Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 253

Click on the video above to watch Episode 253 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: Alright, cool. And we are welcome everybody to Hump Day hangouts today is the 11th of September 2019. And we’ve got almost everybody here. We’re going to do a quick, quick little introduction. But and then we’ve got some really good announcements before we dive into the questions which looked and it looks like you’ve already got some really good ones today. So we’re going to dive into that. But start with Bradley on the top left. How are you doing, man?

Bradley: I’m good. Happy to be here. Excited because we’re about a month away from POFU Live. So excited but nervous at the same time because I can’t stand flying and I have to fly again. I know for you guys is no big deal. But for me, I hate it. So I can start getting nervous about a month out. But it’ll be a good event. So I’m excited about say,

Adam: Denver’s a little bit of a drive. Definitely want to fly there. Yeah. Well, somebody had a birthday this weekend, I think right.

Bradley: They shall remain unmentioned.

Adam: smoothly over that Bradley did not have a birthday. I repeat. Again, well, you know, in case somebody did have a birthday, happy birthday. So Chris, how are you doing? Good.

Chris: Doing good. Little, some of it is we’re going into autumn. But yeah, like same as you excited for POFU Live, it’s coming.

Adam: Definitely. And for those of you who are new, that’s awesome. Thanks for watching. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, it’s gonna be our second year running live event in Denver this year, you can go to pofulive.com to find out some more about that. And we’ll talk a little bit about that in just a second. But last and certainly not least Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: What’s up, man, I’m excited. We have a webinar tonight with Peter Drew. And we’ve been doing his stuff for quite a while. And now we’re going to go into his group and share some of our knowledge. And you know, I’m going to be sharing, actually one of my clients, you know, you guys I don’t like, doing that. Not Not Not the name. But but but the numbers and, and, and like, for example, without giving the farmer whale or what the webinar tonight is about, you know, 2000 actions or whatever Google calls it. With over 1000 visits to the website, almost 200 calls are just incredible shit that’s still going on. With GMB. It’s not dead, I haven’t died. It just the verification is very difficult. But if you can get a client who has a legitimate GMB that you can work on, you can still get phenomenal results. And this is someone going back a year that is going back now what two years is it? Since this came out almost. So I’m not sharing those numbers. But those are even bigger. Maybe I should have but I don’t know. I didn’t want people to think I was lying. Like, like I’m lying if I share that, but anyway, it still works phenomenally well, everything we do still work. Imagine that. Imagine that? What is it six years in for Semantic Mastery. And they still work?

Adam: On that’s good. Gonna go talk to Peter Drew’s people, show them what’s up. So definitely be a good webinar for them. For anyone who’s interested in what they’re going to be covering. It’s going to be stuff that you know, we talk about a lot. So if you’re interested, we could either get you a replay, we can point you in the direction of some other content that we have that’ll help you out over there.

Marco: Join us for the webinar. Yeah, it’s at eight Eastern.

Adam: Yeah. You parents tip will drop the registration link.

Marco: Yeah, drop the registration link and join us and it’ll be fun. I might give something away. I don’t know. I might just get loose mouth.

Adam: All right, real quick, everyone. Thanks for being here today. If you are new, you’re in the right place. We’re about to hop in and start answering your questions. you’re checking out the replay, you can always ask questions ahead of time and go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask them there we’d love it if you’re live but we get it life gets in the way, you may have to step away you got a client call whatever it is you’re doing. But you can always ask your questions we just ask that you limited try to ask one question. You know, we get like those really crazy long, like five-part questions, we sometimes have to skip through them to make sure that we get to other people’s but then you can come to check out the replay on our YouTube channel. And then where to start with Semantic Mastery. This is definitely a question we get a lot. And you know, people are like, Well, what do you do if you have a new site? Or what do you do when you’re setting up a YouTube channel or you have an aged domain. And all of that stuff is covered in the Battle Plan, right? It’s a step by step, Battle Plan for processes for getting results and all those different areas and a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t even mentioned a bunch of crazy frickin bonuses that are really awesome that we put together over the years and we keep this updated.

You know, we update it from time to time we don’t you know, relaunch it, we just put it out once a year for a huge update, but throughout the year we’re constantly updating it if you don’t have that yet, highly recommend you go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com, pick it up. And then the next step from there if you’re ready to grow or start your own digital marketing business, then join us in the mastermind, right that’s you hear us talk about it from time to time it’s great not only for the information but to the access to other people you get, right it’s people who are serious about as Marco would say, doing the do or walking the walk and you want to be around those people as well as learning from them. And so if you’re interested in that Find out more at mastermind.semanticmastery.com. And then last but certainly not least save time and money. We tell people to do this regardless if you’re doing this with clients if you’re doing it for your own projects. But you know user done for you services, if it fits into your project, go over to mgyb.co, find out what can help you get started there in terms of syndication networks are always strive to x press releases link building embeds whatever, right, we constantly preach us, this is the stuff we use for our own projects so that we can speed up results. So we’re not down there in the trenches doing it all the time. I’m on my end, I think that’s about it, guys, do we have anything else we want to cover besides telling people to come to POFU Live in October, we really want to see as many people there as possible, and you can grab your ticket at pofulive.com

