#ive only watched a few select clips on youtube but like. i have so much to say about it

[britneyshakespeare]

i have to make a youtube channel and become a video essayist just to explain how magic for humans is the shitty man’s the carbonaro effect

[thedizeezd]

A Full, Extensive, Thorough Guide to Streaming Video Games for Beginners

There's no secret. Streaming video games has caught on with many gamers like wildfire. The technology has finally adapted so that anyone, young or old, can start a streaming career even with basic equipment. Some streamers have seen success even with a one-monitor setup, while others who have gone all out on purchasing loads of equipment haven't seen much success at all. It proves that equipment—green screens, high-end sound equipment, multiple monitors—isn't the key to success.

So, then what? How does one get from point A, just beginning a stream, to point Z, developing an audience that actually pays you money for entertainment? It's honestly never an exact science to tell you the truth. A lot of it has to do with personality, who you network with, who you support, and what to expect from all of that. But I would argue the most important thing of all is never get discouraged with streaming video games. Millions of aspiring content creators all have the same idea—you want to create content that nobody has seen before. You've got great ideas! You want to plan out everything and start growing your community, and you know you can do it well.

I don't mean to discourage you. The road ahead is long and tiring. But you can traverse it if you put your mind to it and don't let up.

Thus begins the guide you need to start streaming video games. I can give you the keys, show you the door, and maybe even open it a crack for you. But you have to pull that door open the rest of the way, and nobody will do it for you.

Where to Start? Get Your Equipment

The good news is that some of you may already have enough equipment to start streaming video games and you don't even realize it. The PS4 and XBox One have built-in streaming capability along with camera support (if you have them) so you don't really need to concern yourself with bitrate, resolution, keyframe settings, or anything else that might be too confusing. I remember when I first started streaming and I was overwhelmed at all the settings—I started off with the wrong resolutions and didn't realize how shit my streaming setup looked until I actually got the brains to bring up a stream feedback.

Regardless, streaming via console isn't a bad idea to start because it can get you some kind of exposure. You don't even need a separate monitor or TV, although I do recommend you get a headset so you can hear the game audio without it repeating through an external microphone. I can't tell you how many streams I've heard where there's a very obvious echo from an external speaker and microphone that isn't on a headset. It's low quality and people will be turned off from it.

If it's your desire to start investing in some equipment, welcome to intermediate streaming. I would definitely recommend getting a second monitor, one to view your game on and a second to watch chat, have a stream feedback up, audio controls, and of course your streaming program. It all depends on what you want to monitor though—I run three monitors and a television which honestly is overkill for me. I try to fill up screen real estate only to recognize I don't even need the windows I have up.

Generally, you only need to be concerned about one of two programs. Those would be OBS and XSplit, the latter of the two I prefer. OBS is free, XSplit is paid. I just prefer XSplit over OBS because the UI is a little cleaner and the function terminology makes more sense to me. Most people I know use OBS, but I'd recommend trying out both to see what you think about either of them. I won't go into detail on how to set these up because that could take a lot more blogging. Instead, I've written a guide on how to stream using XSplit. It's a little outdated because of hardware upgrades, Amazon servers (I'm on Mixer now), and other factors, but should still hold true for anyone wanting to stream on either program.

A capture card is next. The two most selected brands for capture cards in the streaming universe are Avermedia and Elgato. Elgato is known to have fantastic customer service, Avermedia is known to have better hardware. I own both and I can attest to that. Pick one, I don't think you can go wrong. Some people go with higher-end capture cards because generally "gamer-related" products aren't worth the actual money, a lot more of the money pumped into them is just spent on marketing to gamers (coughrazer). But for these specific capture cards, I think they're actually worth it.

If you get an external card, be aware there will be wires. Many of them. Especially if you have multiple consoles, which brings me to switches.

Switches are nice pieces of equipment for video game streaming. I know plenty of streamers that have multiple consoles attached to one switch, and some of them detect their power so they automatically "switch" (ha) to the powered console and so there's no fumbling with buttons or trying to remember which console is on which output. It's just a matter of convenience so you're not fumbling with unplugging wires. Keep in mind that if you're using a switch to manage video output to your capture card, you will have a LOT of wires. I hold all my consoles in one ventilated hutch to keep clutter down. Clutter will happen if you decide to go this route.

Streaming started getting more popular around the time Intel Sandy Bridge processors released, so the technology has definitely developed so a lot of modern machines have the capability to handle on-the-fly video decoding to send to your stream servers. With that being said, you don't want to get anything meant specifically just for email and word processing. Generally, anything for streaming video games will take an i7 processor, especially if you use the x264 codec for streaming video games—that forces your processor to do the video encoding. Or, you can use NVENC if you have an NVIDIA card for your encoding, which is all in your streaming software settings. NVENC is a heavy drain on video cards, so if you're using a 1-PC setup running Call of Duty: Black Ops IV I would highly recommend an extremely beefy-ass PC, possibly with multiple video cards.

Going the 2-PC route is ideal, however. That's my current setup. I have two keyboards and mice and swap between the two when I need to control one or the other. Think of a 2-PC setup just as if you had a console plugged into your switch, only you control it through a keyboard and mouse setup instead of a controller. This is when your wires can get particularly nuts, especially if you run a KVM switch. I do not recommend a KVM switch, because it is cumbersome to have to switch between control sets just to change things on your streaming PC. Try and get two sets of a keyboard and mouse. I promise you it will work better.

A few last things on equipment: some people prefer using the Elgato Stream Deck which I think is a fantastic piece of hardware, but you can similarly just get a 10-key pad and map scene transitions to it. Do your research on decent lighting. And if you want to invest in really damn good sound, I'd recommend reading TransientGamers' extensive audio hardware guide. He recently hit partnership with Twitch, and he also does sound design for (I think) motion picture. Take a look.

I Can Stream...Now What?

Congrats on moving on with equipment! There's plenty of things you need to keep in mind when you start streaming and while you're streaming. I'll probably start with one of the most important things I've learned in the time that I've streamed.

Always be aware of what you say and do in the eye of the public. I've had numerous incidents where I've let something horrid slip, or I showed something I didn't want to show to an audience of people. What people tend to forget is that everything you say and do can be taken out of context, so even if you say or do things that are intended to be harmless, they can be used against you for harm. There was one time I let something slip on accident and around the same time a very prominent YouTube celebrity was under the scrutiny of the media for saying something similar to what I said. Thankfully, my current audience understood my intents and they laughed at my blunder. But remember, you are being recorded and anyone can copy what you've said to use it against you while you're streaming video games.

Second. Try to think of your stream as a television show. It might be hard to think of it as such a thing, but I've seen far too many people with dead air or constant chair stream where there's really no entertainment value. Remember, one of the biggest aspects to viewer retainment is to be entertaining. Otherwise, why would anyone bother with watching your stream? Television shows hide the politics and focus on the "relaxed fun" atmosphere.

Third. When you start off streaming video games, it's good to have a few scenes already set. Your first scene should be some kind of "Stream Starting" deal with something moving. You never want an entirely static stream. Ever play a video game that just says "Loading..." and doesn't show any indication of movement? Maybe it's the case that the game froze, or the computer locked up? You won't know unless you have something moving. A timer works great for this too, although I wouldn't recommend it right off the bat—if you set it for 5 minutes and don't have enough time for a full setup before the stream begins, either you'll start unprepared or you'll piss off people that come into your stream. Have something moving.

Another good scene to have is a motion-based "BRB" screen. There are plenty of small video clips and animations online you can purchase for cheap and just put a text source in it to notify others you're human and you need to pee sometimes. I've seen some people literally put up a BRB screen and go eat dinner for 30 minutes—it works. Others I've watched literally stop the stream. No. Don't.

Of course, there's the main stream scene. This should include your game. If you haven't thought of that part already, then maybe streaming isn't for you. Typically they include the webcam, sometimes a few stream stats, and other widgets to show on screen. Here's what my main

screen looks like, although I've just recently moved to Mixer as I outlined in the previous blog post. Some people prefer the pure, simple webcam/green screen/game look, others might prefer a ton of different flashy things on their streams. It's up to you and what kind of audience you might want to attract.

