#feel free to comment at which point they should drop the f-bomb

[emachinescat]

Explosion + Hands + Jack

A MacGyver Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat ​

@febuwhump ​ day 22 - burned

Summary: A bomb Mac is disposing of goes off prematurely – and Mac’s hands pay the price. Or, the time when Jack has to be Mac's hands. 

Characters: Mac, Jack

Words: 2,945

TW: Relatively graphic description of burns

Note: This story is based loosely off a scene from classic MacGyver. Also, please take the vague MacGyverism with a grain of salt. I did some research (and also wrote this before Mac made the same thing a different way on the newest episode), but I also took some creative liberties.

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this!

"These have to be the stupidest bad guys I've ever met," Jack griped. He sat in an old dining chair, ankles lashed together with rope and hands tied behind his back. MacGyver was his mirror image, tied similarly, in another chair, back to back with his partner. Their bound hands had been connected to each other, so every time Mac moved, working the ropes, Jack's arms jerked with him.

Even though he couldn't see Mac's face, he could clearly picture the raised eyebrow in his mind's eye as Mac responded dryly, "And you're… complaining about it?"

A cramp ran through Jack's upper back, and he instinctively rolled his shoulders. Mac squawked indignantly as Jack's movement impeded his progress. "Hey, watch it! You almost made me stab myself!"

"Sorry." Jack paused for a brief moment, trying not to think about why Mac was working so feverishly to cut through the thick ropes with his knife – seriously, they hadn't taken his knife before they'd tied them up! – without cutting himself or Jack. "You about got it, hoss?"

Mac's voice was strained with concentration when he responded. "Just … about," he grunted. "Keep talking."

Jack smirked. "Can't get enough of hearing ol' Jack's wisdom, huh?"

"It's more like white noise, but if it makes you feel better…"

"It does." Jack continued on his earlier line of conversation. "I'm just sayin', man, these lunatics didn't leave nobody here to keep an eye on us, and they left Angus MacGyver tied with regular ol' rope with his SAK in his pocket and a room stock fulla toys he can use to escape." When he spoke, Jack's Texas drawl was thicker than usual. He'd noticed that his accent got more pronounced when he was nervous or in a rough situation. He'd mentioned it to Mac once, and his partner had quickly informed him that it was more than likely a coping mechanism, Jack's way of unconsciously trying to keep himself calm. Jack disagreed. He was convinced that his cowboy twang got heavier in nerve wracking situations because he was actively channeling the spirit of Clint Eastwood and his mind and body were preparing him to do some insanely awesome hero stuff to fix the situation.

"Yeah, well… they also left a bomb in the room," Mac reasoned. Jack could feel the sawing motion as Mac carefully made his way through the rope. Any other time, Jack knew that he would have cut through it in half the time, but with all four of their collective hands gathered together in one bundle of scratchy rope, Mac had to move slowly, methodically, so he didn't cut either one of them. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem for him to take his time, but as Mac had so helpfully pointed out, there was the matter of a ticking bomb just out of arm's reach. And they had no idea how much time was left.

Jack tried to paint their situation in a better light. "It's just a little one. The explosion won't even be all that big."

"No," Mac agreed, "but with all the gasoline they scattered around us, I think it's a safe bet that the size of the explosion won't matter, since we'll burn with the warehouse."

A snap, a sigh of relief, and then Jack felt Mac move in the chair, and knew he was bending forward to untie his feet. As soon as he was free, Mac pelted forward so quickly that he pushed the chairs back a couple of inches, Jack and all. He didn't stop to untie Jack – no time – but he did leave the SAK in his palm. Jack immediately started sawing at his own ropes.

He was still working when he heard Mac swear loudly from somewhere behind him. A queasy dread settled in Jack's gut.

"Talk to me, Mac!"

"No time!" Mac spat, and Jack knew, heart stuttering, that his partner wasn't just saying that he had no time to talk – there was no time on the bomb.

"I can't disarm it!" Mac yelled, his voice growing farther away as he ran, presumably with the bomb in tow, away from Jack. "I'm going to try to contain it!"

Jack continued to cut at the ropes – almost there! He heard the sound of something metal being pried open, and he remembered that there was a large dumpster near the door of the warehouse, one of those industrial ones. Hope rose cautiously within him. Mac had done similar things before; there was no reason why it shouldn't work this time!

The one thing that he didn't factor in, however, was the bomb's timer running out before Mac could close the dumpster.

He heard the explosion, a terrible, anguished scream, and then, the worst sound of all – low, uncontrollable, rocking sobs of pain.

Jack cut himself three times in his haste to get free, but he made it to Mac's side in less than a minute. What he saw made his stomach curdle and his hands shake as he pulled Mac back, further from the smoking dumpster.

Mac had curled into himself on the floor, his hands gnarled before him in pain. Once they'd moved a safe distance from the mostly contained bomb, Jack took a closer look at them and nearly vomited – not from the blood or the burns themselves, but from the knowledge that these were Mac's hands that had been caught in the explosion, burned, blistered, and bloody almost beyond recognition. Jack knew he should be grateful that all of Mac's fingers were intact, but it was hard to feel thankful for anything when Mac's hands could serve as a suitable stand-in for ground beef.

Mac's head was low, chin flush against his chest, his shoulders trembling in pain. Jack remembered when Mac had sustained first and second degree burns pulling his dumb ass out of a crematorium. Jack too had been burned on the bottoms of his feet, and the healing process for both Mac and himself had been one of the most painful experiences either of them could recall in recent memory. There had been debriding, cleaning, bandages, antibiotics, and, in Mac's case, a few sessions of physical therapy.

This was so much worse.

"Mac, buddy," Jack entreated, trying to keep his voice steady for his partner's sake. His accent was slathered liberally on every syllable, his voice gentle and quiet, like he was approaching a startled horse. "I need you to look at me. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

Mac didn't respond, just heaved in a great gulp of air, and the breath rattled in his lungs like the last throes of a dying man. The sound clenched its icy fist around Jack's heart. He reached out, placing his index and middle fingers carefully beneath Mac's chin and lifting his kid's head to look him in the eyes. What he saw there nearly killed him.

Jack had been Mac's overwatch for a long time, and he'd seen the kid in a lot of less than ideal situations – roughed up, sick, shot, you name it. But never had Jack seen the level of fear and pain blazing in Mac's eyes as he did now. Tear streaks ran down his face, which was sooty and a bit red, especially around his forehead, but the burns on his face were superficial. Definitely first-degree. He'd managed to shield his face and eyes from the blast.

But his hands… Mac had to have just let go of the bomb to drop it in the dumpster for his hands to look like that but still be basically intact. Jack moved his hand from Mac's chin and cupped his partner's face in his hand, gently brushing a tear away, trying to get Mac's attention on him, to calm him down. "Mac, talk to me." He had no idea how he was keeping himself from crying right alongside his friend. "I need to know you're with me."

Mac hiccuped, took a deep breath through his nose and made a visible effort to calm himself down. When he spoke, every bit of the agony Jack saw in his face translated to his voice. "I–I'm okay."

Jack chuckled, but there was no humor to it. "I don't believe that for a second. But you will be, ya hear me?"

Mac nodded shakily, a low, keening whine building at the base of his throat like a wounded hound dog. He choked out, "It h-hurts."

"I know, bud. Can I see your hands?"

Mac shook his head, pulling his hands closer to his body. "Not yet. We n-need to find a way out of here f-f-first." Mac's teeth had started chattering, which sent a whole new wave of fear tearing through Jack's body. If Mac was going into shock, they were really out of time. And as much as Jack wanted to get a better idea of the damage, figure out what they were working with, he knew Mac was right. In all the chaos and worry, he'd almost forgotten that they were still locked in the warehouse with a smoking dumpster slowly turning the air against them. From where they sat on the floor, the air wasn't bad yet, but they needed to kick it into third gear – it wouldn't stay that way for long.

"Okay," Jack agreed. "How do we get out? As I recall, they've padlocked all the doors from the outside, and this whole place is made of steel. Can you figure out how to make something to bust those doors down?"

Mac's eyes, glazed with pain, darted around the warehouse, which had until very recently been one of the stashes of the cartel that had captured them. "Uhhh…" His voice broke, and Jack saw Mac's hands twitch in a painful spasm out of the corner of his eye. Fresh tears welled up, and Mac blew out a shaky breath. "Okay. Yeah. We should b-be able to make a blowtorch to c-cut us out of here."

Jack shot Mac a dubious look. "You're not makin' anything hoss, and I sure as hell don't know how to make a blowtorch. Think you got it in you to walk me through it?"

Mac didn't look so sure, and Jack's stomach flipped as he saw how much the trembling had increased. Still, MacGyver was never one to admit defeat, and he nodded. His voice was thick with pain, dry and raspy, but he managed to walk Jack through a collection of basic supplies, all of which were readily available in their current space – an empty syringe, a thumbtack, pliers, lighter fluid, and Jack's own lighter, which the bad guys had left on him. Seems the only things they'd actually taken were their prisoner's phones.

By the time Mac had coached Jack through the process of actually building the DIY blowtorch, an incredibly precise and delicate venture that Jack barely managed with his sausage-like fingers, smoke was beginning to gather in earnest, and Mac was shaking so badly that he sounded like he was working a jackhammer when he talked. But Jack had finished it, and to his shock and utter relief, it worked – he'd not doubted Mac, of course, but his own ability to bring Mac's idea to fruition – and Mac had offered a pained, crooked smile at him, and said, "S-s-see, we m-make a p-p-pretty good t-team." Then, whether from pain or shock or hyperventilation, he passed out, and Jack only spared enough time to check his vitals before he used his lighter-turned-blowtorch to cut his way through the steel wall of the warehouse.

It was a slow process, and Jack burned himself no less four times, but at last he'd carved their escape route. The men who'd left them here to burn had gone. Jack hoisted Mac onto his shoulder, taking extra care not to jostle his mangled hands, and set out in search of a phone – he knew there was a gas station a few miles away.

Mac just had to hold on until then.

***

24 Hours Later

Jack was there when Mac woke up from his first surgery.

Jack was always there when Mac woke up in medical.

Mac peered at him through groggy, drug-hazy eyes and gave his partner a weak smile. "Hey, Jack."

Jack fought the urge to pull the kid into the tightest bear hug he'd ever experienced. Only a glance down at Mac's heavily bandaged hands lying delicately on his chest kept him where he was, in the cushioned hospital chair that played at being comfortable but really wasn't after ten minutes. Jack had been sitting in it for nearly sixteen hours, give or take, not counting bathroom breaks and coffee runs. Others had stopped by at various times, too – Matty, Bozer, and Riley chief among them – but right now it was just Jack and Mac. The way it had always been.

The way it would always be.

"Hey, kiddo. How're ya feelin'?"

Mac thought about this for a long moment, his brow furrowed in concentration like he was trying to figure out some complicated equation. Finally, he answered, "Weird."

Jack threw his head back and laughed, though what Mac had said in no way warranted the kind of reaction he was getting. It was like all of the stress and fear and uncertainty and trauma of the last day were riding the shockwave of that almost manic laugh.

Mac's eyebrows creased further in concern. "What's so funny?"

Jack scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve, not sure if his eyes were watering from laughing, or if he had started crying somewhere along the way. "Nothing, hoss. What feels weird?"

"Floaty?" Mac answered uncertainty. From where Jack was sitting, Mac looked all of seven years old, tucked into the hospital bed in the Phoenix recovery ward, hair messy, eyes tired and confused.

Jack patted Mac on the shoulder, and Mac stared at the hand like it was the most surprising thing he'd ever encountered. Damn, they had him on the good stuff. He told Mac as much.

Mac's eyes were already drifting shut, the pull of the drugs too strong. "You go to sleep," Jack said softly, unable to keep himself from brushing a stray lock of hair from Mac's reddened forehead. "We can talk more when you wake up."

Mac, for once, did as he was told.

***

Jack spent the night at Mac's side, of course, despite Matty's urging that he go home and get some sleep. He wouldn't have been able to sleep, anyway, even if he had been in his own bed. He couldn't stop thinking, stop remembering. When he looked at Mac now, he saw pristine white bandages and the kind of tentative peace that could only come from whatever drugs they had him on – probably morphine and a cocktail of antibiotics, if he had his guess.

The problem was, Jack knew what lay beneath the bandages. He had seen, once he had finally found a phone and called for help, the extent of damage that had been done to Mac's hands up close. And it terrified him.

Even now every time he closed his eyes, even to blink, he could see his kid's hands, covered in burns, some so deep that Jack swore he could see tendons. They were bloody and blistered and the angriest shade of red Jack had ever seen.

He also saw, whenever his body betrayed him and he started to doze off, the way that MacGyver had writhed and twitched and moaned even while unconscious as Jack tried to examine them. His mind dragged him back to the Phoenix chopper, where a medical team immediately gave Mac painkillers and started debriding the burns. Mac had woken up then, thrashing and screaming the most terrible, guttural, animal screams, and Jack had been forced to hold him down while the medics worked, and he'd cried alongside Mac, and after they'd landed and Mac had been rushed in, Jack had found the nearest trash can and puked his guts out.

Even now, one surgery down, it was far from over. The doctor's prognosis had been hopeful, but cautious. Mac should be able to gain control of his hands again, should be able to build things and destroy Jack's phones and return fist bumps and high fives, and open doors and climb and pick things up and shoot hoops and anything else he wanted to do… but it would take time.

Six surgeries, minimum, to repair damage to tendons, do skin grafts. Mac's hands would always bear some scars, even though Phoenix had flown in the best surgeons in the country to rebuild the hands that usually did the rebuilding. And the few sessions of physical therapy he'd been through the last time he'd burned his hands were child's play to the PT he had in store in the coming months.

Jack sure as hell hoped the world would hold it together until MacGyver healed. He knew that it might as well have ended if Mac hadn't made it out of that explosion alive. Jack's world would have, at any rate.

But, Jack reminded himself as he watched the steady rise and fall of Mac's chest, despite all of the pain and physical therapy and surgeries in his future, Mac was by far the strongest person he knew. He had no doubt that the cautionary "should" the doctor placed on Mac's recovery was more of a "will definitely," because Mac didn't let anything slow him down for long.

So Jack had to be strong, too.

"I'll do it for you, Mac," he said aloud. He carded his fingers gently through mussed blonde hair.

It was a promise he intended to keep.

[imagine-loki]

Abandoned

Title- Abandoned

Chapter/One-shot- Part 7

Author- starrynight35/starrynightfantasies

Original Imagine Imagine Loki witness a person abandoning a pet, he pays little heed at first, humans, of course, are fickle creatures, but on hearing the human use words like “runt” and “worthless” something in him stirs. Looking into the box human has dumped the animal in, he realises it is a small black furball.

