not planning to do any more redirects in the future, you could make the case that I move the domain name of the company so it makes sense when you have to Google.

However, I’m concerned since expired domain really has a lot of bad place. What I would recommend is if you’re concerned about it and that’s about the concern but run it through a buffer site first. I like to use Amazon or HTML pages hosted on an S3 bucket and Amazon S3 bucket is – I love using those as buffer pages guys for this kind of stuff. I don’t do a lot of real spamming stuff like this. I’m not saying this is real spamming but it’s a re-direct, right. We used to just go out and find domains with a ton of metrics, like a whole bunch of inbound links, a bunch of domain authority and that kind of stuff.

We would re-direct that and we did some tricks we called link laundering and that was one way of doing it. It was doing double 301 redirects, all these kinds of stuff that we used to do because it was all about manipulating metrics. Several years ago, that’s how you used to be able to rank, with just manipulate the metrics. That’s not really the case anymore, it’s more about relevancy. If you’re concerned then I would still recommend putting up a buffer page. Why I like HTML pages posted on Amazon 3 is because there’s inherent authority built into the Amazon domain.

You’re going to use that to help filter a clean, any potential or negative effects, number one. Number two, you can create an HTML page with one outbound link, that’s it. You can also add a bunch of content to that page to inject relevancy. My point is yeah, it’s great you’ve got a relevant domain, that is typically relevant, that’s great. Even if you didn’t have a relevant domain you can still point it to an HTML page that has a bunch of content on it about the specific topic that you’re trying to boost, that you’re going to be linking to. If only you have one outbound link, one external link in that content, contextual link, it’s going to your money side, then you’re basically injecting relevancy at that point.

Plus, you’re piggy backing on the Amazon domain authority. Again, that’s what I recommend doing, you can use a buffer site, you can also use web tools. I just prefer using an Amazonas 3 because I have more control over the entire page than I would like on a web 2, if that makes sense. Anybody else have a comment for that?

Chris: I agree with you Bradley what you say because that’s the standard operating procedure for what we’re doing, it’s a lot of stuff.

Should You Do Internal Linking On Your PBNs?

Bradley: Awesome, thank you. Number two, should you internal linking on your PBNs? Absolutely you should. I’m not really a fan of using trust links, I feel they don’t really authentic since you can still spot a money site either way. I wanted to ask if it’s better to do internal link within a post of a PBN. Of course, Google will still spot the money site but then the article is now at least completely rounded up. One more advantage would be that you just don’t use links from random authority website. Looking forward to your answer. Yeah, okay, look, I get that. Here’s the thing.

All PBNs guides should be treated as money sites now. I mean that’s really the case. Even if it’s like a blog type site, what do normal blogs do? Normal blogs don’t typically sculpt page. They don’t do link sculpting so much because if you go read any of the major blogs out there or even some of them that aren’t major you’ll see that people are constantly linking out to, they are internal linking to supporting content within the same website or the same blog but they’re also outbound linking to supporting content, to basically further reinforce their own opinions or their own ideas, the topic of that post, that article.

It’s just natural to do so and so I don’t worry – I don’t do much PBN stuff anymore but with PBNs, with blogs I would still recommend doing curating which is how we recommend doing all blog posting work, it’s doing curated posts because then you don’t need to be a subject matter expert, you don’t have to hire writers that aren’t subject expert matters that write content. You can just gather or round up content from authority sources and inject your own opinion or commentary between snippets that you’ve curated to create an original piece of content that is citing, that’s linking out to and attributing the authority sources that you’ve gathered the content from.

My point is with that, when you’re linking you can absolutely create silos on a PBN, create supporting articles within the silos, internally link up to this silo landing pages. The silo landing page could have the link to your money site along with other links but then in your curated posts which again I highly recommend you sue curated posts. If you’re out now linking to typically relevant, like stuff that is 100% relevant to that post, whether it’s an authority site or not, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s topically relevant. It’s helping to reinforce the content of that post.

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Don’t worry about not following the links. Here’s to three different types of links that you can include, typically what do we include guys when we’re linking especially from a PBN? It’s a contextual link. We put a link within the content, it’s typically an anchor text link or maybe it’s a naked URL or whatever, but it’s typically a contextual link because that provides the most power, right. However, if you’ve got three different link types, when you curate an article, the three types of links that we usually link out with is the traditional contextual link, it can be anchor text or none, also we do the article citation.