I just want to mention that quickly Marco, I just want to mention that, you know, POFU Live is is about kind of a multi-angled approach to getting results for your business, whatever that business maybe, you could be a digital marketing consultant, or own an agency or even just own your own business. For that matter. It doesn’t even have to be you don’t even have to be a marketing consultant, you just want to grow your own business and could be offline business or not online business. What we’re going to be talking about is a combination of, of course, digital marketing strategies. That’s what we primarily taught for over all the years. But through my own experience recently, with my new business, I found more of holistic marketing, which actually has a significant impact on digital presence, which I would have never known had I not started this business of mine that has a traditional marketing component to it. And so it’s really interesting to be able to see results with my own new business, how much how you can create a strong brand, very, very quickly using a combination of marketing methods, not just strictly or purely digital marketing methods, which is what I have been using in preaching for even my own clients for many years now. And it’s on, it’s very interesting to see the results that I’ve been able to achieve in just a few months it’s in and also implementing with some of my clients now because of the significant results I’ve seen. But on top of just the marketing training that you’re going to get, it’s also the mindset training and the networking along with others that are, you know, savvy business owners of their own. And it’s just creating that, that kind of that all-encompassing environment where you can really learn and grow and learn how to get better results for whatever business you may be in. So I would encourage you guys if you’re really in need of, you know, an edge in your own business, you see, you’re kind of stagnant, you want to see significant growth, the growth we live is probably your best opportunity. Come check us out.

Marco: For people who are on the fence. Right? And I don’t know some people, is it really going to be worth it? Should I go to Denver? Why should I go to Denver, I would say go to the sales page, watch the videos, those are people who were at last year’s POFU Live event. Listen to what they have to say because this some seasoned marketers in their guys that are saying that that it was a lot of stuff shared that they just didn’t know or would never have thought of. So even if you’re a seasoned marketer, you think already know what I need to know, I would say Come join us, come join us because I am going to especially what I’m going to talk about, its to me. And my approach, it’s life-changing for me, and how I see things and how I look at things and how I deal with things. So I mean, it could be what you need to get you not only on the path to POFU but even closer, whatever your POFU is, right? Doesn’t have to be mine doesn’t have to be bread, you should have you should know what your goals are, you should know where you want to be, what your revenue monthly recurring revenue should be or where you want it to be. But you need a way to get there. And that’s what we want to do for you. We want you to want to help you stop that path and keep you on that path.

Bradley: Okay, very well said should we jump into questions or what? Yeah. All right. Let me grab the screen. Okay, you guys should be seeing my full screen. Correct. Please confirm? Anybody?

Marco: Yeah, yeah.

Bradley: Okay. All right. Thank you. Alright, so we’re going to start with Greg. And then we’ve got this very long multi-part question. Guys, we’ve tried to tell you to remind you guys on a regular basis. We can’t assume everybody’s heard it, though. But please, Brett, split your questions up? You know, ask one. If it’s a question that has maybe one or two parts to it. Ask that and then allow some other people to post questions before posting your next question. Because that’s a lot. That’s going to take a few minutes to get through. But we’ll, we’ll try to run through it. We can. Or just break it up. We can come back to it. Yeah, we might have to.

Do You Have A New Strategy In Verifying GMB Pages?

So we’ll start with Greg though he’s first up. He says, Marco when you are testing a new strategy? How do you verify it works? How do you ensure it is because of that new strategy? And how do you track results these days with Google showing everyone individualized search answers or search results?

Marco: All right, to me, it’s very simple. Does it affect the bottom line? The end result to me has increased visits to the website, which means more form feels, more, and especially if I’m in GMB, it means more phone calls, means more visits from GMB to the website, it means more requests for directions. And that should reflect month to month on how much the client is making. From my efforts. I keep a really close eye on my clients. It has to be transparent, right? I have a really good relationship with clients. When I take on a new client. It’s a must. It has to be transparent, I have to be able to see if you try to hide something from me that it means that you’re trying to fuck me out of money. And there’s no way that we’re going to work. I don’t care about Google showing people individualized search results, simply because at the end of the day, it transfers into a metric that I can measure it. For example, another thing about GMB is that it affects organic. It has a cause and effect relationship between what you do in GMB and your organic so does RYS. Like everything that we do, it’s like a domino effect. One pushes the other until the very end. And at the very end, what you see is results. You know, we call it to pay per result, right?

Or performance – pay per performance, PPR, however, you want to call it, how is my client going to know what my performance is. And whether I’m getting results? Well, I’m going to track everything I’m going, I’m going to track that phone that I’m going to have access to it. So I can track it. I’m going to track that GMB, I’m going to have them in analytics, I’m going to have them in Google Search Console, I’m going to know the keywords that are pushing upon them, I’m going to know the traffic that’s coming into the website, I’m going to know what happens to the traffic when it gets to the website. And I am going to know where that traffic drops off. So it’s an overall approach. Now, I know month to month, what’s happening with my client, when I try something new, it has to have either a positive, negative or neutral effect on every day, but it does not affect and I track it over several months that you can’t just be one month, because that could just be a bump. But if there’s a steady, steady growth or a steady drop, I know I did something right or I did something wrong. So to me, it’s very simple to keep track of I don’t need 1000 SEO tools and 1000 thing to keep track of what’s happening with my clients or to know whether I’m getting results. Now, if it’s on something new that I’m trying, then I might just try that one thing. So that’s isolation, right? That’s not a single variable test, because it could have several variables involved. But that test is going to be done in isolation so that it’s going to be absent everything else that we do and in Semantic Mastery so that I know whether we can add it to our arsenal, which is how GMB came into being right. It’s just for me testing and seeing what I’m getting results in isolation meaning within the GMB ecosystem, and I started seeing a bounce in Search Console or Webmaster Tools, whatever you want to call it. And so I knew the only thing that I was doing was I was working inside the GMB. The only thing that could be happening is my whatever work I did had the effect that I wanted to have some of it is just serendipity. Right? It just happened. You come across you stumble across it, and you say, holy crap, this is the day I gotta go see what’s happening, what’s going on? What did I change? What did I do? But that’s how I do it, Greg.