Rating- G

Notes/Warnings- F- bombs, the usual :) 

*For real… this story was SUPPOSED to be a one-shot… and I have a feeling it is going to take over my life!!!!!*

You can read it on AO3 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12152160/chapters/29273055

<p>While Bucky and Loki were out of the tower, Tony decided to do a little research. With all of the information he had at his beck and call, he should be able to find what he was searching for without too much trouble. The only problem was, when the so-called Allfather wanted something hidden, it usually <em>stayed</em> hidden. </p>

<p>Tony hated the fact that everyone in the tower thought he was the bad guy. He really just wanted everyone to be safe; everyone including Loki. He knew how the people of New York felt about the guy. He spent a lot of time on the town, and he knew how people in large groups could be. If they ganged up on him, Loki would be forced to defend himself, and it wouldn’t be seen as <em>self-defense </em>at all. Loki would be sent back to Asgard for execution. Fury had predicted it since they discussed allowing Loki to leave the tower, but Tony wouldn’t let that happen. He could see the change in Loki, especially since he’d allowed Loki to have that…tiny varmint in the tower. </p>

<p>Tony smiled when he thought of Fennie. She wasn’t a varmint. Not really. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>“What are you so happy about, Stark?” Steve interrupted. </p>

<p><em>Shit. </em>He always got caught when he was trying to be sneaky. </p>

<p>“Well, if you must know, I’m trying to locate these children Loki can’t find. Have any idea what they were called?”</p>

<p>Steve laughed. Just the thought of Tony finding Loki’s giant serpent child made Steve cackle with laughter. Tony had absolutely <em>no idea</em> what he was getting himself into, and Steve wasn’t about to tell him. He would just have to find out on his own. </p>

<p>“Um, well, there’s Fenrir, Jormungandr, Hel, and Sle- Slep– I can’t remember the name of the eight-legged horse." </p>

<p>Tony’s eyes were as large as dishpans. "Well, he knows where the, ah, horse is. I’m trying to find the others. Those are some seriously strange names." </p>

<p>He turned back to his computer, and Steve smiled. "Do you know how to spell them?" </p>

<p>Steve snorted. "Really, Tony? I’m guessing Hel is spelled H-e-l-l. But I’m not certain." </p>

<p>Tony began typing, but stopped. <em>"Wait.</em> Don’t they have a realm…or whatever they call a planet… called ‘Hel?’ They spell it H-e-l. Maybe that’s how he spelled it. Sweet fuck, this is a lost cause. Who names their kid Jorgu- Jorm… <em>fuck, </em>I’ve forgotten already. What was his name?”</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Loki had grown very quiet since he spoke of Fenrir, and Bucky hated when Loki was quiet. Bucky assumed he was either plotting someone’s demise, or silently brooding until the point of boiling over. Neither of which they could afford at that particular moment. When it was time to exit the bus, Bucky leaned over to peer inside the bag where Fennie was hidden. </p>

<p>“She’s asleep. Look at her, so peaceful. She’s okay. No one will take her from you." </p>

<p>Loki glanced inside the bag and gave Bucky a half-smile. It was weak, but it was something. Bucky couldn’t imagine how Loki was feeling, but he knew it couldn’t be good. He’d never lost a child, but he’d lost Steve once, and he remembered it. He didn’t remember much of it, but what he could recall was enough. Falling from the train had been terrifying, but finding himself in a strange place surrounded by men he didn’t know who obviously had no regard for his feelings or his safety had been much worse. And before they had made him into a mindless killing machine, he longed for his friend. He laid there in pain wondering if Steve had even made it out alive. And when he actually slept- which rarely happened- he dreamed of Steve. He dreamed of Steve’s horrified face as he fell from the train car, and he felt the wind whipping past his body all over again. </p>

<p>"So, where is the good food again?” Loki startled Bucky out of his memories, and he was thankful for the brooding god’s company.  </p>

<p>They had made it all the way from the bus stop to the parking lot of Petsmart without talking to each other, and Bucky wondered what Loki had been thinking about. </p>

<p>“It’s over in aisle 6. You remember. There was that dark haired girl working over there. The one who kept smiling at you. I think she liked you.”</p>

<p>Loki smirked. “She probably recognized me, and was trying to figure out how to alert the authorities without tipping me off, Barnes. There is <em>no way</em> these Midgardian women would have anything to do with me." </p>

<p>"Not that I am interested anyway,” he added as an afterthought. Bucky knew <em>that</em> was a lie. Loki had been eyeing her just as much. </p>

<p> Bucky chuckled. “Come on, man. Don’t you get lonely? I’m sure Stark and Fury would let you have a guest once in a while.”</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The truth was, Loki did get lonely. Painfully lonely. But he was certain Stark and Fury would laugh in his face if he even suggested that anyone <em>wanted</em> to spend time with him. In fact, the thought made him cringe. No one in their right mind would want to spend even five minutes in his presence. He couldn’t control his own mind for longer than a few minutes at a time. He couldn’t imagine what he would put someone else through. His past relationships had been strained, even before all of…this. He would have to find a woman from some distant realm who had never heard his name before she would have anything to do with him. And <em>then</em> he would have to worry about his oaf brother telling her about his past. He had to face the truth. He was screwed. At least he had Fennie.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>“I’m fine, Bucky. I have her,” he said, gently lifting Fennie out of the bag. He rubbed her head as she yawned and stretched in his hands. Just her mere presence calmed his fevered thoughts. He didn’t need anyone else. Not really. </p>

<p>Loki rolled his eyes when they entered aisle 6. The same mortal woman was standing there with a cart full of boxes, presumably placing the new shipment of cat food on the shelves. Bucky sidled up next to him. “Well, well look who’s here again,” he whispered.  </p>

<p>Loki elbowed him in the ribs, which caused Fennie to stir and climb to Loki’s shoulder. </p>

<p>“Aw! How adorable is she?” The brunette giggled. Loki watched as she bent over to pick up more cat food from the boxes. Bucky snorted. </p>

<p>“Not interested, my ass,” Bucky mumbled. </p>

<p>“No, I'm <em>not</em> interested in your ass, Barnes.”</p>

<p>Evidently, Loki’s comment had been a bit too loud because the girl looked up and smiled. She was standing directly in front of the food Loki needed, and he couldn’t find <em>any</em> way around her. So he stood there awkwardly. </p>

<p>“Can I help you find something?”</p>

<p>“Um, ah…” Loki’s supposed silver tongue was tied in knots, but Bucky was right. He actually did know how to talk to the sales people. </p>

<p>“Well, yeah, actually. We’re looking for some good kitten food. Like, the <em>best</em> kitten food we can buy.” He gave Fennie’s head a pet. “You see, she’s a sweet girl, and we want her to stay healthy, <em>don’t we?”</em> He made a face at Fennie that almost made Loki gag, but it seemed to work miracles on the girl in front of them because she was swooning. </p>

<p>At Bucky. Not him. Fucking Bucky. <em>Damn.</em> </p>

<p>“Let me see… I think this one is the best,” she said, holding up a can. “It has all-natural ingredients, and it’s made from fish. Does she like fish?”</p>

<p>Loki jumped in with both feet. “Oh yes. My darling Fennie loves fish." </p>

<p>"Fennie? What a unique name! May I?" </p>

<p>She was holding out her hands, and Loki began to panic. This woman wanted to <em>hold</em> Fennie. <em>His Fennie.</em> What if she stole her from him? He couldn’t very well strike her down in the store. Loki started to sweat; something he hardly ever did. She was very attractive, but there was no way he was going to let her have his baby. </p>

<p>"Um, well, Fennie has anxiety, and if she’s away from…Larry, here, she will take off. It’s bizarre, but true. She seems so calm, and then, phew! Off she goes!” Bucky said, making a rocketing motion with his hands. </p>

<p>Thankfully, the girl laughed and shrugged. “They all have their little quirks, and she’ll probably grow out of that. Besides, you two seem like really good daddys for her.”</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>

<p> "Wait a sec…“ Bucky paused as they were on their way out the door with several very large bags full of toys, food, and other accessories. "Did she think we were together? Like, <em>together</em> together? I mean, she said we seemed like we made good daddys for Fennie…" </p>

<p>Loki took one look at Bucky’s confused expression and started laughing so hard, Bucky thought he was going to drop the bags. </p>

<p>"Now that you mention it…” Loki said through gasping breaths, “I think she did! So much for either of <em>us</em> winning her attention!" </p>

<p>Bucky had never seen Loki laugh in earnest before. Every time Loki had laughed, it had been with a bit of malicious glee, but now he was laughing like a big kid. It was one of the most heart-warming things he had ever witnessed. </p>

<p>Loki chuckled every few moments all the way back to the tower. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the expression on Bucky’s face. It was as if Bucky had just realized that his charms hadn’t worked on the girl. Loki hadn’t felt so free in a long time. He wished he could bottle that feeling and keep it on his shelf so that the next time he was feeling down, he could pull the cork and take just a tiny sip. </p>

<p>When they finally made it back to the tower, Tony met them at the elevator. </p>

<p><br /> </p>

<p>"Did you get plenty of food for Fennie?” Tony asked. </p>

<p>Loki couldn’t figure out why Stark even cared. He hadn’t spoken to the metal man since the incident in the common room, and he didn’t particularly want to talk to him then. </p>

<p>“Yes, of course. I never know when you will let me out again.” </p>

<p>Loki rolled his eyes, thinking Tony was just trying to start a conversation so he could find out what he and Bucky did while they were out. He could just look at the surveillance footage from Loki’s wrist implant anytime he wanted. </p>

<p>“Good. I think I may have found one of her siblings. We’ll need plenty of food for her if she’s coming with us to meet him." </p>

[lotrewrite]

Recap of 8.26.17 Chat

So in this chat, we started out with some general points which all writers should take into account when revising their episodes, and then went episode by episode. This time around, episode-by-episode, I've focused more on the substantive comments rather than the love (there was love for all the episodes)

First: for everyone's convenience, someone apparently wrote a script to put in all of the html code needed to transition your fic from gdrive to ao3: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eZnBQ4989Dr17v2ODFgE8QWAo9Oahi4USDNS3hOSvM/edit

Second: We’re going to be using TV Rules in terms of rating – no sex/full nudity, avoid swears like ‘fuck/shit’, but ‘damn/hell/crap’ are OK. Seemed easier to have everyone try to keep this in mind for a consistent tone than to try to figure out how many f-bombs we can drop in an episode

Third: The “basic” introduction we’ll be using is "Time travel is real, and all of history is vulnerable to attack, which is why we must travel through time to keep anyone from damaging it. We are a team of outcasts and misfits. So please don't call us heroes, we're legends."  If you’ve already come up with an alternative intro, feel free to keep it! if you want to alter the above intro, feel free! This is just the most basic, unadorned version.

Fourth: Things we should include more references to in various episodes:

Mick being a pyromaniac

Ratigan exists (post episode 9)

References to Nate and Lisa once they’re gone (i.e. "Lisa would've liked this" and "Nate's going to hate us all SO BAD when we tell him" and "wish we had Nate/Lisa here")

Mentions that Oculus!Len has attempted to make contact with the others and failed (post episode 12 only)

Fifth: Names (for consistency)

Len: In episodes 1-12, we call him "Len" in narrative and "Snart" in speech (except Lisa, who refers to him as "Lenny"); post episode 12, Len is introduced as "Legion!Len" and "Oculus!Len" respectively - use the full names (i.e. Oculus!Len not O!Len) for clarity; this applies even when a given Len is alone on screen, but exceptions can be made if you're deliberately trying to confuse the issue of which Len is which

Eobard Thawne: "Eobard" in narrative, "Thawne" in text; Legion!Len starts calling him "Bard" or "Bardy", followed by Oculus!Len once he hears it, but Legion!Len stops once he has been brainwashing only to slowly resume once it begins fading

Damien Darhk: "Darhk" in narrative, "Darhk" when the Legends are talking about/to him, "Damien" when the Legion is talking about/to him

Queen Bee: always referred to as Queen Bee unless someone is explicitly making a joke

ASIDE: I feel like we're missing a lot of jokes for Queen Bee's name

Someone needs to tell her to buzz off

"You've been busy." "...is that supposed to be a pun?"

"Queen Bee? Yeah, Queen B-rated"

"BeeGees"

"It's the Bee Team" that's DEFINITELY a Ray comment, which he'd ruin by going "Get it? 'cause we're the A Team???"

these puns are giving me hives

she needs to call everyone honey

crowdsourcing puns, who would BEE-lieve it??

(also at some point you should also make a joke about there being "Lenses". You can see better with two Lenses.)

Let’s move on or we’ll bee here all night (sorry)

Gideon and Rip call everyone by Mr./Miss, except for “Captain Hunter” and “Captain Lance”

Everyone calls Jax "Jax" except Stein (Jefferson) and Gideon/Rip (Mr. Jackson)

Mick has nicknames for everyone: Ray (Haircut/Pretty), Nate (Pretty), Sara (Blondie), Stein (Professor), Len (Boss, Len, Lenny), Kara (Skirt), Jax (Kid), Amaya ("Rules"), Lisa (Goldie), Rip (Englishman)

For historical characters, use whatever works for the historical time period but is understandable to readers of a modern audience (i.e. use "Octavian" not “Gaius Octavius/Octavianus”)

Episode 10

They should look Queen Bee up at some point after the initial fight

Gideon confirms that Queen Bee is an enemy of Mari’s and thus would know something about Amaya’s future, making Amaya more anxious

Episode 14

It'd be great if Amaya could look up her future at the end of the Tudor episode, maybe while Mick and the others go burn down the Globe; that way, Amaya can struggle with it and Queen Bee’s comments in the next episode

maybe in Episode 14, after O!Len's shock at seeing his "other" self we might want to have a short scene where he asks Gideon what the hell was that, and Gideon explains that he was picked up in 2014 and he has a moment where he goes "wait, so that's...me? that's really me? a me that's not DEAD yet?"