The Not-So-Fun Part

So now we consider what you want to do with your stream. If you want to turn it into a business, you're going to have to network. A lot. One of the things I say constantly is if you want a partnership, or perhaps some kind of viable money, it's important that you are known. If nobody knows who you are, you don't get support. It's pretty simple. There are some methods of getting "ahead" that are very legitimate, such as signing up to do charity streams. Althouigh the intended result with charity streams is to raise money for good causes, a welcome side-effect is that you get publicity. Pursuing charity streams for the intent of making a business out of streaming video games is...well, fuck you if you do so.

Keep in mind that with this day and age of broadcasting platforms, people tend to question the legitimacy of stream viewer counts. If there's 500 people in your channel, the channel lists only 30, and barely anyone is talking, this should raise a red flag for many, many viewers.

In other words, don't viewbot or try to get ahead by using some external hosting service. You will lose support. Partnership isn't everything, and neither is money. Pardon my french, but fuck you if you viewbot. You deserve no support.

But, as before, network. Stop by streams similar to yours. Say hello to people, even if you don't know them. You need to service people before they service you, and sometimes you get serviced, so return the service. You'll eventually find someone you click well with, and use each other to network.

If you use people to get ahead...well, you get the idea.

Attend cons if you can, find local groups, reach out to people on social media, and stop by their channels. Sometimes even boring content creators turn into your viewers, so don't be afraid to stick around someone's channel for the sole purpose of gaining a viewer. Visit channels on Discord, check out new channels from time to time, but I would advise not to automate any kind of social media. I used to put up auto-DMs in my Twitter and I would drop a link for people to check out. That never worked.

What did work is when I would engage in conversation with them. I'd stop by their channel, host them a few times, and maybe even donate and sub. Eventually, a broadcaster can turn into a viewer if you play your cards right. And if they don't, stop supporting them. That's it.

Also, do not go into another person's channel and announce "Yo streamer, I'm going to be streaming X game today!" That's a blatant advertisement of your own stream, and you're likely to get kicked or even banned if you pull that. Always be cognizant of the rules of anyone else's stream, and read them thoroughly before you even say anything. I've learned the hard way with that.

As before, network. Find the legitimate people you enjoy. Figure out who you can network with, and establish relationships with them. Eventually, you'll build something where some of your users are shared and some of their users are shared, since your audiences tend to like the same kind of humor, and birds of a feather flock together.

Lastly on this topic, although you may have made friends in some sense, recognize these are working relationships. However you treat whatever platform you broadcast on, recognize that some people will be trying to take advantage of you. Be amicable with people, but remember some people are out solely just to make a career playing video games and don't care who you are. I'm not much of a "magnetic" person, unfortunately, and I've been in the seat before where suddenly many, many people I didn't know had a strong interest in me. It's a weird feeling, and there were times I let it get to my head.

Don't. Having a large ego in this business will only cause you to lose support. I would know.

But, with all that said, I would caution you, reader, that at the first sign of someone doing unethical, shady things, do not pursue the relationship further. I wouldn't say burn the bridge, but keep your guard up with the particular person. Being used is never a fun thing.

A Business? Or a Hobby? Or Both?

This is always a hard question to answer because it feels like both often times. There are some ethical issues I've always had with it, so I try not to pursue too much with it. However, if you're able to distinguish between a business and a hobby, I have some tips for you with the former selection.

I started a spreadsheet (or many) that tracks the following: Profit and Loss, Preshow, Postshow, and Weekly Checklists, "extra" benefit recipients (for Patreon, Gamewisp, others), User Acquisition (how people came to your site and how you get them to stick), content timelines (internal and for your viewers), SEO, and whatever might come to your mind if you are really serious about streaming video games. I would definitely try to put effort into marketing your own self constantly. Truth be told, there are some aspects to content creation that are not fun. When you're not streaming, and for many that's about 6-8 hours a day, you have to dominate social media channels.

What exactly do I mean? I mean spread your name as far as the eye can see. Share your channel and its content as much as you can. Make sure your YouTube channel is up-to-date on clips. Make sure you use tumblr. Get those social signals and hit them hard. I've heard of pretty rough stories of 16 hour days of streaming, social media, content creation, blogging, networking, and pretty much doing whatever else is necessary to spread your brand for streaming video games. Generate your Discord and be sure to plug it regularly so you can build your community. But remember to take time off, too—never let this difficult career path affect your health. It's not worth it.

Also, if you decide you want to stream for the money, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Streaming video games for a living takes more work than you think. It's a fun job, but expect your time to be limited and your significant others to dislike you. Or maybe even leave you.

En Conclusion

That's what I have to say for now, for part one. I've been streaming video games for 5 years, but there's plenty I don't know. As before, I can show you the door and open it a little, but you have to walk through. It's your channel, your business, and you need to take the lead. There will be a part 2 soon, discussing sponsorships, free games (and how to handle those), and other matters of streaming video games.

Thanks, and see you online soon.

[sapphyrelily]

Seijoh 4 Week Day 6

Prompt: different kisses shared among them // youtuber au

Warnings: None

External link: AO3

I am lateeee ugh.

i. Dare

The first time they lock lips, it’s because someone dared them to.

On a live stream.

Oikawa sighs dramatically after he reads the comment out loud, turning to his guest with a flourish. “You heard our viewers, Iwa-chan. They want a demonstration.”

Iwaizumi squints at the screen, then glares at the camera. “You are all traitors.”

The chat overflows with claims of denial and of goading responses, pushing and pushing them to take on the dare.

“You guys are only doing this because Oikawa said I look kissable,” he tells the camera sourly. “It’s a make-up tutorial! I’m supposed to look kissable!”

“’So prove to us that you are kissable',” Oikawa reads, shrugging when Iwaizumi turns to glare. “What? Are you going to disappoint your viewers?”

“No,” Iwaizumi mumbles. “But if you guys try to make a ship out of this, I’m never doing another make-up tutorial with him, got it?”

Most people in the chat agree, with some making don’t be chicken comments, causing Iwaizumi to roll his eyes. He knows they’re still going to make a fuss. That’s how fans work.

He turns away from the camera, facing a very amused Oikawa, and takes a deep breath. “Ready.”

“Iwa-chan, you make kissing me sound like an ordeal!”

“You mean it isn’t?”

“Mean!”

The chat is blowing up again, with awws and so cute! and just kiss already, so he sighs and leans in.

Oikawa’s lips are soft, smooth from the vitamin E chapstick he uses, and he tastes faintly of the caramel sweet he was sucking on. It’s not so bad, he thinks, shifting a little so he can press their mouths more firmly together. It’s actually better than some other people he has kissed before.

They part after a few seconds, blinking at each other, then turn back to the camera with a smile.

“Very soft, probably because of the vitamin E chapstick,” he tells the camera. “Tastes like caramel, though I prefer strawberry.”

“Iwa-chan, that’s not how you rate a kiss!”

He laughs at Oikawa's fake pout, and throws in some comments about it feeling like kissing a marshmallow – too soft and too sweet – but despite all his teasing, he does mean it.

It wasn’t a bad kiss, by any count.

 ii. Accident

“I still can’t believe they want to watch us playing Mario Kart.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“That’s because you’re kicking my ass!”

As if on cue, a blue shell hits the back of his car and he falls off the track. Hanamaki’s character zooms into first place, and he throws his arms up in victory.

He turns to grin at the camera, shooting it a peace sign. “I may not be able to win at arm wrestling yet, but I am still the King of Mario Kart.”

“I’ll contest you for it.”

“Shh. It’s not your day to stream with me, don’t barge in like that,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows at Matsukawa.

Iwaizumi growls and picks his controller up. “Again. I demand a rematch.”

“This is the fifth set. There’s no way you can win this race and still beat me over all.”

“Shut up. Let’s play.”

Matsukawa settles his elbows on the back of the sofa, camera steady.

Hanamaki stands to select the course, only to have Iwaizumi pull him back, insisting on choosing.

“Hajime-kun, please, one race isn’t going to change anything–”

“Shut up and let me choose–”

Matsukawa grins to himself, moving so that he can catch the entire spectacle of them fighting over the control. Between Hanamaki’s height and Iwaizumi's strength, it’s a fair fight, and they would have gone on forever if he didn’t tire of watching them. “Guys.”

“He started it!” Hanamaki protests, and Iwaizumi takes that opportunity to jump him for the remote.

They fall in slow motion, wobbling and tilting, and Matsukawa surges forward to stop them–

They hit the ground, and he goes forward with the camera, a concerned question on his tongue when he sees them, frozen against each other.

They pull apart immediately, wiping their mouths and grumbling, but the damage is done.

