#FINALLY my local walmart is keeping up with release schedules | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kennethherrerablog · 5 years ago

Text

The Money Hack for Using the Local Coinstar for FREE

Is it just me or do you love cashing in your coins?

It always feels like free money since I’m never actively thinking about cashing in my jar of loose change. Only once my jar is full and heavy, do I realize that it’s time to finally empty and collect my money.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably asked yourself (or Google), where are the coin machines near me?

However, during your research you may find that Coinstar charges a whopping 12% in fees!

Ouch.

Lucky for you, we have the answer to avoiding Coinstar fees altogether.

Table of Contents

Avoiding the Coinstar Fee

What is Coinstar?

What are the Coinstar Fees?

The Hack to Avoiding the 12% Coinstar Fee

Donate Your Cash With Coinstar

Charities That Partner with Coinstar

How to Use Coinstar

Now, Is Using Coinstar Safe?

Finding A Coinstar Near Me?

Why Use Coinstar?

The Future of Coinstar

The Banks

Banks That Accept Rolled Coins

Credit Unions

Other Ways to Use Your Spare Change

Acorns App

Self-Checkout to Pay for Normal Items

Find and Sell Rare Coins

Donate to a Local Charity

Final Thoughts

Maximize Your Change

Avoiding the Coinstar Fee

If you don’t feel like counting coins one-by-one and then rolling them in those difficult paper rollers, you may want to consider Coinstar as a great alternative.

What is Coinstar?

You know those giant green machines found near the checkout of just about every grocery store in America? These machines allow you to dump all of your loose change into them and then it will count your change for you in a matter of seconds. However, there is a fee associated with the convenience of the machine.

What are the Coinstar Fees?

Coinstar charges a convenience fee of 11.9%! That means for every $100 of coins you put through the machine, you only get to keep $88 of it.

Is it worth it to use Coinstar? That answer is completely up to you, but there is a hack to workaround those hefty convenience fees.

The Hack to Avoiding the 12% Coinstar Fee

If you want to bypass the high fees that come with using Coinstar, there are few hacks you need to know about.

Instead of choosing to get paid out in dollar bills, you can choose to get paid out in Amazon gift cards and bypass the fees associated with Coinstar.

The minimum amount to receive an Amazon e-gift card is $5.00, with a maximum of $1,000.

But, if you’re not an Amazon shopper like me, there is one last option if you’re in a location within a Wal-Mart and some other retailers. You can get your receipt and use the funds toward purchase at Walmart or participating store. While I didn’t see much info online I know I’ve personally used this option at Walmart and Kroger stores in the past.

Donate Your Cash With Coinstar

While the nearly 12% fees still eat most of us, Coinstar does offer another positive alternative to using their services. You can now donate your coins directly to one of the seven charities they have partnered with.

The best part? They don’t charge you the nearly 12% fee!

Not to mention you are donating to a cause you believe in. Plus, it’s a tax write off so it’s a win-win-win!

Charities That Partner with Coinstar

Here’s a quick summary of the main charities that Coinstar has partnered with:

Feeding America: A nationwide network with 200 food banks that help fight hunger in the United States.

American Red Cross: The American Red Cross is where people mobilize to help their neighbors in emergencies whether across the street or across the world.

WWF (World WIldlife Foundation): This charity helps stop the degradation of the environment to help protect and restore animals natural habitats

Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals: Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds and awareness for 170 member hospitals that provide 32 million treatments each year to kids across the U.S. and Canada.

United Way: Each donation helps fight for education, health, and financial stability for others in the community.

UNICEF: This charity works in more than 190 countries to save and improve children’s lives by providing health care, clean water, and nutrition.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: They are dedicated to finding more effective treatments and cures for blood cancers so patients can live a longer life.

Who knew that your spare change could be easily contributed to helping such great causes around the world? One thing to note, not all of the charities listed above are available on every kiosk. Make sure to check online to ensure you can donate to the charity of your choice.

Also, make sure to keep your receipt. Donations like these one are 100% tax deductible and want to keep the receipt for your future taxes.

Lastly, you might not have noticed that there is one other option besides an Amazon e-card or certificate. If you’re not a huge Amazon shopper or want to put your spare change to a good cause you have one other option.

How to Use Coinstar

Using Coinstar is pretty straight forward to cash in your spare change. At the kiosk, make sure to check e-gift card for Amazon, cash, or if you want to donate the money. Add your coins to the machine and wait until it is done counting them.

If you have any coins that aren’t accepted or foreign objects accidentally inserted, the coin dispenser will spit them back out in a slot below. Once the machine is done counting you will receive the cash, store certificate or Amazon e-gift card receipt.

Make sure to not lose that receipt it’s small and I’m not sure they have any way to help if you end up losing it.

Now, Is Using Coinstar Safe?

Machines never fail, right? Well, that’s not always the case. When using any coin machine there is always room for error.

A story ran back in 2016 about a TD Ameritrade kiosk being off by $44 off from a $300 total. That’s a huge amount of money you’re not getting back!

Coinstar does appear to be the leader in the coin machine industry and released this statement after people began doubting the coin machines after the 2016 ABC investigation. Here’s what they said:

“Its number one goal is to provide its customers with a satisfying and reliable experience…it has refined technology and implemented regular maintenance schedules to service, clean, calibrate and test the machines to ensure reliability and high accuracy levels…rigorous testing has delivered extremely accurate coin counting and more than 95% machine uptime.”

Finding A Coinstar Near Me?

You can find Coinstar machine at most grocery locations but make sure to check out their locations page here.

Here is a list of the most common stores to help you find a coin machine near you:

Albertsons CVS

Kmart Super Centers

Kroger (This includes a ton of brands underneath it including Fry’s Food and Drug, Pay Less Super Markets, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Foods Co, and others)

Lowes

Rays Food Places

Target Superstores (these are bigger than normal Target stores and include a full grocery selection as well)

The Food Emporium

Walmart

Why Use Coinstar?

After reading about cashing your coins in a bank Coinstar takes away a lot of the frustration by making it simple and convenient. You don’t have to roll up your coins and make a separate trip to the bank. You can save gas money and combine the experience with a normal trip to your store.

The Future of Coinstar

While Amazon e-gift cards and donations are great the options are kind of limited. Especially since they used to have 5-7 different e-card options until 2018. But Coinstar is about to roll another feature later this year that is a huge benefit for you.

Coinstar and Doxo announced a partnership in April of 2018 that will allow you to pay some of your bills with the kiosk. Through this partnership, you will be able to pay bills including utilities, phone, car loans, cable, certain types of insurance, and more. All of this will be done using your spare change at up to 7,000 Coinstar kiosks by the end of 2018.

Not to mention, Doxo is a huge company so you will probably have access to at least one or two monthly bills that you are already paying. Doxo has a crowd sourced directory of more than 45,000 local and national billers.

The Banks

Did you know that not all banks actually accept coins anymore?

Yes, a government-backed entity like a huge bank doesn’t always accept your legal tender! How crazy is that? Is it even legal? I didn’t go too far down that rabbit hole but this seems ridiculous.

While some banks do have coin cashing machines in the lobby, they are usually reserved only for account holders. Typically, you have to enter your debit card and PIN before it will actually allow you to get cash for your coins. Even if they do have a coin machine it might not always be free, even if you bank with them!

Then there are banks like TD Bank which charges you a fee to use the machine. It’s hard to believe it’s so much effort to get cash for your coins even at banks.

Banks That Accept Rolled Coins

As you can see the list of banks that don’t accept coins that aren’t rolled isn’t many! Most banks choose to only accept them if you have them properly rolled.

This usually means you have to buy the device to help roll or do it manually. Most of the banks will provide wrappers for free but some of the banks will still charge a fee!

1. Bank of America

No fees for Bank of America customers

No fees for non-Bank of America customers

2. Chase Bank

No fees for Chase Bank customers with an unlimited amount

No fees for non-Chase Bank customers until $200. Anything above there are fees which weren’t disclosed online

3. BB&T

Fees vary for BB&T customers. They are free for under $25; 5% for more than $25

10% Fees for non-BB&T customers (Yes, 10% at a bank!)

4. Cape Bank

No fees for Cape Bank customers

No fees for non-Cape Bank customers (and uncapped total amount unlike others on the list)

5. Citibank

No fees for Citibank customers unless you live in the state of Illinois in which there is a 5% of the total amount

No fees for non-Citibank customers unless you live in the state of Illinois in which there is a 5% of the total amount (Sorry Chicago readers)

6. Home State Bank

No fees for Home State Bank customers

10% Fees for non-Home State Bank customers. Yikes, might as well head to Coinstar or a credit union for that price

7. JBT

No fees for JBT customers

5%fees for non-JBT customers

8. Manasquan Bank

No fees for Manasquan Bank customers

5% Fees for non-Manasquan Bank customers

9. Shelby Savings Bank

No fees for Shelby Savings Bank customers

5% of the total amount for non-Shelby Savings Bank customers

10. U.S. Bank

No fees for U.S. Bank customers

No fees for non-U.S. Bank customers

11. Wells Fargo

No fees for Wells Fargo customers

No fees for non-Wells Fargo customers

12. People’s United Bank

No fees for People’s United Bank if you’re a customer

Unknown fees if you’re not a customer

13. Umpqua Bank (Pacific Northwest)

If you’re a customer they do not charge and coins don’t have to be rolled.

Unknown fees if you’re not a customer

If you don’t have any luck finding one of these locations near you, make sure to search for smaller banks and credit unions.

Credit Unions

If you’re not familiar there is a big difference between credit unions and banks, especially big banks like Chase and Bank of America. While banks have customers (and sometimes shareholders), credit unions are membership based. Once you get accepted based to the affiliation of the credit union you can become a member.

Credit unions tend to have more personalized service and don’t give you as much grief for want cash for your change! If you are a member, most of the bigger credit unions won’t charge you any fees. This is definitely one of the biggest perks of using credit unions!

And some credit unions have Coinstar type of machines that will allow you to give them your change without having to spend time rolling them.This is a huge time and money saver for you. Some credit unions do allow non-members to take advantage of their kiosks but they charge around 9-10%. Still a high rate but ultimately lower than Coinstar if you want cash.

Credit unions are also a great fit if you’ve had problems getting loans or credit cards due to a low credit score. They are much more likely to work with you than big banks.

If you don’t want the work of rolling your coins and finding a bank or credit union it’s time to learn about Coinstar.

Other Ways to Use Your Spare Change

If you’re not a fan of rolling coins, using Amazon, or paying 12% in fees, there a few lesser known options to best utilize your spare change.

Acorns App

Acorns is the free app that takes your spare change and not only saves it for you, but invests it for you using roundups from use on any of your debit or credit cards.

If you would like to see exactly how it works, you can check out our Acorns app review which explains in detail how Acorns works and why microinvesting is becoming wildly popular.

Self-Checkout to Pay for Normal Items

This is a method that you might love or hate. Personally, I always get frustrated when people using self-checkouts and are slow. To me, it kind of defeats the purpose entirely.

But, this method does let you save money so I understand. Instead of having to roll your coins for the bank or lose money to Coinstar, just pay for items with coins in the self-checkout.