Episode 15

Make Amaya being picked up by British/white colonialist forces to be used by them, so she was fed a lot of propaganda, and most of the lessons about the British should come from Ching; possibly also a conversation with Sara in which Sara explicitly notes that she can’t understand the experience of being colonized - "I can give you examples about what they've done but I can't tell you how you or anyone else they affect should feel about it" kind of thing

Amaya should be struggling with her knowledge about her future - I really like how you have Amaya resisting Queen Bee's offers; but I think the resolution might work better with Amaya deciding against making Sara's mistake from Episode 4 rather than not looking it up at all? That would explain the dialogue where Amaya’s considering changing the future

Lily aberration arc: the end of episode 15, she forgives Stein for keeping it from her, but she's still upset and "needs space" because she's still an aberration and scared - leave it ambiguous at the end of 15, so the audience initially thinks she's still angry about Stein hiding it from her

Shay Hannibal Houlihan - immigrants were told (or forced) to change their name, maybe he could mention that, you can mention that they changed his name to Hannibal at Ellis Island, but he still prefers Shay, you could also have Josephine calling him Hannibal; Maybe his bar is name Hannibal and when asked, he explains that's his legal name

Len arc: Len starts encouraging Mick to go talk to his other self so that he can tell him not to die - the emphasis should be Oculus!Len wants Mick to go to his other self rather than the Legion

Episode 16

I really liked the characterization in this episode; I thought it was really spot on

Lily aberration arc: at the end of episode 16, when Stein gets back to her, he basically announces that he will fight ANYONE who tries to hurt her even a little and the Legends back it up and agree that no one will be "fixing" her aberration

Lily needing a bit more to do this episode, maybe a conversation with Jax, who she can have that "I don't know what being an aberration means and it's freaking me out" conversation with. The conversation could maybe go while they're following Rip to the place with the ship parts

Len arc: the emphasis should be Oculus!Len wants Mick to go to his other self rather than the Legion

Episode 17

Fantastic episode, emotional whiplash, so much fun

They're dropping Lily off - do we make it clear enough that happens before episode 17 starts? maybe we could put in a brief comment about how it's been a few days since they dropped Lily off or something?

Episode 18

Legionnaire Len joke

Len calls Eobard ‘Bard’ at the end, causing them to comment about possibly needing to reinforce the brainwashing, but Queen Bee resists because how dare they question her

Gag reel: Darhk in a leather skirt with lace up sandals; "Show some leg, Damien! That'll distract her!" "Shut up, Snart!"

They can’t read the graffiti because it’s slang/graffiti, not because they can’t read the foreign language - the babelfish applies to that too

Episode 19

Awesome representation, superpowers, fantastic battle sequences, emotional moments; it was a great episode AND it felt like a great backdoor pilot for a Ystina-themed episode

the only section I had any issue with was there was one or two that had no Legends

scabbard – Nimue stealing it or maybe when she's knocked over (iirc?) it can fall under her or some other object and out of sight

can mick just watch the cigarette burn down? Yes

Doomworld:

Jessica Cruz should show up as a Green Lantern, since she shows up in episode 17

Jax goes to QB's place in Africa to get Amaya, but it seems like this is really far to travel and be back in time within an episode. should she have a hq somewhere closer, just for visiting while at board meetings? Yes, they should go to Queen Bee’s local embassy

I really liked Mick's opening.

I also like that Nate bursts in but they don't even humor him

what exactly is the brainwashing cure? don't think we had one; I think we just planned to have Ray design a mind-fixing gun again - I did make a note that they could pick up Ted's BB gun which works on light spectrum; it also used the emotional spectrum in the comics; that could work

The second part seemed short – maybe add the part where we picked up Rip again - there should be a scene where they break in and steal him and the waverider

also there's a comment about the lanterns going away to space and coming back to a mess, but it contradicts Queen Bee complaining about her 'pest' problem in the first half

There should be a moment where Len weakens the brainwashing and becomes aware that he’s being brainwashed, and is now resisting unsuccessfully

what O!Len's motivation is for not revealing L!Len's brainwashing to Mick - O!Len can dance around the subject until he tries to warn Mick about L!Len going to kill him; Mick probably wouldn't believe that so easily until O!Len blurts out "He's been brainwashed! Since before all this happened!" "...Why didn't say that earlier, I would've listened to you then!" I don't think Len would ever be able to actually say the words brainwashed about himself, too horrifying maybe some reference to "remember what the Time Masters did to you? to make you Kronos?" "yeah?" "that's what they did to him. to make him like that." That scene would fit in well in Doomworld and explain his earlier reluctance to speak

Finale

after Rip, Len and Mick decide to take a break, maybe everyone feels they deserve a vacation until, whoops- dinos in LA they do still have family outside the Legends after all!

can Bambi be our new mascot?

Queen Bee says something like "It is beneath my dignity to brainwash people like you!" I can add a line to mine where they comment on "you did it before" and she tries to bluster

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 7th April 2019 (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande)

We actually have a pretty busy week to cover today, with five new arrivals, one of which is in the top five, another of which is a total meme that just hit #1 in the States. There’s also a tragedy less lighthearted we’ll have to talk about, but for now, let’s discuss the top 10, because there’s been somewhat of a shake up.

Top 10

That shake-up isn’t going to affect Lewis Capaldi still at the top of the charts for a sixth week, as “Someone You Loved” continues its reign. I hope it gets overthrown pretty quickly because the song is pretty painful on its own and it does not bear well with me after the overplay.

Our shake-up starts just at the runner-up spot, however, as from her worldwide #1 album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, debuting at number-two is “bad guy”, her fourth UK Top 40 hit, second Top 10 and first ever top five. We’ll talk more about it later.

This means that Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and Calvin Harris’ “Giant” is down one space to number-three.

Tom Walker was hit with an identical loss, with “Just You and I” down to number-four...

...as was “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, also down to number-five.

Thanks to the album, “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish had a large boost up 14 positions to number-six, which is a new peak after its debut at number-seven.

Speaking of number-seven, Dave’s “Location” featuring Burna Boy is down one spot this week.

Steel Banglez’s “Fashion Week” with AJ Tracey and Mo Stack doesn’t suffer nearly as much as I thought it would this week, just moving down one position to number-eight off the debut.

Ariana Grande, the only real competition for Billie Eilish within the top 10, seems to have been hit more than anything else here, as her song “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” has been pushed down four spots to number-nine.

Finally, we have “Piece of Your Heart” by MEDUZA and Goodboys rapidly moves up the charts, up a whopping 22 spaces this week to #10, becoming each artists’ first top 10. I don’t know why, but I’m not necessarily complaining, it’s a good song, I’m just kind of confused about its incredible boost in popularity this week, maybe a commercial placement. That seems to help a lot of these EDM tracks from relative nobodies rack up chart points.

Climbers

There are literally no climbers outside of the two already discussed in the top 10.

Fallers

On the other hand... sigh, let’s sort this by genre as I try to do whenever we have a massive amount of losses.

In pop and dance, “Walk Me Home” by P!nk was walked down five hills to its home at #14, “Don’t Feel Like Crying” by Sigrid is also down five to #18, as is “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #21, while “Dancing with a Stranger” by Sam Smith and Normani is down six to #27. Ariana Grande’s “7 rings” also continues its fall down nine to #38.

In hip-hop and R&B, NSG and Tion Wayne’s “Options” is down seven to #17, “Wow.” by Post Malone exits the top 20 finally, down five to #22, “Disaster” by Dave featuring J Hus loses album release steam down eight to #23 (as does “Streatham”, also by Dave, down 11 to #33), “Keisha & Becky” by Russ splash and Tion Wayne is down six to #25 off the debut and “Please Me” by Bruno Mars and Cardi B is down seven to #32.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

“Nights Like This” by Kehlani featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #33, “Kitchen Kings” by D-Block Europe is out from #34, “Think About Us” by Little Mix featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #35, “MIDDLE CHILD” by J. Cole is out from #36 due to cuts to its streams’ importance on its chart placement, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee is out from #37 and “How it Is” by Roddy Ricch, Chip and Yxng Bane featuring the Plug is out from #40. Good riddance.

Also, Billie Eilish’s “wish you were gay” returned to #13, reaching the top 20 at a new peak. Since this is the lowest Eilish song on the chart and it was released prior, that means there is no album bomb from Eilish; this, “bury a friend” and “bad guy” are the highest-performing songs and that’s all the UK chart allows.

IN MEMORIAM

On March 31st, 2019, a man named Ermias Joseph Asghedom was shot six times in the parking lot of his own clothing store, once in the head. Approximately 30 minutes after he was transported to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. That man was Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle, murdered fresh off of the release of both his single “Racks in the Middle” with Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy as well as his album, Victory Lap, which had failed to grab the Best Rap Album Grammy Award the month prior, having his life at the peak of his career cut short unjustly by gang violence which he had since made incredible efforts to put in the past and distance himself from, making positive and charitable contributions to his hometown ever since, to the point where the Crenshaw and Slauson intersection has been named Nipsey Hussle Square in his honour. His memorial service has been held today, April 11th, and he’s since been buried, at only 33 years old, leaving two children from a long-term relationship with Lauren London behind to carry his legacy. While I was not amazed with Victory Lap, I thought I’d discuss one of my favourite tracks from his last ever record released in his lifetime.

“Dedication” – Nipsey Hussle featuring Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Mike & Keys, Rance and MyGuyMars – Peaked at #93 in the US

First off, this oily beat is pretty beautiful, with reversed and manipulated soulful vocal samples backing some really slick keys and piano loops, giving off a great West Coast vibe that was Nipsey’s signature style. Nipsey’s first verse is an intense way of introducing the listener to the subject matter, with an intricate depiction of Nipsey’s life as a youth trapped in the ghetto, with a nice beat switch-up in the last few bars. The short chorus is barely a hook, but Nipsey gives a surprisingly great singing performance on the track, and it has a drop of sorts where Alexandria Dopson and Garren Edwards show off some vocal power in the midst of Nipsey’s frustrated grunt-screams, which I like to think are representative of how he felt when he thought he could never make it out of the streets, but the chorus is about how he finally broke himself free of its chains – dedication, hard work plus patience, invoking imagery of the abolishment of slavery used as wordplay throughout Nipsey’s third verse. Kendrick’s great albeit oddly-mixed verse references his come-up as well, but also the death of his grandmother how when he was suggested to make a song with Nipsey Hussle because of how they were both Crips, he responded by emphasising how he’s not just a gang member, but a man too, and after his death and some of the negative comments I have seen about Nipsey mentioning his past, is a stronger message than ever. The best part of the track is when Kendrick’s verse is interrupted by some 808 stabs, and the instrumental transforms into a semi-chopped and screwed shell of what it was, with echoing vocals from Dopson fading out before Kenny comes and sings in a janky flow that is trippy yet also pretty elegant and makes sense considering how it transitions from Nipsey and Kendrick talking about their history in gangs and Nipsey’s final verse about how satisfied he is with how his music, or what he says are is spirituals, have brought him into fame and luxurious life after about 30 years of barely making it by. I love the line where he references not only his friend YG’s album but the popular local saying, “Stay dangerous”, as he was educated by the hood into believing that he had to be feared to be safe, as well as his bars about how him owning his own masters is his way of abolishing what had shackled him as a teenager and as a young adult. The song ends with another repetition of the anthemic hook as a book-end, as we are treated to a relaxed instrumental featuring piano melodies layered on top of each other and Nipsey laughing in joy as he’s finally “Made it out”, with sound effects of dogs barking and general civilian life surrounding the melodic finish to a fantastic song.

This the remedy, the separation / 2Pac of my generation, blue pill in the f***in’ Matrix / Red rose in the grey pavement / Young black n***a trapped and he can’t change it

RIP Nipsey Hussle, August 15th 1985 – March 31st, 2019.

Now, on a lighter note...

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “MONOPOLY” – Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét

Produced by Social House and Tim Suby – Peaked at #6 in New Zealand and #70 in the US

Why Ariana Grande seemed it fit to release this song as a non-album single on Monday, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to blag on about that as Grande released this single and its amateurish video as seemingly a joke, right? It was on April Fools, and was coined “a treat for the fans”, with a video that had a budget of less than $10, as well as being both sonically and visually meme-heavy, so I don’t think it should be taken any seriously and rather just as a fun celebration of Grande’s success, featuring rap verses from her lead songwriter and best friend for some reason. It’s Grande’s 20th Top 40 hit over here and Victoria Monét’s first ever credited appearance on the Top 40, and you can tell their level of success by just their performances on this song, as Grande gets to show off the vocal prowess and is provided with both the intro and outro as well as all the multi-layering, while Monét’s expressions of her personality are relegated to the singular actual rap verse (Which she still shares with Grande) and Auto-Tuned ad-libs that are literally just sped-up sentences, as well as a messy Nutty Professor reference. The beat is pretty lightweight, with a couple vocal samples and cloudy synths hidden behind a trap skitter, but it’s fitting to back the nonsensical lyrics here, all of which only work because of the charisma the girls ooze from their vocals, despite the imbalanced vocal production. And, yeah, the lyrics here are awful, as expected. First of all, the refrain/pre-chorus rhymes “Where you been?” with itself three times, barely fitting the lyrics into the meter by scrambling the word “GPS” into a Twista-like chopper flow for like a second until going back to the droning, saccharine delivery. Let’s look at some highlights.

Bad vibes, get off of me / Outta here with that f***ery

Sorry, I just love the visual in the music video of Monét and Grande literally swatting away the “F***ery”, it’s pretty cute.

I swerve both ways, dichotomy / I like women and men

This painful, forced reference to Monét’s bisexuality is so blunt and to the point that when Grande says it, it’s hilarious. Imagine coming out in a loosie trap single that barely counts as a song and not an interlude. I do kind of like how straightforward the line is, to be honest, it’s almost anthemic... maybe I’m thinking too much into this.

Then we hit the bank, making dumb investments, for the win

“For the win”? I didn’t expect a song saying, “For the win” to make the Top 40 ever, but, sure, let’s roll with it. What does Ari say?

And if they try come stopping me, I’ll show them my discography (Yeah, yeah)

Okay, that’s kinda clever—

Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win, go!

Nevermind, they said, “For the win”, again.

This been buildin’ up, I guess this friendship like Home Depot

Yeah, nope. Next song.

#39 – “Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X

Produced by YoungKio, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Peaked at #1 in the US

Oh, great, another meme song. Well, at least I can say this – where were you when a country-trap fusion from a former Twitter comedian turned rapper that samples a Nine Inch Nails guitar loop and was later remixed by Billy Ray Friggin’ Cyrus became the most popular song in the entirety of Northern America thanks to TikTok memes and a racism scandal? The whole situation is so loony to me, but I respect Lil Nas X and YoungKio for being so relaxed and chill about the whole fiasco, especially when it started getting bigger and bigger, becoming the shortest number-one song in America since 1963, with a runtime of only one minute and 54 seconds, disregarding the remix of course. Is it a country song? I mean, obviously, it’s a country rap song, nobody’s arguing that, and that’s got country in its name so yeah, in my opinion, if Nelly and Tim McGraw count when they released what was essentially an R&B song, this counts, even if it’s essentially just a trap song about horses. It actually paints a pretty interesting lone cowboy story inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 but, who cares? It’s a meme, alright, and for now it’s pretty funny. It’s got a really catchy hook/intro, with an effective refrain as well as verses that much like “MONOPOLY”, were probably written in less than five minutes but they work, and that’s all that really matters. I like how his voice sounds in the muffled outro, but really, there’s not much to it. It’s a fun beat with a great sample that Billy Ray Cyrus takes advantage of entirely and bodies. His flow is stiff but so is the stunted beat so it fits together quite nicely, and the additional choruses add some needed meat to the track, as does the banjo and the whistling at the tail-end of the outro... but we’re not judging the remix just yet, and on its own merits, “Old Town Road” is nothing all too special.