When we’re citing or attributing content to its original source, we link back to the original source, typically the title of the article will be the anchored text. It doesn’t have to be though but then also there’s usually like a read more or additional reading or recommended resources or something like that box somewhere within the content and usually at the bottom that typically links out to additional content sources that reinforce that particular topic. That’s another opportunity to link to content within the same PBN or to money site.

My point is you can link to your money site with a traditional contextual link which is what most people do, or you can link to your money site or even to other content on the same PBN via curation style, right. In other words, you’re citing content from another page or post on PBN or you’re citing content, curating content from your money side. You’re creating the link back like a citation link. Lastly, there’s the recommended resources, box or additional reading, whatever you want to call it, at the bottom where there – I usually would [inaudible 00:26:09] I’ll have my curators gather three to five links. Usually we do five, five links that are a link out to other content that reinforces the topic.

We just in-bend or insert our link to one of our money pages or money sites depending on what we’re trying to boost, where we’re trying to direct link to within that recommended resources box. It’s at random, we don’t always put it number one, right. If you’ve got five links box that you’re going to fill up, then put it, randomize it. Put it number one, one time, number three next time, number five the next, you know what I mean? That just gives you multiple ways to internally link a PBN which is absolutely important, it should be done because that’s how all real genuine blogs are going to interlink.

They’re going to interlink to reinforced content to direct readers within, to other articles in the same blog as well as to content that validates their own via external links. Just try to make it look natural is what I’m trying to say. Again guys, I know that was a long one an answer to say that but my point is the old style of PBNs where you go through content form and buy a shity article for six bucks and post it on there and you link out to your money site and the you link to Wikipedia or .gov site or .edu site because that’s what everybody has told you to do for the last 10 years, those days – it’s not as effective anymore and those can be spotted as PBNs from a mile away, even blindfolded you can tell it’s a PBN.

Chris: Yeah, I would just say that we need to continue this re-educating our listeners, our members, the people who follow us to understand that these assets are not PBNs. They are public linking websites and so it’s perfectly okay to do everything that you just said. That before it was one, you would just set up that homepage, you would put a link to the website and the content didn’t matter. Now the content matters, it has to be relevant and it had to be set up so that it generates traffic. You need traffic there, you need people to visit, you need people to go through it.

You need people to link through. When that happens, now that public linking website becomes part of what’s called – it’s not really a seed site or a seed set yet but it brings it that much closer so that everything that surrounds your website, that links to your website is trusted authoritative and relevant which is what you’re looking for.

Marco: Yeah, I totally agree. We’re actually- we may be talking more about this kind of stuff, building these types of set ups in the coming months. I know, I know, in the coming months. That is all I can say for now.

Should We Refrain From Linking To Affiliate Offer When Starting To Build The First Batch Of Articles For A New Website?

Andy is up again and he says affiliate question, when starting to build the first specs particle for a new website, should we refrain from linking to affiliate offer? I read from other forms and people are saying that Google shuns new websites that have affiliate links. How to use the statement, thanks. Well because I’m not a huge like affiliate marketer, I assume there’s some truth to that.

I have no reason to doubt that. the way I look at it is if you’re building a site and you have – and it’s real thin on content, and you’ve got affiliate links and that stuff, then it’s likely that yeah, your site won’t perform well, it might even be sandboxed or flagged to where it never performs well because through the probationary period, the typical new sites, new types typically go through.

Hernan: I want to explore this though because I totally bullshit this to a point and I agree 100% with Bradley. Of your content sucks and it’s a piece of crap site, but otherwise there’s no – if every link on your website goes to Amazon or it’s an Amazon short link or a redirect to Amazon, then that’s pretty obvious. At the same time like, again, going back to our real website, they sell shit, they refer people, you know what I mean. Like that’s not out of the ordinary. I totally don’t buy that you can’t put up referral links or affiliate links out there. It’s just – again, if it’s thin content and all of your links are affiliate links then guess what, you’ve got a thin site.

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Marco: That was my point. Like if you have good content, like in depth articles and such and you link up to that, I don’t buy that for a second that it won’t write well. I’ve seen over the years, I’ve seen people that have taken a lot of time to develop out a piece of content that its entire conversion goal is to get somebody to click an affiliate link. It’s done really well and it ranks like crazy because nobody else in that was willing to put that much effort into it. I’ve see that time and time again, so again I would recommend that if you’re going to do it, just make sure that you’re providing valuable content that’s relevant and that’s providing value and all that kind of stuff.