You won’t have to pay any fees and can easily use self-checkouts at most grocery or retail stores. Maybe keep the total to a minimum not to hold up the line with $50 of spare change.

Find and Sell Rare Coins

I’ll admit this step requires a little more and is kind of a side hustle as much as anything else. Before you decide to use one of these options for your coins, double check to see if you have rare coins.

Sometimes you will be able to find coins that are of more value than the actual amount! Again, I want to preface that this will take more effort on your end and certainly not for every reader.

Here are some of the most common coins you can look for and potentially earn some extra money:

A buffalo nickel (this has a Native American and a buffalo on either side of the coin)

A penny made before 1982. This means the coin is 95% copper and worth more money!

A quarter, nickel, or dime minted prior to 1964. If it is prior to 1964 that means the coin contains silver and worth more money.

Plus if you have any older coins you can always go to a dealer and see if they are worth more to you than sitting in storage.

Donate to a Local Charity

If you don’t want to make a separate trip to find a Coinstar or don’t like the limited options you can always choose to donate your change. Religious institutions, community center, and the Salvation Army are among a few that will accept your donations. If you have international coins from your travels some of these places will also accept them as well.

Final Thoughts

Back in the day, this wasn’t something you needed to ask. Instead, you could just go to your local bank, get cash, and go about your day. Sadly, it’s just not the case anymore when it comes to trading your spare change for cash.

While getting money is always nice, it’s getting harder and harder to get 100% of your change converted to cash. With banks, machines, and high fees, you normally only get a fraction of your money. A lot of cases you only get around 90% of your “free money” after expenses!

It’s a shame that banks and our financial system have made it so difficult for people to get money for legal tender. What’s the point of having a piggy bank if you can only collect 90% of what you save? Probably not a great example from our financial institutions to teach our youth.

Maximize Your Change

But there are some alternatives to help you maximize your change for the full amount. This article will help you minimize those fees and find the best ways to get started.

Start clearing out your couch cushions, car consoles, and every random area of your house. With these methods, you can finally start using that change for something you actually need!

In today’s digital world coins and cash seem to be used less and less. Inevitably you will end up with spare coins that you need to cash out eventually. Besides, it’s not like you’re collecting interest on coins that are scattered throughout your life.

There are plenty of options to get started. Whether you roll your coins and take them to your local bank or take the fees and use Coinstar. And for quick purchases at the grocery store you can always carry your spare change with you. While it is a little of bit of work, every penny counts when it comes to meeting your financial goals!

Hopefully, this helps you deal with coin machines, fees, and the other hassles when finding a coin machine. Make sure you remember to check your Coinstar in 2019 so you can use your spare change to help you pay for your monthly bills.

What method do you use for dealing with spare change? Do you prefer the old school method of rolling them or the convenience of Coinstar?

Let us know in the comments and happy free coin rolling!

Related Posts You May Like

45 Cheap, Fun and Easy Hobbies You Should Know About

150+ Freebies You Can Get on Your Birthday: Food, Retail, & Experiences

19 Ways to Get Free Gas This Year How to Avoid Those Free Gas Scams

The Money Hack for Using the Local Coinstar for FREE published first on https://mysingaporepools.weebly.com/

0 notes

voice-of-anarchy · 8 years ago

Text

ALISSA WHITE-GLUZ: Getting Fired From THE AGONIST Was 'The Worst Betrayal I've Ever Felt In My Life'

ARCH ENEMY frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz says that getting fired from THE AGONIST was "the worst betrayal" she has ever felt in her life and has vowed to never speak to her former bandmates again.

White-Gluz was announced as the new singer of ARCH ENEMY on March 17, 2014. That same day, THE AGONIST revealed that they had recruited Vicky Psarakis as Alissa's replacement, saying in a statement that they wished White-Gluz "all the best with ARCH ENEMY and her future endeavors." A day later, Alissa released her own statement in which she claimed that she "had every intention of (and had even started) writing and recording yet another killer album [with THE AGONIST] this year," but explained that her "former bandmates decided to choose a different path." She also said that "the unfortunate decision" to part ways "was made beyond [her] control" and added that she would "always be proud of the three albums [she and THE AGONIST] created since 2005."

Alissa, who co-founded THE AGONIST in 2004 (then known as TEMPEST), has been largely quiet about the circumstances that led to her departure from the band, choosing instead to focus on the touring activities in support of ARCH ENEMY's 2014 album "War Eternal", which marked her recording debut with the latter group. But during a recent appearance on HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta's official podcast, "The Jasta Show", Alissa aired her side of THE AGONIST split for the first time, saying that she "never in a million fucking years" suspected that she would get kicked out of her own band.

Recalling some of the early discussions she had with ARCH ENEMY about replacing that band's singer of thirteen years, Angela Gossow, Alissa said: "It was in 2013, and Angela and Michael [Amott, guitar] from ARCH ENEMY had asked me if I wanted to join, and so I said, 'Well, can I keep doing the band that I'm in?' [referring to THE AGONIST]. And they were, like, 'Yeah, we want you to be happy, so if you want, we can work out a schedule where both bands can be fulfilled.' And in my head, at that point, I had already been spending a lot of time with KAMELOT [touring as a guest vocalist], so I was, like, 'Oh, well, with KAMELOT, I'm just a guest. They can replace me easily. So I'll just stop doing KAMELOT and focus on ARCH ENEMY and my current band.' 'Cause that band was my baby. I built that band, I picked the name, I drew the logo, I directed all the photo shoots… You know, it was my band."

She continued: "I thought that we made great music together [as THE AGONIST]. I really liked the music that we were all making. I think everyone was very talented in that band. And so I told them. I was actually on tour with KAMELOT when I started having discussions with ARCH ENEMY, and that was earlier in the year. And so when I got back to Montreal, and then the next time we were all together, we did a short run, I think, in New England. And so I got all the guys together and we were in, like, a Walmart parking lot. I think the van was getting an oil change or something, so we were sitting by the trailer, and I called them all over and I told them. I'm, like, 'I've signed a confidentiality statement, so I can't tell you the name of the band, but I just wanna let you guys know I'm gonna start working with another band. I've been working with KAMELOT a lot recently, and that's been taking up my time, but I've decided that, to make sure I have enough time for both, I just won't do KAMELOT anymore. But I'm gonna be working with this other band. I think it's gonna be great for us, because it's a band that we all like. It's a band that we've wanted to tour with for a long time.' And they were, like, 'Who is it? Is it NIGHTWISH?' So they weren't happy, but then I told 'em, I'm, like, 'But don't worry, because I've worked out with the manager a schedule where we're gonna have enough time to do our stuff. The manager's totally cool with me keeping my band. So it's gonna be fine.' And the manager [of ARCH ENEMY] is Angela. So with Angela, I worked out a schedule that would have made it totally fine for ARCH ENEMY to do some tours and record our album and me to still have enough time to devote to that band. And another thing that I told 'em, I was, like, 'At this point, I'm also not gonna be working my dayjob anymore, so those forty hours a week I can devote to music.' So I was, like, 'Okay. Perfect.' And this was in, like, June or July of 2013. In July and August, I was on tour with [THE AGONIST], and then September I had a KAMELOT tour, October I had a Europe tour with [THE AGONIST], November I had a KAMELOT tour again, and then December finally, I came back and [THE AGONIST] did some local shows. And the whole time everything was good, and we were, like, really positive. I was actually really happy. 'Cause I was, like, 'Wow, things are finally going well. They are being really understanding.' And I have e-mail chains back and forth with Angela where I was, like, 'No, they're being really cool about it. I'm really happy. And the schedule looks good.' And I forwarded them the schedule. It was literally broken down for, like, the next three years. Like, March and April will be ARCH ENEMY time, June and July will be your [time]… Like, really, just perfectly laid out. And it was great. Michael was happy with that too. And we did a show in a city in Quebec. It was around mid-December [2013]. We did the show, and I was on a video interview from a local TV station, in French, and they asked, 'What's going on? How's the band going?' And I remember being really happy and telling them, 'Yeah, I have five songs written, and we're making a new album now. And it's really cool music. I'm really happy. I'm excited to get the album done.' And I remember just being really proud of what we were doing musically and where we were going. And then the next morning… One of the guys [from THE AGONIST] doesn't live in Montreal, so the other three guys showed up at my door and came into my house. And they were just, like, 'We need to have a meeting.' So I was, like, 'Okay. Well, what's wrong? This is a crazy emergency meeting. For sure, let's talk about what's going on.' And never in a million fucking years would I have suspected that I was getting kicked out of my own band. They basically sat down and they told me that one of the guys in the band gave them an ultimatum and said, 'Either we kick her out or I'm gonna quit the band, because I don't want her in the band anymore.'

"While this was happening, I was in complete, complete panic mode. Even as we were having the meeting, I was, like, 'Well, we don't have to do this. Why is this even a thing?' And so then it ended with them leaving. And I was, like, 'I'll write to…' We had just gotten a new manager at that point; he hadn't done anything yet at this point. But I was, like, 'Look, I'll write to him, and I'll tell him what you guys think, and we'll figure something out.' And I thought I was still gonna work this out. And so as soon as they left, I went to go into my e-mail to get the manager's contact, and I couldn't get into my e-mail account. So then I went to go into my Facebook, I couldn't get into my Facebook. I went to get into Twitter, I couldn't get into Twitter. I went to get into our YouTube, I couldn't get into YouTube. And these were all accounts that I created, and I had only recently — because I had been so busy with KAMELOT — I had only recently given access to some of the other members to start posting on, and because I had been so busy, I didn't notice…

"It was the middle of the night in Europe at this point, so I was calling Angela freaking out, calling Michael freaking out, 'Oh my God! What just happened? I don't understand.' I was trying to get hold of the people at Century Media [THE AGONIST's then-record label], trying to get hold of this manager guy. The manager guy didn't seem to understand what was going on. And he was, like, 'Well, you quit.' And I was, like, 'What? I didn't quit. This is my band. I would never quit this band.' And he was, like, 'They told me you quit.' So I was, like, 'Can we get on the phone, please? I don't know what's happening right now.' My whole life was basically being destroyed.

"So finally, I was freaking out. I couldn't get into my accounts. From my personal account, I wrote to Angela and whatever. And so finally, I actually managed to just, like, guess the security question and I got back into my e-mail account. And so then I was able to get the contacts that I had been building up for twelve years — everybody at the label, the manager, all this networking that I had been putting all of my life into, all of our contracts were saved in PDFs in that account. So I got back into there, and then I saw the e-mail chain that was accidentally forwarded from the label dating back to September where [the guys from THE AGONIST] went and found some other person to replace me on vocals. So now I had a name. I had no idea who this person was. I've still never seen her, never spoken to her ever. I just thought a professional courtesy would be, 'Just letting you know… Are you cool with this? Because I'm gonna be taking over your baby and your brainchild and the art that you've worked your ass off to create. I'm now gonna be representing that. Is this okay with you?' But I never received anything like that. Another thing that was super weird was I wrote these lyrics [for THE AGONIST] about being vegan and about being straight edge. And so I'm, like, 'Is this person vegan and straight edge? Is this person just gonna be singing something that they don't even believe in?' And I still don't know.