Later, when they read the comments that they missed, they groan. They expected it, but it is still ridiculous to see how the comments were chock-full of fans screaming about opportune timing and DO IT AGAIN.

 iii. Publicity

“Mattsun, this is tragic. Really, really tragic.”

“You’ve had your own share of glory, it’s not tragic for you.”

“But Makki and Iwa-chan got more views than me!” He wails and throws himself across Matsukawa’s lap, only to have a pillow stuffed in his face.

He pulls the pillow off and hits him with it, whining about his uncouth behaviour. Matsukawa rolls his eyes and hits him with another pillow. “Stop whining, we have a video to film.”

“Mattsunnnn,” Oikawa pleads. “We have to beat them!”

The younger rolls his eyes. “What? You want to do another kissing video?”

“Yeah?”

“How ‘bout no.”

“It doesn’t even have to be a full clip! It could be a blooper!”

Matsukawa shuts up at that, as if he’s considering it. Oikawa doesn’t ease up on his puppy dog eyes – his friend is beginning to crack, he’s sure of it.

Finally, Matsukawa sighs and nods. “Fine. But it’s only for the publicity, got it?”

Oikawa claps his hands in glee. “Thank you! Thank you!”

Twitter nearly crashes the day after their video goes up, everyone screaming about how and why Oikawa was kissing Matsukawa when he obviously had something going on with Iwaizumi.

(Oikawa was ecstatic over his increased views. Iwaizumi was not.)

 iv. Exploration

Hanamaki flops onto the sofa next to his best friend, putting his legs into his lap. “So.”

“So.” Matsukawa balances his book on top of the extra limbs, raising his eyebrows.

“Are Iwaizumi and Oikawa actually a thing, or is that just the fans?”

“Bro, you ask me like I would know.”

“Considering that you kissed Oikawa, you might.” Hanamaki drawls, and his friend chuckles.

“That was for publicity.”

“…I knew it. Iwaizumi owes me creampuffs.”

“You should have asked for cash.”

“Dude. Creampuffs.”

“Meh.” He goes back to his book, and they enjoy the silence for a few minutes before it is broken again.

“What’s it like to kiss Oikawa?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me what it was like to kiss Iwaizumi.”

“Such a quick response.”

“I'm curious, y'know. He’s a good-looking guy.”

Hanamaki laughs. “True. I dunno though. We mostly knocked teeth when we fell down.”

“That’s the most unhelpful thing you’ve ever told me.”

“Touché. But I told you, so now you tell me.”

Matsukawa is silent for a moment. “It’s soft. But kind of firm too? I don’t know, it’s not like I’ve got a lot of kissing experience.”

His friend snorts. “More than me.”

“If your poor gay heart can’t take it, you’re welcome to ask Oikawa, he’ll love to have more publicity–”

“I’m not brave enough for that yet.” He says it so quietly, he almost misses it, but when he does understand, he stares.

“…you’ve got it bad, huh.”

“Shut up. You like Iwaizumi.”

Matsukawa smiles wryly. “He’s good-looking.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“Good-looking is hardly an excuse.”

“Shh, just admit your big gay crush.”

“I will if you will.”

“Nope. Too chicken, remember?”

“I’ll help you with kissing practice, if that’s what you’re scared about.”

Hanamaki stares. “Are you serious.”

He returns his stare evenly. “It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t want it to. Like holding hands.”

“But this is kissing.”

“So you touch your mouth to someone else’s mouth. Big deal.”

“You are so unromantic.”

“You want to kiss Oikawa, so I guess that explains your romantic heart.”

Hanamaki kicks him.

“Just practice with me, okay?”

“Fine, fine.”

Their first kiss is awkward, just a peck and pulling away, before Matsukawa tells him to close his eyes and pretend.

It gets easier after that, light glances, firm presses, gentle gliding of skin on skin, teeth tugging and nibbling until they are short of breath.

They practice a lot, because they don’t want to admit that maybe, maybe – they’re beginning to like it a bit too much.

 v. Secret

“Hey, Oikawa.”

“Mm?”

They’re doing another make-up tutorial, this time with Hanamaki as the artist, because it’s Halloween themed.

“Would you like some more publicity?”

Oikawa cracks an eye open – the one he’s not working on, thank goodness – and his gaze is sharp, searching.

“Makki, if there’s something you want to speak to me about, you can just say it, y’know. Doesn’t have to be ‘for publicity'.”

“Ah, well, just–” He flounders for a reply, and Oikawa opens his other eye to stare, head cocked.

Hanamaki give in with a sigh, head dropping to his chest and mumbles, “I want to kiss you.”

Oikawa cracks a little smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Only because this job makes me pretty thick-skinned.”

The brunet hums in acknowledgement, grabbing his hand before he can pick up his brush. “You can. But later.”

He wasn’t sure he heard that right. “What?”

“You can kiss me,” Oikawa repeats, gentle smile in place. “But do you have feelings for me, or is it just a whim?”

His mouth dries up then, and he can no longer look at him.

Light fingers press on his wrist, tapping for attention. “Makki. I’m not going to hate you, no matter what your answer is. You can tell me,” he says gently, and Hanamaki gulps.

“I– Yes.” He still can’t look up, until a hand enters his vision, pulling on his chin so that grey meets brown.

“Yes to the feelings, or the whim?”

“The feelings,” he whispers, and Oikawa’s smile widens.

“Then kiss me.” His eyes turn serious then, adding, “But I think you should know, before you do, that I’m asexual.”

Hanamaki gapes, pieces clicking into place, finally, finally comprehending why he was always so blasé about it. “Then maybe I shouldn’t, if you’re uncomfortable–"

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “I’m not uncomfortable with it, but I don’t get any feelings from it. You can kiss me, but I won’t get as much enjoyment from it as you do.”

“Ah, um, okay?”

The brunet laughs. “Just kiss me. But later, we have a tutorial to finish.”

Hanamaki picks up his brush sheepishly, dabbing it on a colour and instructing him to close his eyes.

When they do get to the promised kiss, Hanamaki feels giddy, light, but it’s the little whisper of I like you too in his ear that really makes his heart flutter.

 vi. Confirmation

“Yo, Iwaizumi.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you heard from Oikawa or Hanamaki lately?”

“No?”

“Bit weird, don’t you think?” He says casually. “They’re not the type to go radio silent.”

“Enjoy the silence while you can,” his companion mumbles. “I’ve got a feeling they’re planning something.”

“Oh?” He leans in, resting his chin on top of his head. “Do share.”

Iwaizumi shakes his head to get him off, tilting his head back to glare. “Don’t do that.” When Matsukawa doesn’t say anything, he gives him a sour look and hits him with his pen.

“Okay, okay, geez.” He backs off, sighing over the back of the couch. “So what are they planning?”

“Did you know they kissed?”

“Oh, you mean that thing where people touch their mouths together?”

Iwaizumi raises a dictionary this time, and he hurriedly backs away.

“No, no, I didn���t know they kissed. How’d it happen?”

“Apparently Hanamaki confessed while they were filming the Halloween make-up tutorial.” He picks up his pen, sketching something nonchalantly. “Oikawa was saying something about telling the viewers.”

“…I thought he was radio silent?”

“He was radio silent after screaming about it for an hour. Would’ve been two, but I think Hanamaki went over.”

Matsukawa hums, hooking his chin over the back of the couch to watch him draw. He already knows all this, but he needed an opening.

When did he get more chicken than Hanamaki?

He sighs.

“So.”

“Yes?”

“I like you.”

“I am aware.”

“Oh?”

“Mm.”

“…Iwaizumi.”

“What?”

Matsukawa reaches over, pulls the pen out of his hand. He gets an annoyed glare for that, but his heart is pumping erratically, nervousness eating at him.

“I like you,” he says slowly, watching for a reaction. “And this is a confession, not me reminding you that I’m your friend.”

Iwaizumi gapes for a moment, before a slow smile spreads across his face. “I know.”

“Do you?”

(His heart is beating too fast, too fast, a hummingbird trapped behind his ribs. )

“I’m grey-aromantic, not stupid,” he tells him, flicking his forehead. “But I do like you too.”

Matsukawa exhales, hard pounding diluting into thrilled flutters, a dumb smile lifting his lips. “Since you’re aromantic and not asexual, can I kiss you?”

“I was waiting for you to ask.”