#26 – “Better Man” – Westlife

Produced by Steve Mac – Peaked at #2 in Scotland

Westlife released a second single in 2019, after their last single three months back debuted in the Top 20 and did insanely well in radio and sales... in 2019. This new single, produced by Steve Mac, has an orchestral version, and is set to be on their new album Spectrum which was announced to be released on 6th September, 2019. This new single is their second to reach the Top 40 in 2019. It nearly peaked at the top spot in Scotland, in 2019, and has had success all over Britain in the week of release, which may I add, was in March 2019. I refuse to believe Westlife will have a resurgence in 2019, and although I mostly believe that charts are ran by impressionable teenagers, this proves that Mom-pop is safe in the midst of the new British trap-rappers who talk about murder and drug trafficking, and of course Gothic art pop starlets that aren’t even old enough to drink yet... and I’m not here for it. No, the orchestral version is not better, get this manufactured waste of time off the charts.

#19 – “Your Mrs” – JAY1

Produced by Coolie

So, just as I was actually starting to lighten up on British trap-rap – seriously, Tion Wayne’s stuff, especially “Options”, has been growing on me immensely and I loved Dave’s debut studio album – this  comes out and debuts in the top 20, and it’s bloody awful. It’s literally one piano chord. It’s literally ONE. FREAKING. PIANO CHORD. Through the whole song. There’s a trap skitter as well after the beat doesn’t transition to the drop after its intro and instead just fades out with a cheap pitch-shift effect, until we get to a developed version of the beat, and by that I mean it has two annoying high-pitched beep sounds and a bass that clips through the mix thanks to the vocals that are louder than everything else. For the most part it feels like it’s just JAY1 rapping over a hi-hat, and to be fair, that’s what most of it is. It’s not menacing, of course, because even if it was, literally in the first bar of the song, he’s joking. He won’t actually be luxurious enough to take your missus, as he says, and would rather just let the women watch him, I guess. He’s not interesting, and although there switch-ups to the instrumental that help make it more interesting, the more stretched-out flows he uses are absolutely painful. The subject matter is nonexistent, apparently he has an Australian side chick and NAV helps transport his cocaine. Oh, but do you hear that? There’s a flute... no, seriously, can you hear it? Because I can’t, really, I mean it’s just a pathetic loop probably stolen from some Creative Commons musician that somehow ended up in an official release, and it doesn’t last long. It comes back in the third chorus, where he’s multi-tracked with a pitched-down vocal and this would actually be menacing if he wasn’t just talking about how his girl has a big butt. If that voice was whispering about cold-blooded murder, then this song would be awesome... but it’s not. It’s weak flexing and bragging with a nonexistent beat from an incredibly uninteresting dude who doesn’t know to mix his bass properly. I hope to see this gone quickly, because this is dreadful.

#2 – “bad guy” – Billie Eilish

Produced by FINNEAS – Peaked at #1 in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Norway and Slovakia, and #7 in the US

This is the big #2 debut, the one I’m supposed to care about most, but mostly I’m just feeling lukewarm on both the big single and Eilish’s album as a whole, which felt structure-less and lacking of much substance as she gets wrapped in her own metaphors. This new song has got a vivid, shocking and quirky video, but Dave Meyers stole it from an indie magazine called Toilet Paper’s photo shoot so I suppose that has helped this song increase in popularity – nothing like some good controversy. The dark, bass-heavy and reverb-drowned groove here is actually really nice, and I love Billie’s vocal melody, especially when it’s multi-tracked with the fake finger-snaps in the background that are incredibly flat, and that bassline when it hits in the chorus is insane. The lyrics are kind of funny if anything, as Eilish references her melodramatic, emo image as she claims herself to be a “make-your-momma-sad, might-seduce-your-dad type”, priding herself in the cynical bad guy personality among pop music’s cutesy stylings we’ve been accustomed to. The eerie flute-like synth melody is pretty creepy and I love how it takes itself way too seriously despite the lyrics that are basically just Eilish being an edgy teenager, even with a post-chorus where she says, “Duh”, in a deadbeat manner followed by high-pitched gliding chopped-up vocal samples, and it’s all good, right? But then there’s a beat switch that just doesn’t freaking work. The pause from the original beat lasts way too long, so the transition feels incredibly forced, and the trap breakdown/drop means the song loses all momentum, especially with that annoying bird chirping sound that starts it off. There’s no real transition here, so Eilish’s offbeat delivery isn’t interesting and endearing, just kind of janky, with the whispering not being creepy but forced and tryhard. Without the drop, this’d be pretty cool though.

Conclusion

Wow, what a mixed week. Sadly, I can’t give Best of the Week to “Dedication”, so it goes to Lil Nas X for “Old Town Road” because it’s probably the most fun song here, with Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét snatching Honourable Mention for the so-bad-it’s-good mess, “MONOPOLY”. Worst of the Week should be obvious as it goes to JAY1 for “Your Mrs”, but Dishonourable Mention is harder, so I’ll give it to Westlife for the sake of tradition. See you next week!

[ohdizzy]

Tie Me Down

Pairing: Taehyung/Yoongi (Side! Jimin/Jeongguk) Rating: Mature  Genre: AU, Kidnapping AU (oh my god), Comedy, Semi-Crack, Romance,  Word count: 11,900+ Chapter: 1/2 Summary:

“I’ve just woken up with a fucking splitting headache, to find myself fucking taped to an office chair in a fucking living room that smells like unwashed socks and takeaway food. How am I? How do you think I fucking am?”

“Wow. That’s a lot of f-bombs you’re dropping. Did anyone tell you that you need a healthy dose of positivity?”

In which Yoongi’s life is a parody of Taken and Taehyung is just trying his goddamn hardest not to get arrested.

(“You know, when I think of being kidnapped I think of being trapped and hopeless in a desolate warehouse or something. Seeing as I’m secured to an office chair with scotch tape in what looks to be your living room, I can’t help but be a bit underwhelmed.” AU) 

Read at: ao3, or under the cut! 

“Guys, I just wanted to say that I—I love you guys, and I appreciate t—this so much.”

Yoongi stifles a snort, looking over Namjoon’s disheveled, crying form at Seokjin, jerking his thumb at Namjoon in a can-you-believe-this-guy kind of motion. Seokjin frowns, shaking his head slightly in a don’t-you-dare-say-a-fucking-word kind of way. Two minutes ago, Hoseok and Seokjin were snickering away at the snot bubble forming in Namjoon’s left nostril but the moment Yoongi tries to join in he’s suddenly the asshole.

Figures.

Hoseok makes a soothing sound, patting Namjoon’s head, murmuring comforting words, and Yoongi watches, slightly incredulous, as Namjoon lets out another loud wail, fresh tears leaking out of his swollen, red eyes.

Oh, what a life Yoongi lives.

Min Yoongi, at the ripe age of twenty-three, is currently sitting on the floor of an awfully decorated apartment, comforting said owner of awfully decorated apartment as he has some fucking existential slash quarter life crisis.

What the actual crisis is, Yoongi’s not actually sure of. There wasn’t a lot Yoongi picked up from Namjoon’s incomprehensible blubbering, just a lot of I love yous and fuck the systems, so Yoongi’s been on back petting duty, wisely choosing to shut the fuck up while Seokjin and Hoseok comfort an estranged Namjoon.

But it’s nearing 2AM and while Yoongi loves and cherishes Namjoon, he really loves and cherishes his beauty sleep, too. And when it gets past 10PM on a weekday, Yoongi’s body automatically shuts down. So right now, on this blessed Thursday night, Yoongi’s awake purely because he doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of Seokjin’s wrath if he actually does happen to fall asleep—a possibility that is slowly becoming alarmingly close to reality.

Fortunately for him, Hoseok, bless, seems to be well aware of this and is looking at him with a concerned expression.

“Hey, Yoongi, you should go home. We can handle this.”

Honestly. Bless Jung Hoseok. Bless his beautiful, wholesome soul.

“No, it’s okay, I don’t mind.” Yoongi does mind. He’s lying through his teeth. Please send him home.

Namjoon blinks up at him, and god, he’s such a pitiful sight with tear-stained cheeks and that goddamn disgusting snot-bubble well and truly formed that Yoongi’s heart softens a little and maybe it’s not all that bad if he has to stay behind.

“Y—You should go home,” Namjoon sniffles. “You look like you’re going to pass out. Sorry for making you stay.”

“No, it’s okay, I can stay.”

“Yoongi, you’re literally halfway to the door already. Just go home.” Seokjin rolls his eyes.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, Joon-ah,” Yoongi promises, shrugging on his coat. “I’m sorry I can’t stay here any longer.”

“Get home safely, Yoongi,” Seokjin says, frowning slightly. “There are so many fucking weirdoes these days.”

“Jin, no one is going to mug me.”

Seokjin gives him a skeptical look, pursing his lips. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

“It’s ‘cause you look like a girl from the back,” Namjoon pipes up tearfully. “You’re so tiny and cute.”

“Yeah, the first time we met I nearly hit on you,” Hoseok sniggers.

Yoongi scowls. Seokjin smiles smugly.

It’s a ten-minute walk from Namjoon’s apartment to Yoongi and Hoseok’s shared apartment, but Yoongi’s already to call quits two minutes into the walk. There’s seriously no way anyone actually expects him to haul his dead-beat, emotionally drained ass all the way to his apartment.

He reckons by this point someone could club a fry pan over his head and he probably wouldn’t notice. Honestly, he’s just ready to go home, take a hot shower, put on his bed socks, and get the fuck to sleep.

(Apparently, though, Life has other plans for him. It’s always fucking him. Give Yoongi a break.)

It starts off as a small noise Yoongi chooses to ignore. A niggling feeling in his stomach. The strange feeling that he’s being watched.

Yoongi quickens his pace, and suddenly, he’s not so tired anymore, and he quietly curses Seokjin to hell and back for jinxing him. Suddenly, his ridiculous claims of mugging don’t sound ridiculous anymore.

There’s a noise that’s slowly gradually getting louder and it’s not until the sound is really fucking close does Yoongi realize that it’s the sound of someone running towards him at full speed.

Okay, cue panic.

“What the f—”

“I’M SOORRRRRY,” a loud voice, shrill with panic and adrenaline interrupts him, before something blunt hits him on the head, hard.

You know when he said that a fry pan could hit him and he wouldn’t notice? Min Yoongi would like to whole-heartedly retract that comment, because damn if that didn’t hurt like a motherfucker.

“Fuck.”

Ever so eloquent, Yoongi manages to catch a glimpse of what looks like a fucking watermelon hovering in his line of sight before the sharp throbbing in his head becomes too much and he blacks out.

There’s a dull, insistent throbbing in the back of Yoongi’s head that draws him from the depths of unconsciousness. The pain gets sharper and sharper and he lets out a little whine, hoping that Hoseok will come and shove a pillow under his head or something to make the pain go away so he can go back to sleep, but his limbs feel heavy and water-logged, the way one might feel after an entire day of working out. Which is unusual, considering Yoongi is basically allergic to any form of physical exercise.

He reaches up to rub at his eyes—well, he tries to anyways. Something’s binding him painfully to something that is most certainly not his extra cushiony king-single, and panic seizes in his chest as reality crashes down on him. Yoongi’s eyes fly open, his eyebrows automatically pinching together in fear and confusion.

Min Yoongi, at the ripe age of twenty-three, is no stranger to waking up in strange places. Hoseok might poke fun at him and tell him he’s got the soul of an eighty-year-old man, but Yoongi’s seen some crazy shit back in the day when he was Young, Wild and Free.

From waking up in an empty parking lot wearing nothing but a dirty cloth placed strategically over his Yoongi Junior and bright pink nipple tassels with no recollection whatsoever of what happened the night before, to waking up all the way in some fancy Gangnam apartment with some girl he’s never seen before telling him she’s going to introduce him to her parents, Yoongi feels like he’s seen—and been through—it all.

So it’s really, really something, when Yoongi wakes up and is surprised. Honest to God, hand on your heart kind of surprised.

Because he really, really does not know how to react to being taped down with copious amounts of scotch tape to a rickety office chair in what looks like a fucking living room of who Yoongi is going to assume to be some college student, based on the half-eaten bowls of jjajjangmyeon and jjampong littered on a messy coffee table and the mess of twisted wires and consoles underneath a huge plasma TV.

Yoongi sits there in literal shock for a few seconds, trying to process what the everloving fuck is going on, when his eyes fall on a lamp—one shaped oddly like a watermelon.

A watermelon. A watermelon had knocked him out.

And then it hits him—kidnapped.

Yoongi is fucking kidnapped. Someone had looked at Yoongi and decided to kidnap him. Someone had looked at his dead-ass, disheveled form and thought, ‘ah. This is the one. The one I’m going to fucking kidnap’. What the fuck.

When Yoongi thinks of being kidnapped, he thinks of being trapped, hopeless, in a seedy warehouse with faceless thugs surrounding him, blood dripping dramatically from his temple as he takes beating after beating heroically.

Maybe he’s seen too many movies, but Yoongi really can’t help but feel underwhelmed. Because who the fuck thinks of sitting on a swivel chair, staring at a funky-looking cactus, nursing a headache that feels kinda like a hangover when they think of being kidnapped?

He’s waiting for the panic, the overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread, to kick in, but… nothing. Well and truly nothing. Maybe a little annoyance.

A timid cough sounds in the living room, startling Yoongi and alerting him to another presence. With difficulty, he slowly swivels around towards the sound, grunting with exertion. When he finally manages to turn around, his eyes immediately fall on a tall, slender figure standing on the other side of the room. When Yoongi drags his eyes up the kidnapper’s body, finally settling on his face, Yoongi is a little surprised to note that his kidnapper isn’t some deranged psychopath, but someone kinda… cute.

With soft-looking blond hair that falls over his eyes, pretty lips, and huge, doe eyes staring back at him, he looks like something out of a magazine. Yoongi’s kind of annoyed at this—if his kidnapper had been some old, balding man maybe it would have been easier to be scared. Or pissed. Yoongi’s just kind of annoyed and tired right now.

He starts to slowly approach Yoongi, holding something before him like a weapon, like Yoongi’s in any state to leap out and suddenly attack his kidnapper. Yoongi can’t help the snort that escapes him when he sees what the kidnapper is holding. It’s a butter knife. A fucking butter knife. He’s holding a butter knife threateningly towards Yoongi like it could actually stop him, if Yoongi ever happens to break free from his sticky bonds.