Bradley: Thank you for that answer. And I agree with that. For me the same thing. It’s more about what is the end result? I don’t really, you know, I still do provide rank reports for clients. But rank reports are typically I’ve conditioned all of my clients to understand that rank reports are just an indication of what their search presence looks like. It’s not like the law, like it used to be years ago because of more individualized or personalized search results being displayed now. Because what we track more is analytics, and traffic and conversions. Essentially, that’s what we’re those are the primary metrics. And those all affect the bottom line. So what we’re looking for is the number of leads generated the number of visits to the website, but not even that it’s more or less, I mean, we still look at that. But it’s more about the conversions, the number of conversions created, whether those are phone calls, or web form submissions, or whatever the conversion goal is, obviously most of my clients are looking for leads. So we track basically the number of leads, however, that lead came in whether it was a phone call, or web form, submission, or whatever the case is. But that could also apply to people that are you know, for example, ecommerce or when you’re looking to make sales online or whatever that is that those same type of metrics. It’s not necessarily for local businesses, it’s more in my opinion, it’s not necessarily searched results. It might be for ecommerce, but not necessarily for local businesses. And I don’t know why this thing is making me reconnect. Let me see if I can get it to load. As far as what do I do for testing? To determine if something Why is this not loading son of a bitch if I can’t read the questions, um, when it comes to testing for me, I’ve got a ton of lead gen sites. So I usually do testing on my lead gen sites first. And once I’ve discovered something that works, then I repeat it and try it or try to duplicate it on another lead gen site. And if I can duplicate it and get similar results from the same process or same method. And as Marco said, it’s not really isolation because there are other components, other methods that have been applied. So it could be a combination of the thing that I’m testing, in association with other things that have already been applied. So what I try to do is find another property that has, you know, had similar things done to it. And again, I’ve got a ton of lead gen property. So I got a lot of testing sites, or testing projects, in other words, that you know, projects I can test against, and then I apply the same thing. And if I’m able to get similar results, then I will start to apply those to client sites as well. So I usually prove everything prior to applying anything to a client site. Those are good questions are great.

So the next one is from Lloyd. And it’s actually it’s, it’s actually seven full questions squeezed into there. So we’re not going to go through all seven. It looks like it’s only three. But three. Part number three has got four parts to it. It’s seven questions. So we’ll, we’ll come back to and Lloyd if we have time. We’ll start with the first two. How about that?

Which DFY SEO Services Would You Recommend To Rank A Local Real Estate Lead Gen Site Faster?

So the first one is which of your done for you services, would you recommend for the following scenarios to rank fast local lead gen. Number one local lead gen for an agent working within a certain radius rank for a main keyword and subdomains for each city. Again, it’s done for you services, and we would recommend are the same that we talked about in Battle Plan. You know, there’s and I mean, I kind of all kind of run through them right now very quickly. But it’s the same process and eat, whether it’s for local or for even national type terms. It’s just for national type terms, you’re typically going to require more of the some of the things whatever they are, right so but for local, I always recommend a syndication network that’s branded for the brand name of the company, period. You know,  that’s the first thing we do is syndication network, then once that’s delivered, then we end up ordering us a drive stack and RYS drive stack because that’s how you can build that association between brand name and keywords that you’re trying to target and or locations as well. And then blogging to your money site if you have a money site blogging to that to feed the syndication network, but you’re going to include the syndication network URLs in your drive stack order. So that does get built into the profile, press release announcing the new business. And then what I like to do is use blog posts as an excuse to publish new additional press releases. For example, you know, if you get on a on a regular basis of maybe let’s just use an example of two press releases per month. So you you’d highlight or promote two different blog posts per month with a press release if that makes sense. Because then you can do a whole bunch of what we call PR silo stacking. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go to our YouTube channel and search PR silo stacking, or press release SEO. Either one of those will work and you’ll be able to find a webinar where we talked about that. From there, you’ve got you we got the embed packages, especially for local it works really, really well. If you go to mgyb.co and you can embed your GMB map URL or your map excuse me and do an embed blast for that and and link building to that that works really well link building to your drive stack, the @ID local iframe loop, that’s something else that works very well. So just putting all of those components together, and then being consistent, again, blogging consistently. If it’s GMB, you want to be doing GMB posts consistently, those are all things that once you get the Get Started, you just keep them going. It’s like keeping your foot on the gas, and it starts to build momentum. And once you piece all these, once you put all these pieces together, then you should start to see significant results. My timeframe for getting significant results with it with the GMB, it depends on the competition, if it’s kind of a, you know, suburb area with low competition, I can usually get results within 30 days. But if it’s a more competitive area, then I usually tell a client they act, the timeline to expect significant results is three months. But I usually end up getting results within about 60 days, just putting all of those pieces together. And those you know pretty much the same. And I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver, then try to tell a client, you know, I can get your results in 60 days and have something happen where I don’t get results in 60 days, and then i’ve you know have not delivered upon what I promised. So I always try to set expectations for 90 days. And just by putting all those pieces to gather and start to build momentum, then it ends up usually within 60 days I get significant results only the most competitive areas does it take usually 90 days to get significant results. Marco would say you on that?