It’s a short, sweet kiss, nothing like what he experimented with Hanamaki, but it’s because it’s short that it means so much more.

 vii. Declaration

“So anyway, I was thinking that we do a big outing, all four of us, and leak that we’re gonna be out so that the viewers know–”

“No.”

“No.”

“I’ll do it if we get to stop by the bakery and do the other plan.”

Two sets of incredulous eyes stare at him, while Oikawa claps in delight. “Done!”

“I did not agree to this.”

“I like the bakery idea.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Blackmail, Hajime, blackmail.”

“I am a pure, kind, soul, and I will not engage in your nefarious activities–”

“Iwa-chan, please.”

“Innocent, you are not.”

“I was before this job.”

“Past tense, present tense – you’re still no innocent.”

“How about the day after tomorrow?” Oikawa interrupts loudly. “I need some new outfits anyway.”

Matsukawa pretends to think. “Well, the undressing part of that plan sounds like a good idea–”

“Mattsun, keep your dirty thoughts to yourself.”

“Your bedroom is right there, save the thoughts for later.”

“Shinjuku sound good to you?” Iwaizumi asks. “Or Harajuku, there’s this cosplay I’ve been meaning to draw.”

“Harajuku.”

“Harajuku.”

“Harajuku, Shinjuku, and then the bakery. Or the bakery first, it doesn’t matter.”

“Alright, and done!” Oikawa drops his phone onto the table triumphantly. “Make sure you all dress in bright colours, we need to be very visible.”

Everyone groans, but there are no objections.

-----

“Makki, someone's following us.”

“You set this up so that people could follow us.”

“Well, yeah, but–”

“Changing room.” Hanamaki shoves an armful of clothes at him, pushing him to the back of the store. “I have a bit of a plan.”

“Will it get them off our tail?”

“Maybe. But it’ll definitely distract them for a bit.”

“Okay.”

Matsukawa comes up to him as Oikawa draws the curtain, holding up two shirts. “Yea or nay?”

“For you or for Iwaizumi?”

“I like how you think.” He turns away, calling for his boyfriend, and Hanamaki grins. He hears the curtain being pulled back then, and holds up a finger.

“One second, I need to get my camera app open.”

A fond huff. “Makki, it’s just a shirt.”

“It’s a very good shirt.” He holds up his phone. “Now pose.”

“Really, now, this is too much.” But he places one hand on his hip anyway, holding the other up in a peace sign and winking.

Hanamaki snaps the photo, then lifts his hand to kiss it lightly. “Majestic.”

“Of course,” the brunet preens. “Who do you think I am?”

“The great Oikawa Tooru, who will not be getting milk bread if he doesn’t hurry up, because the bakery will be closed.”

“Oh my goodness, it’s noon.”

“I know right?! Hurry up.”

Iwaizumi walks past them with a pair of jeans and sighs. “Idiots.”

“Unfortunately, they’re our friends.”

“We should ditch them.”

“Soon, soon.” Matsukawa forces a hanger into his hands. “But first, try this. We should get matching shirts.”

Iwaizumi gives him a sour look. “I’m not ready for humiliation.”

“Please, it’s just a cloud shirt. A cute cloud shirt.”

“Why am I going to listen to you?”

“Because you like me.” Matsukawa leans in and presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Please?”

“Fine, fine.” He steps into a changing room, and once the curtain is drawn, Matsukawa shoots Hanamaki a thumbs up.

His friend grins, waving his phone at him, so he pulls his own out, scrolling through the wave of notifications.

What he sees makes his eyebrows disappear into his hairline, and he quickly opens his messaging app.

[Matsukawa]: Wow the stalking is real

[Hanamaki]: ikr

[Hanamaki]: bt theyre so shocked lmao

[Matsukawa]: Gdbye to those iwaoi fantasies lolol

[Hanamaki]: hanaoi sounds btr anyway

[Matsukawa]: so does matsuiwa

[Hanamaki]: nah I call iwamatsu

[Matsukawa]: Wht makes u think he tops

[Hanamaki]: u mean u dnt swap?

[Matsukawa]: Not yet past 3rd base

[Hanamaki]: hah

[Matsukawa]: shush, sme of us r romantic

“Issei, stop texting Hanamaki and let’s go.” Iwaizumi pulls his shoes on and takes his hand, dragging him to the checkout. “I know the publicity is very shocking, but the mission here is to outdo them.”

“Oh? I didn’t take you for the PDA sort.”

“Sacrifices must be made. By that, I mean my dignity.”

“How touching.”

Iwaizumi yanks him down and fuses their lips, a hard short kiss that ends with a feral grin. “Hanamaki bet me five thousand yen.”

“Now there’s the motive.” Matsukawa puts his arm around his waist, tugging him closer. “If you win, you’re treating me.”

“Of course, of course. But first we have to win.”

“Iwa-chan, no cheating!”

Iwaizumi twists to smirk at him. “All’s fair in love and war.”

“Oh, you are on.”

[skkaw]

Welcome, Skkawliens, to our Diablo IV playtest experience! As one of the most hotly anticipated Blizzard games of this year, I was really looking forward to playing this game! And sure enough, Diablo IV did not disappoint. For context, this post will focus on my impression and experience playing the Diablo IV demo at Blizzcon 2019. Unlike other reviews, my goal is to share the aspects of the game that I enjoyed the most being a long time Diablo fan. With that said, you may want to look elsewhere if you’re looking for a more technical review of the game (there are plenty of which online). And now, onward brave wanderer, to the depths of the Sanctuary!

Sorceress Supreme

At Blizzcon, I was lucky enough to have played all three character classes available at the demo (there will be 5 character classes on release). Now During my first playtest, I choose the Sorceress class to start. Playing the Sorceress was like catching up with an old friend.  Her attack and power felt familiar and natural.  And to me, they should, as the Sorceress is a character class inherited from Diablo II – which I spent countless hours playing in my youth.

The Sorceress’ abilities are ranged attacks using fire, ice, and lightning. The gameplay was pretty straightforward as any Diablo game, point, click destroy. Right-click Fire Bolt, left-click Frost Bolt and you get a mix of special abilities to start including Blizzard, Lightning Spear, Meteor and Conduit. You activate these abilities by pressing numbers 1-4 on the keyboard.

If you want a detailed breakdown of each spell and ability you can check out Dantics Sorceress Breakdown via YouTube here. 

Now after choosing my character class and doing the obligatory intro level and cinematics/cutscenes, I just went out into the Sanctuary (the world of Diablo) and made my own path.  What I mean is, I didn’t talk to any of the NPCs or follow any of the quests. I just went wandering!  You see that is what’s great about Diablo IV, it’s now an open world. You’re no longer limited by linear gameplay. You can do what you want when you want to. I found it fun not having to tackle mandatory quests and just do my own thing, exploring the world of Sanctuary on my own. This is in contrast to Diablo III where the first you have to do is follow one quest after another to get a point where you can go exploring (and even then you could still feel tied down by the plot).

But I wasn’t alone for long! After a bit of exploring, and a few random encounters later,  I had stumbled upon what is called a World Event. An event where players can band together and fight one big HUGE monster.  I mean:

Right. One minute, I’m wandering the sanctuary just minding my own business and then suddenly I’m smack in the middle of what felt like a total warzone. I couldn’t even begin to tell what was happening because I had one goal: to survive. But ASHAVA, THE PETTILENT, the big baddie pictured above, had other plans:

Yup. My character died 3 times. 3 times. They did not make this easy and I loved it.  It definitely made me feel the risk that went with dealing with these World Events. But, after a few more re-spawns our group was able to deal with ASHAVA. We were victorious!

The World Event was definitely a whole lot of fun to play. Maybe next time I’ll be able to survive a bit longer..

But wait, there’s more! I was then able to playtest the Druid class.

Druid’s Our Guy!

I have to say, the Druid was certainly was the con favorite. What makes this character so special is that he can transform into an animal to beat your enemies. For one example, he can transform into a bear. Check out the short gameplay clips below as they show the sheer awesomeness of the Druid in action:

They really were able to make the gameplay feel fluid between transforming your character into a bear and into its human form. And if that wasn’t enough here’s another short clip:

Who doesn’t want to hurtle a giant rock at some skeleton warriors? Winner.

Another thing I really appreciated about Diablo IV, is the attention to detail. In previous Diablo games you could interact with the environment. Like let’s say destroy a bench or search through a bookcase.  But here the world just felt a bit more interactive, take for instance the clip below.  Basically, I took a moment from my busy adventuring to stop and just watch my wolf buddies.