"Basically, I saw this happen. It occurred to me that they had been lying to my face throughout an entire thirty-day tour of Europe. Me talking about 'em, 'I'm so excited for the album. Listen to this. I did this on a song.' It now occurred to me that they were smiling to my face but secretly knew that they had found someone else."

Asked why she thinks THE AGONIST chose to kick her out of the band the way they did, Alissa said: "It was ego. I think it was ego. I still don't get it. I don't understand what the point of that was. Because I'm the kind of person, if there's a conflict, let's talk about it right now and solve it. I told them everything that I could. I literally had signed a confidentiality agreement, so I couldn't say the name 'ARCH ENEMY' to them, but I literally told them, 'It's a Swedish band we all love. There's a female singer I'm replacing.' What else could it be? [Laughs]"

She continued: "I had fans writing to me and being, like, 'Why did you quit? We loved you in that band.' And I was, like, 'I didn't quit.' And if you want proof of it, listen to the song 'Avalanche' on 'War Eternal', because that's exactly what I wrote that song about."

Alissa added that she hadn't spoken about her split with THE AGONIST before because she didn't "wanna publicly shame anyone." She explained: "I block those people. I don't see any news about them — nothing. Because, honestly, with social media, you can control what you see. So I just decided I don't wanna feel that betrayal anymore. Honestly, it's like… picture being in a marriage. And we had three albums, so say you have three kids and then suddenly you walk into your home that you built one day, and your husband or wife is literally cheating on you with another person, and then, rather than talking about it and trying to figure out what happened, they kick you out of the house and they steal your kids. And that's literally what it feels like. And so rather than dwelling in that pain, I just decided I was gonna not talk about it and be really thankful that I have ARCH ENEMY, which is a great band with great people, great management, and just focus on the fact that I have a band that I love. I can still do KAMELOT, which is another band that I love. And now I even have a solo project, where I can kind of revisit the music that I used to do. And so rather than bringing up the past and being super negative about it, I wish them the best. I don't agree with what they did. I don't have respect for what they did."

Asked if the door was open for some kind of mending of the fences if the guys in THE AGONIST wanted to "make it right," Alissa responded: "No. I'll never talk to them again — ever! That was the worst betrayal I've ever felt in my life. They stole a lot from me. It was not right. I know because fans have told me, 'Hey, they're saying this about you, they're saying that,' and rather than sinking to that level and actually presenting the truth… which I had to do at one point with the manager because he was actually being really rude to me and did not understand the situation. And finally, I was, like, 'Hey, I'm gonna forward you every e-mail concerning this situation.' And then finally he read those e-mails and understood that I was the one telling the truth. And then he stopped working with them. Because he was, like, 'Woah, wait a second. I was lied to.' And it wasn't by me. That was the only time that I've had to really be, like, 'Okay, I'm just gonna stand up for mysef and prove the truth here.' Otherwise, I just took the standpoint of I'm not gonna say anything negative about those people. I'm not even gonna talk about them at all. They've stolen enough from me. I'm not gonna let them steal any more of my energy. Instead I'm gonna put my energy towards the good things that I have, which is from this point and into the future."

THE AGONIST has released two albums so far with Vicky Psarakis on vocals: 2015's "Eye Of Providence" and 2016's "Five".

In a 2014 interview, THE AGONIST guitarist Danny Marino spoke about the band's split with Alissa, explaining: "Once we found out about the ARCH ENEMY thing and what it meant, we talked about it and decided it really can't work for us. It wasn't a case of Alissa filling in for a tour or an album, it was for everything and it was permanent. So basically, what we were going to go through for this new album we would go through for every album for the rest of our career… For example, one of the things we would have had to do was cancel all the European festival dates we [had] coming up if Alissa stayed with THE AGONIST. We were told we'd have to cancel those dates even though she'd be playing some of the same festivals with ARCH ENEMY. Their management said that can't really work. And even before this, we'd passed up a couple opportunities because of Alissa being out with KAMELOT. That wasn't as serious, obviously, and we were able to work with it."

He continued: "Not to say anything against Alissa, because I would understand if after six months or a year of being in ARCH ENEMY, she said to us, 'I've bitten off more than I can chew, I can't work with THE AGONIST.' I could foresee that possibility because I've seen it with other bands in a similar situation. Sometime it can work, but that depends on whether the 'B' band is will to become something of a side-project band, and we're not that band."

#Alissa White Gluz #Arch Enemy #2017 interviews #The Agonist

29 notes · View notes

oakpodcast · 8 years ago

Text

Transmission 3 Transcript

New episode is live on Patreon. It is scheduled to release publicly at noon EST.

HOLLY:

If you're a new listener, make sure to start from the beginning.

MUSIC: "Solitude" by Muciojad

SOUND: SOS SOS SOS SOS

HOLLY:

This is Holly, broadcasting on all frequencies using protocol: MINISTER DELTA. This transmission is for Oak. All others, please disregard.

SOUND: ...-- .-- .. .. .--- .-.

Some Things

SOUND: Nature sounds, at a park

HOLLY:

Some things you might not know. Or maybe you do, because you always seem to know everything.

Other than time, there's no way to get waterproof mascara off that doesn't cost money. At least, not that I've figured out yet. That was a long first week.

In Alabama, spring is yellow. I finally understand what "allergies" are. (sniffs)

The library will let you camp out all day with a book, library card or not.

People get a little weird when they see you running MS-DOS on a library computer, so don't expect to get away with anything illegal that way.

When the library's closed, Walmart and McDonald's employees have a lot bigger things to worry about than you using their washroom.

People are more likely to give you money when you're holding a stray.

No one will usually stop you from showering at a public pool.

The best way to steal a towel is to walk right into a hotel around lunchtime and just take one off a cart.

Sleeping unprotected and vulnerable outside is a terrible idea. But at least you'll have good company from the other traumatized military types.

And finally, pizza is... amazing.

Rambling

SOUND: ... -. / .- .. -.. .- -.- --. -- .. .-.-.-

Holly:

Yes, that's right. I'm eating pizza during passover. It's not even thin crust. Not that that would make a difference, I don't think, but... you know.

HOLLY:

I don't know why I care? It's been almost fifteen years since you or I celebrated any sort of holiday like that.

HOLLY:

Besides, I feel like this past month is the closest I've ever been to wandering around a desert, so... I think that counts for something.

HOLLY:

So yes. Pizza during passover.

HOLLY:

Admittedly, pizza won't help my current digestive issues at ALL, but I suppose fewer washroom trips are ideal when you don't have a place to call home. It's worth it.

HOLLY:

We should have eaten pizza more often. We should have eaten anything good together more often.

HOLLY:

When I see you again, I'm going to eat every single meal with you.

HOLLY:

It's going to be real food, too. No more chocolate milk and smoothies for breakfast because we can't be bothered to cook. No more inhaling sandwiches at 3 p.m. because we forgot to eat lunch. And no more alcohol for dinner because we have stressful jobs. We can't use that as an excuse forever.

HOLLY:

Mostly, I think I got pizza because I wanted it to feel like hockey night—like my body hurts like this because we went on a long run together, not because I've been sleeping on benches and in chairs for the past month.

HOLLY:

And it's not like anything else sounded good. Well, a raw, bloody steak always sounds good lately, but that's not healthy. Or cheap. Unfortunately. Anyway...

HOLLY:

(Alarmed) I'm probably just being paranoid, but an SUV parked at my three o'clock right after I got here, and no one's gotten out yet. It's probably nothing, but I'm going to move anyway.

SOUND: All noise stops for a moment, then resumes.

SOUND: -- .. .. .-

Sitrep

HOLLY:

Sitrep. I'm at a local park today. I've been trying to find an abandoned house to stay in, but it's not as easy as it sounds. It doesn't help that I get so nervous about breaking the law.

HOLLY:

It's April 15—a nice Saturday afternoon during the playoffs. The Sens will hopefully beat the Bruins in a few hours, but either way, it should be a nice distraction.

HOLLY:

I don't think Ottawa will take the cup or even the Eastern conference, but I think they have a shot at winning the Atlantic division.

HOLLY:

You said you'd be back in time to watch the playoffs with me. That was worst-case scenario, remember?

HOLLY AS OAK:

Don't worry, relax! I'm gonna try to be back before the 19th so I don't miss out on any wild birthday festivities. I mean, Valentine's day is more likely, but I'll try to be back before then.

HOLLY AS OAK:

If they try to make me miss being with you for the tribunal, or even worse, the playoffs, I'll just quit.

HOLLY:

Now that I think about it, that was a terrible joke. Oh well.

HOLLY:

I'm really not very good at imitating you. Did you at least get a good laugh out of my secure transmission last week? I bet you did.

SOUND: ..... ----- ----- --..--

Podcasts

HOLLY:

I've listened to so many great podcasts recently. Rover Red is an interesting choose-your-own-adventure story. It's in the dystopian young adult vein, and it's pretty creepy.

HOLLY:

Lake Clarity is also about teenagers, but it's a modern horror story. Who doesn't love creepy camp stories? Just... maybe don't listen to it when you're going to spending a lot of time in nature. Oops.

HOLLY:

I'm good. I only barely peed myself over that fox last night (laughing).

SOUND: ... --.- -.. -- .-. --- -. --.- ... .-.-.-

Thank You

HOLLY:

A huge thank you to Kim and Jody for pledging $10 per broadcast.

HOLLY:

You know, my girlfriend in uni was named Jody. I say that like I've had a bunch of girlfriends. (laughs)

HOLLY:

Anyway, Jody was incredibly hot and incredibly nice. We only parted ways because I was headed to far-off places for adventure and military training and other B.S. like that.

HOLLY:

So, if you're the same Jody who used to be into... extremely 'creative erotica,' uh... hi? (Laughs) But you're probably a different Jody, in which case, disregard my awkwardness. I appreciate your support either way.

SOUND: --- -.- .. -.. .-. ..

Inventory

HOLLY:

Inventory since last transmission: One pack of baby wipes, some makeup, a pair of tweezers because suddenly I'm really furry, one Holiday Inn towel, one Chromebook in... we'll be generous and call it "fair" condition, and roughly $12 in cash, USD.

HOLLY:

Hm, does the cat count as inventory?

HOLLY:

I can't really claim ownership of her; we don't have that kind of relationship, but I named her anyway. (Cat purring) Say hello to General Leia Janeway.

HOLLY:

This cat and I have a pretty good arrangement worked out. I feed her plain cheeseburgers or the cheese from my pizza, as well as a warm, cozy lap to sleep on, and she looks extra cute so people give me more money. Then she wanders off to do her thing with whomever, and I sleep at the shelter if I'm lucky, and we meet back up again later.

SOUND: -.. .- ...- --. .-. ..

Makeup

HOLLY:

Anyway. Cheap makeup. It's funny how often camouflage involves smearing something on your face. Mud, camo paint, foundation... it's kind of all the same to me.

HOLLY:

You're probably cringing so hard right now, picturing me doing my own makeup. This cheap sponge thing is nowhere near as good as yours, and a flickering fluorescent light doesn't compare to your vanity back home. Ugh, just putting makeup on myself is a nightmare.

HOLLY:

I can't believe the list of things I took for granted now includes you dabbing makeup on me before parties and annual evaluations. I used to complain so much. And now I'd give anything for you to come do my eyebrows again.