Marco: I say that local a relative? We do the same thing. For both for anything, the foundation is the same just how much of it is is the only question right some some some need more power. And even at the local level, I’ve come across keywords that are just a bitch to get to that that man, it’s just rough, but then you just have to keep hammering it. I you know, I brute force sht. So if if something doesn’t work the way that I want, I just give it more of it and force it to work. The way that we do it though is how we approach the entity at a local level. And at the national, global affiliate, whatever it is level, if you have to at a little bit different. And that’s all throughout our training. We did a webinar, the entity webinar in MGYB be right, it’s one of the update webinars, we did that. And we showed how it’s done. So I suggest go start going through, start going through our stuff, take a look at everything, we have tons of resources, our YouTube channel is a great resource for free information. And we have I don’t know how many thousands of hours of training in there and webinars and just things that we go over and maybe we update or we’ll do a training webinar, whatever it is that we do, plus, the mastermind, doesn’t matter Mastery mastermind, that’s where we really get down and get to the nitty gritty and give people the best tools and the best way to approach whatever it is that they’re doing. But at this level and what you’re looking to do, I don’t treat them any differently, man. That was the only thing that my approach is a little bit different as far as the entity that I’m going to show Google.

What’s The Best DFY SEO Service To Rank National Lead Gen Keywords Like Life Insurance Or Life Insurance Quote?

So number two is National lead gen for so he’s asking about which MGYB services would get the best result quickest results for a national lead gen for a keyword like life insurance or Life Insurance Quote? Again, I stand by my first comment and so so well Marco, I’m sure in that it’s the same thing, we still build the entity as you met. That’s part of like what I call an entity loop. We’ve talked about that in various locations, and pretty much any one of our paid member paid courses, we’ve talked about the iframe loop, or entity loop, pretty much the same thing. And and that’s it’s just building that out first, and then it’s how much power you inject into it. So whether you’re I mean, now remember life insurance life insurance, quote, that’s going to be a bitch to rank for, you can do it, but it’s going to take a lot of effort and a lot of work because those are very, very, you know, competitive terms. And they have been for many, many years. So that’s like going after gold or you know, gold IRA or something like that very similar in that it’s going to be very difficult for something like that. But it can be done with enough. Enough power, right and enough effort. So again, say is pretty much the same common as number one, it’s just a matter of how much you put into those, that when you’re building that out. Again, Marco, you want to comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I would just caution that you have to gauge the time and effort, that it takes time, effort and money versus the return that you’re going to get on it sure. Because if if you have limited resources, and you’re trying to rank for life insurance, it’s likely not going to happen, although it can be done if you do it correctly. And it’s something that we would only guide you through again, in our Semantic Mastery mastermind, we had that a case study that Darya presented, and he explained exactly how he got the result and what it took. Right, which included, Of course, our methods. And in it, they’re available in mgyb.coso that you don’t have to do it. And so that it Believe it or not, although people see it as an expense, ordering something from MGYB, you’re actually investing, right and it saves you It saves you money in the long run because you don’t have to spend all that time first. Trying to figure out how to do it. Second, implementing it.

Third, are you doing it correctly so that you could follow the Battle Plan? Right. But that that only takes you so far? I always tell people look, if you want to know how, if you want direct answers, if you want to go in depth, if you want us to look at your website, the mastermind is the place to be there is no other place where we’re going to give you what you’re looking for, which is information on how to rank locally and nationally outside of the mastermind. Although we do give you a lot of information, you put it together. And we’ve had people Paul Fussell is one one of the people who created a an entire business, just from our Hump Day hangouts where we sharing in Hump Day Hangouts, we’ve had people come to us with business already that they built from listening to us and Hump Day Hangouts, and going through our free training. So I mean, that’s one way of putting it all together. But imagine how much time and effort that’s going to take versus joining the mastermind with which, to me, the price that we’re charging monthly is ridiculous. It’s not enough, but it is what it is, and get the guidance that you need, get the done for you services, and learn how it’s done. Once you once you know how, then it’s just lather, rinse, repeat. That’s the Semantic Mastery way.

Bradley: Alright, so Lloyd, if we have time, we’ll come back. But we spent a lot of time on your first two questions. And there’s several more. So I think the same answer goes from number three. I’m not going to read the question, but it’s pretty much the exact same thing that we just mentioned for number one and number two, if we come back for A, B, C, and D or whatever, what if we have time? We’ll come back to that. Okay.

Is It A Bad Idea To Build Out An Existing Drive Stack/GSite If The New Drive Elements Are Based On Other Business’ Brand Name Keywords?

Kyle says is that a bad idea to build out an existing drive stack and G site if the new drive stack elements and G site pages are based on other businesses, brand name keywords, for example, you have an affiliate site and one of your money sites pages is Bowflex review, or Playstation review? Thanks. I don’t see why that would be a problem. I mean, that’s, it is a brand name. But it’s also cute. I mean, there’s a brand name part of it, but it’s also a keyword, right? People look for that kind of stuff. There are sometimes you can’t create ads when you’re using a trademark name. But as far as and again, I’ll let Marco clarify what his error put, you know, tell you what his thoughts are. But in my opinion for SEO, I don’t see why that would create any problem, especially within a drive property or Google, you know, drive stack and G site. Marco, what, what do you think?

Marco: it’s only a problem when you’re trying to run a trademark ad, I can’t do you can’t do it, you have to get around Google’s Terms of Service. And they’re going to probably block that ad from showing because you’re using something that’s a trademark. But if you’re doing a review of the product. Now, here’s the caveat. Unless you’re doing a bad review of the product, if you do a bad review, you better make sure that you write in case they come after you. Because if you can’t show how you write about your bad review, you could get into a lot of trouble that way. Otherwise, if you’re just trying to sell Bowflex through Amazon, or whatever it is, or sell a PlayStation through Amazon, Playstation welcomes you selling for them. Why not that they’ll pay that glad that Amazon will gladly pay the commission, could they make money both ways, so they don’t care?