As far as I know it should work but like Adam said, if everything that – if every link on this site is an affiliate or redirect link then there may be an issue with that too.

Hernan: Yeah. If I can add real quick to what you were saying guys which I totally agree, I think that you should frame this as you’re building an asset. You’re building an asset, you’re building an affiliate website but at the end of the day what you’re building is a potential community or an audience. The website is going to be the vehicle for that audience to find you, right. Then again if you can send, like if you can capture emails right off the bat and flesh out some more follow-up sequence initially, then you can do a [inaudible 00:31:45] of course but you can also do paid advertising as Andy was asking about and invest in your asset.

At the end of the day you’re building a community around a subject. Like I see people saying okay, how can I put together an amass on affiliate website? My question would be, why would you want to put together just an amass in affiliate website? Put together a website around I don’t know, gardening and then you can sell all sorts of stuff and you will have an audience of people that are interested in that kind of niche. Then you can scale from there. That’s a more long-term approach, that’s why buying a domain that’s best gardening tools selling at 100 bucks outcome doesn’t work.

You want to build a brand and you want to build an asset that lasts throughout time.

Bradley: Yeah, long term, yeah.

Chris: I’ll add one more thing. If you decide it’s quality and it has great content and you know that people are going to go there, see if you can get some, if you can get access approved on the website so that it is a Google affiliate so to speak, right. If that happens then you’re more likely to get another affiliate approved in that. because you can run access and certain affiliates. You can try and play with that but first get it accessed approved. You can get even – once you’re done getting access approved and you’re running ads and everything is fine, you can get rid of access and add another affiliate network which people do.

People will add Bing or their equivalent which actually has a better payout. Then you can go with whatever it is that you want to go for. Yeah, it’s just a matter of thinking outside the box and seeing how you can sneak into Google while using – everything I do is try and sneak into Google by using Google and what Google lets me do. If Google lets me do it then they’re more than likely to let me do something else. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah.

Chris: I hope it does because it works.

How Do You Convince Video Email Prospects Who Are More Interested In Doing Business Offline?

Bradley: Mohammed is up, he’s still at it men. He’s – Mohammed I just read through your question this is precisely why I got out of dealing with real estate agents. I got out of the realtor marketing because of very specifically what you’re dealing with, men. That’s exactly what I found. I’m not going to read through the whole question guys because you all can read but Mohammed is basically saying that he’s still working on the video email system to generate prospects and leads for his agency and he’s in the real estate industry. That’s who his target market is and he’s been having a lot of trouble with landing clients.

Again, this is precisely why I got out of dealing with realtors because the problem is even if you can show them that what they’re saying, like what you’re claiming here is that, like the one guys says that he doesn’t, none of his leads come from online and then the other person which is a lady saying that she gets, it’s all through word of mouth. You can prove that there’s a lot of traffic in those keywords on your area and their area, excuse me, then my point is – and you just said at the end of this other paragraph you said, “she acknowledges it but she’s still convinced.”

That’s the problem there Mohamed, that’s what I’m saying. Like you’re trying to sell, you’re trying to make two sales per prospect right now. The first sale is convincing them that they need you, then you have to sell them on whatever the service it is that you’re selling them. You’re doing twice the amount of work because you’re dealing with people that aren’t, that don’t understand why online marketing is important. You’re having to sell the on the idea before you even pitch them on your services. Does that make sense?

You have to make two sales. That’s why, drop those men. When you catch that kind of resistance from somebody, like honestly, I’m not on the convincing business. Like that’s why I want to talk to people that get it, that understand. Yes, you have to sort through a lot of sand to find the gems occasionally, I get that but you ought to have some sort of qualification process in place that eliminates those people that are just disinterested from the get go. Because you’re going to waste so much mental capital and energy trying to convince these people and it’s like banging your head against the wall.

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You won’t make it anywhere with them. Even if you do convince them that they need you and then convince them or make the sale to them for whatever service it is, those people because they had to be convinced, they always have that skepticism. There’s always that doubt that follows them around, about whether they made the right decision. They will be the most pain in the ass clients you ever have. They will contact you for every single slight ranking drop or dip or anything, or that kind of stuff. To be honest with you men, I wouldn’t tell you to just scrape that industry altogether because I know you’ve put a lot of work into it.