HOLLY:

I spent a dollar more to get the foundation that clears breakouts. Was that frivolous of me? Ugh, probably. My face has just been so aggravated since you left. I thought it was stress, but... (sighs)

Holly:

I decided there was no point in messing with eye makeup. It's a bitch to put on, it's a bitch to get off, and no one really looks that closely, I don't think. Especially not if you're wearing glasses.

HOLLY:

A scarf would help, too. Between that and the Chromebook, I could get away with wearing pretty much anything and just look like an especially worn-out doctoral student. But the scarf is pretty low on my list of financial priorities right now. If I can't steal one from you like usual, I'm not going to bother.

HOLLY:

So much of my life has been spent undercover as a normal person. Ever since we joined the military, both of us have had to... look, you make a really good Marine, surprisingly, but I'm not cut out for it. I never was.

HOLLY:

I hate running laps. I hate doing pushups. I hate doing pull-ups. And pretending to be normal just really, really wears me down.

HOLLY:

Being able to work part time... that was ideal. I could have not worked at all, but I liked working with you. Besides, I wouldn't have felt right mooching off you for my entire life, and the only alternative to that is mooching off Mom and Dad, and that comes with too many strings. Like having to talk to them, for starters.

SOUND: --.- .. ---...

Coffee

HOLLY:

I've never understood how you do it. Act normal, I mean. I've watched you stir speed into an iced coffee bigger than our coffee maker and then go to work, like it's business as usual. You flew right under everyone's radar. Maybe you spoke a little too fast sometimes, but I was always the one with "issues." Not you.

HOLLY:

Ugh, I distracted myself thinking about coffee. Iced coffee.

HOLLY:

I know I shouldn't be drinking coffee at all right now, just in case. I'm just so exhausted all the time. It's hard to keep an eye out when they keep closing without my permission.

SOUND: -. --- .. --.- -.. ... --. -. --

Attraction

HOLLY:

So, as previously mentioned, I got the funds for a Chromebook off Craigslist.

HOLLY:

You probably would have pick-pocketed someone your first day here or... just talked them into giving you their wallet, but I've never been good at those things.

HOLLY:

Somehow, I don't think the girl voted "Most likely to die in a hilarious freak accident" and "Most likely to become a serial killer" is the best person for stealth or charisma.

HOLLY:

That SUV is back. It's probably just people playing Pokemon Go, but I'm going to relocate again.

SOUND: All noise stops then resumes

HOLLY:

Apparently, a relatively attractive woman holding a sign that says, "Hungry veteran, please help" will attract all kinds of interesting job prospects.

HOLLY:

I've never really thought about the word "attractive" before. It's always used as a compliment. But it's so obvious now that I'm looking at it in my head...

HOLLY:

Attract...ive. Attractive.

HOLLY:

An adjective to describe someone who magnetically attracts all kinds of strange and unwanted bullshit.

HOLLY:

I've honestly never considered myself attractive. I'm not fishing for compliments there. I mean I literally get surprised by my reflection sometimes, as in, I get surprised by having a reflection.

HOLLY:

The idea that strangers find me attractive confuses me. I'm an autistic 32-year-old who's never been independent in any sense of the word. And right now I'm homeless. Not exactly my definition of a catch.

SOUND: .-. -.-- .-.. ..- --. -. .-. --. .-.

Objective

HOLLY:

Do you remember that time you saved the mission by seducing... I think she was a diplomat? (Laughs) Okay, I have to be more specific. The one in Dubai, remember?

HOLLY:

You and I have always had a relationship like me and this cat. You come and go as you please, and I wait around for you to come back.

HOLLY:

After that diplomat, you kept asking if I was secretly upset over what happened. If I was... jealous. You didn't believe me, but I really wasn't. Maybe I would have been a little upset about it if we'd failed our objective, but we didn't.

HOLLY:

Likewise, maybe I would be upset right now if I'd failed my own objective... but I didn't. I have pizza and a Chromebook, and I might get an iced coffee later, and I feel too relieved to feel anything else.

HOLLY:

Things are good, all things considered. I'm totally fine.

SOUND: -.. .-. -.. --- .-.-.-

Dissociation

HOLLY:

Okay, that's sort of a lie. I'm one giant ping-pong machine of emotions lately, and I hate it.

HOLLY:

I am relieved. But I'm also zoning out a lot. I'm ridiculously paranoid. And my nightmares are worse than ever now.

HOLLY:

I probably should have listened to Evergreen and gone to counseling when I had the chance. I should have taken care of a lot of medical things when I had the chance. But something something about hindsight, right?

SOUND: .-.. -.. -.-- / -.. -... -... .. --- ... .-.-.-

Options

HOLLY:

Anyway. All that to say that I figured something important out last night.

HOLLY:

Either you're incapable of helping me, or you're an even better actor than I thought.

HOLLY:

Because I might not care what you do for a mission, but you care a lot.

HOLLY:

So. Option one, you're dead.

HOLLY:

Option two, you're in prison somewhere.

HOLLY:

Option three, you're some kind of sadistic, soul-less asshole capable of completely fooling me for years, if not decades.

HOLLY:

I think option three is the least likely. It's not that I can't see you running a long con like that on someone. Because I can. You'd be really good at it. I just can't imagine you running it on me.

HOLLY:

Option one... It seems like the most likely possibility. If I had to guess for someone else, I'd pick that one.

HOLLY:

But it just doesn't feel right. I've always known when something was wrong with you before. I have this nagging feeling that if you were actually dead, I'd know.

HOLLY:

And like I've said before, I can't think like that. Because if you are dead, you'd probably want me to join you. And don't get me wrong, normally I'd be completely on board.

HOLLY:

Which... is not the most healthy mindset, but I never said it was.

HOLLY:

But things are complicated now. There's potentially a lot more at stake than just my life. Things that might not come to fruition anyway. But definitely not if I die.

HOLLY:

I don't know how I feel about anything. I want completely contradictory things and I don't know what to do.

HOLLY:

And honestly, fuck you! You don't get to do something stupid and get yourself killed and then expect me to off myself too just so you can have company. It doesn't work like that! I mean, it used to, but not anymore. You should have planned better. Asshole.

SOUND: Holly's phone ringing

HOLLY:

Oh shit, how do I—

SOUND: Ringing stops

HOLLY:

Oh. Apparently not like that.

HOLLY:

Anyway. For now, I'm going to assume you did something stupid and got yourself arrested—

Phonecall

SOUND: Phone ringing

HOLLY:

Hello?

GENERAL WILLARD:

Hello, Holly.

HOLLY:

(Gasps softly)

GENERAL WILLARD:

We need to talk. Don't hang up—it's about Oak.

#oakpodcast #oak podcast #transcripts #season 1 transcripts

6 notes · View notes

angelagiles18 · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 250

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 250 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: Probably now. All right, well, assuming that we’re actually live because it says we’re live. Welcome to Hump Day hangouts today is the 21st of August 2019. And we have got the full crew here. We’ve got Hernan on video which you know rarely happens normally he’s robbing banks and so he has to work just guys do not show his video, but today we’ve been blessed. He’s not robbing banks. So thank you, Hernan, for being here with us.

Hernan: Dude, I always come here in Hump Day Hang out! You know why? I came on video today because they want to show this. What do you got there? This is a powerful coin. They’re rare. They’re extremely rare. Just a handful of people have it, specifically this one. And so as you can see, it says POFU. So it’s a POFU coin and we got one. I got one, a POFU Live 2018 and they’re rumors that they might be a new set of these POFU Live 2019. So I’m just going because of the coin you know it’s just a gift just to cut the check so so anyways yeah I’m really excited about that we have some good stuff coming up so if you want to hang out with the Semantic Mastery crew learn a shit ton of new stuff to grow your business make awesome connections and then have a good time and then maybe have a coin like this one but not this one like another one just come to POFU Live 2019 is going to be pretty cool.

Adam: I have to agree with Hernan. I couldn’t have said it better yeah you’ll get a coin and it will be there is I can confirm a coin this year and it will be unique so definitely show up like Hernan’s doing it if it’s just for the coin that’s cool but hopefully, you’re there for everything else. Um Let’s go down the line real quick. Bradley, you’re next on my screen How are you doing?

Bradley: I’m hoping that I don’t get knocked offline again fucking storm

Adam: so let me know it takes a day off you don’t have to make up whether the stuff you can just say it right?

Bradley: Yeah, I think I missed one Hump Day hang out or two to one was scheduled off and the other one I missed. You guys covered it for me in what? 250 episodes now? Yeah, about that. That’s crazy, man. So, no, I’m not lying. There’s really a storm out there.

Adam: Deal. Well, we got everyone here. Let’s keep moving on Chris Are you there? Yeah, of course. Hey, how you doing?

Chris: Doing good.

Adam: Cool. All right just gonna keep moving Marco you there?

Marco: I’m incognito.

Adam: Marco we got something coming up next week, right?

Marco: Yeah, but it doesn’t work.

Adam: Yeah. So we should have actually I might go and edit the webinar, which is what we’re hinting at or I was to be you know, you’ll learn how to find out what’s not working.

Hernan: Let’s grab the logo, let’s scratch it, you know, like scratch it like that. That doesn’t work like doesn’t work.

Bradley: As I said, even if it did work, Google could shut it down at any time that you know how many times we’ve heard that over the last four years.

Adam: Well, assuming it doesn’t work and people, but people still want to show up. What’s it? What are we going to be talking about Marco?

Marco: Oh, well, hello, ranking Google using Google.

It’s the whole basis for the whole principle. The whole theory when it first started was that it would be much easier.

And I don’t know four years later, will show Wednesday because we just had an awesome case study posted in the Semantic Mastery mastermind we finally went after something e-commerce right. So well, this is local, this is local. This is local, we took on. I mean, I showed what Lowes, Walmart, Amazon, you name it all. All the big boys. We took them on and getting results and you can’t get any better than I did. As they always say the proof is in the pudding. Right? Show me. Don’t tell me Well, I’m going to show you the dress that people can talk. But I’m going to show you and so that’s next Wednesday.

Adam: One hour before Hump Day Hangouts. So make sure you tune in early on next week on Wednesday, to hear Marco will talk shit and to see what’s not working. Definitely highly encourage you, everyone be there. Just like Marco said with the live case study ongoing. We’ll be talking about that a whole lot more. And if you’re not, or if you’re watching right now and you’re not on the Semantic Mastery email list, head over to the website or if you’re watching on the page, sign up, you’ll get an email invitation to the webinar we’re talking about as well as some other great stuff. So real quick, before we jump into the questions I wanted to say to if you’re watching for the first time, thanks for joining us, you can always come here. This will be where the newest latest greatest upcoming Hump Day hangouts will be. And that’s at semanticmastery.com/hdquestions. All right, and then the next step after that is to grab the battle plan. You can find it on the sidebar somewhere where you’re looking at it or if you’re watching the replay on YouTube, you can find the link down below. That’s the best place to get started. You can

Looking for repeatable results. And if you’re looking to take things up another notch or two you’re starting or you’re wanting to grow your digital marketing agency you want to join an experienced community you want to access faster access to real-world info, then the mastermind is probably the place for you to find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com and wherever you are in that area of those groups. MGYB.co is where you can get your done for you services. get hooked up with your syndication networks, you’re always driving stacks, press releases, link building embeds and a ton more coming. To be honest, if you haven’t been over there in a while. Go check it out at MGYB.co. Rob and team have been busy adding some services making some updates so go and check it out. And last but not least, if you’re watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe button. Stay up to date with these as well as other videos that we upload from time to time. And help us out share the channel share the videos you like and give us a holler leave some comments. Let us know what you like and what you’d like more up

Bradley: Don’t we have some new? Am I allowed to talk about the new packages coming out in MGYB?