His kidnapper stops right in front of Yoongi, the hands holding onto the butter knife trembling. Up close he looks even younger than Yoongi had thought. And cuter. And Min Yoongi doesn’t just throw out the word cute.

But all of his cuteness goes flying out the window the minute he opens his mouth.

“Hello,” He says timidly. “How are you?”

Yoongi’s brain kind of just… breaks.

He’s tired, he’s emotionally exhausted, and now, he’s fucking tied down to a chair with some weirdo (who’s also unfairly cute and hot) asking how he is. How is he? How is he? He’ll tell him just how he is.

“Oh, I don’t fucking know,” Yoongi spits out scathingly. The boy takes a step back, his expression contorting into one of alarm and a tiny bit of Yoongi feels a little bad, but the majority of his sleep-deprived mind doesn’t even feel one ounce of remorse, and his kidnapped ass is not having any of it, cute boy or not.

“I’ve just woken up with a fucking splitting headache, to find myself fucking taped to an office chair in a fucking living room that smells like unwashed socks and takeaway food, with a fucking stranger pointing a fucking butter knife in my fucking face. How am I? How do you think I fucking am?”

Yoongi’s chest is heaving by the end of his mini-explosive rant. He glares fiercely at his kidnapper for extra measure. The kidnapper who had listened to his rant with huge, alarmed eyes, kind of looks like he’s about to pass out now. Yoongi’s not too sure how he feels about this.

“Wow,” The boy says in a tiny voice. “That’s a lot of f-bombs you’re dropping, hyung. Did anyone tell you that you need a healthy dose of positivity?”

Yoongi’s eye twitches.

“Hyung? What the fuck, you don’t know me, don’t call me hyung! I don’t fucking need positivity in my fucking life, I need you to tell me what the fuck is happening! And—fucking stop pointing that goddamn butter knife in my face!” Yoongi is kind of pissed now, but he’s mostly super annoyed. Like. Super annoyed. Like, raising-his-voice kind of annoyed.

“Okay, chill, I’m sorry!” His kidnapper says hastily, hiding the butter knife behind his back. “I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t completely necessary, but it is! So I’m doing it. I’m broke, right? In fact hyu—”—his kidnapper shoots a nervous glance at Yoongi before continuing—“I’m so broke that I’ve had to resort to illegal means. So. I’m ransoming you, haha! So please tell me your details so I can contact your parents.”

Yoongi shoots his kidnapper the dirtiest glare he can muster. Which is quite dirty, if he’s being completely honest. “What the fuck is wrong with you. Are you on drugs or something?”

“Nope!” His kidnapper lets out a nervous laugh. “Only the adrenaline running through my veins. You know. From fear.”

“This is fucking fucked up, fuck you, fuck this, what the fuck.”

“Please stop glaring at me, Yoongi hyung. I’m already terrified as it is—I’ve never actually done anything illegal in my entire life. Unless you count that time I stole a cucumber from the mart when I was six, but you should’ve seen my grandmother when she fo—”

“Wait. Hold up. How the fuck do you know my name?”

His kidnapper stops in the middle of his rambling, looking distinctly like a deer caught in the headlights. He lets out a sheepish laugh. “Well. I may or may not have looked through your wallet, but I—”

“What?!”

The boy flinches, raising his hands defensively. “I didn’t steal anything!” He protests. “I���m not that kind of person!”

Yoongi arches an eyebrow. “Okay. You don’t steal, but you did kidnap me? That’s alright in your books?”

The boy giggles. He actually fucking giggles. This is no time for giggling. “But that’s like. Not as bad as stealing. It’s bad, yeah, but stealing? That’s a no-no.”

“How the fuck—are you hearing yourself right now?” Yoongi groans, rolling his eyes. He tries to sit upright, looking his stupid-ass kidnapper in the face. “Kidnapping is stealing, you fucking walnut! You’re stealing me!”

The expression that dawns on the kidnapper’s face is priceless. Yoongi suddenly doesn’t mind being kidnapped, because that expression, that absolute dumbfounded, shell-shocked expression on his kidnapper’s face is worth it. Well and truly worth it.

Yoongi’s not sure how, but even in this situation—tied up and unable to move—Yoongi still has the upper hand. He supposes it’s like, compensation for being kidnapped.

“Holy fuck!” The boy shouts so suddenly Yoongi startles so hard he nearly flips the chair backwards, and wobbles precariously for a heart-stopping second before he regains his balance.  “I fucking kidnapped someone. I actually kidnapped someone. I’m Kim Taehyung, the boy who helps old people across the road, not Kim Taehyung the kidnapper! Oh my God, oh my God, I’m—I’m—fuck!”

Okay Yoongi’s a little worried now. And it’s not so funny anymore—not when it looks like the poor fucker is about to pass out. He’s hyperventilating, his face as white as sheet and as funny as it was to Yoongi maybe ten seconds ago, he kind of needs his kidnapper to be conscious if he wants to ever get out of these fucking bonds.

His kidnapper dramatically drops to his knees, facing the wall across from him, barely paying attention to Yoongi as he howls into his hands in what Yoongi supposes is intense regret. He would be kind of fascinated if he weren’t so worried, because it looks as though he’s reenacting a K-drama all by himself. It’s pretty impressive, actually.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Yoongi says soothingly. He can’t believe he’s comforting his kidnapper, out of all people.

His kidnapper—Kim Taehyung—turns to him, his eyes as huge as saucers. “I’m—I’m a good person and I’ve fucking kidnapped someone! I was going to ransom your parents! Your parents, hyung! Oh my god, what would my parents say? What would your parents think?! How could I even think about putting them through that?!”

To Yoongi’s shock, Taehyung’s eyes are shining with unshed tears. Yoongi really feels like he’s trapped in a fucking K-drama. Only in a K-drama could it be so dramatic.

“Hyung,” Taehyung whispers, clutching at Yoongi’s tape-clad body tightly. Yoongi tries not to roll his eyes at the honorifics. “What should I do?”

“Here’s a fucking idea: let me go.”

But Taehyung’s already turning away from Yoongi, pulling out his phone, talking absentmindedly to himself. “My best friend will know what to do. He’s so smart, he’s studying medicine.”

Yoongi can see over Taehyung’s shoulder as he clicks on a name. Taehyung’s own face pops up on screen as he waits tearfully for his best friend to answer his FaceTime. After five long rings, Taehyung’s friend finally picks up and the screen opens to a sleepy-looking dark haired kid.

He looks even younger than Taehyung, from what Yoongi can make out, but he looks well and truly pissed at being woken up.

“Kim Taehyung,” The dark haired boy groans down the phone. “It’s fucking 7AM on a Friday morning, are you seriously for real right now?”

The boy makes a loud rustling sound, turning his head, and Yoongi can make sight of a smaller, blond haired male lying in bed behind the dark-haired boy. The blond whines, snuggling up to the brunet.

“Sorry baby,” The dark-haired boy whispers softly to the other. “Go back to sleep.”

He turns around so he’s facing the camera again, his expression agitated. “You woke up Jimin, you shit.”

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung bellows, seemingly uncaring for the fact that his supposed best friend’s boyfriend is sleeping. “I might honestly go to jail because I might get arrested, but you’re gonna bail me out right? Right? You’re not gonna let me rot in jail, right? You know what they do to pretty faces like mine!”

“Jail? What the fuck have you done this time, Kim Taehyung?!”

“I’ve done something really, really illegal. And I actually might go to jail, I’m not fucking kidding. And real-life jail, Jeongguk! Not fake-jail!”

The dark haired kid’s eyes widen and he reaches behind him to shake the other awake. “Hyung—Jimin, Taehyung might go to jail! Not fake-jail, but real-life jail!”

Fake-jail? Real-life jail? Yoongi is seriously dealing with a bunch of six-year-olds.

The blond’s eyes open groggily, and he reaches for the phone. “Tae? You okay? Why are you going to jail?”

“Jimin,” Taehyung moans. “I fucked up so bad.”

“Couldn’t have been that bad,” His friend soothes him. “What happened, Taetae?”

“I—I fucking kidnapped someone, that’s what I fucking did! I honest to God kidnapped someone and I’m going to go to jail.” Taehyung’s voice is high-pitched with hysterical panic. “Look—look, I’m not kidding! Yoongi hyung, say hello!”

Taehyung angles the camera over his shoulder towards Yoongi, and Yoongi is met with an eyeful of Taehyung’s two extremely naked friends peering in shock into the tiny camera.

“Fuck off.”

His dark haired friend snatches the phone back, his eyes wide in shock, while the blond makes a disbelieving noise. “Taehyung why the fuck did you kidnap someone?!”

“Because you suggested it, asshole!”

“Dude, I was joking.”

“Well I didn’t know that! You need to distinguish your sarcastic voice and your normal voice better, they sound exactly the same!”

“You fucking idiot, I was joking, let him go right fucking now!”

Suddenly, his blond friend’s face is taking up the entire screen, an apologetic expression gracing his features.

“Sunbae, I’m so, so sorry,” He apologises smoothly. “I apologise deeply on behalf of our friend, please don’t call the police on him. He’s deeply misguided and extremely sleep-deprived because of his major, please understand. He’s probably running on less than five hours of sleep this entire week. And that’s a lot of sleep for our Taehyungie.”

“I don’t really care at this point, I just want to go home,” Yoongi growls.

“Yes, of course!” His blond friend agrees immediately. “Taetae, let him go and say sorry and then forget this ever happened, alright?”

“Okay,” Taehyung agrees easily, throwing an uneasy glance at Yoongi over his shoulder. “I gotta go. I’ll call you guys later.”

After hanging up, Taehyung eyes Yoongi warily. “Do you promise you won’t leap out and attack me when I cut you loose?”

“Yes,” Yoongi says, exasperated. “Now let me go before I really get annoyed.”

Taehyung doesn’t hesitate after that, retrieving a pair of scissors and cutting through the scotch tape. Luckily, Yoongi’s wearing a long coat that covers his skin, so it doesn’t hurt when Taehyung rips the tape away, though he does wince a little when Taehyung accidently digs his scissors into the coat, ripping a small hole in the sleeve. Yoongi and Taehyung stand in front of each other for a short second, sizing each other up awkwardly.

Taehyung’s taller than Yoongi had initially thought—Yoongi barely comes up to his ear—and even though he’s still thin like Yoongi had thought, there’s definitely some kind of definition underneath the thin shirt he’s wearing.

Not that it matters at all. Yoongi’s not checking out the fucking weirdo who kidnapped him. Nope. Not happening.

“Hyung, I’m honestly so sorry, please don’t call the police on me,” Taehyung says earnestly, grasping one of Yoongi’s hands. “I honestly don’t know what came over me, I’m not usually like this, I swear.”

“Stop calling me hyun—you know what, it doesn’t matter,” Yoongi sighs, extracting his hand from Taehyung’s vice grip with difficulty. “Just… don’t kidnap other people.”

It sounds lame, even to Yoongi.

But Taehyung’s nodding along eagerly, his expression solemn. “Oh, yes. Don’t worry, I’m never doing anything like this again. I think the stress I felt knocked about five years off my life.”

Yoongi stifles another sigh at the honorifics. “This is the fucking weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Taehyung smiles sheepishly, guiding Yoongi towards the front door. “Sorry, again. Really. Also you swear. Like a lot.”

“Got a problem with that?”

“Not at all! Just an observation. My friend Jeonggukkie, he swears so much that I—”

As much as Yoongi would love to stick around and find out what happens when his friend Jeonggukkie swears so much, he doesn’t particularly feel like chatting with someone who’d smashed a watermelon lamp over his head.

“I should probably get going now.”

Taehyung halts mid-sentence, and his expression drops for a millisecond before he’s smiling brightly again, and Yoongi can’t help the little twinge of guilt prick his heart. Maybe he shouldn’t have cut him off. It was kind of rude.

(Not that he cares what weirdoes with ugly cactuses think. Yoongi was just brought up better than that.)

“Sorry,” He says quickly. “I’m just really tired and it’s been a long, weird day for me.”

“No, that’s alright! I tend to talk a lot, anyways, so…” Taehyung trails off, swinging his arms awkwardly. He offers Yoongi a smile. “See you around?”

“Um… sure.”

And that is how Min Yoongi from Daegu, aged twenty-three, experiences his very first kidnapping, complete with watermelon shaped lamps, a rickety office chair, copious amounts of shitty tape, and a hole in his favourite winter coat.

Min Yoongi has experienced a lot of strange things in his life, but he thinks that this might really fucking take the cake.

“Jin-ah, how many times do I have to say this,” Yoongi says, exasperated. “Stop trying to parent me. I’m twenty-three, not thirteen.”

“How can I not parent you, Yoongi?” Seokjin’s worried voice comes down the line. Yoongi can hear Namjoon’s obnoxious laughter filtering through the phone, a stark contrast to his uncontrollable sobbing a week ago. “Yesterday I tried cutting up a watermelon and you nearly broke my arm trying to throw the watermelon into the bin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you act like that before.”

Yoongi wraps his coat around him more tightly as he hurries down the street, his breath coming out in white puffs. “I just…who eats watermelons this time of year, anyways? It’s stupid.”

“My point exactly! Why do you care so much about when I eat a fucking watermelon?!”

“Watermelons are stupid and pointless, that’s why!”

“How are they stu—okay, you know what? I’m not arguing with you about a watermelon. Where are you? It’s nearly midnight.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “I’m on my way home from the library. Group assignment. Seriously, Jin, you need to stop parenting me.”

“Namjoon has a quarter-life crisis at least once a week, Hoseok thinks everything can be solved with a dance battle, and you have weird breakdowns when I cut watermelons. Someone needs to be the responsible one!” Seokjin protests.

Yoongi laughs in spite of himself, opening his mouth to reply when a large noise startles him. He jumps into the air, cursing quietly to himself, before turning around to locate the source of sound. He can hear Seokjin’s voice through the receiver, asking him what’s wrong.

When his eyes land on the source of the sound, his eyes widen in disbelief.

“Um—Jin?” Yoongi says distractedly, standing on his tiptoes, trying to get a better look. “I’m—I’m going to have to call you back later.”

“Yoongi? What—”

But Yoongi’s already hung up, scurrying forward for a closer view, crouching behind a flimsy sapling in the fucking freezing weather, not really believing his eyes.

It’s that fucking Taehyung kid again.

But this time, bless him, he’s not alone. Instead, he’s with a vaguely familiar looking dark haired kid who’s holding up his phone and filming.

Kidnapping is one thing, but seeing the very fucking same kid, not even a week later, standing on top of a cement block, belting out ballad lyrics at the bloody top of his lungs whilst simultaneously doing some odd interpretative dance, while his friend fucking films the whole thing kind of makes Yoongi wonder if he was lucky to escape that fucking apartment with his life intact.