What I would suggest doing is having some sort of gateway in place that would qualify or disqualify people by checking their engagement level. Unfortunately, you’re not in the mastermind right now. I know you plan on coming back when you can and so the content will be there, the training will be there when you do come back. I’m telling you from first-hand experience because recently over the last few months we’ve been working on various prospective angles and had a lot of really good results with getting people to a specific point. I was putting a lot of those prospects into a funnel through an action that they took, but it wasn’t qualifying them enough.

I can completely relate to what you’re dealing with right now because we spent, we made over 220 phone calls, code calls out, well, they weren’t totally cold because the people were at least exposed to the brand, out brand and out offer but we were trying to force the sale too quickly. Because of that we only made three sales out of like 220 phone calls. It was absolutely terrible. I went back to the drawing board and that’s what I’m working on now, it’s various other prospecting funnels so that we can test or gauge their interest level before they get added into like our ecosystem or our sales funnel, our pipeline.

Okay, does that make sense? That is what I would recommend that you do, perhaps to try and figure out a way to judge engagement a little bit more. Like, send them to a landing page instead of having them directly contact you. If you’re doing the video email system, for example, send them to a landing page where they have to take some sort of action before that you even get – before you even take notice of them. In other words, send them to a landing page and make them fill out an opt and formal survey or something that requests more information, anything that you can do that makes them take that one additional step.

Because now at least they’ve raised their hand and said yeah, I’m really interested. They don’t need to be convinced as much. If you can automate that, whether it’s a white paper or free report, a video that’s behind an op-ten or something like that that can educate them about what it is that you have to offer before you start contacting them. Because again, if you can pick their interest and they’re still interested after seeing what the offer is about then you don’t have to convince them, you don’t have to make two sales per prospect, you only have to make one.

Because they already understand the importance. One other thing I want to say about that before I get the opinions from the other guys is that’s another reason why one of the things that I like to do is look for prospects that I target that are already spending money, that are already spending money on online marketing. Realtors I know spend a shit ton of money on business cards with their face on it, real estate signs with their face on it, everything with their face on, billboard with their face on it. Shopping carts at the grocery stores with their face on it, they’re such an egotistical bunch.

If any real estate agents are on this site right now please don’t take offense but you are. My point is, they spend a lot of money on like traditional marketing stuff but I found that they are really resistant to online marketing methods. It’s just, it’s a tough sell and there will be a few that get it but you have to set up some sort of like automated filtering systems so that you’re not spinning your wheels, wasting your time dealing with a lot of people that you have to sell twice before you ever make a dollar. Does that make sense? What do you guys think?

Marco: I’ve actually worked both niches. Here in Coastal Rica there’s a lot of commercial real estate, there’s a lot of luxury real estate. The problem right from the start is that since these are high ticking items, the real estate agents that are in this niche, they are really arrogant. They think that they know everything there is to know about commercial and luxury real estate and you can’t tell them anything that …

Bradley: They’re marketing.

Chris: Yes. That they don’t know and they’ll even try to tell you how to do your SEO. I’ve had clients in this type and I fire clients in this niche because I couldn’t handle them. I can’t handle someone telling me what to do. It will be like me going to get operated on and telling the doctor how to do the operation. If you’re running into that, if you’re running to people that are doing that are doing that, get away. If you’re running into that much resistance then they already know everything. How can you tell someone who knows everything that they don’t know everything, because they know everything?

I know that you put a lot of time and effort into this real estate deal and you’ve done a lot but I mean, it’s difficult to crack these people that they know what they know and it’s really difficult getting them to understand that they don’t really know what you know.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam, I heard you try to chime in.

Adam: Yeah, definitely. This is kind of a combination, first of all full disclosure, I haven’t worked in this niche so I can’t say if this will work but I think this is a good idea to add on. Bradley, it basically goes with what you were saying about having a better qualification process or disqualification process. You’re trying to get people like this away from you so that the people come to you that you do want. Chris mentioned this, I think it was in the mastermind newsletter, I forget exactly, I think it’s the Dean Jackson and the nine-word email, Chris I don’t know if you’re still on.

Basically, engaging people with the goal of getting them to explain themselves to you, giving them something up front as too well instead of just trying to sell them and convince them. Maybe your outreach gives them some sort of free whatever, that depends on your niche. You figure out what that is and then starting asking them questions and let them reveal what it is they need help with. You can do that automatically, you can do that one on one but getting to the point where they’re talking to you and you are having to hunt them down.