Adam: Thank you kit. Well yeah we could say it’s potentially because if it doesn’t happen we don’t want people to be depending on him but we’re working on them will say and hopefully they come out so yeah I want to talk about that, Bradley.

Bradley: Well we’ve got some new packages coming out soon very soon with that will make it a lot easier for you guys to place orders because it’s kind of like bundle pet services depending on competition levels like different you know, we’ve kind of a Rob is put that into the link building packages and embed packages now which is great because it makes it easier instead of you guys trying to have to figure out what’s best or have to contact support to figure out which configurations are best depending on your competition levels and stuff that’s going to be suggested right within the sales or the order page excuse me, so it just be on the lookout for that we’ve got three new services new packaged services bundles essentially coming with in the next week or so.

Adam: Outstanding! Guys, that’s all we got right now. Anybody got anything you want to toss him before we hop into questions? All right, well, the last thing I will say to like Hernan was talking about with POFU Live, if you haven’t grabbed your tickets can be in Denver, October 11 to 13th. Just go to POFULive.com. Grab it there. And I encourage you to grab a VIP ticket. It’s a great way to get an extra day of the event we spend a day right before we start with everybody and we go out to an event, have some drinks out some food. And it’s nice to get to know everyone beforehand and then roll into the event you already know everyone, it’s a little bit easier. And just a lot of fun here at

Bradley: Plus one. When some of us drink we tend to get a little bit loose with information. So

Adam: I don’t know where my face and Bradley’s is for everyone else. But like yeah, that’s all right. I guess it’s just one at a time. So yeah, talk to Bradley get all the secrets you’ve ever wanted.

Bradley: All right. If we can jump into it. We got a lot of good questions already. So let’s do it. Grab the screen. Then you guys confirm that you see my screen? Yeah, we can see it. Okay. I don’t know if I can. Does it lock on me when I’m sharing the screen? Do you know? Does anybody know?

Hernan: It does actually Yeah, it does.

Bradley: Okay, good. Alright, cool. So let’s get into these.

What’s The Best Way To Do A Proper NAP Citations For A Service Area Business Having Multiple Zip Codes?

Let’s see, the first one looks like it’s going to be this one says what’s the best way to make a right NAP on citations for a service area business considering that this kind of business can have multiple zip codes since he or the business provides service for an entire city? Well, the citations you’re supposed to use whatever the physical location of the businesses, that’s the address, the name, address, phone number, that’s what a citation is, right? And a P stands for name, address, phone number. So you list in your citations, the actual physical location of the business regardless of the service area. Doesn’t matter what your service area, it doesn’t matter. If you just Service, eight zip codes, you’re going to put the zip code of where the business is physically located. And it’s absolutely critical that you have consistency across everywhere that your nav is published. Its data consistency. And it’s really, really important with citations. So I know what the Google GMB site if it’s a service area business or GMB profile page, whatever you typically want to hide or not show not display the actual physical location. So it basically just hides the street address, but it will still show the city and you know, where the business is located. But force most citation directories or even non business directories, but places where you’re going to publish the name, address and phone number a mention of the business which is still considered a citation, you’re going to want to make sure that you have as much of the data you know like a lot of business directories are going to require you to have the full street address anyways regardless of whether you hide it or not in GMB.

So what’s important is that you make sure that you’re consistent wherever it’s published. In some cases, we’ve talked about, you know, being able to not show the street address in other places that it’s published. For example, if you’re going to publish a press release, you could choose not to list the full street address and just do the business name, city state zip, instead of the street address, city state zip. But again, most business directories if you’re specifically talking about traditional citations, if you’re going to be publishing business directory listings, they’re going to most of them are going to require a full street address. Good question.

Marco: Just to reiterate, a citation is any mention of any of the three points right in the business which is the name, address, and phone number to any of those three, can be a citation. It has nothing to do with other zip codes or service or anything else other than the zip code where the business resides. Because that’s what the citation is referring to where the business is the name of the business and the phone number. That’s a citation.

Should You Use A VPN Or A Proxy To Prevent Footprint Issues When Using Multiple Google Accounts In One IP Address?

Sweet. Okay, um, here’s another good one says, hey guys, I have about five or six Google accounts that I access from the same computer. Some are more personal, but there are two that I would like to do more SEO on for business. Should I be thinking about a VPN or proxy to prevent any sort of footprint from one IP address? No. That’s one thing you can do. But we that’s not even really the most important thing anymore. The most important thing is for each one of those profiles, Google profiles, accounts essentially, to start accruing and building its own history. And one of the ways you can do that is use something like BrowSEO or Ghost browser.

I think we have actually linked either one of those https://www.semanticmastery.com/browseo or the other one is just Ghost Browser https://www.semanticmastery.com/ghostbrowser. I know, those are what we’ve called or I’ve called browser keeper apps. I don’t know if that’s the proper name, but it’s what I’ve always called them. And what that essentially does is allows whenever you log whenever you go into an account, it basically keeps the session logged in. Right? So it’s an app that keeps your session logged into that browser for that particular account or profile. And what happens then is you start to accrue a history. And what’s odd about using like a VPN or proxy, which is what we used to do years ago, was we would have to switch accounts like every time we would switch accounts, we would do a browser, clear cache and cookies essentially. And then we would maybe run see cleaner, for example, which would do a deep clean of cookies and clean like zombie cookies and things like that. But and then we would log in, but that’s really odd now, because how many people are logged into a Google account and then log out from a single device and then log in to a different account? It’s very rare. And so that actually throws up red flags. Your best bet is to use a browser app, I think goes browsers probably the most popular right now that I’m aware of. And just set up a profile for each one of your, you know, Google accounts, essentially. And then each one of those will maintain its browsing session for no matter what it is that you do unless you, you know, purposefully clean it. Does anybody want to comment on that?

How Do You Create Cost-Effective Images For GMB Postings?

Good. Okay. Moving on. Fitz is up next. He says Good day, gents. Thanks for offering this form to help us. My question is how do you guys create images for posting to GMBs? If you’re posting for two times per day? That’s a lot of images. How can that be done cost-effectively and efficiently? What would that cost approximately? Thanks. Um, well, it you know, I don’t know what it costs depend. It depends on how you know how you’re handling it. My VA is my blogging VA is we don’t have any accounts that we post four to five times two per day, four to five times per week. Yeah, sometimes seven some cases 10 times a week, which would be twice per day Monday through Friday, but my VA is typically using a combination of customer or business provided photos, right. So for most of my clients, I have a shared Google Photos album that they or staff members of their business deposit photos into, that my VA has access to. or we use so it’s a combination of customer provided photos or you know, you know, client-provided photos, stock photos, which we don’t particularly like to use, but sometimes we still use them anyways. And also grabbing images from YouTube. We’ve talked about that many times. So find YouTube videos that have you know, relevant scenes or images for whatever business it is that you’re promoting. And use make sure that your select high resolution of the video player and just pause the video take a screenshot of a YouTube video and like an image from the YouTube video. That tends to work well because you can get topically relevant images that are unique because they’re not, you know, those are going to be unique. Very, it’s very unlikely that any of those have ever been used anywhere else on the web. And it for geographically or you know, geo relevancy, you can take screenshot images of like, known, you know, landmarks and stuff around the business from maybe Google Street View or maps and stuff like that. Just got to be careful that you don’t have the Google watermarks in them. Because that could be you could get in trouble for Google for that. Anybody else wants to comment on that?

Marco: I showed in local GMB pro training how to get unlimited local images. Yep. And how to get rid of how to avoid the watermark that that’s all it’s all in the training.

Bradley: There you go. So as far as what does that cost approximately? You know, again, my VA is just do everything on a pay. Most I’ve got one VA that I pay hourly, but the other for blogging, but my other VA is they discharged on a pay per post basis. So it’s just you know, wrapped right into the service. It’s up to them to generate the images. In the case of stock images, I fund an account or my clients one and account depending on what the agreement is with my clients, like, you know, so some clients have funded account my VA has access to that other clients, I actually, it’s just wrapped into the monthly retainer, so I actually fund it, but it’s not very expensive, you know, depends on how what kind of arrangement you have with your VA. Right? It’s very cost-effective guys. Content marketing is one of my primary sources of revenue for my agency because I pay a VA a set amount and I mark it up usually at least 100% if not 150%. So you know, I’m making money off of basically just providing them with the tools and the knowledge of how to do it. And it’s great because it’s just money, its revenue on autopilot, so

Okay, if it says having a good day, send a quick donation to Marco’s charity having not so good a day client or Something driving you nuts. Get back at them and send a small donation. Okay, that’s cool fits. I think Marco would appreciate it.

Marco: Yeah, thanks a lot for I really appreciate it. We’re always needing money, though. Yeah.

Can You Turn Off An RYS Drive Stack From MGYB Store That Is Targeted To A Client’s Web Property?

Gordon’s up, he says, Hey guys, thank you very much again for the great help you provide on hump days. If you order an RYS Drive stack from the MGYB Store and have it targeted to a client’s web property? For example, the GMB listing, can you turn it off? And for a later date if the client stops paying you? And if so, is that something that average consultant can easily do? And if so, how much would MGYB be charged to do it? Yeah, it’s actually really simple to do. Because if you’re, you’re the ones going to be managing it for them anyway. And all you have to do is either go in and delete the drive stack entirely. Do you have access to the Google account, right? The driving because we you know, when you buy a drive stack from us, we’re going to create a new Google account, then build everything in there and then we’ll share it with you and you can take ownership of it or do whatever you want to do. But the Google account that we create, when we create the drive stack that that’s going to be the original owner of the drive stack anyway, so all you gotta do is log in there and just delete it as the owner, right? If you want or just turn it set it to private again to where nobody has access, only you are the owner has to access. However, we do know that.

Marco might be able to comment on this, if you turn something not to the public, but to anybody can view that has the link, you can still pass the juice through that even though it’s not publicly available on the web. But Marco if you turn it to private to where only people that have them or if you set it to private to where only specific permissions can be given to you know, very specific people. Does that stop passing juice or will it still pass juice?

Marco: I haven’t tested that. I can’t ask for that. But I just said it’s a private sense. You’re going to be doing a whole lot of work through that. And then you go in and you just turn it to whatever else you want another client, something personal, you just have to edit it right in that in that niche in that category, whatever it is that you’re targeting. So don’t just set it to private while you go in and you edit the content. What I would recommend is eliminate the Gsite altogether and then build a new one with the old dr site that’s been edited.