“What the everloving fuck,” Yoongi mutters to himself, edging closer in spite of himself to get a closer look.

It’s nearing midnight on a Sunday night—it’s a wonder no one has lodged a complaint on him or told him to shut the fuck up, at the very least.

Yoongi’s not sure what it is, but it feels like he’s been rooted in his spot, unable to move, or wrench his eyes away from Taehyung’s booty-shaking form. He watches on, incredulous, as Taehyung continues to sing passionately, dancing way too vigorously in a manner that doesn’t match up to the slow pace of the song at all.

The dark haired kid who still looks somewhat familiar, films with a seriousness that Yoongi just can’t fucking comprehend, and the entire situation is just so absurd. The dark haired boy nods seriously adjusting his position every so often so that he has a better angle.

Yoongi thinks things can’t get any fucked up; he really does.

Like, c’mon.

But since Yoongi’s life is slowly devolving into a shitty K-drama, things, of course, get more fucked up. Of course. Taehyung seems to spy something in front of him, because he stops in his tracks, halting mid-song, before letting out a delighted whoop. He bends down, scooping up two large sticks and holding them above his head triumphantly.

Taehyung then proceeds to continue his soulful ballad singing (Yoongi will admit grudgingly that he does have quite a nice voice; one that sounds a little like liquid gold and dark chocolate), whilst banging the sticks against a fucking bin, creating even more of a racket than before.

Yoongi is just coming to the conclusion that this Taehyung kid is, in fact, fucking crazy, and he was indeed lucky enough to escape that apartment when a policeman pops out of nowhere. Amazing. Fantastic. Incredible.

This Taehyung kid is a riot and Yoongi can’t help but laugh in disbelief. Seriously? A policeman? At this time of night? What the fuck. Catching sight of Taehyung’s crooning and banging, the policeman lets out a shout, telling them to halt (he actually says halt and Yoongi is in amazement. Who the fuck even says that.)

Yoongi can’t help but snort at the look of unconcealed panic on both their faces, like they actually thought they could get away with banging against steel bins and singing at the top of their lungs on a Sunday night without any consequences.

“Shit!” Yoongi hears Taehyung yelp. “Jeongguk, shit, shit, shit, run!”

Taehyung and his friend both leap down from the cement block, sprinting away, and Yoongi actually thinks they might make it. But of course not. Of course not. One minute, Taehyung’s sprinting like motherfuckin�� Usain Bolt and Yoongi thinks that they’re actually going to get away, and the next thing he knows he’s watching Taehyung trip over his own fucking feet, faceplanting brilliantly onto the cement ground.

Without even realizing Yoongi’s stood up from his semi-crouch, like he’s actually about to run out and help Taehyung because holy shit if that didn’t look painful as fuck. He can’t even bring himself to crouch back into his uncomfortable squat—partly because it was uncomfortable as fuck—so Yoongi just stands there, his mouth gaping wide open as he watches Taehyung shriek dramatically, flailing around on the floor.

Like he’s in some mediocre K-drama, Taehyung stretches out one hand dramatically towards his friend who stands a good fifty metres away, looking torn.

“Go, my friend, go!” Taehyung cries out (dramatically. So fucking dramatically). “Save yourself! I’ll be alright!”

Yoongi stifles his laughter when his friend starts backing away, jogging backwards, an apologetic expression on his face. Taehyung looks outrageously betrayed despite his previous dramatic urges to save yourself, his mouth wide open in shock, his hand dropping to his side.

“Sorry, Tae!” His friend shouts, backing away even faster. “I’m a fucking scholarship kid, I can’t get arrested! I’ll bail you out if you actually get arrested, I promise! I’m so sorry!”

Taehyung gapes. “You’re actually fucking leaving me? Oh my God, don’t you fucking dare—oh my god, he just did it. He just fucking did it.”

“Did you just see that? My friend literally just ran off and left me here to fend for myself. What the fuck!” Taehyung points in his friend’s direction, shouting obscenities as the policeman hauls him up to his feet.

As if just realizing the dire situation he’s been left in, Taehyung suddenly laughs nervously, backing away from the police officer, his hands raised in defense.

“Sir—hyung, can I call you hyung?” Taehyung smiles charmingly at the policeman who merely looks at him, unimpressed.

“No.”

“Okay—okay I’m sorry, sir. No to hyung, then. Duly noted.” Taehyung nods, frowning like he thought he’d actually be able to successfully sweet talk his way out of this clusterfuck. He backs away, alarmed when the police officer pulls out handcuffs and his eyes widen in alarm. “Woah—woah! No need for those handcuffs, this is all just a misunderstanding, please don’t arrest me—no! No, wait!”

Yoongi sniggers slightly to himself as Taehyung gets handcuffed. “I’m going to need your details, son.”

“Details? What do you need my details for? Sir, can’t you just let me off with a warning? Please, I’m doing this for my major, I major in music! C’mon, don’t be like that, huh! We can call my professor right now if you don’t believe me!”

Yoongi can feel a strange surge of satisfaction run through him. That’s right. Justice served icy cold.

People, he thinks to himself smugly, can’t just kidnap other people and get away with it. What goes around comes around, karma’s a bitch, et cetera, et cetera.

Yoongi feels like he’s seen enough; he nods once to himself, satisfied. If he ever feels like he’s having a bad day, he’ll just think back to this great day and be reassured that his day, cannot, in fact, be worse than Taehyung’s.

In hindsight, everything could have been avoided. Had he not been so drunk with satisfaction, so full of pettiness and just plain old mean, the higher powers probably would’ve shown Yoongi mercy.

But with Yoongi’s life playing out like a fucking K-drama, what did he expect at this point?

Stretching once to get rid of all the kinks in his body from squatting strangely, Yoongi makes to leave, throwing one last look over his shoulder to engrain the image of Taehyung being handcuffed into his mind one last time.

Their eyes meet.

Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck.

Yoongi freezes dead in his tracks as Taehyung’s eyes widen in recognition, his mouth dropping open. He struggles enthusiastically against the police officer’s grip, attempting to wave with both arms at Yoongi.

“What the—ahjussi! That’s my friend!” Taehyung screeches loudly. Fucking crap on a catapult, just let Yoongi die. Throw him into a ditch and leave him to die. “Oh—Oh my god, it’s actually my friend! Yoonjae! Or—or was it Yoonbin? Ahjussi, we’re actually best friends, call him over! My dude, my bro, my pal!”

Please, Yoongi closes his eyes briefly, praying to the based gods. Please don’t call Yoongi over. Please let him leave.

But of course not.

Of course not.

The police officer’s eyes narrow in suspicion before he beckons for Yoongi to come over. Yoongi contemplates making a run for it—he can probably make it if he runs fast enough. Maybe it’s because Yoongi’s tired and therefore his sense of rationality has gone to shits. Or maybe it’s because a tiny part of Yoongi wants to know just how Taehyung plans on getting out of this fucking mess. If he can.

Seriously questioning every choice he’s made in his life, Yoongi finds himself walking towards the handcuffed idiot.

Standing in front of Taehyung, he scoffs a little at the eager, excited expression on Taehyung’s face, like he actually thinks Yoongi is going to make up bullshit about knowing him. Honestly, he should be counting his lucky stars that he’s not outing Taehyung for the law-breaking, kidnapping hooligan he fucking is.

“So,” The police officer starts, looking at Yoongi skeptically. “You know this kid?”

Yoongi’s going to say no. He really is. He even got his name wrong—Yoonjae? Seriously? That’s not even fucking close—and he’s going to walk away coolly and leave this idiot to fend for himself. Because he has to learn the hard way that life can’t be solved by cracking watermelon lamps over people’s heads and demanding ransoms.

Yoongi’s going to say no, and Taehyung must’ve realized this, because his face drops from a goofy, excited smile to a pathetically sad face, his lips twisted down like those Greek tragedy masks.

Yoongi’s going to say no, but Taehyung looks like a kicked puppy—so sad and little and pathetic, even though Yoongi knows for sure that Taehyung is a whole lot taller than him.

Goddamn it.

Goddamn it all to fucking hell.

“Yes,” Yoongi sighs. God-fucking-damn. “I know him. We—we were in the same class.”

Taehyung’s face breaks into a huge grin, his eyes sparkling in the darkness with something Yoongi can’t quite pinpoint. Yoongi’s mouth feels dry. It’s cause he’s nervous. Who wouldn’t be? Lying to the police. Jesus, the things he’s doing for this kid. Honestly.

“Yeah,” Taehyung agrees fervently. “Tell him, Yoojung.”

Yoongi glares at Taehyung, who shrinks back a little, smiling sheepishly. “He’s a good kid, sir. A little weird”—he ignores Taehyung’s protests—“but a good kid. He’s always been a model student, so if he said he was doing this for a project, he’s telling the truth.”

When the police officer looks skeptical, Taehyung turns his puppy dog eyes onto him, pouting cutely. “Sir, I’m so, so sorry. Please let me go, my parents will be so ashamed of me if I have to go down to the police office. Think of my parents, sir! Weren’t you ever a kid, sir? Can’t you show me a little mercy? I promise I won’t ever do it again.”

Yoongi suspects that the little fucker might actually be enjoying himself, and is really fucking milking it for all that it’s worth.

The power of puppy eyes, Yoongi thinks dryly to himself as he watches the police officer visibly melt and fall prey to Taehyung’s aegyo. Even the strongest will fall.

Yoongi restrains himself from snorting when the officer sighs, unlocking the handcuffs. Taehyung rubs his wrists, smiling brightly at the police officer.

“Son, I’m letting you off with a warning. If I ever catch you causing a scene or a racket, I’m going to take you straight to the station, is that understood?”

Taehyung nods solemnly. “Yes sir, I appreciate this so much. Thank you so much, have a great night!”

After Taehyung’s waved the police officer off (literally stood there for a fucking minute waving enthusiastically at the police officer’s retreating form), he turns to face Yoongi, a bright smile on his face.

“So. That went pretty well, didn’t it?”

And that’s how Yoongi finds himself sitting at the campus diner at 1.28AM in the morning, with the fucking weird ass kid who tried to kidnap him, watching in disbelief as he slurps loudly on a strawberry milkshake. The milkshake, by the way, that Yoongi fucking paid for.

After Taehyung’s taken a long, satisfying slurp, he pushes the milkshake a little to the side, resting on his elbows and leaning forward, his lips quirking up into a smile.

“So. Yoo—”

“Yoongi.”

“Sorry?”

“Yoongi. My name is Yoongi. Not Yoonjae, not Yoonjin, Yoongi.”

Taehyung shoots him a strange look. “You’re so odd, Yoongi hyung.”

“Wha—I’m weird? You’re fucking weird!”

“Well I’d rather be weird and memorable than boring and forgettable,” Taehyung says, shrugging cheerfully.

Yoongi opens and closes his mouth. Can’t argue with that logic.

Yoongi clears his throat awkwardly. “Were you really doing that for your major?” He asks gruffly.

Taehyung perks up at that. “Yeah! I actually major in music. This semester we’re learning about music production, so we have to produce a few of our own songs.”

“Why were you banging around on the bins and singing for?”

“Well… I’ve been trying out new styles to see what fits me best. I’ve heard that a lot of people actually use sounds that they hear out and about in their songs, so I’ve been trying to figure out what kinds of sounds I should use. It’s a whole new world to me! So far, I’ve tried to record myself gurgling underwater, the sound of glass breaking, and I tried banging on bins as a replacement for drums, but I still think—sorry, I’m boring you, aren’t I?” Taehyung breaks off mid-sentence, wincing. “People tell me I tend to ramble too much.”

Actually, Yoongi doesn’t mind. He usually doesn’t like it when people talk for too long—seriously, it’s just asking for a headache—but Taehyung talks with such an excitement and passion, it’s hard to get annoyed. Which is weird because Yoongi can get annoyed at anything. It’s kind of a gift.

“No, I don’t mind,” Yoongi says, but Taehyung’s already moved on to another subject.

“I’m sorry for kidnapping you last week,” Taehyung says sincerely. “Desperate times call for desperate measures!”

Taehyung’s chortling away but Yoongi doesn’t really find it that funny (his head is still fucking throbbing).

“It’s not that funny.”

“C’mon, it kinda was! You should’ve seen the look on your face, it was hilarious. I wish I had taken a photo of it.”

“I looked hilarious? You were the one about to shit their fucking pants! I’ve never seen anyone’s facial expression drop that fast my entire life.”

“I wasn’t scared! I was just”—Taehyung waves his hand around, searching for the right word—“nervous.”

“You were so scared, stop lying to yourself.”

“Fine, I was scared. But who wouldn’t be scared? You were glaring at me like you wanted to kill my firstborn child.”

“Wouldn’t you glare at someone who fucking smashed a watermelon-shaped lamp over your head, taped you down to a chair and then ripped a hole into your favourite winter coat?”

“Well actually, I didn’t technically smash the lamp over your head because it’s still intact and as for tape I couldn’t find any rope, even though I did watch several YouTube tutorials on how to do a proper sailor’s knot.”

Yoongi glares at Taehyung, before reaching for his bag and standing up. “Okay, well I’m gonna go then.”

Taehyung makes a noise like a kicked puppy and reaches out for Yoongi, tugging him back down into his seat. “Ah, hyungnim! Don’t be like that, c’mon I’m sorry, don’t go!”

“Fine. But don’t call me hyung anymore. It’s giving me weird flashbacks I’d rather not have.” Yoongi sits back down warily, eyeing Taehyung with trepidation. “Just call me Yoongi.”

“But that’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Why’s that weird?”

“Because… you’re my hyung.”

“Then as your hyung, you should listen to what I say to you, and I’m telling you to call me Yoongi.”

Taehyung opens his mouth to speak, before snapping it shut in resignation. “Can’t argue with that logic. Okay. Yoongi.”

Taehyung fiddles with his straw for a moment before he sets his drink aside and looks up at Yoongi, his eyes wide and sincere. “Anyways. I’m so glad I bumped into you again. Don’t you think that it’s fate?”

Yoongi makes a face. “No. I don’t believe in fate and that kind of bullshit.”

“Oh come on hy—Yoongi! Out of all the places you could’ve been, you just happened to be passing by where I just so happened to be filming, and you just happened to stay while I just happened to get arrested.”

“It was a coincidence.”

“In the wise words of Einstein, the ‘stars don’t lie’,” Taehyung says smugly across the table, shrugging. “Sorry, Yoongi, but we’re obviously just meant to be friends. I don’t make this shit up.”

“Einstein did not fucking say that.”

“He’s said a lot of smart things during his life, I’m sure he said something along those lines at one point. Besides, you’re missing my point—and my point being, obviously, the stars want me to make it up to you. It’s just fate. You can’t fight these things.”