It’s like what Bradley and Marco said like now you’re dealing with people who you have to sell and you don’t want to be in that situation.

Bradley: Yeah. If you’ve got to sell to somebody twice men you’re doing twice as much work and they’ll never be – they’re always going to be a pain in the ass. Again, I’ve done it guys many, many time and I can tell you from firsthand experience, it’s not worth it because we chase the almighty dollar and sometimes I don’t trust my gut. Again, when you’re dealing with somebody that’s that difficult to – and you’re trying to convince them that they even need online marketing, I mean what are the chances that even if they do end up hiring you for services, that they’re going to be happy.

The point is they’re likely going to be unhappy the entire time and it’s just going to be a nightmare to deal with and it’s not just worth the money, money is not everything guys. Again, Mohammed I don’t recommend just dropping a niche altogether. I mean, I did but I’m not telling you to do that. what I would say is you might want to go back to thinking about how to create some automated systems that can help to funnel some of these people away from you that really are truly just interested, to begin with, so that you’re not wasting your time.

That is so discouraging men to just be banging your head against the wall and not making progress and that’s what it sounds like you’re doing.

How Can I Convey The Message On Google Dance To Clients Without Having To Look Like You’re Covering A Major Drop In Rankings?

All right, the second question he says I’ve read Marco’s article on the google dance and I know I have to make sure clients understand that as well. When I say it meets the big drop in ranking I fear I will look like I’m covering for drop rankings. How can I convey the message to avoid that? Well, first of all, whenever, if that comes up with a potential client or a client that I currently have and they mention something about rankings I say look, I don’t work for Google, Google is constantly making shifts in their algorithm.

What I do is show overtime historically that you’re ranking well. There’s obviously going to be fluctuations. One of the things I would recommend and I know Marco is going to back me up on this and Hernan as well is not focused on ranking so much. If you can produce leads and traffic and you can show that, you can quantify it by increasing phone calls. You can show analytics, you can show search consul reports, you can show reports from – like for example if you’re doing call reporting and call analytics, you can show call analytics reporting. You can also show opt-ins and leads and conversions if you’re tracking all of that stuff.

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If you’re doing all of that, even if the ranking is dip a bit, as long as you’re producing additional leads for the business or whatever the conversion goal is for the business then the rankings are irrelevant. It may be something for them that they want to see and guys I’m not – because if your sole source of traffic is rankings then what I would recommend you do is diversify your traffic sources. Put some PPC in place, put some social medias stuff in place, put some perhaps direct mail and email marketing in place, some remarketing, retargeting. Put all of those things in place so that you’re not 100% relying on SEO traffic alone.

That way again even if the ranking is dip you can still provide proof that your marketing is producing results. Again, when it comes to the Google and stuff, I always state very clearly. Look, I don’t guarantee rankings, period. I can show you a portfolio of projects and their historical, the trends that I’ve been able to set or achieve with the projects that I’ve worked on and that’s what I expect to do with your project Mr. Business owner or Mrs. Business owner. Again, I don’t work for Google and I can’t guarantee that. However, what I can guarantee is an increase in leads, an increase in traffic, an increase in phone calls. Guys, you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, that was perfect.

Hernan: Yeah, I agree.

How Do You Handle Keyword Density On Silo Menu Pages?

Bradley: Okay. Keith is up, what’s up Keith. Question on keyword density. Found that using a silo menu on page increases the keyword density by quite a hike; in my case six extra main keywords on page. How do I handle this? Ignore the menu and just get named y the keyword density right or add extra content to take silo menu into account. Appreciating your help on this one. Well, I wouldn’t worry about it because Google weights links depending on where they are within the site structure differently. Menu links, side bar links and photo links are weighted less than contextual links.

Google understands that guys. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless your keyword density is like extremely high which is probably isn’t Keith because I know you’re a content producer. You own super spot articles so my guess is that it’s probably your keyword density isn’t terrible. It may be a little bit beyond what we talk about as rule of thumb time thresholds but I don’t think – it’s probably nothing to worry about. Because again, menu links are counted, are weighted differently with less overall authority in relation to the page the contextual links are. I really wouldn’t worry about it that much. What do you guys say?

Is There A Formula For Figuring Out What To Charge A Local Client For Rank And Rent Videos?