Bradley: Yeah, just keep in mind that if you’re using those for like affiliate, you also got to check the affiliate agreements for those types of products, guys, because sometimes they will be you’ll be in violation of their affiliate agreement. If you’re using their terms in like SEO titles and things like that, you have to look most of the time, it’s just for ads for paid traffic. However, just keep that in mind, you really need to read the affiliate agreements for that kind of stuff. Because if you put time and effort into building out, you know, a website with that, that you’re going to put se you know, a bunch of time and effort into SEO as well as a drive stack and all that other stuff. And you are doing something against their affiliate Terms of Service, by using their brand name and your titles and things like that, then you can end up getting your term your affiliate agreement terminated or suspended from being able to promote that. So just keep that in mind. You want to be really careful about that. I don’t know that that’s the case with either one of these examples. But just make sure that you’re aware of what’s in the affiliate agreement. Okay.

Google Limiting 20 GMB Listings

Gordon’s up he says, Hey, guys, can’t thank you enough for all the help you provide on hump days. Thank you very much. You’re welcome, Gordon. He says I’m sure you probably know this already. But Google is now limiting the total number of GMB listings shown to just 20. You must mean within the Manage locations part of your dashboard. Isn’t it just page needed? Like in other words, it doesn’t just restrict you to 20? Maybe I’ve got some grandfathered accounts, then because I know that I was just in my jammies today, a couple of them that have well over 20. So I’m not sure what that means. Maybe newer accounts, I’m not sure what that means exactly what you’re talking about. But you should even if it only shows 20 as far as I know.

Marco: Hey, Bradley. Oh, it’s it’s it’s not in the UK. He’s talking about it in in search results. But that was just something that was published the other day by some idiot who jumped the gun. It’s back. Google is always testing Google’s always putting, Oh, you mean in front of people showing their wish? When you when you did, the more? It was, it was limiting it to 20 rather than the endless scroll that you were getting? Yeah. Night or pagination, as you said. But is there back to normal? As far as I know, because, guys, I never jumped the gun when Google does something. I again, talking about the mastermind. It’s something I always tell it my my mastermind, people. When Google is out there changing shit, you don’t do a fucking thing other than what you usually do. Because there’s usually Google out there looking for idiots. We just I’m sorry, I’m not that I’m calling Kyle. I’m sorry, Gordon an idiot, but not by any stretch of the imagination. Because you’re always here. You’re always asking questions. I appreciate you coming in here and asking the question, I’m talking about these idiots who jumped the gun, put out information that that you know, it could have been just a glitch in Google that happens guy Google is so huge. It’s unimaginable how huge Google is there bound to have glitches. When that happens? You do? Nothing? nothing other than what you usually do. You let things settle once they settle? And you know for sure, that’s what’s happening. That’s when you say, Okay, let me go and figure out what it is that I need to do. Since Google is limiting. so so sorry for interrupting, but for interrupting you. But I just had to get that off my chest. Because I saw that I saw that. Look at this idiot. No, no, no, give Google a chance to work it out and see how this is going to settle before you start talking about what Google is doing.

Bradley: Yeah, well, you know how writers on these big magazines and blogs and stuff are they they need, they need, they need shit to write about. So as soon as they see something, they say, oh, Google’s made a change. And it could just be like Marco said, a lot of times Google’s testing different layouts and things like that when it comes to the search search or the search results. And a lot of times, that’s just it’s just a test. So it’ll it’ll be here today and gone tomorrow that that happens a lot. Speaking of which, how many of you guys, and this is just kind of a rhetorical question, but how many you guys are seeing now two ads in the maps three packs. So the maps three pack is turning into a maps five pack with the first two listings being ads. Those are advertisers, people paying for Google ads, search ads that have the location extension enabled, which means they have a GMB that is connected or linked to their Google Ads account. And I’m starting to see more and more two ads placements above the three maps pack. So in other words, in the maps pack, it’s now a five pack, where the first two placements are ads. So even if you’re in the number one organic spot in the maps, pack, you’re still in number three position. Think about that. And so that’s why again, I’ve really pushed most of my clients. Well, I pushed all of my clients with some of them won’t have any part of Google ads. But I’ve pushed most of my clients into letting me manage an ads campaign for them whether they wanted to or not, because of that reason, it’s just guys, Google’s pushing us more and more into the advertising space where we got to pay for the pay to play basically, and I’m not going to fight it anymore for strictly SEO, because I feel like the, you know, and again, for mostly local, I feel like we’re losing, we continually get pushed further and further down the page with just strictly SEO results. And so I’m, again, I’m mentioning to all of my clients to do a blend of both SEO as well as paid ads, because also the results that it can produce are phenomenal.

Is YouTube A Good Backlink Source For GMB Since It’s Authoritative And Is Owned By Google?

So anyway, back to Gordon’s questions. He says anyway since YouTube is a Google property with lots of authority power, I guess I’m guessing that it would be a good idea to include it as a backlink source to help a GMB listing rank in the three-pack. Is that correct? And if so, other than updating a few niche related videos to a up other than uploading a few niche related videos to a niche optimized YouTube channel and including the GMB URL in the descriptions, what else if anything can you do to use YouTube to help rank a GMB listing, run ads, run ads and push traffic in your GMB listing through YouTube? You know, that’s one of the things you can do you can you know, also like you said, you putting your GMB your NAP your name, address and phone number in the video description. As well as a link to your GMB maps URL that not the share URL. I mean, it’s going to be a three on one through YouTube in the description area anyways, but grab that www.google.com/maps?@ID=version of your maps listing right and use that in the description. As well as put that in the comments the first comment underneath the video and then pin that comment as the channel owner you can pin comments, right so put that link as the first comment, then run traffic via Google ads to that YouTube video targeted geo targeted and preferably audience targeting relate, you know, relevant, relevant audience targeting as well. So because now what happens is, you’re going to get traffic to that video that are good signals. And in that the description of the video and then in the comment link underneath, which is a dofollow link. Although that’ll be a topic for another day where we talk about nofollow stuff.