“Make it up to me?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, you didn’t call the police on me and then you saved me from the police. It’s the least I can do; don’t you think? I’ll buy you dinner!”

“Aren’t you broke? That’s why you fucking kidnapped me, isn’t it?” Yoongi deadpans.

“Oh! I’m not actually broke. My boss forgot to pay me, that was all. But he’s already paid me!” Taehyung says brightly before dropping his voice to a raspy whisper and winking greasily at Yoongi, beckoning for him to come closer. “Just call me Daddy Warbucks.”

Yoongi recoils, jerking back like he’s been burnt. Who the fuck even says shit like that. “That’s fucked up, man.”

Taehyung shrugs. “Are you going to say no to free food, though?”

Yoongi thinks about this for a second. Taehyung does have a valid point there. Even Yoongi isn’t below free food. “True.”

“Give me your Katalk details! I’ll text you soon.”

Yoongi hands Taehyung his phone and watches as Taehyung types something rapidly into the search bar, before clicking on his name when it pops up. “Cool. Well, I gotta jet. Jeongguk’s probably wondering whether I’m rotting away in jail right now. I’ll see you soon, Yoongi! Ciao!”

And for the second time in two weeks, Min Yoongi is left wondering what the fuck is going on. 

Yoongi represses the urge to sigh for what feels like the umpteenth time, his pen tapping against his notepad in irritation as he stares at the algorithm on his page with pure, unadulterated hatred.

He’s a fucking idiot for picking mathematical economics, he supposes. He’s not even good at math.

Yoongi’s in the midst of wondering if he can ask someone in his class give him the answers when his phone vibrates, startling him.

TAEHYUNGIE YOONGI!!!!!!!! 9.05pm

Yoongi What 9.06pm

TAEHYUNGIE where u at!!!!! 9.06pm

Yoongi I’m at the library 9.08pm

TAEHYUNGIE what floor u on homie g 9.10pm

Yoongi Wait why do you want to know 9.10pm

TAEHYUNGIE

9.11pm

Yoongi What the hell does that even mean 9.12pm

TAEHYUNGIE it means you’ll regret it if u dnt tell me kekeke 9.13pm

Yoongi -_- 9.15pm

Yoongi 5th floor 9.15pm

The little one next to Taehyung’s name disappears signaling that he’s read it but doesn’t reply after that, leaving Yoongi wondering what the hell that was about. But the algorithms are calling his name, and alas, Yoongi doesn’t really have time to wonder why Taehyung is asking him random questions.

Taehyung’s taken to bombarding Yoongi’s Kakaotalk at a time when no one—Yoongi repeats, no one—should be awake. From random song recommendations to pictures of trees (look how pretty this tree looks!!!!!!!!!! im swooning!!! over a tree haha can u believe!!), Yoongi feels as though he’s now somewhat accustomed to Taehyung’s complete disregard of Yoongi’s sleeping schedule and, as well as his atrocious grammar.

However, these goddamn algorithms aren’t going to solve themselves, so Yoongi tosses his phone aside, grits his teeth, clicks his pen a few more times out of irritation, and tries to get the questions done (preferably before the sun starts to rise).

Yoongi’s not expecting anything—he’s really not. He’s just pegged Taehyung’s seemingly random question to be one out of a long, long list of random questions he’s going to be asked since Taehyung’s deemed that they’re buddies (Taehyung’s words, not Yoongi’s). So it’s kind of saying something when he gets the fright of his life approximately thirty-seven minutes later when he’s glaring down at his paper in frustration one minute, and then looking up straight into Taehyung’s smiling face pushed way too close to Yoongi’s own face for comfort.

Yoongi jerks back, stifling the shout climbing up his throat—because he’s in a fucking library and has something called decency, unlike assholes (read: Hoseok and Namjoon) who think the library is a place of socializing—hand flying up to press dramatically against his chest. He can feel his heart galloping around in his chest in like fucking horse and he’s twenty-three years way too fucking old for this shit. Taehyung seems to have developed the habit of popping up (quite literally) to Yoongi in the most inconvenient of times. Maybe it’s a gift he has.

“What the hell,” Yoongi hisses once his heartbeat has slowed down considerably. “You gave me a goddamn heart-attack.”

Taehyung merely grins as he plops himself down on a spare chair, shoving Yoongi’s carefully alphabetically organized papers to the side before dumping two huge plastic bags onto the table.

“I would say sorry,” Taehyung says, reaching into the bags and pulling out plastic containers stuffed to the brim with food. “But I’m not. And my parents didn’t raise a liar, so.”

Yoongi frowns, surprise coloring his features. He’s not too sure why Taehyung’s suddenly bringing food, but then again, it’s Taehyung. But still.

Yoongi leans back on his chair. “What’s all this?”

“What does it look like? I’m fulfilling my promise. I’ve brought you dinner, because God knows you could use it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat. How can I live, knowing that my friend is withering away like some sad, unwatered flower?”

Yoongi ignores the bullshit of him being some unwatered flower because, well, it’s bullshit. “That’s because the two times we met you were either trying to kidnap me or sweet-talk your way out of being arrested.”

Taehyung pauses, frowning for a second. “Oh shit. Yeah, I forgot about that.”

“How can you forget about kidnapping someone?”

“In the wise words of Ghandi, ‘live for the future, not the past’.”

“Stop making up quotes! You’re turning historical figures into trashy teen romance novels.”

“I’m offended. How dare you.”

“Someone has to set you straight.”

“Well you can insult me as you eat. The food’s getting cold,” Taehyung says, passing Yoongi a pair of chopsticks.

Yoongi  stops dissing Taehyung to appraise the food. From fried chicken to jjajjangmyeon to jjigae, it looks as though Taehyung’s went and bought everything Yoongi might possibly like. Yoongi doesn’t really think much about food—especially when he’s studying, but suddenly he’s ravenous and he digs into the food like he’s been starved.

He’s gotten two mouthfuls of chicken and some noodles in when he remembers his manners.

“Thanks Tae,” He says through a mouthful of food.

Taehyung stabs a piece of chicken with his chopstick. “That’s alright. What are you working on?”

“Equations and shit.” Yoongi swallows his food, taking a sip of the Milkis Taehyung’s produced from the plastic bag that reminds Yoongi of Doraemon’s endless pocket. Seriously. How does he keep producing food like this. “They’re dry-pounding my ass.”

“Equations? Do you study math?”

“Close,” Yoongi says, picking up his chopsticks again. “Mathematical economics.”

Taehyung winces. “Ooh. Sounds rough.”

“Yeah, I’d much rather be doing music. I envy you.”

“Oh?” Taehyung swirls the jjajjangmyeon around and around on his chopsticks. “You like music?”

“Yeah, I—I produce my own music in my spare time.” Yoongi’s not too sure why he’s telling Taehyung this. It’s a private part of his life that even Hoseok, Namjoon, and Seokjin had unintentionally found out about only recently, so he’s not too sure why he’s blurting this out to a near stranger.

Maybe it’s because the black paste has smeared itself all around Taehyung’s mouth and he just looks so harmless slurping away at his noodles. Or maybe it’s because Yoongi’s frazzled, burnt-out brain is just blurting out random shit at this point, and his brain to mouth filter has just gone to shits.

But for what it’s worth, Taehyung looks genuinely interested, perking up instantly and looking at Yoongi with bright eyes. “What? That’s so cool, what the hell! What kind of music do you produce?”

“Oh, like a bit of this, a bit of that,” Yoongi waves his chicken around vaguely. “Mostly rap.”

“Rap?” Taehyung breathes, leaning towards Yoongi on his elbows. “Will you show me sometime? I would love to hear your work.”

Yoongi flushes, rubbing a hand across the back of neck awkwardly. “I—I mean, I guess, if you want. Like it’s really lowkey. Not that big of a deal.”

Taehyung smiles at that, returning to his noodles. “Still. I’m a firm believer that all music should be appreciated. I mean, the artist has gone into the effort of finding a beat, and then a melody, and then writing lyrics on top of that. Who knows how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, they’ve spent on that one piece. The least someone could do is listen to it.”

Yoongi’s a little stumped by the sincerity and seriousness of Taehyung’s words. He blinks.

“Anyways,” Taehyung continues, like he hasn’t just thrown Yoongi off. “How come you’re doing mathematical economics?”

“Uh—parents. My parents wanted me to do something… practical,” Yoongi sighs.

Taehyung frowns. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. That sucks.”

“Nah it’s alright. They made a deal with me—if I can finish my degree and get a proper job, then I can come back and do music here part-time.”

“Oh swag!”

And just like that, the moment is broken.

“Did you just seriously say ‘swag’.”

Taehyung shrugs happily. “I thought it fitted the moment well.”

Yoongi doesn’t even bother answering, focusing on the jjigae. A little voice in the back of his head tells him that eating in the library is probably worse than talking in the library—if the glares he’s receiving from the neighboring table are any indication of that—but he hasn’t been kicked out yet, so he supposes it can’t be that bad. Hoseok’s been kicked out a grand total of seven times just for talking, so it’s probably better that he’s eating and not talking (too much).

Taehyung leans back on his chair having finished his own bowl of food, patting his stomach contently. He frowns for a second and just as Yoongi is about to ask him if anything’s wrong he lets out a loud burp, earning him a spectacularly loud shh! from the neighboring table, accompanied with a lethal glare. Taehyung looks far too relaxed for someone in a library smiling sleepily at Yoongi, before his eyes wander down to the weathered leather watch on his wrist.

Taehyung’s eyes widen and he jumps up from his seat so violently it knocks backwards and he lets out a panicked shout that has everyone on the entire floor glaring at him venomously. Yoongi sinks a little in his seat.

“Shit—oh my g—fuck! I’m gonna be la—I gotta jet—shit!”

“What?! Where are going?” Yoongi whisper-shouts after Taehyung, who’s already started to make his way towards the elevator.

“Zumba class! I completely forgot Jimin wanted to do Zumba with me! I’ll call you, Yoongles! Don’t be a stranger!” Taehyung calls back, stepping into the elevator, pressing furiously on what Yoongi assumes is the close button.

Yoongles?

What the fuck.

Yoongi’s lying on the sofa, flicking aimlessly through the channels on the television when Hoseok approaches him with an expression that means he wants Yoongi to do something. Which means Yoongi will have to physically get up from the sofa. Which automatically means he isn’t doing it.

“Hey. Let’s go get bubble tea.”

“No.”

“C’mon! I even made you coffee this morning, how can you say no to me?”

“Easy—you’re annoying and you want me to get up. I haven’t had a day where I can do absolutely nothing in like, a month. There’s no way I’m getting up from this couch.”

Hoseok pouts, plopping down on the sofa and turning on the puppy-eyes. “Please?”

“No. Now go away before I pinch you. I’m small, but deadly.”

Hoseok laughs like Yoongi’s words hold no real threat to him, eyes curving up into crescents, dodging Yoongi’s weak attempts at pinching. “C’mon, my treat.”

That makes Yoongi pause in his pinching conquest. Free bubble tea? Yoongi’s not a cheap-ass nor is he particularly broke, but even he can’t resist the alluring charm of free bubble tea. He supposes that thirty minutes there and back won’t hurt anybody. Especially if free bubble tea is thrown in.

He heaves a huge sigh, before stretching his arms towards Hoseok, who laughs some more, pulling him up from the sofa. “Fine. But as soon as we get our bubble tea we’re coming straight back here.”

Luckily, there’s a Chatime that’s close enough to Yoongi and Hoseok’s shared apartment that Yoongi doesn’t complain too much on the way there. He opens the door, the bell jangling welcomingly as he steps into the warm shop. It’s completely empty, save for the two employees behind the counter.

Yoongi glances over at the two employees, letting his eyes wander away when his mind catches up to what he’s just seen. Doing a double take, Yoongi stops dead in his tracks, letting out a small noise of surprise. Hoseok bumps into Yoongi, but Yoongi doesn’t even seem to realize, his eyes fixated on the two employees. Well, one more than the other.

Lo and fucking behold, Taehyung’s standing behind the counter—looking goddamn fucking adorable in a printed purple uniform that should look hideous on anyone—balancing an empty cup on his nose with surprising agility while the same fucking kid who had been filming Taehyung the night he’d almost been arrested (Jeonghan? Or was it Jeongguk? Jeong-something, Yoongi’s sure of that) is filming Taehyung’s valiant attempts yet again, laughing hysterically.

“Taehyung?” Yoongi can’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Both Taehyung and Jeong-dude turn at the sound of Yoongi’s voice. Yoongi takes a small step back—bumping into Hoseok once again (who makes his displeasure known by pinching Yoongi’s arm, but Yoongi doesn’t really notice—or care—at this point)—when Jeong-dude steps towards Yoongi, because he has the body of a fucking weight-lifter, and despite his cute, non-intimidating face, he kind of looks like he could bench press fifty Yoongi’s without breaking a sweat.

“Yoongi!” Taehyung exclaims at the same time Jeong-dude says, “hey, it’s that guy you tried to kidnap!”

“Tried to kidnap?” Hoseok repeats. “Am I missing something here?”

Taehyung’s made his way around the counter and has walked up to Hoseok, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “I’m Taehyung!”

“Hoseok,” Hoseok replies, smiling despite his confusion. What a trooper. Yoongi, on the other hand, can feel his expression darkening. Once Hoseok knows, that means by default Namjoon and Seokjin will know, which means Yoongi’s life is basically over. “Kidnapping?���

“Oh yeah. I tried to kidnap Yoongi,” Taehyung grins. “I was getting desperate because my boss missed payday and my bank can’t keep up with my lavish lifestyle, so I had to resort to drastic measures.”

“Oh my god,” Hoseok chokes.

“Don’t worry!” Taehyung reassures Hoseok like he was worrying in the first place. “We’re all Gucci, we’re practically joined at the hip, right Yoongi?”

“Nope.”

“See? Best friends.”

Hoseok’s laughing loudly now—the one that sounds somewhat like a fire alarm and Yoongi knows he’s in deep shit. Namjoon and Seokjin are definitely going to know within the hour.

“Wait ‘til Jin hyung and Namjoon hear about this.”

Yep. Certified death.

“Can we get our bubble tea now?” Yoongi waves his hand impatiently, trying to lessen the amount of time Hoseok has to extract more information he can use to blackmail the fuck out of Yoongi. “We’re running on a strict schedule.”

“Oh, sure! Jeongguk!” Taehyung calls to Jeong-dude—Jeongguk—who’s dutifully waiting for them behind the counter. “Can you help them out? This is Jeongguk, by the way! He’s my best friend.”

Jeongguk grins at Yoongi. “Hi hyung—can I call you hyung? I feel like we’re already friends. I mean, you saw me half-naked, and I saw you taped to a chair.”