Okay, good enough. Roxanne’s up. I wouldn’t worry about that. by the way Keith, if you were in SEO boot camp I don’t know if you bought Jeffreys SEO boot camp if you haven’t you should because he talks a lot about that kind of stuff in there and men he’s good. I would highly recommend that you get that if you’re building up any sort of sites, period. All right, Roxanne’s up. Hi, I have two questions please, is there a formula for figuring out what to charge a local client for rank and rent videos? I know it has to do with the niche but is there a formula using a number of searches and CPC cost or recommend a minimum per video? Is ranking a popular niche city times.

Second question, okay, recommend a minimum per video, is ranking a popular niche, city times, all right. I know I’m going to get a lot of push back on this, guys. I don’t charge a lot for video SEO, I just don’t. I use it as a foot in the door strategy, period. Again, I know I’m going to get some pushback on this, so you can take what I say and throw it out the window, I don’t care. I’m just telling you video SEO, I don’t charge a lot for that. I specifically do a variant expensive price for video SEO just to develop a relationship, at which point I upsell in the full marketing sweep.

Which is typically maps ranking, perhaps website development, content marketing, syndication network, drive stat, press releases, all of that. It just opens up the floodgates of additional services that I can upsell to potential clients. When I charge, what I charge for video SEO is incredibly inexpensive. For example, I do a lot of vide SEO work for a local video production company. I sell it to them wholesale for 100 bucks per keyword per month, that’s it. A lot of you would probably puke at that and say that’s ridiculous. I’m not working for that. well okay, don’t, I do it and it works really well.

At any given time, we have as many as 35 videos that I’m ranking for this company for 100 bucks per month. I mean, yes, it’s good money and it’s not a lot of work and so again I don’t charge a lot for it. Now, that said there are a lot of people that do make their entire living off of video SEO services alone and they charge a lot more. It’s really what – first of all what were the markets there and that’s going to depend on the industry as well as the actual location, the level of competition, etcetera. Also, and Marco always does a really good job of explaining this, but figure out what the value of that customer is.

Whether it’s lifetime value or annual value depending on what the customer type is and you figure out what a customer value is to that company and then figure out what kind of traffic you can generate from that particular video which may mean that you have to rank a video and track clicks or phone calls. I’m working on some prospects and photos right now for the prospecting module inside of a mastermind. One of the things that I’m doing is I’m doing results in advance phone. That’s what I’m doing right now, is working on a result and advance funnel.

Where I go out and use video SEO, again phone and service, I freaky love it where we go spam like 150 keywords which is like a radius around a particular central location of a city or whatever. Out of 150 keywords maybe 20% of them will rank on page one. We end up with 30 keywords right on page one, I do a small little funnel, a showcase funnel to show what’s ranked and then go contact these contractors or business owners in that particular industry and say look, this is what’s showing. It’s very inexpensive, right. Like I’m charging next to nothing basically to get it done because it’s just about getting the conversation started.

My point is like there’s a lot of things that you can do to determine what kind of cost that you’re going to charge for that kind of stuff, lifetime value, customer value, how much traffic you generate. Again, with the photo that I have set up right now, I found a service – I was trying to figure out how to track. Besides just showing the ranking, I want to be able to show what kind of traffic can be generated from these videos. If you just set up your own redirect you use something like pretty links word press plug in to set a redirect URL that you can embed in the video, right, so in the video description.

The first thing in the video description be you own link that you can redirect the way you want. Why I like pretty links is because it will allow you to track link clicks. Every time somebody clicks the link, the pretty link will register as a click and you can actually get like a click analytics report from. That you can show clicks to the link within the video description. You can also set up a voice mail box and have a virtual phone number that goes directly to a voice mail box that you can actually rank in advance and show phone call volume. It just goes in the voicemail, that’s all you need is call analytics.

I actually just set up today, I just found a cool service called evoice.com which is incredibly inexpensive for even their lowest subscription levels, 12.99 a month and it gives you six different phone numbers, six different voice mail boxes for 12.99 a month which is great. You can set up like a result in advance type video, rank it, have phone calls shown via call analytics, have link click shown via click analytics and then you can approach the client or the prospect or whatever and say look, this is what I – this is the kind of traffic I can produce.

You have hard data then. Does that make sense? If you know what the customer value is and what that lead is worth then you can charge accordingly. I know that was long guys, what do you say?