You can see them nibbling like an ordinary wolf and the swaying of the grass just completes the effect. It’s kind of hard to see but the wolf behind my Druid character even does a little shake!

Also, similarly,  there was another moment I couldn’t help but take stock of the waves as the water hit the coast. See below:

I had to let my companions do all the work and deal with all our undead counterparts as I took a moment to take in the world around me.  I really just enjoyed taking a moment and enjoying the scene.

Speaking about companions, it was great that they let us play together in groups.  Basically, some computers were linked together.  They set it up so we could invite other players, see below:

I’m not sure if this is going to be the same interface we’ll use in the final game to invite other players to play, but it certainly was useful during the demo.  I had no problem inviting one of my buddies to join my game and start playing together.

Lastly, I played as the Barbarian class. Below is a shot from the cutscene of the demo.

Barbarian and Multiplayer Fun

Speaking about cutscenes, they definitely went in a much darker direction for this game. at one point, your character is basically crawling out of a cave and he/she looks into what you initially think is water and your character’s reflection. But nope:

Shudders. This game definitely took a turn for the dark, but for a game that literally takes you to Hell for the end boss battle, it works. The land of the sanctuary is a dangerous place, good thing they got us to save the people (they are all doomed, haha).

For this playtest, I actually went to town and talked to the townsfolk to receive my quest. Again, since this is an open-world environment, you have to be proactive and find the right NPCs to speak to to get your quest. One of my buddies from Blizzcon tagged along with me, she was playing the Sorceress above. See below a short clip of my Barbarian and my buddy’s Sorceress questing together.

Also, obviously the Barbarian himself is just a fun class to play.  See below a short gameplay clip for the Barbarian just plowing through enemies. No complaints here.

And there you have it! From the moment I selected my first character class to the time I found myself fighting the first hordes of the undead, I was impressed. It felt like the Diablo of old but fresh, relevant and new.

Final thoughts:

I also went around the convention hall asking people what they thought of the Diablo IV demo if they had any issues or concerns with the game.  I was really trying to play Devil’s advocate, but there weren’t any takers, no one had anything negative to say about the game.

Everyone I spoke to at Blizzcon about Diablo IV  seemed to have the same consensus as me: Diablo IV is shaping up to be a really good predecessor of the Diablo games of old..  And from what I heard from the Diablo Developers on the show floor, they’re really getting a lot of their inspiration from Diablo II and Diablo I (not that Diablo III wasn’t as good but going back to the roots of the game feels right). For example, pictured above is Brom’s original art for the cover of the Diablo II game. In my opinion, this photo alone show’s there’s so much to pull from for this game. With that said, I for one cannot wait for when this game will be released. Only time will tell when though Blizzard will be ready to release this game to the public, but until then we’ll just have to wait and see.

Cosplayer: @stefiedew @keltonfx

We hope you enjoyed our first impressions and gameplay experience of Diablo IV.  Do let us know what you think in the comments section below.  Until the next time brave wanderers, keep safe during your travels in the Sanctuary!

    Check out our Diablo IV Gameplay First Impressions . . . #Blizzcon2019 @Blizzard #Diablo4 #gameplay #reviews #gamereviews Welcome, Skkawliens, to our Diablo IV playtest experience! As one of the most hotly anticipated Blizzard games of this year, I was really looking forward to playing this game!

[daynamartinez22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[howardkuester22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[pledje]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[teresaajones9]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[localwebmgmt]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[liteblock]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[charlesswink19]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[pinnacledigitalmedia]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[your-clarity-digital]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[zigdot]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it��s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on https://dilatepage.tumblr.com/

[qxcel1]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[lawrenceseitz22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225

Click on the video above to watch Episode 225 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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

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

  Announcement

Adam: We are live very quickly today. Hey everybody! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 225, two hundred and a quarter. Today is the 27th of February 2019. We have got some great announcements for you. But before we get into that, we’re gonna go down and say hi to everybody. Starting on the left, Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good. Exciting day today, especially with all the good stuff going on in Semantic Mastery.

Adam: Definitely, definitely. Hernan, how about yourself, how are you doing?

Hernan: I’m doing great. I’m super excited for today, super excited for Funnel Hacking live last week, it was awesome. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys, so stay tuned. We have a lot of good stuff coming up for you guys today, actually. So it’s gonna be awesome.

Adam: Oh, I just have this T-shirt on, how random. All right. Well, anyways, moving right along. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: I’m good, man. What’s up?

Adam: Nothing, just chillin’. I was hoping for a weather report. It’s kind of overcast and nasty here. How about you?

Marco: It’s over-sunny and sunny here.

Adam: Bradley, how are you doing? What have you got, snow, hurricanes? What’s going on?

Bradley: I don’t know. I haven’t been outside since about 6 o'clock this morning because I’ve been working all day. But it looks sunny, with the temperature. Anyways, hi!

Adam: Well, I see you’ve got your nightshirt on too.

Bradley: Yeah. We got the memo, apparently. Mine is fading now because I wear mine more than you, apparently.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. I might have just gotten one for the conference I was at. So shout out to Dan, if you’re watching, good to see you, man. We bumped into Dan and his wife at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s always good to see people. We met a few more people who knew us from Hump Day Hangout. It was really cool to see, Hernan, I think you met up with a few people, [inaudible 00:01:52] my mind while I’m talking I can’t remember anybody’s name.

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. Adam reached out to me and he was a big fan of Semantic Mastery. He had a digital marketing agency and he was listening to Hump Day Hangouts pretty much every week. So yeah, it’s good to see, “Hey, you’re from Semantic Mastery. I know you guys,” and that’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

Adam: Awesome. Well, I’d like to say this every time, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thank you very much for watching Hump Day Hangouts. This place gets your questions answered, you can just put them on the page. If you’re watching the replay, just go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions and ask your question there. Then you can always come back, we timestamp the video so you can watch later whether you got client calls, you’re working, whatever it is.

Then the next thing we always tell you is, because people ask us, where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Well, you should start with the Battle Plan. Today, the Battle Plan 3.0, bigger, better badder, expanded, has landed and we have got all sorts of good stuff in there. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more, but I’ll be putting the link on the page. I highly suggest you grab that. We got some kick-ass bonuses. I’m not gonna read it to you. I want you to go check out the sales page. Personally, I like it because I made it, but secondly, we got just a like laundry list of some cool stuff we put together for you guys. So please go and check that out.

If you’ve already done that and you’re looking to take things up a few notches, if you’re wanting to grow or you want to start your own local digital marketing agency, then we would love to have you join the Mastermind and you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: By the way, I wanna welcome Robert Nelson. He just joined today. Robert, I reached out to you via email to schedule your onboarding call with me. Welcome to the Mastermind. I hope to chat with you next week sometime.

Adam: Outstanding! Looking over things real quick, I wanted to tell you too, I’ve skipped this while I was excited about talking to the new people, but if you’re checking out the replay or you watch these on YouTube and you’re checking this out sometime in the future, click the subscribe button, stay up to date with all the Hump Day Hangouts, all the video clips we put out, all the training, all the good stuff. It’s great way and free way to stay up to date.

Let’s get into it. I need to pay some stuff on the page. Hernan, or you guys, can you tell them a little bit more about what’s going on with the Battle Plan?

Hernan: Yeah, for sure. The Battle Plan was born because, I think it was like two years ago and we have been putting out like, Bradley specifically, he’s a content machine, and we have been putting out a bunch of content, a lot of content pretty much every week, between Hump Day Hangouts, between the Mastermind sessions and whatnot, the groups and whatnot. So a lot of people are reaching out and saying, “Hey guys, you guys are awesome, but we need, or we feel we need something that we could actually grab and take a look at and say, all right, so I am at this stage, I have a new website, what step one, what would Semantic Mastery recommend? What would Bradley Benner do?”

Basically, we kind of developed that step-by-step framework so that we knew a lot of people that were coming that they would have like new websites and, bam, we developed a framework for them, each websites we develop a framework for them, YouTube videos, we developed a framework, local websites, we developed a framework. We have been adding up, taking out, subtracting, adding and updating to the latest and greatest stuff that we have been finding throughout these past few years.

Now, this edition, the 3.0, the SEO Confidential, we have added everything that goes into Google My Business, which is something that we didn’t have on previous versions. Now it’s there. So if you’re optimizing Google My Businesses for clients doing lead-gen and whatnot, this is the type of stuff that you wanna get. We have also added a bunch of additional bonuses.