Bradley: There you go. And that’s something that we may be able to do in the future. I know Marco has been working on that, being able to go in and edit drive stacks and add stuff to them after they’ve been the initial ones been built. But that’s not available yet. You guys will know about it when it is. Alright.

Are Video Embeds On GMB Posts Useful When Ranking GMB Listings?

Next question. He says By the way, you mentioned previously that we can create a GMB post with a video embedded in it and then use that URL post to run an MGYB embed job but will that provide any significant ranking power to the GMB orr just the post itself? Thanks again. I’ve not done any of that Marco might maybe Marco you can comment on that I’ve not done an embed gig for an MGYB video post. or excuse me for excuse me a GMB video post. I have no idea if that would do anything or not. Marco, can you comment? Hello. You’re muted.

Marco: Yeah, sorry about that. So you do an embed run? Well, that provide Yeah, it’s an iframe. It’s an iframe of the post that has an inner page on the GMB. So of course, it’s going to pass power to everything.

Bradley: Okay, yeah, I mean, again, I haven’t tested any of that. That’s why I couldn’t comment on that. I know the embed gigs that we’ve got running in MGYB right now are working crazy good. In fact, that’s what the case study that Daddea have posted on our mastermind today was about specifically about a combination of our services but the embeds being a big component of that. And, and it’s working really well it’s working well for GMB map embeds. It works well for video embeds it’s just it’s you can do you know you can iframe pretty much anything so there’s a lot of things that we can use the embed service for right now that are super powerful. So

Hernan: yeah, I wanted to add something real quick so that we don’t forget I don’t forget before I forget, as you say that if you like what you’re hearing if you like all of these back and forth between Marco and Bradley and the people within the mastermind, you should really consider joining the mastermind. There’s a lot of high-level technical SEO people in their there are also a lot of business owners right now that are crushing it with all of this stuff that we cannot share publicly. So I would recommend that if you love what these guys are saying Come join us because you can have a lot more of that’s

Bradley: gold star for Hernan again. It’s a good Good, good plug for us, buddy. Thank you.

Does Ordering A Single Tier 1 Network In MGYB Requires Modification To An Existing Syndication Network You Own?

Alright, so the next one is I already have some syndication setup using IFTTT and my blogs, RSS feed to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. If I order a single-tier syndication network, will that require modification to my existing syndication? Or would Semantic Mastery just create a new network from scratch? Thanks. Yeah, typically, we’re going to just create a new one from scratch, which it’s okay. We’re not because remember, we’re not going to create a Facebook page for you. We don’t do that. For a Facebook profile, we just don’t do that. Twitter. Yeah, we can create we would create a Twitter account typically an A new Tumblr account, and it’s okay to have more than one Tumblr or Twitter. I don’t I’m not so much of a Twitter user. It’s part of the networks but I don’t know maybe somebody else can comment on if it’s okay to have multiple Twitter accounts for the same brand. But you can have more than one Tumblr blog or more than one WordPress blog in a syndication network for brand

The goal is not to create a whole bunch of them because that’s very spammy. But it’s okay to have, you know, an additional one or two, it’s not going to hurt us, you know, especially blog properties, it’s really not going to hurt you just don’t want to. What I recommend not doing is creating multiple syndication networks full-on networks, for one particular brand were the only content that’s ever published to them, is the content that’s republished, repost it syndicated from a blog, the money site blog, and that’s because that leaves a footprint, which is clearly used from an IP, you know, search manipulation. But as far as, you know, if you just have a couple of syndication points like Facebook, which we’re not going to touch anyways, Twitter and Tumblr. I don’t think that would be an issue. Can anybody comment on the Twitter part of it?

Hernan: I don’t think so. Either, unless you’re pushing really, really hard on getting those index, but it’s really hard to index a tweet, right? So I don’t think it will be it will be that big of a deal. We have experience sending people through t.co, which is Twitter, you know shortener through goo.gl. And all that sorts of shenanigans, which we had. And you know, it did move the needle. So I don’t think it would be any issues doing that. I wouldn’t, I would still keep it like natural as possible. Yeah. Well, usually you don’t have usually like any company out there. If you think about it, any company or business unless they’re opening Twitter accounts or Twitter profiles for different branches, they don’t have like a lot of Twitter profiles, they have like just one main Twitter profile, and then they seem to get out of that. So I would follow that route.

Bradley: Yeah. And also keep in mind, if it’s a Twitter account, if you’ve already got a Twitter account that you know, you actually really engage with the company and the brand does or whatever that actually engages with, you know, has followers and that kind of stuff and it’s being really used. Then if you have another one that’s created as part of the network, when you buy it from us, it’s not a big deal because it’ll basically be standing

Anyways, until it gets, you know, a lot of engagement. And if you’re not actively using it other than just posting tweets to it, it’s probably not going to affect anything. But that said, just contact support and say you’ve already got your own Twitter account. Again, Tumblr, I wouldn’t care about having a second Tumblr, but Twitter, if you want to just contact support and say, Look, I’ve already got my own Twitter account, please omit that from this network, we can certainly do that. It’s not I mean, then you don’t even get to worry about it. You just got one Twitter account you’re already connected to. So it wouldn’t be an issue. Right? It’s a good question. Oh, there’s also I have a lot of your services appear to benefit sites, excuse me.

What Semantic Mastery Services That Are Beneficial To Location Independent Affiliate Sites?

Also, a lot of your services appear to benefit sites focused on local SEO, what Semantic Mastery service would or would not benefit affiliate sites that are location independent things. Everything that we have will benefit any sort of site we you know, we’ve talked about a lot of our stuff in framed it as a local SEO type or local You know, it produces results for local because a lot audience does local lead gen or local client consulting. So, you know, that’s why you hear a lot of that. However, there sound SEO principles that will benefit pretty much any sort of project. And as Marco always says, which I know, Marco, I’d like for you to chime in on this. Your local is relative. So all of the stuff that we do are really entity validators. Right. So, for example, a syndication network that helps to solidify the brand, right? We something else, kind of a newer term that we’re kicking around as an entity loop, right? Because that’s part of what we do with our @ID pages and all these other things that we create these loops that helped us solidify the entity and it basically puts all these different assets out there on the web, that reinforce what the entity is to Google. And so syndication networks, drive stacks, @ID pages, all of those things are part of that. So Marco, what can you say about that?

Marco: Well, I’ve talked about. There’s quite a bit, right we’ve all talked about this local is absolutely relatives how you look at it. If you box yourself in and you only see relative as your neighborhood, then you’re never going to rank for your city because you stuck in your neighborhood. If you only see the city, then you’re not seeing the county and if you only see in the county, and so on, and so on and so on. What matters now is the entity, the overall entity, and how you’re relating the entity to the niche. If the niche is global, and you focus on local, then that’s where you’re going to get stuck because you have a global entity but you’re at a local level, and vice versa. So it’s it’s really how you focus on it and how you relate your entity to the niche that matters whether the niches local, whether the niches nationwide, just whatever. That’s how you need to look at it and again, next Wednesday during the RYS anniversary webinar. We are going to show an ecom store, where do we I can’t say the name of the ecommerce store. But it’s getting just fantastic results. And, you know, ecommerce is not local, or at least this one. It’s not targeting anything local. It’s really global and focused on the US, of course. But it just goes to show that if you do it the right way, and the way that it’s taught, right, because the training is there in a specific manner because that’s how it works. So as long as you follow the training, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to replicate results. It’s when you start veering from the training and like cutting corners, or not doing everything that we tell you to do, that the results just won’t flow. You cannot expect it to work. The way that it works for us. If you cutting corners, if you know everything that we tell you you should do.

Bradley: That’s a good point because last, not last week, because we didn’t have a mastermind webinar last week, but the week before that was part of, you know, we covered that I covered that a bit in-depth because you can’t do one part of everything that we teach kind of builds upon each other. They work for hand in hand, the sum of the parts are large, the whole is the sum of the whole is larger than this, the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. Does that make sense? I think I said that right. This time, it took me a minute to think through that. But the whole is looking bigger than the sum of its parts. In other words, if you put all of the components together, that we teach in the way that we teach it, then you will get a significant effect from it. But if you just do, one, one of them, or two of them were bits and pieces of them. It’s not like let’s say there were four components, right? If you only did one component, you’re not going to get 25% of the results. Right. It’s lesser than that. Like, in other words, if all four components are put together and done right, then you should get 100% results right well

Whatever the hundred percent is, I’m just saying, if you just do one of those four components, then it’s not going to give you 25% of the results. It’s less than that as my point, you have to do the things that we you know, the way that we get results is what we teach. I know there are other ways is more than what there’s a there’s more one way more than one way to skin a cat right? So there are other methods out there that will work as well I get all that but you know, we teach what works for us and it works really well and we haven’t Knock Knock on wood we haven’t had to deal with any penalty issues or anything in years. So and you can feel very blessed for that reason. But if you just doing parts of it, it’s you’re not going to get the full results. So as Marco said, you want to follow the if you’re going to be using our stuff, use it the way that we suggest using it including building all of the components out and putting them together with the correct way. Okay, don’t cut corners or you won’t get results and then you’ll say oh, well their stuff doesn’t work. Now every time we have to analyze somebody that claims that stuff doesn’t work. It’s because they cut corners essentially or they didn’t complete all of the stuff. So

Marco: we just had someone who ordered a drive stack without the G site say that it’s been over 21 days cleared the Google that why am I not seeing results? I thought someone said that I would be getting results.

We never said that if you read is the thing when we deliver the drive stack and the decision or anything that has to do with our is you get it done for you User’s Guide. I wrote it so I thought what the fuck is in it? I I tell people specifically, this is what you need to do sometimes. all that’s required as a drive stack, this is how I say it. And then at other times, you might be able to do more. That’s why we came up with the battle plan. The battle plan is very specific syndication network, drive stack and then into the drive stack you might need press releases you might need embeds, you might need you might need link builds. You might need to push videos, you might need another embed, run another link building right

On this ecommerce store, I went to 300,000 links before it got a nice push. So it’s sometimes it’s not just a one, but about link building push. That’ll do it guys, it depends on the competition. If you’re going up against Amazon, and you get 2500 links to your drive stack. Are you seriously telling me that you’re expecting results against Amazon? with that? It’s a joke. I mean, you have to look at your competition, get your competition, understand how much work it is that you need to do to take on your competition. And is it going to be worth the money going after that competition Are you better off going after something else? But if you’re in it to win it, then you have to go balls to the wall, you have to go out you have to just hit it and hit it and hit it again until you get the desired results but you cannot just get one thing. say okay, this is good enough nominate What was it? I’m going to rank for Toronto DUI attorneys I lawyer DUI attorney. No, no.

Bradley: We got to tell that story real quick. We had a member come and join our mastermind This is three or four years ago now. And he was in our mastermind for I don’t know, maybe two months, he built a syndication network that was only partially complete. And did like, three posts to his blog for targeting DUI attorney Toronto or on it was in Canada, either Toronto or Ontario or something like that DUI lawyer DUI attorney. And he basically said your stuff doesn’t work. Because I’m not ranking on page one for DUI attorney Toronto or whatever it was. And I said, Well, let me take a look at what you got. It was a partially completed syndication network with three blog posts. And that was it was like I was like, Yeah, you’re I’ve done work. So it was funny. He didn’t stay with us.