Hernan: I think you make a great point there Bradley. I mean as long as your using that service as starting point to build a relationship with the folks, I think that’s genius, I think that makes a lot of sense. It’s not like you’re charging – it’s not that you’re not charging enough, it’s just that it’s part of your strategy right. The money maker is probably not the video ranking services or the results advanced, that’s not the money maker, that’s the ice breaker. You know what I’m saying? I think that makes a lot of sense as long as you have that in mind then you can charge as little as possible so that you can get that ice barrier.

Then you’re positioning yourself completely differently than anyone else in your competition. You’re creating what we like to call a blue ocean strategy for you because you’re the only one doing that. That separates yourself instantly and I think that’s a really good way of starting.

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Is There A Recommended Volume Or Way To Tell If I Am Over Doing The Video Powerhouse?

Bradley: All right, awesome. Recommended a minimum per video – wait a minute I’m sorry, second question, is there a recommended volume or a way to tell from overdoing video power house? Love it by the way Roxanne I highly recommend, guys typically for videos, stuff that I run through video power house I’ll do 50 embeds, I’ll do secondary embeds too like the web 2 embeds and that’s it. I do 50 embeds, dripped out over usually 14 days but sometimes 21 days and then I wait. I wait 21 days before I judge the results.

I just set a calendar reminder. When I go set up a video powerhouse project I go set up a calendar reminder for 21 days out and then I go check the results and I sue pro-rank tracker to track YouTube videos. I’ll go check pro-rank tracker when I get the calendar event or the calendar notification, in three weeks I’ll go check it and see, where’s the video rank. If it’s moved then great I don’t need to do anything else if it’s where I want it to be. If it’s not then I’ll go back in and then I do another like 25 embeds or another 50 embeds or I buy some views via YouTube, ad wars for video or I’ll do something else.

Maybe send some back links to it or something like that. My point is like video power house, I usually use the – and I recommended this many times, I still want to get to Scott’s question too guys, I try to do the bear minimum to get it to move because again if you come out with guns blazing and you dump everything you have on the video all at once, then what happens if it didn’t move enough and that might be too much too quick then you’ve got nothing left is my point. Usually, I just do a little bit of time and try to nudge it a lot, that way I always have more ammo left, so to speak if it needs more.

Marco: Also, if I can just add real quick, that’s an ace video embed network, right, the map embed network. It’s been constantly over what, the past two years or so, two years. The power in it from just 25, 50 embed should be enough to let you know whether you’re going to need more, whether that’s enough or what else you need to do to get that video going to where you want it to be. That’s a powerful network man I believed it. We worked on that a lot to get it to where it is now.

Content Kingpin

Bradley: Yeah, we’ve got thousands of domains in there too, so. All right Scott, this will be the last question guys. Sorry if we didn’t get to the rest of them. I really apologize guys. Scott, I want to get to this, this is a great question. He says, hey smart and master dudes, I’ve been using content kingpin, it’s a great success, thanks again for the course. I hired a curator, however, I’ve been doing the original material writing. Shame on you Scott. It’s all right men when you’re getting started, I get it. He says it reached a point where I can now hire a writer so I can be totally hands off. My curator currently places the curator material into client work press site then saves post to draft mode. Should my writer add to that or should I now have material developed to notepad then uploaded when completed? No, it doesn’t matter Scott. If it’s saved in draft mode it’s not indexed, so it doesn’t matter. That’s absolutely fine. What I recommend you do is whether you choose to have everything saved the way that you’re doing it or if you want to switch over to something else like having them all collaborate. Like what I would recommend is Google docs because then it’s updated in real time.

If anybody makes any changes it’s everybody sees the changes universally, you don’t have to worry about files that are being saved in one location and not in others and all that kind of stuff. When you’re dealing with remote workers like Google Drive is my favorite thing in the world, I freaking love it not just because of RYS. I love it just because I run my entire business in Google Drive guys with all my team members and everything. To me it’s incredibly important to do that. whatever you do Scott just create a system that will be less hands on for you to where and something that can be duplicated so that as your business expands or grows as you scale you can add more to it.