Not only that, when you’re getting the Battle Plan, which is again of kind of a feel manual, you go through it, you know exactly what you do, where to order, what to do, in what quantity, in what power and whatnot, you also get access to a webinar that we recorded that is basically the Battle Plan in a webinar format. So I think that when getting the Battle Plan you’re sending yourself up for success with your local digital marketing agency. Even if you’re doing info products, if you’re doing affiliate, it also works as well just because of the fact of how specific it is.

If you want a million different things, that’s not your thing, that’s not what you wanna get. But if you want to simplify way of applying the Semantic Mastery knowledge over the past five years, then that is the guy that you want to get pretty much.

Marco: Can I just add that simply does not mean bad. We boiled it down. It’s a step-by-step instruction so that anybody could come in and follow what we do, how we apply our own training. Because Bradley does training, I do training, Hernan does his stuff, and we have to have a way for people to know, okay, so if I were to approach this, how would I tackle this step-by-step? So that’s what was done in the Battle Plan.

Just because it’s simplified doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, that it’s bad. We’re hardly charging anything for it, anyway. But it’s just a way for you to go and take a look, okay, so these are the things that I need to do. If I follow this formula, does this guarantee me success? Oh, fuck no. Nothing guarantees anything. The thing that we can tell you is that this is what we do and the things that we apply to get our success online. These are the things that we have done.

If you apply it and if you follow everything in sequence, I mean, nothing’s guaranteed and in this world, especially not when you’re dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but this guy, there’s some absolute fantastic tactics in there that will help you overcome that 800-pound gorilla. I mean, you can go and do the Google tickle. When all is said and done and you’re still having trouble, you can go in and you can still hammer Google and make the needle move. It’s just how much work are you willing to put in towards your success? Because nothing in this world is free. I’m Christian, and so if you don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s very plain. So guys if you don’t put in the work, how can you expect to be successful on the web?

No magic pills. No magic formulas. Anybody telling you that you can make $100,000 overnight is blowing smoke up your ass. Stop listening. Put in the work.

Bradley: Yeah. He mentioned G tickle, that sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. Just check out the Battle Plan, you’ll see what we mean.

Adam: Yeah. I want to say real quick, I wanted to do something fun for you guys. If anyone is watching right now and hasn’t picked up the Battle Plan yet, one, you should do it, and two, we’ll give you a little push in the right direction here. Go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Buy it, grab it during Hump Day Hangouts and comment on the page and we’ll randomly select one person who does that, we’ll buy one of these nice fancy T-shirts for you and ship it to you for free.

Marco: Can we give someone a Battle Plan for the best question? I know we didn’t plan this ahead, but why don’t we do that?

Adam: Yeah.

Marco: Or if they bought it, we can refund it.

Adam: Yeah. We’ll do a free one, just because I don’t wanna screw up our stats. I’m not gonna lie. I’m looking at the numbers. But yeah, best question, Marco, we’ll pick someone, and then if you go and buy the Battle Plan during comment, leave a comment on the page, and we’ll randomly select. We’ll hop online, we’ll get one of these nice shirts, printed out for you and send it to you.

Bradley: Cool. Can we get into it?

Adam: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. I’m gonna tease the Mastermind just briefly because we’ve been working on building out GMB assets and all that. By the way, guys, if you’re in any other groups, you’ll probably are aware that there’s a lot of shit going on right now with GMB because Google’s trying to crack down on spam to Maps listings, which we all knew was gonna happen. I’ve been preaching that for months. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been pushing for months on building a scalable process for building these out. I kept hammering all of our Mastermind members especially with guys be building, building, building right now, well, monetize them later, right now build them, because I knew it was gonna be a loophole that was gonna get shut down or at least made more difficult. It looks like that’s what’s going on right now.

So there’s a lot of stuff going on, a lot of changes, Google’s cracking the whip, they’re tightening the noose, so to speak. So I recommend staying out of the GMBs, unless you have to go in them, work on off-page stuff. That’s really what my team is doing. My team has been completely prohibited from going in any new accounts or anything that’s been set up recently. So I’m having them just go back through and fine-tune our off-page strategies until we figure out what’s going on.

Also, a lot of times, guys, it’s just a matter of letting the dust settle, like letting everything calm down and cool off before going back in. We have some ideas, we’re not gonna share them here yet, but we do have some ideas as to what not to do in order to prevent suspensions and that kind of stuff.

But just know that you have options and opportunities to work on existing assets that may need additional pushes, like I’ve got a bunch of those. So we’re kind of working on the off-page stuff at the moment. Then once we nail down what we’ve determined is the proper procedure for going forward, obviously, we’re going to share that in our paid groups or the members that have bought specific products and things like that.

Just kind of wanna give everybody a heads up that, no, don’t panic, guys, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stuff that you can work on while the process is calming down. Eventually, it will, it always does, and we’ll find other ways. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s what SEO is, really, digital marketing.

With that said, also I have recently released all my processed docs and everything to the Mastermind members because I had spent about four months really developing these processes in training and virtual assistant team to build out my assets and so that I could scale this and do exactly what I’ve been preaching and that was to build, build, build. I think we built-, well, I’m not going to mention how many, but a lot. We built a lot of different assets. I think it was two weeks ago I released, or maybe a month ago now, or three weeks ago, something like that, all the process docs that I developed with my team as well as some of our live event attendees to the Mastermind, which was invaluable.

I got a lot of really good responses and comments from that because we didn’t charge anything extra for that, guys, as part of the Mastermind. We always say Mastermind has its privileges. Well, because I’ve got my team doing off-page stuff right now and recently there’s been some developments. For example, we did a webinar with Lisa Allen. You might want to get this link ready, Adam, anyways for the RankFeedr webinar, if anybody hasn’t seen it yet. Lisa has this tool that’s a co-citation RSS feed creator, or a super feed creator, as I like to call it. It’s called RankFeedr.

It’s great for creating co-citation and adding geographic relevance, especially for some of the processes that we developed for the GMB asset building or the Local Lease Pro model. It’s something that you can set and forget. It’s a bit time-consuming to create these super feeds. Also, there’s a way that you can embed them in specific pages.

There’s a question specifically from our new Mastermind member Robert that I’m gonna answer in just a few minutes, but there’s a process that I taught on how to create an embedded feed using feed burner in Syndication Academy update webinar, which was the last update webinar. I just held that a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. So if anybody’s in Syndication Academy, excuse me, if you haven’t seen, that go to the training area and go look at the update section. It’s the only replays or archived so far for 2019. So it’s in a specific section there in the replays or updates, module, whatever you call it.

In there I talked about specifically how to do that. Well, you can combine the two methods. If you’ve got RankFeedr, then you can actually embed the feed. It’s really powerful. So I’ve got my team, I actually was working on producing the process doc for my team today so that I can get my VAs, because I’m just having to do off-page stuff at the moment. So they’re gonna go back through and go through all the assets that we’ve created and start embedding these feeds and in very specific locations. It’s a bit of a process but I’m just gonna give you guys a quick preview of what my process docs look like. The Mastermind members already know, many of you probably don’t.

That in itself, guys, I’ve put a lot of work into this stuff. I’ve developed my processes over the years and how to create process docs and how I train my team. It’s a literal step-by-step process that they cannot make mistakes. As long as they follow, I mean, they don’t even need the training video. There’s always a corresponding training video with all of my process docs. But they could just follow, if they can read, you can take a VA, virtual assistant that’s cold right off the street, like essentially has no internet marketing skills whatsoever. But as long as they know how to read and navigate on a computer, then they can complete any process that I want them to complete. That’s essentially how we train our teams.

So I’m just gonna grab the screen before we get into it anyways. I’m gonna show you guys this really quickly. Take a screenshot if you’re smart. But this is it. This is me explaining what it is to my team, and then I go through and I tell them what we’re gonna be doing. I just started on part one, the training video will go here, there’s a step-by-step process as part two will be next, and then part three is how to create the feed burner feed and embed it.

So again, I just wanted to do it real quick, kind of tease on that, guys, because Mastermind members, as soon as I get that process training completed, I’m gonna add that to the process docs that I shared with you, guys, in the Mastermind just a couple of weeks ago. Okay. So be on the lookout for that, you’ll be able to put it to use. All right.