What Type Of Report Should You Present To The Client After Building A Syndication Network?

Anyways, long as Let’s move on. The next one is after building a syndication network for the client. I like this question. By the way, after building a syndication network for a client, what’s the best type of reporting you could do for them to make sure that they know it was worth it? Well, in the past years ago, up until really last year, I would have said, you know, rank reports are one of the ways that you could you could show a client that it’s working because as long as your remember, syndication network alone isn’t going to do much it does help to solidify the entity, there’s no doubt and I’ve proven that recently, even with the most recent business that I launched. But the trick with a syndication network and always has been is to post publish consistently and regularly to it. And especially if it’s connected to a money site. It’s the same thing for YouTube. Because what happens is it will theme the network over time. In other words, it starts to build up more authority and relevancy, topical, relevancy, and location, relevancy if it’s for local stuff.

As more content accrues across the network, right?

So and they become aged and more trusted and all of that. So the idea with the syndication network is to, and this is what I always recommend guys, and I’ve said this since day one when it comes to client work, content marketing is no, it’s not an option. It’s part of my SEO, monthly services, right, that they’re paying them monthly. And part of that is content marketing, which includes blog posts.

You know, if it’s a lead gen property that I own, I might not blog all the time, or I might not have vas blog all the time. Because once I get results, and I get it to rank, and typically I, you know, can pull back in some cases, I can pull back to where it reduces my expenses for lead generation properties. But for clients, I always tell them, Look, if we pulled back, there’s a possibility that you could slip in, you know, in results, you could stop getting as good results, and then there’s always a catch-up period. So there’s going to be a delay but between when you start to stop getting good as good results and the time that we can get them back for you. So I just recommend never taking your foot off the gas. So that’s what I always recommend to clients and so it’s an ongoing thing.

As far as how do you report to them like I rankings are no longer my primary reporting method, I still include rank reports. I’m not gonna lie to my clients, guys. But I made it clear to them well over a year ago now, that it’s because of the way that the algorithm is now with mobile index first and proximity and all of that, that the rank reporters are very, they’re inaccurate, they may provide an indication as to the health, the ranking health of something but they are there they are really rather inaccurate. Because it really depends on where somebody is, what kind of device they’re searching from their search history, all of that kind of stuff influences search rankings now, for each individual user. So what we focus on and I know my partners will agree, is that we focus more on providing traffic kind of statistics that so analytics GMB Insights, Google Search Console. For Search Console, you could show that there are years the site is being given as getting more impressions, which means that the site is being recognized by Google for more keyword search queries and given impressions. You could for Analytics, you can show traffic increasing for GMB insights, more maps activity, you know, impressions clicks, click for driving directions as storefront phone calls, those kinds of things. So, my primary reporting methods to my clients now are analytics GMB Insights and Search Console. And if I’m doing AdWords stuff, obviously, you know, Google Ads stuff, I can show them ads, traffic statistics, and in rank, reports are always thrown in there, but they’re kind of a secondary thing. They’re not you know, I’ve made it real clear that they’re no longer the primary reporting method.

Marco: Alright, so specifically, around or regarding the syndication network. The conversation needs to be around branding. And ongoing brand recognition. That’s how you’re reporting well. The initial conversation with the client, that’s what needs to take place, you’re going to tell the client that you’re going to have the brand throughout the web, you go you and that you’re going to be working on ongoing brand recognition, which just means that you go and add, because we have a ton of an update videos, you add new profiles, according to the updates that Bradley does on an ongoing basis. It’s very simple you keep if you keep the conversation that way, and that you’ll be working on the brand and that you’ll be working on brand recognition, then you can bring in content syndication of as part of it, because the only way that you could that you could get the brand that you can get a branded correctly and you can get the brand recognized is by posting on a regular basis into these different social media web two point O properties that you’re going to create. That’s how I would frame the conversation with the client. So that

There’s nothing else that you have to account for it no ranking or anything else. Now, as Bradley said, the second part of this would also be that you’re paying for me getting paid for results. That’s at least how I do it. And I know Bradley does it the same way my partners do, you get paid because you produce results. And so as long as as long as you can show that you’re producing results, which is all of the things Bradley said and also phone calls, you make sure that you have a way to get into those phone call your clients phone calls to see and to be able to show the client that you have affected the number of calls that have come into the business on a monthly basis and it’s because of your work and what you’ve done. That’s how I would frame the recording.

Hernan: Yeah, I totally second and third, what these guys were saying. The reason why is because if you if you’re providing a keyword report, you’re missing so much like you’re leaving so much out of the table because people do not search as the Google Keyword Planner tells you that they search, right? They have so many variations, but they are infinite variations of any keyword imaginable. Right? So having that in mind, the reality is those business owners, they don’t get they don’t care if they’re like ranking number one or number two, what they do care is how many new clients you’re generating. So the best report, in my opinion, would be a really simple one would be before hiring me or my firm, my agency, how much how many how much money or how much revenue how many sales you are doing? Now after hiring me 30 days 60 days down the road has done increase. If it does, then that means that we’re doing something right. So just like the bare-bones reports that will be added, you can add impressions, you can add the increase in traffic, I don’t know the longer length of sessions, you know, under website decrease, decrease the bounce rate and all that good stuff. But at the end of the day, what our business owners should be focusing upon is, is your help helping them or easier or your services, helping them move the needle and move their business forward. Right? a business owner that is like focusing on Oh, well with you, we decrease one spot, or we, you know, like, we lose like 10% of our rankings, that guy is putting their, their main focus and energy where there’s where it shouldn’t be, which is that’s your job, you know, that’s why they’re hiring you. So that’s my two cents.

Bradley: Okay, oh, I have an update. I had a client that had a GMB that was suspended from their new Pest Control industry. And I just went in and made a slight edit and it got suspended and it’s a legit business. It’s been legit for seven years. It wasn’t spammy. Nothing I did was spammy. We’ve never done anything spammy for that business. And it’s always

Just dominated in its local area, and then it got suspended. And it took, I tried to do a reconsideration request or reinstatement request. And I got denied and it took four weeks for them to reply back finally and say that Nope, it’s in violation of quality guidelines, which is total BS. So I replied back said, you know, please explain, you know, there’s nothing was, you know, anyways, I rebooted it, but of course, I never got a reply. So I talked to my client about two weeks ago and told him that you know, I was going to have to create a spam listing in the same area in order for us to generate a new one unless he want wanted to go through the processes the actual business owner, the bonafide business owner, because I did it through my manager account as a manager of the GMB but I had him do it. I asked him if he would do it under his owners’ account. And so he submitted a reinstatement request. And it took only about two, two weeks, maybe two and a half weeks and we just got notification yesterday that the listing has gone live again. And I’ve confirmed that it is back. So just so you guys know if anybody that has a GMB, you know, the newer ones I don’t know, but this was an aged one it’s been in existence for like seven years and it got suspended because of just a slight edit that I made to it, which was bullshit. It was just one of those algorithmic suspensions, I believe, and but they wouldn’t allow me they denied my request to reinstate as a manager. But as the business owner, he was able to get it reinstated and about half the time that it took them to even reply to me so just so you guys know, that’s something you may want to check out if you run into the same issue. Okay.

How Do You Create A New GMB Listing For A Business Expansion Without Changing The Existing GMB Page?

Okay, wills up and we’ve got lots more questions, guys. So I’m going to try to roll through these a little bit quicker will says Hey, guys, I have a client that has a current GMB listing and has recently expanded to a new location. He doesn’t want to change the current GMB listing and instead wants to know if there’s a way of creating a new GM dealer listing for the new location. The new location has its own phone number and business address. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. If it’s especially if it’s got its own business address, that’s a genuine new location. So there’s no reason why you can’t set up another GMB listing for that. postcard verify it to to the new business address, all I would recommend is that you create a separate landing page on the same if you’re going to use the same website, just create a location-specific landing page and use that as the website URL and that new GMB listing for the new location. So it makes sense. But yes, as long as you got a unique address and a unique phone number, and like I said, I would recommend using a unique URL, not a new website, just it could be a location page and inner page of the same website. This location-specific so your brand.com/locationname, does that make sense? Or city or whatever like that they use that as the actual website URL. Then there’s no reason why you can’t create a new GMB for that I would absolutely do that. Okay.

Marco: Totally agree.

Should You Use The Blog In Shopify Or Should You Build A WordPress Blog On A Subdomain?

Bradley: Moving on. The next one is some very nice things that this gentleman says and he says question one actually, I am trying to rank a Shopify store for the syndication network. Oh, I’m trying to rank a Shopify store and for the syndication network, I have two options which I guess a) either host a WordPress blog on my subdomain and use it as the syndication source or b) just post blogs on Shopify as they have an RSS feed so I can use that as a source. So I’m confused about which way to go that provides more link juice and authority to my main ecommerce site. Also, if I have a normal woo commerce store, Then should I use a blog subdomain or not? Okay, I’m not an econ guy. I’m going to give you my opinion and maybe some of the other guys can chime in because I know really none of us do much any calm stuff, really. My opinion is if you can blog on a Shopify store that may be great, typically that you can get a little bit more authority from blogging from the actual money site itself. But I don’t know how much how, first of all, how those blogs posts are going to look, I don’t know how you know what it looks like when it’s syndicated. In other words, I don’t know how much control you have over the content that you know, like the like, is like a WYSIWYG editor. In other words, can you add elements to the content and you know, the blog posts, all that kind of stuff? I don’t know, because I’ve never done Shopify stuff.

With WordPress, you know, what you know, I know what you can get with WordPress, and you probably know as well. So if you use a subdomain on an ecommerce site as your blog as content center, distribution engine, essentially, you know that you have really a lot of control over the content and how it’s formatted and the elements and what it looks like and what it looks like syndicated and what happens if you mirror and we always talk about this, you know, network Empire kind of coined a term it’s called theme mirroring. So if you mirror and if you create a subdomain, a blog, a WordPress installation on a subdomain for your money site, then if you create a theme, mirrored structure, so in other words, a silo structure based upon the categories within your store, and you basically link your category URLs, do a 301 redirect from your category URLs over to your category pages on your money site. Then you do all of your blogging from your subdomain, you place your posts in the correct categories, which you know and do all of your internal linking to your store pages, then you can use the blog and still push 90% of all the juice back to this the money site. So you know, the the main site, the root domain, which would be your Shopify store, we’ve had I know I don’t really do any ecommerce stuff, but I have done content marketing for ecommerce clients in the past and we’ve always been able to get really good results doing that exact same method that I just covered. Does anybody else want to go on that?

Hernan: Yeah, I want to come in something. But now Yeah, I want to I wanted to say real quick that Shopify does come with a block solution and it will allow you to SEO optimize it. But the reality is that here with a WordPress subdomain, I would like to know what Adam has to say about this because I know that he’s been playing with Shopify a little bit as well. But with a Shopify store, like if you’re trying to rank on Google for your Shopify store, go the WordPress route, like WordPress is second to none when it comes to SEO capabilities. Yeah, like you can get away with the Shopify blog. But it’s not like unless you’re doing paid media, which 99% of Shopify owners, you know, do paid media by, by that I mean, sending traffic to an article via Facebook ads or Google ads or you know, sending like actually paid traffic to your store, which is like 99% of the Shopify stores out there. Other than that, then I would definitely suggest what Brad is just said because you can control that way. One of the, if not the best one of the best SEO optimized platforms in the world, which is WordPress, if you’re planning on blogging, right, number one and also number two, you can still leverage the ease of use that that Shopify has. So that would be my take on it.