Yoongi can feel himself aging ten years. All this trouble for bubble tea. “No.”

“Ooh, I like him already Tae,” Jeongguk says to Taehyung, who’s made his way back behind the counter. Taehyung grins.

“See? I told you he was a keeper.”

Yoongi splutters indignantly.

“So. What can I get you today?”

Yoongi’s still incoherently sputtering to himself, so Hoseok nudges him out of the way and rattles off their orders to Jeongguk, who dutifully keys it into the cashier, before accepting their money and bustling off to make their orders.

“Taehyung, aren’t you going to help Jeongguk?” Yoongi asks once he’s managed to get a hold of himself—which was actually a lot harder than he thought. He’s still in disbelief.

“Oh, Taehyung’s fucking useless. Didn’t even show up to training,” Jeongguk says, measuring out the syrup expertly. “The only reason why his ass is still hired is because our boss has a soft spot for him.”

“Hey, I resent that! I’ll have you know that I’m literally an expert at pouring shots now because of Chatime.”

Jeongguk snorts. “Alright. Speaking of shots, you’re coming to Jimin’s party on Friday, right?”

“Duh. Is that even a question.”

Hoseok perks up. “Party?”

“Yeah—hey, you guys should totally come! My boyfriend’s hosting the party. He’s known for having the best parties ever,” Jeongguk says, preening.

“Yeah,” Taehyung agrees fervently. “Jimin’s parties are no joke.”

“Wait—wait, is this by any chance Park Jimin? Does he study biology?” Hoseok looks way too excited now and Yoongi can see the wheels in his head turning. Oh god. Yoongi tries to backtrack.

“Actually, we’re not free this Fri—”

“Yeah, how do you know him?” Jeongguk looks suspicious.

“We used to be in the same dance club! His parties are insane,” Hoseok gushes. “Once I woke up on the other side of campus dressed in a nappy and a bib.”

Taehyung laughs at that. “Sounds like one of Jimin’s parties.”

“You know, actually, Jimin always talked about his boyfriend, but I had no idea it was you,” Hoseok says. “Count me in, I love Jimin’s parties.”

“Yoongi?” Taehyung turns to Yoongi, holding out his finished drink for him. “What about you? You’re going to come, right?”

“Nup. My wild party days are over,” Yoongi says.

But then Taehyung pouts, his eyebrows pulling together and looking so distinctly like a kicked puppy Yoongi wants to cry. He can do this. He can resist. His mama didn’t raise a little bitch.

“Please?”

“Nup. Nope. Zero chance. Nada. Zilch. Not happening.”

“I seriously can’t believe I got talked into going,” Yoongi grumbles, twisting around to check out his back in the reflection.

“Oh please,” Hoseok says from his position on Yoongi’s bed. “Don’t act like you didn’t melt three seconds into your tough guy façade.”

Yoongi ignores his comment. “How does this look? Should I tuck it in or leave it out?”

“You know, I’ve never seen you give so many shits about your appearance. Is it because a certain someone is going to be there?”

Hoseok sounds so smug Yoongi wants to smack him. He didn’t even answer his question. He leaves it untucked.

“No, I just don’t want to look like a slob. Is there a problem with that?”

“Nope. None at all,” Hoseok says, raising his hands in defeat. “Gosh, so touchy.”

“I will kick your ass.”

“On that happy note, let’s go! Time to get fucking hammered.”

Well, at least they agree on one thing.

By the time Yoongi and Hoseok arrive at the apartment, the party is already well and truly in full swing.

The party has extended all the way to the hallway, with people drunkenly swaying to the obnoxious EDM music playing loudly, to the point where it’s hard to see where one person ends and another starts. Edging past a couple kissing, Yoongi and Hoseok walk in through the open front door.

Inside the apartment, it’s packed to the brim and Yoongi can barely take a step forward without getting jostled. There are disco lights swiveling around crazily, momentarily blinding Yoongi as he makes his way through the crowded apartment. On top of the dining table, three girls are dancing in bikinis, each clutching a bottle of tequila and pouring some of the liquid into the waiting people’s mouths below. Yoongi’s also pretty sure there’s a guy wearing nothing but his underwear and a cowboy hat dancing crazily next to another guy wearing a rainbow colored wig.

“Hey!” Hoseok shouts into Yoongi’s ear. “Look, it’s Taehyung.”

Yoongi turns to the direction Hoseok’s pointing at, catching sight of Taehyung who’s making his way through the crowd and kind of just. Freezes.

Yoongi reckon he fulfils the three C’s: cool, calm, and collected. There isn’t really much that gets to Yoongi, nor is he particularly wowed by anything. He’s very much a neutral party.

So there’s a lot to say about the fact that he feels like his heart is about to burst forth from his chest and flop around on the floor (and probably get trampled on), with his mouth drying up in less than two seconds.

And there’s probably also a lot to say about the fact that he feels like he’s in a K-drama, because everything seems to narrow down to Taehyung, and he can only vaguely hear Hoseok asking him if everything’s alright when, well, it’s not really. Everything is most definitely not alright.

Because someone, god knows who, decided to let Taehyung out looking like a fucking god in the most goddamn tightest leather pants in the world—there is a high possibility that they may, in fact, be spray painted on—as well as the lowest v-neck shirt. His eyes are smudged around the edges with kohl, his lips an alluring red and holy shit Yoongi is shook right down to his very core. Yoongi watches, offended, as the shirt slides to the side to reveal Taehyung’s sharp collarbones.

Suddenly, it’s too hot. Like, a sauna in hell kind of hot and Yoongi fans himself, turning to Hoseok with a nervous chuckle.

“Did someone turn on the heating or something,” Yoongi mumbles, laughing awkwardly. “It’s getting hot in here, am I right?”

Hoseok’s face scrunches up in confusion. “Are you feeling okay? It’s not that hot.”

Yoongi doesn’t really pay any heed to Hoseok. Taehyung’s nearly reached the pair and Yoongi’s Not Ready. He needs at least another week and three shots before he’s ready to face Taehyung and his spray painted pants. “I need a drink. Or seven. And someone really needs to lay off the goddamn heating.”

“I think that’s just you being thir—”

“Yoongi! Hoseok hyung!” Taehyung calls over the loud music once he reaches them. Holy shit. Has his voice always been so low? Yoongi swears that just yesterday Taehyung’s voice still hadn’t cracked. “You made it!”

“I made it,” Yoongi says unnecessarily.

“C’mon, lets get you a drink.”

Taehyung grabs Yoongi’s hand and pulls him through the crowd, and Yoongi is suddenly painfully aware of the fact that his hand is probably clammy and sweaty and the fact that Taehyung’s hand is clamped down over it isn’t making things better. At all.

He tries to wiggle his hand subtly out of Taehyung’s grip, but Taehyung looks over his shoulder and shoots Yoongi a grin like nothing’s wrong, tightening his grip on Yoongi’s hand and making it basically impossible for any further attempts at escaping his grip.

They eventually make it to the small kitchen and Yoongi thanks the gods for small mercies when Taehyung finally lets go of his hand. The kitchen, luckily, isn’t crowded at all, with two people standing near the island counter, talking and giggling with their heads together.

They look up when Taehyung enters and Yoongi recognizes Jeongguk, who lets out an excited shout, his hand coming up in a wave. The other, a smaller, blonde haired male with cute smiling eyes, looks curiously towards Yoongi, his lips curving up into a welcoming smile. He catches sight of Hoseok and his eyes light up in recognition as he lets out a surprised noise, immediately making his way over to Hoseok.

“Hyung!” He says in a lilting voice. “You made it!”

The blonde hugs Hoseok tightly who laughs, patting his back fondly. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss your parties for the world, Jiminie.”

Ah. Jiminie. The famous boyfriend.

Jimin diverts his attention to Yoongi, smiling widely—if not a little smugly. Why that is, Yoongi isn’t too sure.

“Yoongi hyung! I’m Jimin. I’ve heard a lot about you from Taehyungie.” Jimin giggles when Taehyung punches his arm. “I’m glad I could finally meet you! Thank you for not calling the police on Taehyung.”

“Uh, nice to meet you, too. And you’re—you’re welcome, I guess?”

“Hyung, you look good,” Jeongguk says, coming up behind Jimin and resting his head on Jimin’s shoulder. “Tae, tell him he looks good.”

Taehyung flushes. “You—you look good, Yoongi. I like your shirt.”

“Thanks. You look good, too.”

More like drop-dead fucking gorgeous, but Yoongi’s not about to say that.

Yoongi can see Jeongguk whispering something into Jimin’s ear, who giggles. Taehyung, who seems to have overhead, blushes furiously and flicks Jeongguk on the nose.

“Hey, asshole. You wanna go?”

“Fuck yeah,” Jeongguk says, stepping away from Jimin to puff his chest out. “I’ll take you out with a hand tied behind my back.”

“Okay boys, time to break it up,” Jimin laughs, pushing the two apart from where they’re standing nose-to-nose, before turning around and picking up two shot glasses filled to the brim with an ominous looking blue-black liquid. “Anyways, Yoongi hyung! This is a welcoming gift from yours truly. Think of it as an… initiation gift.”

“Initiation gift?” Yoongi wrinkles his nose. “Initiation for what?”

“My parties, of course! Anyone who’s been to my parties has had at least one of these in their life. It’s called the Jimin Shot and it’s scientifically proven to get you absolutely fucked. Trust me, I’m a science major,” Jimin winks.

“I’m pretty good at handling my alcohol though,” Yoongi says skeptically.

“No, oh my god Yoongi, that drink is literally certified death,” Hoseok says, shuddering. “I swear that shit is half poison.”

Jimin, Jeongguk, and Taehyung are all wearing identical shit-eating grins as Jimin holds out the shot invitingly, and in all honesty, it’s a little intimidating. But Taehyung is looking at him so expectantly, with a fucking gorgeous grin that lights up his entire face and how can he, a weak mortal, say no to that? How can Min Yoongi resist a smile that is probably carved by angels? The answer: he doesn’t.

Maybe Yoongi wants to prove himself to Taehyung. Maybe he wants to impress him a little. And maybe it’s the adrenaline rushing through his veins that makes him do this. Yoongi’s not sure the sane part of his mind decided this is a good idea, but some part of him thought it is. Maybe it’s a #TBT to the good old glory days of Party Animal Min Yoongi.

That Yoongi takes one look at Taehyung’s excited, expectant expression, blurts out a, “I can drink two easy”, grabs both shot glasses from Jimin’s waiting hands and downs them in quick succession, one after the after.

Hoseok was right, though. There is probably a decidedly illegal substance in the shots because there is no way that the mix was just pure alcohol.

There’s a shocked silence. Yoongi sways unsteadily on his feet for a second and four pairs of hands shoot out to steady him, before he regains his balance and slams the shot glasses onto the counter with a bit more force than necessary.

“Like I said,” Yoongi says, repressing a burp. “Easy.”

Jimin hoots, slapping him on the back, while Jeongguk makes a surprised noise. Hoseok shakes his head in disbelief, muttering an unbelievable.

“Oh my god, you are definitely my kind of friend,” Jimin says, eyes twinkling with mischief. “You, hyung, are welcome any time at this apartment.”

Taehyung stares at him with an unreadable look in his eyes, his lips twitching in amusement. “You are something else, Min Yoongi.”

Maybe it’s the fuzziness in his brain, or maybe it’s the liquid confidence. But there’s something in that drink that makes Yoongi grab Taehyung’s hand and pull him towards the door.

“Let’s dance.”

Somehow they find themselves right in the middle of the throng of sweaty people, swaying in time to the heavy beat. Yoongi’s never been bad at dancing, per say. With all those weekends spent grinding up against a stranger, he feels like he knows how to move his hips just right to get the other person flustered.

Yoongi’s not bad at dancing but Taehyung is on another level. It’s like a switch has been flipped—from a cute, bumbling Taehyung to a Taehyung that looks at Yoongi with a hungry, seductive light in his eyes. Taehyung has a tight grip on Yoongi’s waist, almost guiding him as they grind against each other.

Yoongi turns around, bringing his arms up and looping them around Taehyung’s neck, bringing his face close to Taehyung’s, close enough so they’re breathing the same air.

“You’re—you’re fucking beautiful, you know that?” Yoongi breathes. He can feel Taehyung all around him to the point where it’s almost overwhelming, but it feels right, so fucking right.

Taehyung laughs softly. “You’re so drunk, hyung.”

“I’m sober enough to know what I’m doing when I do this,” Yoongi says, eyes blazing, before he yanks Taehyung down and crashes his lips against his.

Maybe it’s the impact of the Jimin Shot, but Yoongi feels like he’s on top of the world. Maybe Yoongi will regret it in the morning. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But right now, with liquid gold in his veins and stars in his eyes, nothing feels more right than this.

[lawrenceseitz22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on your-t1-blog-url from Blogger https://ift.tt/2OybMQ1 via IFTTT

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

[howardkuester22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[daynamartinez22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196

Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 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: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.

Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.

Bradley: ‘Nuff said.

Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?

Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.

Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.

Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.

Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.

Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?

Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.

The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.

The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.

Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.

That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.

That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.

Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.

Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.

Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.

Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.

I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to support@semanticmastery.com.

All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?

Bradley: No.

Hernan: I’m good.

Adam: Let’s get into it.

Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?

Adam: Yes.

Marco: Yep.

Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement

Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”

Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.

So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.

I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.

Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.

I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.

I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is support@semanticmastery.com, you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.

But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.

Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”

I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.

Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, support@semanticmastery.com for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.

What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?

Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”

I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?

Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.

Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.

Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.

Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-

Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.

Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.

Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?

Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.

I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.

Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.

When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.

Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.

If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.

This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.

But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.

Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.

Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.

Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.

But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.

Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?

But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?

Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?

Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.

So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.

But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.

So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?

Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.

Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.

Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?

Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.

That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.

They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.

As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.

I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.

Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.

All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.

Do you want to comment on that?

Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.

Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.

Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”

Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.

I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.

Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.

What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?

Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”

Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.

Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.

I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.

Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.

Anybody wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?

AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.

There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.

Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.

Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.

I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.

Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?

That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”

That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.

Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.

As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.

Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?

Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.

Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?

Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.

Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.

Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.

Bradley: Were you?

Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.

Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?

Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”

Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?

But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.

So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.

Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?

“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.

I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …

So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.

That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?

Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.

Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.

Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.

Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.

I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.

The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.

But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.

Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.

So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.

Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.

Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?

This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.

This is Dan, right?

Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.

Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.

Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.

Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.

Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.

It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.

Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.

It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.

I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”

But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?

Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.

Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?

Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.

Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.

Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.

Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?

Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.

But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.

Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”

No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.

I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”

That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.

By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.

Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.

Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.

Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.

Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.

Bradley: Offer leads recon?

Adam: Yeah.

Bradley: Did you drop the link again?

Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.

Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?

Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-

Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.

Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.

I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.

Adam: That’s good.

Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.

Adam: Bye everyone.

Marco: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url