Based on an article that was released today, actually, by getting geo targeted traffic and prop and preferably audience route, you know, relevant audience targeting traffic to it as well, you that’s going to help get help the video to rank better. But that’s also a good signal to the link within the video description. So in other words, it’s a good signal to the GMB and some people especially like I said, if it’s geo targeted, and it’s a relevant audience, what you want to look for in market audiences or life event audiences if possible, then a small portion of those viewers the video viewers, which is what you’re buying, you’re buying views will actually click through and those clicks are are extremely weighted, because they’re relevant clicks. And Google knows it because you’re buying those that traffic from Google. So Google knows which audience buckets you’re buying traffic from, again, geo targeted, and topical or excuse me, relevant audience buckets. So those types of engagement signals as Marco was calls it art, right? activity, relevance, trusting or excuse me, authority, activity, relevance, trust and authority art, right. So you’re, you’re you’re actually providing two of those first two signals, active activity and relevancy through those engagement signals that you’re buying from YouTube. So remember, yes, that on a strictly SEO basis, building links from YouTube can also help especially to other Google properties. But it’s also the activity and the relevant signals that you can buy directly from YouTube. And plus, you’ll get some organic, maybe some organic traffic, which will be helpful to but you can buy it, and really kind of force everything. What do you have anything to add to that?

Marco: Yeah, actually, YouTube ads carry all three activity, relevance, and the trust and authority that you’re moving from YouTube to your website, through that, through that visitor right through that person clicking on that ad coming through. Google is trusting you with that person. And then when that person if they finish the goal that you’ve set for them, then that just senses the trust and authority transferred over to your website. And the more that that happens, the more trust and authority that you accrue.

Wow, we’re getting a hell of a storm brewing out there, guys. So we’ll try to get through another 20 minutes without losing power. We’ll see what happens.

How Do We Know If Our Ranking Efforts Have An Impact On Moving The Listing Closer In The 3-Pack?

Okay, so the next question, he says, By the way, you mentioned previously that the order of the GMB listings that show up after you click the more places at the bottom and three pack is primarily based on their proximity to the searcher and not as much on the ranking signals. But if ranking signals are a significant factor and getting into the three pack, why isn’t it the same for the listings that aren’t in the three pack? And how do we check if our ranking efforts are having any impact on moving the listing closer being a three pack? Well, again, it’s it proximity is a significant issue. So there’s only really the only way that I know of how to do that is to check is if you are using a Rank Tracker that can simulate a location based search, like for example, bright local does that. But as we talked about in the past, even a simulated location based search is not going to be the same as somebody searching from a, like a mobile device that’s actually in the area. And again, it’s because of the history, their browsing history, their preferences, their you know, the where they’ve traveled within that area, you know, all those kind of things, because Google has built a profile for that searcher, those results are likely going to be different than what you would see in a search that was simulated from within that particular area, from you know, servers, if that makes sense. Because the servers aren’t going to have a Google profile built a local, like a relevant profile built for that particular area. So it can give you an indication of your ranking of what type of if you’re getting any movement. In other words, if you are doing SEO work, and you’re using something like Bright Local, I know there’s other rank trackers out there guys that do location based rank tracking. But remember, it’s still just simulated, so it’s not going to be 100% accurate, there’s just no way they can be anymore. But it can still give you an indication as if you’re if you’re getting if you’re improving the rank positioning of whatever it is you’re working on, because you should see it start to move based on you know, whatever keywords it is that you’re tracking. Although, like I said, it’s not likely going to be exactly what somebody’s searching from that particular area is going to see on a mobile device. That’s a real bona fide you know, genuine person, it can still give you an indication of if you’re getting results or not. Right, if you’re moving the needle, so to speak.

And come comments on that?

Marco: Yeah, ART trumps anything Gordon, active read was trusted authority. It can even trumps proximity if you push enough power. So don’t don’t just you’re isolating, you say one versus the other. And actually, one includes the other take take two listings, that are in close proximity to the searcher, the one who has done the better job of optimizing and giving Google the right the right signals will probably be delivered to that person. I mean, it’s an all in one, it or I don’t know it’s a component with many different parts, one of the most important being proximity. But if I had GMBs that weren’t optimized, and with no activity, no nothing delivered to a person, simply because of the proximity. But then once you start fleshing it out, once it starts getting activity, once you start getting posts and images and everything else in there that you’re supposed to, it gets even better better. So you know that that an optimized GMB will probably get more action than something that’s not optimized. Unless, you know, it’s just right next door to the to the searcher, and it just makes sense for rank rank to deliver that search to the person doing the period.

Bradley: Amen.

Did You Update Your Press Releases With The Recent Roll Out Of Rel=”Sponsored” And Rel=”UGC” Tags?