Adam: Yeah, I’m basically going to pair it with what Hernan says and just agree I would probably go with if you have the choice, go with WordPress, especially if you’re more familiar with it and getting it set up. But other than that, as far as the actual benefit these days, I haven’t seen anything. Have you guys seen any actual studies recently about whether that Okay, yeah, we should dig that up? If anyone’s watching in the scene one recently let us know. Yeah, I’ve been working a lot with the emails and optimizing like actual landing pages but not so much the back end or you know using subdomains. So

Marco: Yeah, I don’t know one against the other, but the econ taste study it will be talking about next week is a.com TLD with it with a blog. It’s not a Shopify store anything it’s built on WordPress. Right. WooCommerce. Yeah, that’s what’s getting. It is WooCommerce. And that’s what’s getting syndicated. Right. It’s getting syndicated from the from the.com TLD. Right.

Hernan: Yeah. So Shopify, it’s really, really powerful. And it’s not like it’s simple. Because you don’t want to you don’t have to fuck around with hosting and whatnot, they will allow you to add subdomains to your domain. And then at the end of the day, like, you can still use Claudio, which is the solution that animates you know, he’s really good at that. So you can use Claudio to you know, to send emails, and then you will be basically getting the best of both worlds, which would be the SEO world and the ecommerce store. It’d be pretty cool.

Adam: So yeah. I’m taking the page off finance book to the like, if don’t spend so much time worrying about it, like if it’s going to take a couple of weeks, like or a month, you know to like get the subdomain or get the client or who if it’s yours, like, just start getting some content out there. And you can you know, switch the syndication point like start if you’ve got content, check out Shopify that way, if you are doing this for a client, maybe you know how the blog works when someone’s like, no, I refuse to do it this way. But in the meantime, yeah, would go the WordPress route.

What’s The Best Way To Link Review And Curate Content To The Money Site?

So question number two is for creating blog posts, both review and curated type posts. What would be the best way of linking to my money sites? Should the blog content be linked to category pages or direct product links, either-or, in some cases, both? It just it really just depends on what your content of the blog post is. So for example, my blog is about 10 best baby products. So what I linked to all 10 products individually or just the baby category page. In that case, I would probably link to the category page but you do want some internal link diversity. In other words, you want to keep your silos tight. So what I just mentioned about if you’re creating a blog on a subdomain, and like WordPress blog, essentially, you’re going to want to silo the site into categories just like you would have your products. So you know, your products go into specific categories, because it’s logical for them to go into the categories that they’re in. Well, you want to stack your content the exact same way. So again, you would, for the WordPress category URL, you can set up three one redirects from the category URLs to the category pages on your money site, your Shopify site, or ecommerce site. But then in the actual blog posts themselves, as I said, you want to have you want to any posts that you place in a product category, and likewise, a content category on the blog. You want to link to both the products within that category and the category page itself, not both at the same time all the time. What I’m saying is you do want to switch up your internal linking strategy somewhat to were sometimes only into the category page, sometimes you’re linking to a product or two within that same category. And it really just depends on what the content is about. But in that case, I wouldn’t link to all 10 baby products individually. I mean, you could, it wouldn’t hurt anything. Because as long as they’re all still in the same category, it’s still going to pass some juice. But what we teach in the mastermind, and I know I can’t get too deep into this at all his specific ways to do internal linking now, especially within silo structure, tight silo structures, that can get really, really good results. So again, I would recommend it. What you don’t do though, is cross-post from within one category to another with internal links, if it makes sense to do so from a reader or viewer standpoint, for strictly SEO purposes, you don’t want to cross-link from the within the same post to other categories or other products within other categories. If you’re going to for the users benefit, then nofollow those links as a nofollow tag or attribute to those links, okay.

Marco: Back to a nod or heads of the network Empire again, brilliancy still works like crazy. So if you work bottom-up so that your blog posts are pushing up that top-level category, just say you think I think about it this way you going, you’re going after the top of the pyramid, but what holds the top of that pyramid is all the work that you did on the bottom. So pushing from the bottom up, you pushing up that top-level category, your top market level keyword, and all of the work that you do to push that top-level category up is going to carry everything up along it as up as the top market level category begins to climb up in the SERPs. it’ll pull everything along so it’ll have the effect that he’s looking for, if he doesn’t, right, but where he can get the most value from this is if he joins the mastermind and comes to comes and listens to what we’ve been doing. As far as internal linking in concerned.

Bradley: Yeah, we’ve only got five minutes left. So I’m going to skip that last part of the question. It looks like Adam dropped a link for the art.

Adam: I just want to say real quick if anyone else is interested in this, we did a webinar. This was a couple of years ago now with Scott Scanlon and curation suite and he talked a lot he had some great info about content curation so on the content side, go check that out. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend the tool itself. Right now, I’ve been hearing some issues with people not being responded to but watch the webinar for the content information, how to generate content. There are some great ideas. Yeah.

Does Hiding An Adress On A GMB Listing Affect Citations?

Alright, so then this one says, Is there a way to use all the all of the products without giving away your full address for privacy reasons? And can we change address easily? Does that affect citations and everything else? I set up my Google business with full address but chose to hide it then did citations using just the part of Google address that does show like city-state zip? Yeah, I mean,

yes, and no. If it’s best to be able to use the full address, there’s no question. But if you for whatever reason you absolutely want to hide the street address, then what I would recommend is on every time that you create a citation that you don’t include the street address you as long as you keep them consistent, right and as long as the name is unique, you know if it’s if it’s a name that can be ambiguous aided with others. In other words, if there is another business with a similar name, that is in close proximity to you, and you try to just get away with city-state, zip, name, city, state, zip and phone number and then obviously URL, then that can cause and regulation, right, that can get muddy the waters a bit for both your business as well as your competitors business that has a similar name, and can cause both of you guys to have issues with ranking or getting results. So but as long as it’s unique, a unique name and you’ve got you know, like I said unique phone number unique web address, then then you can get away with that.

Although it’s still his best to give it more data than less data, so again, I would recommend that you know, if if, if at all possible, just use the address. Remember, most of the places that you’re going to be publishing the address aren’t really going to get it’s free for SEO purposes, right? So you’re not going to get a lot of eyeballs to it, which is going to reveal like for people to come knocking at your door pissed off or whatever like it’s not I mean, you shouldn’t really have to worry about that in my opinion. But you know, like I said, as long as you stay consistent and you don’t have a common type name that will and cause ambiguous ation with another type of business which would hurt both of you, not just you. Does that make sense? Then you can get away with that but more data is better than fewer data in that case. Okay.

All right. This is the last question guys unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to get to the rest of them.

Warning To PressCable’s PR Syndication Network Posting To PBN Junk Sites

He says You guys rock I want to add a few things to the conversation in case you can help someone Bradley mentioned a few times I press cable has a lot of PBN type junk sites in their PR syndication network. I’ve posted a few prs recently and they appear to have gotten worse. You know, unfortunately, some some some of the pbn disk or a press release distribution services are more worried about inflating their distribution numbers than they are about the quality of the distribution sites. And that’s unfortunate. I can’t comment on it anymore Just because I haven’t used them in quite some time. I’m happy with my providers. So you can now verify a Bing places maps listing based on your verified GMB listing. Bing Yahoo still covers about 30% of search if we believe the public statements are probably worth doing for all properties. No, I agree. I absolutely agree.

Verify Bing Places Based On Verified GMB Listing

You know, I’m even using Bing Ads and a couple of businesses that are my own business for one but also for a couple of other businesses because there is traffic and is not nearly as much as Google guys, but Bing Ads work and same thing I imagined with search but or excuse me, organic stuff and local stuff is being ads when you Run Bing Ads. They appear on Bing, Yahoo, and AOL Who the hell still uses AOL as a browser. But they do they appear there too. And I do get traffic from there and the clicks are cheaper than they are for Google PPC as well.

Hernan: Dude, specifically for your demographic for the stuff that you’re doing with the land stuff that is a slam dunk because it’s exactly the demographic that you want to target.

Bradley: So the older demographic, you me, hey, well, browsers. Yeah, I didn’t want to say it. But uh, yeah, yeah. That’s funny.

What Are The Benefits Of Using RYS Drive Stack?

Man, Marco. If you got 30 more seconds. Let’s cover this other one. Just because I think that’s a perfect ending question. What is the main reason people use an RYS drive stack is it only to help

Marco: No, you stop it right there, power, hour wherever you want it to go. Has nothing to do with it with a GMB. It has nothing to do with anything. You want it to be the GMB in be it. The what he called the GMB, the business site, your money site, a tier-one branded property wherever you want the power to go. That’s where you direct power. And that’s where it goes. That’s right. That’s why you use it. And the power that you’re going to push behind that is going to end up wherever you’ve connected it. That’s why. So just we’re going to talk about this next week. And it’s at five o'clock. So we do have to wrap it up, guys, but I’m just going to point this out really quick because this is the four-year-old case study from a poorly built syndication or drive stack that I built on my own the day that Marco revealed this strategy to me, and I always show this but the reason why is because it just goes to show you, I built a drive stack to push the power to the G site of a dry stack, right. And you can see that it’s four years later because this is the day that it was published. You can see it’s also one of the properties in that stack that all I did was took the same Drive files from the RYS stack and embedded them into a wordpress. com post for

From my you know Bradley better dot WordPress com and that you can see the day it was published it was Saturday, May 16, 2015. And I’m ranking number one for Virginia SEO, SEO Virginia, Virginia SEO agency like multiple variations of that keyword and have been for four years over four years now.

When all we did like the primary, the focal point of where we were pushing the where I was pushing the juice with this particular drive stack was the G site. And you can see that that’s what’s ranking. We’ve learned or you know, Marco probably already knew this but what we you can push the juice of an RSRYS Drive stacked anywhere you want it to go. If you want it to be a GMB map listing, it’ll be a GMA map, listen, you want it to push you a money site. It can be a money site, it can be a web to auto property, a tier-one branded entity, it can be anything the G site, obviously, it can be anywhere that you want to push. It just depends on where you want and that’s when you go to order a stack. It says specifically, what is your primary target URL, and that’s what you want to push it to

So yeah, but I don’t know if it works. It doesn’t work. Yeah, shoot, shoot come next week to see how it doesn’t work. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t work it can if it does work. And if it does work, Google can shut it down and anytime, right?

The world could end tomorrow. So let’s all go hide under the bed. Alright, well, thanks, everybody for being here. We do have a mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you guys in the mastermind on that. Otherwise, we’ll see you guys next week. Thanks, everybody. All right.

Always pitch fest.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 250 published first on your-t1-blog-url https://ift.tt/1WMpNvB August 26, 2019 at 06:54PM Semantic Mastery https://ift.tt/2YeHIxM

0 notes

beyondvapepage · 5 years ago