You can duplicate that process over and over again, that’s really the key. Because that’s where most people struggle guys including myself is not having systems in place and then at some point you start saturating yourself with too much – you’ve got too much work which is busy work because you don’t have proper systems in place. Building right from the start will save you a ton shit of headache, all right. As far as I’m concerned if your current system is working for you, the curator curates and word press saves it as draft and now you’ve got a writer that goes in and injects commentary before the post is published, that’s fine, I wouldn’t mess with it, okay. What do you guys say, anything?

Chris: I agree with you Bradley. The more hands off it is, the better.

Adam: Sounds good and Bradley in Slack we have one more quick curative content one if you want to take a look at that.

Are You Using A Curator And A Writer For Your Blog Articles Or Does Your Writer Do Both Curation And Writing?

Bradley: Is that this one here? No, sorry, excuse me. Let me finish, there’s another part of Scott’s question real quick. He says are you using curator and a writer for your blog articles or does your writer do both curation and writing. See that’s the thing, it depends on what type of curating is being done. For my money sites or client sites I have a writer that I’ve trained to curate, if that makes sense. The writer really does mostly curating but they do write. I use native English speakers for my blog sites. What the hell was that? did you see how that page refreshed on its own guys? That was weird, are we still here?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay, all right. From my client’s site, stuff like that I use, I’ve got three different curators: one in the states, one in the UK and one in Africa, South Africa and they are all really, really good. They curate and write but for like PBN stuff I don’t have any anymore because I just don’t use PBNs anymore. I’ve had a log of Philippines BAs that I taught because I wasn’t really concerned as much about the content quality, so I can get it done for very, very cheap. That’s because I was doing all crated PBM post which is what we just talked about at the beginning of this something Hangouts. Again, I use basically writers that have been trained with content kingpin.

How Do You Find Useful Content When The Customer’s Services Are Narrowly Niche Specific?

It’s the same training that you got Scott, it’s the same training that I give my writers that I want to teach how to curate. It’s funny because the writers that I’ve taught how to curate now that’s their primary method for blogging for their other client. It just goes to show you it’s good. All right. All right, the last question is the one that you just posted. With regard to curating content for clients, how do you find useful content when the customer services are narrowly niche specific? Oh yeah, that was Brian’s question I saw that. in my case, floor restorations, for naturals stone tile floors.

Well, Brian what I recommend because I’ve got a lot of clients that are – like roofers for example or HVAC and it’s very, very difficult to find content about roofing that’s interesting. We blog about general home improvement stuff, all of it, it doesn’t matter. Kitchen remodeling, fence building, landscaping, deck building, I don’t care what it is, house painting, whatever you want just blog about home improvement related stuff because it’s still relevant. You can add value to potential readers or whatever because you’re talking about all things home improvement and then obviously there will be from time to time stuff that would be specific to flooring that would really apply.

It’s still in that same, they’re all as Adam likes to say, tangent markets. It makes sense to blog about all that stuff and it gives you – there’s no shortage of home improvement content. There might be about specifically for restoration, for natural tile stone, stone tile floors, excuse me, but there’s no shortage of content out there for home improvement and home remodeling and do it yourself and all that kind of stuff.

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Adam: That just reminded me too Bradley and I just posted the link Brian if you’re still watching or anyone who’s interested in this, we had Scott of curation sweep do a webinar with us and I don’t recall the details but I remember he had some great ideas on how to curate content for really low local niche products or services. I just posted that link. Go check out that webinar. I just remembered specifically he talked about that and we have like a flash bulb moment of holy shit, that’s amazing.

Marco: Yeah and lastly Brian, also curate about local events, any sort of local news. If it’s for – I don’t know if you’re talking local business or like a national business but if it’s a local business, you can curate about locally relevant content. What I mean that is like it’s relevant to the location. It doesn’t have to be about stone tile floors.

Adam: All right guys, that’s everybody for being here.

Hernan: Just to give Brian some tips really quick. You can talk about counter tops, you can talk about kitchens, you can talk about bathrooms, he doesn’t have to talk just about floors. It all relates back to whatever he’s doing. Whatever he can relate to it, it always comes back to the natural tile or natural stuff – I forget what it is that he’s doing, sorry, natural stone tile floors. You can talk about natural stone tile in other setting, building facets, whatever and this is a ton – now I just gave you a bunch of different ideas that you can write about, so there you go.

Adam: Awesome. All right everybody, thanks for being here in this five minutes extra-long – we have to hand up so we’ll see everybody next week I guess. Thanks guys.

Chris: Bye guys.

Hernan: Bye everyone.

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 175 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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