Also, we’re gonna get into questions, but I did wanna mention this very quickly, Ben had a great question last week, he’s also a Mastermind member, about how to get over shiny object syndrome and how to focus and how not to get carried away or swept away by other products or methods that are attractive? As entrepreneurs, we often chase opportunity because we see opportunity everywhere and, as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

So a lot of times we get involved with or started on a project usually a new method of some sort that we’ve been suckered into from an attractive marketing message. We start off with what’s called uninformed optimism, and then as we dig into it a little bit we realize the amount of work or the learning curve involved and all that kind of stuff, that’s where we go into this next stage of what’s called the emotional cycle of change. It’s called informed pessimism.

Anyways, I’m not gonna go through all that because I put a video on here that I found to be very helpful. I review it often when I find myself in this emotional cycle of change. So I posted this in the comment section, guys. Just bookmark it. Go back and watch it if you are the type that suffered, most of you are probably entrepreneurs and that’s why you’re watching this webinar, you’ve probably suffered from shiny object syndrome at some point or you currently still are. I’m a recovering shiny object syndrome, that’s like a recovering alcoholics. Do you know what I mean? I was talking about how I’ve unsubscribed from all the marketing emails message or lists and things like that specifically because I really want to stay focused on doing what I know is going to progress my business. I think this video may help you, guys, so just check it out when you get a chance.

Does Ranking YouTube Videos And Selling Lead For Local Business In Google Still Work In 2019?

Okay. We’re gonna get right into questions. It looks like Renee Wagner posted his question twice and it looks like she posted it last week probably after the webinar, so I’m gonna start with her. She says, “Does ranking videos for local businesses and Google using YouTube and selling the leads to local businesses still work well in 2019?”

Yeah, it can. The thing about ranking local videos for leads is they don’t convert typically as well as having a Maps listing would. They can, don’t get me wrong, depending on the message and if it’s a compelling video and that kind of stuff. Also, ranking videos, you can still do it, but I also recommend that you learn how to use YouTube ads because YouTube ads, you can get really targeted traffic from the very specific areas. You can set your geographic targeting. There’s so many targeting options as far as audience targeting inside YouTube now or the Google ads platform for video that you can get really good results.

And as a byproduct of having a video that is targeted and getting targeted views from people that are within a specific geographic area, that are known to Google to be in the market or interested in that particular product or service, those are heavily weighted views. And as a byproduct of that, the video will often rank. Again, this has been a trick up my sleeve for years now, but it’s gotten better and better recently, and that’s using YouTube ads to actually rank the video.

So if you know video SEO, you still apply all of the SEO methods to the video as well as the channel, you can still do off-page SEO stuff, but the magic, the real magic is using YouTube ads to run local relevant traffic to it. Because it’s not just about the traffic either, you actually get engagement and clicks to your offer or clicks to the landing page or leads for local businesses. You’ll actually get real traffic and real leads from a properly set up YouTube ads campaign.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Adam, but isn’t that training available is an order bump for the Battle Plan?

Adam: I’m not gonna lie I was looking at a spreadsheet, I missed the first part of that.

Bradley: The YouTube ads training I did for local videos?

Adam: Yep. Yeah. You can get that if you buy the Battle Plan on check out. It’s the killer ads for local, order bump, yeah.

Bradley: I would recommend you look into that. It is still a strategy that works. For the longest time, for years now, guys, like five years now I’ve been ranking videos or doing video SEO, selling a wholesale video SEO services to a local video production company that creates videos for local businesses. They would always just create the videos and then sell them, the client, their customers, they would sell them the video and the customers would put them on their website, maybe posted into Facebook, put them on a YouTube channel, but they never were getting leads from them or ranking them in Google.

For about five years, now I’ve provided wholesale SEO services to that company. So the company handles the sales, then they upsell my service to the client or the customer and so they make money off of my SEO service every month. That way I don’t have to deal with the customers and all that kind of stuff, all I do is provide reporting. However, with just in the last six months or so, I’ve actually went back to them, after four and a half years or so of just providing wholesale SEO services, and I said, “Look, I’m not going to provide the SEO service anymore. I’m going to provide local ads. I’m going to set up ad campaigns for the videos.” Because I can guarantee traffic that way. I can’t guarantee traffic or leads or clicks or anything from ranking in Google. I can’t guarantee rankings either.

I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always said, “Look, if it doesn’t rank, then I don’t refund the money, but we could cancel service.” They can always cancel anytime. I don’t ever put them on contract. I’ve always been successful at ranking them anyways, but I can guarantee traffic, clicks to the website or the landing page, whatever the destination or target URL is with the call-to-action of the video. I can guarantee that with ads. I tell them, “Look, you can still tell your customers as a byproduct of a well-optimized video and a well-optimized ads campaign. It’s likely going to rank anyways.” So I still apply the SEO techniques to the videos, but I set up the ads campaign now.

What’s also cool about that is the reporting is so much better. So I provide the video production company with the reports that then they send off to their customers or their clients. The reporting is so much more detailed. It’s so much more accurate because I can show where exactly the clicks are coming from. If you go into ads and you look, and you go into the ad group and then you go into locations, you can pool locations reports. You can do it by zip code or by city or by county and things like that. So I can literally show where the views are coming from specifically.

So my targeting can be extremely tight. I can show that “Hey, this is only local people looking at the video. I can also show the audience targeting options. I can show the demographics.” I can show an incredible amount of detail as to where the traffic and clicks are coming from the ad campaign, which you couldn’t do with regular YouTube analytics or with just a rank report if that makes sense.

Again, 95% of the time the video is gonna rank because of a proper YouTube targeting campaign, because of the traffic and the engagement is [inaudible 00:23:41] both geographically and topically. [Inaudible 00:23:49]. It’s available, like I said, as part of the quarter buff to the Battle Plan. All right. That’s a great question though.

Marco: If I may, run a test just to see. Because this is interesting, we ran the test over a two, three week period. We ran embeds and link building tests to see what kind of action that would do. Interestingly enough, that still it, not only moves the needle, it has a great effect on videos. Once they start hitting the first page and they move towards the top, you can start seeing the people start coming through to the channel and subscribing and liking and sharing, and doing all of the things that a video needs in order for YouTube and Google to keep giving it love.

So there are two things that play here, right? If you hit the top spot, you’re going to get traffic if, and now here’s a caveat, the video has to be engaging enough for real people to take action to like it, to share it, or to give you that thumbs down in YouTube and in comments and everything else.

There are two ways to do this, both ways are still viable. Bradley’s method, the ads training, that’s hyper-targeted people that are likely to convert into leads. Now on the other method where you’re doing the embeds and the link building, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get a more general viewership and so you’re going to need more in order to get the leads that you could generate through the video ads course. But both methods are still alive and well in 2019.

Bradley: Yeah. To be clear, guys, that’s why I mentioned, I still apply all the SEO methods. For example, I always live stream a video to a channel that’s connected to a bunch of syndication networks. So that’s the first step. Once the live stream is over, it literally cascades through all of the syndication networks that are attached to that channel. It’s automatically getting embeds. My syndication networks are well-themed and aged because I’ve been doing this for so long. So it gets a lot of super good traditional SEO power, or juice, or whatever you want to call it from that, which are traditional signals that Marco’s talking about, like embeds.

Even if you don’t have well-aged syndication networks or whatever, you can just use an embed service and embed it. So all of those are traditional SEO signals and they still work, there’s no doubt about that. What I’m saying is combining those two methods, guys, that’s where the magic happens. So still do all the SEO stuff, optimize on page, which means optimize the video, optimize your channel, use playlists, guys, playlists, YouTube Silo Academy is how you silo. Guys, even if you only have one video on a playlist, create a playlist and put the video on it. Because a playlist is also part of video SEO, right?

Again, on-page stuff for the video, on-page stuff for your channel, use playlists, use embeds, use some backlinks. But if you’re not getting the traction that you want, and like I said, for me, it’s just standard operating procedure, I do all that first and I immediately go set up the YouTube ad for it and start driving real engagement, real traffic from Google to the video.

Google knows who that traffic is, what they’re interested in, where they came from and where they’re located. So it’s super-targeted traffic which is highly weighted trafficked by Google, and that’s the magic that really kind of helps all that SEO work. It just flourishes, right? It just works. Everything comes surfacing. It’s almost guaranteed. Again, I don’t guarantee rankings now. I tell them if it doesn’t rank, they don’t have to pay me and we’ll cancel it. But I do guarantee views and clicks. I can’t guarantee a certain number of clicks, but I can guarantee targeted views because I can buy those views directly from Google. You know what I mean? Again, use both methods, guys. I’m not saying do one or the other, use both. All right.