So the next question is, and this is fun, it’s kind of when I started talking about earlier, how our press releases affected and change changing with the new tags sponsored or UGC tags, which stands for user generated content in search quality, rather guy rater guy, excuse me search quality rater guidelines Google just introduced. Did you update your submissions already? Hell no. First of all, that was just announced that that it for people that don’t know you can do a search on this. Google, I’ve just announced that starting today, they’re going to start treating nofollow links differently. And they’ve introduced to New Relic equals or, or essentially tags for LinkedIn tag, tag links with they called one one sponsor to one UGC, which stands for user generated content. First of all, was just announced today. And because Google announced it, I’m no way what I ever recommend anybody go out and start changing shit that’s already been published on the web, because Google published a new announcement. Like if you do that, you’re just setting yourself there fishing. Google is oftentimes fishing when they announced stuff like this, if you marker just talked about this, if you freak out and go start changing based upon some changing stuff that’s already been published based upon something that Google announced, you’re literally raising the red flag and saying, hey, come look at me, come look at me. I’m an SEO and everything that I’m touching right now has been SEO. Right. So it’s like you’re inviting penalty, or scrutiny anyways. Right? So again, I would never after one single announcement when I go out and start changing shit. First, I want to see what kind of effect it has by not doing anything. Right. If If I start to see significant drops or changes and existing projects and things like that, then I’ll start working through what the fixes are, what the recommendations are, but as Margaret just said in an earlier comment, to an earlier question, don’t we don’t we don’t want when somebody makes an announcement, whatever it is, even penalties or new algorithm updates, things like that, while everyone else is scrambling, we recommend and we’ve been in this game for a long, long time, recommend waiting and letting the dust settle and letting it kind of the process play out. Because a lot of the times there’s an initial overreaction, like a knee jerk reaction, and that’s what ends up causing more harm than good. If you just wait and see what happens. A lot of the times you can find start figuring out logically, if anything changes at all, just Just so you know, knock on wood. For the multiple, multiple updates. We haven’t seen any for using the methods that I know my team and I use and the same ones that we teach, haven’t seen a lot of time, we don’t even know, an update has occurred until somebody comes on like Hump Day Hangouts, for example, and says, By the way, what did you think? What kind of changes? Have you seen because of the new update? Oh, yeah, there was an update, because I don’t read a lot of the SEO blogs, because I think most of them are full of shit, you know, based upon, you know, their proprietary metrics and all this other stuff. So I just honestly, I don’t stay plugged into that stuff until somebody comes to me with, you know, and brings it to my attention. And if I see any differences in any of my existing projects, then I’ll dig into it and try to figure out what, you know what occurred Exactly. But again, I would, I am certainly not going to go out and start changing stuff just because of an announcement that Google made today. First, I want to see what kind of an effect it has, if any, before I try to determine what changes to make, and it was at that time, that’s when I would start to make suggestions. But right now, it’s way too early to tell. And honestly, I’m not I’m not really even concerned about it at the moment.

Marco: Firstly, what we have, we have six months, we’ve been given some six months to see how to implement any of these changes, if at all, because Google didn’t did not say that you had to make changes. And the only thing that’s different about nofollow links is that now they’re being considered a hint. And in quotes, but if you’re using nofollow so that you don’t pass a vote or trust and authority over to somebody else, then you don’t worry if that’s how you using your nofollow, then why worry about it? What are you worrying about? There’s nothing to worry, go read the article, again, go to Google, don’t read somebody else’s fucking opinion about what Google said, or what somebody said that Google said or what somebody might have said, about what Google could have said, That’s bullshit. Go read the blog post in Google. It’s very simple and straightforward. If you need to change the tags, at some point, go change them. If you have people it might affect you’re doing, what a blog comments and all that bullshit, we don’t do any of that we this post to be, I saw it. And because I didn’t think that it was worth my time. I just blew it. I’m sorry, I blew it away, because it had nothing to do with anything that we’re doing. Because we don’t do any of that we don’t go and do blog comments or any other chit. We do our own links and our own link building. And it works perfectly well. It’s not user generated content. We don’t get into any of that. We know follow, we use that strategically. But we’re mostly looking after day after do follow. And that’s just how we do it.

Chris: Or you go as one more thing, I think it was mostly related to press releases if I understood the question correctly.

Bradley: Well, he was asked, yes, yes. Okay.

Press Advantage, the fabulous thing is that Jeremy wants to know a lot about SEO, we’re in constant contact. He’s, he’s developing some awesome stuff for us. And it’s based on my training right on on RYS and the principles behind RYS, so we’re not even going to worry about it. Because if he changes the the tags, or if he has to change the tags, because it’s a press release service, and it falls within the categories that Google is going to look for, it’s not going to make any difference, because we have some awesome shit in our press advantage. Press releases that are workaround guys, we got to realize something Semantic Mastery, two minutes fast three steps ahead of everybody else in the game. That’s how we do the dude, you haven’t realized it, that you better start really researching and understanding what it is that we teach, because we don’t care. How long have we been out? Six years Syndication Academy still working? Or is Academy still working? Everything that we teach is still working through every update and penalty, whatever, you could think of Google rolls something out and oh, yeah, really? Now we didn’t we didn’t see anything happened to whatever it is that we’re doing. That’s our usual answer. No, that didn’t happen. So we go and we test. So yeah, Google’s doing that. But it doesn’t affect what we’re doing. And it hasn’t yet. And I said Bradley said knock on wood into the future. We’ve created an SEO shield.

Yeah.

How To Get The Embed Code From The GMB Listing Mini Website?

Okay, so the next question is Brian, he says, Can you show us how to get the embed code from the GMB Mini website? So that’s the Google My Business or the business site. And yeah, that’s very simple. Just go to https://www.iframe-generator.com/ and just put your, you know, you can set some parameters here as to like, how, why do you want it and all that kind of stuff, I this is all I use, we never got to create an iframe. This one I use, it’s very, very simple. So for example, here’s a Semantic Mastery, GMB website, all I would do is come here, paste this in. Again, this is https://www.iframe-generator.com/, I would put my keyword or my name brand in there, depending on what it is that you’re trying to do. So in this case, I put Semantic Mastery. Usually, depending on where you’re going to embed it, you can adjust the width and the height. If you want for a scroll bar, you can show a scroll bar, all of that doesn’t really matter. Again, you can just adjust those parameters. And you click Generate right there is your iframe embed code. That’s it you can use for embedding wherever you want. Really, I mean, it’s really very simple to do. OK, so again, I just use https://www.iframe-generator.com/, very easy. Alright.

The next question is, by the way, BK doses can’t wait for Boku. Awesome, glad you’re coming. Where can I see? Wait a minute, I thought there was another question I just missed.

Where Can You See The Webinar About Agencies Who Want To Ramp Up?

Okay, another one is down here. I saw it. I was trying to figure out where I read it. Where can I see a recent webinar you did for agencies who want to ramp up I couldn’t make it it was hoping for replay. That is probably the Semantic Mastery mastermind webinar. I see that you talked about down here the growth solution I believe that’s our mastermind webinar, where basically Hernan walks through why the mastermind is going to help you to grow your agency so if you need to get a replay just contact us at support@semanticmastery.com and we’ll get you a replay for that specifically. I’m not sure where Hernan has that replay. Boyd is getting it is pounding out there.

What URL Should You Use When Ordering The RYS Stack?

Alright, so the next question is Ernest says what URL should I use for GMB when ordering the RYS stack, and this is why I brought this up as well. So I’m going to give you a quick way to grab this. The best way to do it that I know and the quickest way is either go into your GMB and on the right, and on the Home tab, or so the management dashboard, your Google My Business dashboard, and you can right-click where it says view on maps or view on search. If you click right click on view on maps and copy the link URL, right and then paste it into a notepad file. It’ll give you a specific version of it that then needs to be edited slightly. I’m going to show you how to do that. Or the other way that you can do it is using this pretty cool tool. Excuse me, let me pull it up and I’ll show you what I mean. It’s called GMB reviews or gmb.reviewsmaker.com. If you go there. And then you just go visit the GMB that you’re wanting to promote right this all you guys got to do is this one time and then you know, put this URL correctly formatted in your workbook or your spreadsheet for that particular project. And that’s the URL you want to use for link building and for everything else. So guy, because it’s straight, it’s not even, it’s not even a redirect URL. It’s really crazy. It’s the straight URL that once the page loads, it turns into this big long, ugly maps URL. And so let me show you what I mean. If you go to gmb.reviewsmaker.com. And you see over here, you can either start to type the business aim and if it comes up, you can click on it. Or you can just click DD code place ID right there. Just go visit your maps listing, right, so you can search for it in Google and then click on the map icon when you if it pops a knowledge panel and it will open in maps or you can just go directly to maps and search for the company or the business. And then you want to copy that long, ugly URL, right. As soon as you do that, you’re going to come over to this click decode place ID paste that in and click decode place ID will take a second. Then you’re going to scroll down to this part here where it says review generation URLs where it says maps URL, copy that link address. And then what you do is put this, I just put it into a notepad file, because this shows you this particular format. However, if you take a look at this format, in a redirect checker like where it goes, for example, you’ll see that this is actually a redirect URL also. So it’s still not a good, it’s still a 302 redirect. So what you want to do, and you can see that’s the final URL that it redirects to. And then once the page loads, it turns into this big long, ugly URL. So what you can either come to where it goes and just paste that in and then just copy this version of it or a quick edit in a text file would be this, this is the correct way to do it. You just changed the subdomain from maps to www, and then you add maps to just be on that first. forward slash and there you go. That is the straight URL direct to your maps listing is not even a 301 redirect, it’s for whatever reason, like I said, just when the page loads, it turns into the ugly. But look, you’ll see it’s a no redirect, see how it just says trace complete. And if we go take a look at open up Firefox, and we paste this in, you’ll see it’s going to go directly to Semantic Mastery. And then once the page finishes loading, it’s going to switch directly to that long ugly URL, as you just saw. Okay, so that’s the best URL to use. And again, the easiest way to do to get that is either go into your GMB dashboard, right-click on where it says view on maps, and then copy link address, paste it into a notepad file, change it from maps dot google. com to www.google.com/mapscid?= and then it’s your basically your see ID code is your maps identifier code. Right? And that’s all it is, is that that particular version of that URL is the best format for you to use for link building for drive stack orders and all that other stuff. Okay.

All right. I think we’re out of time. old school way. Yeah. Brian Marco, does it the old school or he just creates an iframe on his own? You can do that too. Last question or last comment really is Duke says yes. I have seen two ads in the GMB section, especially for services that have Google certified services like plumbers. Yeah. And what’s crazy is the Google certified service keywords where the keywords that will produce the certified services or the Google guaranteed services, right, that has a carousel of ads at the top, then the maps pack which will have to paid ads before it gets to any organic and organic maps listings, so to speak. And so I mean, it’s like the whole top of the page is nothing but paid ads. So that’s why I said you know, I think it’s it’s silly to not also be doing paid ads, guys, in my opinion. I think you’re missing out on a lot if you’re not doing a combination of both. So all right, any final comments, guys before I wrap it up?

POFU Live. Join the mastermind.

Alright guys, thanks for being here. We will see you guys next week.

Bye, everybody. Bye bye.

 
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 253 posted first on your-t1-blog-url