Factors Contributing To Low Conversion/Leads Despite Having Many Views in GMB Insights

Alex is up. He says, “Hey guys, I’m ranking in the 3-pack and I have a couple of five-star reviews. The GMB Insight shows around 450 views per month, but the calls are around five to eight per month. Is there a reason why it might be getting so few phone calls? Could you explain some common mistakes that lead to that? Thank you.”

Yeah, Alex. It could be many things. First of all, what is your message? Do you have a compelling call-to-action? What are your calls to action? What are the images? Where are you sending people, by the way? For example, if your call-to-action is to click the button in the post and go to a landing page, or wherever you’re sending them, where are you sending them? If you’re sending them to just the homepage of a website that’s not set up for lead conversions, then it could be that you’re losing them there.

It could be that if you’re just using the call buttons, then you could be losing traffic from desktop searches because people aren’t clicking the call button from desktop search and some people won’t go actually click through to the website or go do another search for it. I mean, there’s a number of things that could be it. I would say that, typically, if you’re getting a lot of exposure but you’re not getting a lot of calls or leads, then I would look at your calls to action, what your offer is, and where you’re directing the traffic to, if it’s a click-through as opposed to just a call conversion goal.

Also, in your posts, if you’re doing posts regularly, which you should be, use some images that are relevant to the industry. Because I know a lot of people that use stock images in their GMB post, guys, people are almost blind to that, they almost are numbed to a lot of stock images, so try to get original images from the client if possible, also just relevant images. I talked about how to do that from YouTube. You can also local images, which is more for SEO purposes. We talked about that at some of our training, can’t talk about that here.

Those are some of the things that I would recommend. Marco, what do you say?

Marco: I’d say that that’s just about right with 450 views, between two and 10 calls a month. You have to get, this is for talking about locally and from our experience with Mario who had more phone calls and other locals that I’ve been doing. It’s not until you get the thousands of views that you start seeing movement upwards of 20 calls. I mean, the ultimate it’s calls or people going to your website or asking for directions, all of that are our actions that could turn into leads depending on where they’re going. It just means that you have to go and figure out. I’m not gonna get too deep into our training, but you have to know when to deliver the message. Right? There’s ways to know which days, what time, what message.

Bradley: And how often.

Marco: Correct. I mean, in some niches, you might only need two or three posts a week. In others, you might need two or three posts a day. In others, you might need just a whole lot more. It’s just constant, right? Because there’s people constantly looking for it. So there’s a whole lot of things involved. Just a general overall opinion on what’s happening, I would say from 450 views, you’re just about right on the calls.

Bradley: Yeah. That’s increased the views per month and it’s a numbers game. If you’re getting what looks like 1 to 2% of whatever your views are, it looks like that’s what’s actually converting in the leads based upon that number that you’re showing there, right? Four hundred fifty views per month, five to eight calls, that’s about 1 to 2%. So if that’s the case, even if that were to hold true, that number, then if you increase your views, if you doubled that to where you’re getting 900 per month at that conversion rate, then you should essentially get 10 to 16 calls per month. Does that make sense?

Well, how do you get more views? More activity, better images, more compelling images, those kind of things, video, start using video in your GMB post, guys. If you haven’t done that yet, go test it because you’ll see that a video post, just like it does on Facebook, will get a hell of a lot more exposure, therefore, it will get a hell of a lot more views. Okay?

Marco: I would also say to look at the posts and see which of the posts are getting the most action and then try to figure out why. Explore why those are getting the action and the other ones aren’t, and tailor your posts to the ones that are getting the most action.

Bradley: Test different calls to action in different messages. It’s just like split testing ads, guys. If you’ve ever done any pay-per-click search marketing, you got to split test copy, you split test your landing pages, all that kind of stuff. Again, you can fine-tune for conversions, which is called conversion optimization, right? That’s something that you may also want to look into.

Can You Explain The Siloing Process Of GMB Auto Poster?

All right. Olena’s up. She says, “Bradley, on the Local Lease post training you talked about siloing post. You said silo post based on tags.” Yeah, that’s just because there’s an auto post, like our GMB post scheduler or GMB Briefcase, depending on the level that you’re at with your business, gives us the ability to schedule posts within the dashboard of it, which is great. It’s great for my team. It just makes things a lot easier. Then the post siloing can be accomplished through tags. It just daisy chains post together. It’s a very simple process. It’s not difficult at all.

Let me carry on with the question. She says, “Silo post based on post tag. Assign each post in the Auto poster, then select to silo posts in the Auto Poster, which means it takes the previous post URL, and adds that link from the previous post to the new post.” That’s correct. “Your GMB websites turns posts into inner pages.” That’s correct. “The first post you do manually and then in Auto Poster, the second post links to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Can you please explain a little bit further what you meant?”

No, you’re right on track. The difference is … Look, when my team goes through to set up to optimize do on-page stuff of a new asset, a new GMB location, then they typically will do, and this is just our standard operating procedure, they don’t add or connect that location to the post scheduler first. That’s something that gets done after the initial on-page work gets done, and part of the initial on-page process is just posting a post manually.

I also recommend posting manually to it anyways instead of automatically connecting a new location to an API and using an automated tool, which is what the post scheduler is, because it’s very similar, guys, to syndication. I know Olena, you’re in Syndication Academy or have been, I know that for sure. It’s the same as the best practices that I’ve been preaching for years about syndication networks, is that you don’t go out and build or purchase a brand new syndication network and then hook it up to IFTTT and start posting to it through an automated way or right off the bat.

Because if you do, it’s likely that some of your web 2 accounts within the network will get terminated. It’s happened time and time again, guys. That is specifically why I tell you if you’re gonna build them yourselves, which I don’t recommend, you’re better off buying them already built from MGYB. But my point is, whenever you build them or buy them, I’ve always recommended that you post manually to, at least to the blog accounts, which are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, post manually to them and allow that post to sit with for about seven days or so, I call that seasoning the network, before hooking IFTTT up and starting to automate post to it.

Because if you automate right off the bat, then a lot of the times one of those or a couple of those blog accounts will get terminated. Tumblr has been real like trigger-happy in the past, and it goes in waves, guys. WordPress too, WordPress will often get terminated if you try to automate posting to it too quickly. So that’s my process for GMBs as well. We don’t like to automate things right off the bat. I like to have my team go in and do all this stuff manually and then within a week or so, or a few days time, they’ll go back and connect through the API, which is through essentially that’s done within the post scheduler dashboard, and then they’ll start to automate the posts.

So just so you’re aware, if you’re posting manually first, which is what I recommend, then you’re not going to have a tag in that post. So when you start the posting, scheduling posts out using the post scheduler or the briefcase, depending on what level you’re at, then that first post that you create will be the first post in the silo. You can manually go link from within that first scheduled post to the post that you created. That’s why in the spreadsheet, the GMB assets sheet, which you guys have the template for that have joined Local Lease Pro, there’s a column for the first GMB post URL.

Again, my team, when they go to schedule the first post within the briefcase, we use the briefcase because we got a lot of locations, then they can just go copy and manually add that first post URL to that first scheduled post, and then that one will have the tag in it, and from that point forward they can daisy chain them together.

All right. Again, you’re right on track, Olena. I think you just needed a little bit of clarification.

Issues With Changing Appointment URL With Amazon S3 @id Page in GMB

All right. Ted’s up next. Ted says, “Hey guys, a heads up. My tree service GMB that’s been around and generating leads since LLP launched was suspended this weekend when I updated my appointment URL with the Amazon S3 @id page. Also, I was using the same Ghost Browser session since day one. I just wanted to get everyone heads up.” Yeah. That is one of the things that I would recommend. Well, first of all, like I said, I’ve told my team to stay out of them all together right now while we let things settle and there’s a lot of testing going on through various people and other groups as well. So once we have a better understanding of what it is that is triggering that, which can be a number of things, we’ve got to try to identify each one of them.

Again, I would recommend just staying out of them, but one of the things that I would recommend not doing, for those of you that still want to test with your own assets at the moment, is do not add the @id ID page to the appointment URL. If you want, you can link to it via anchor text link within the GMB website text, so it would be a contextual link. But I would recommend not pushing anything into the appointment URL at the moment, that section, other than an actual appointment app. Okay. That’s just one of the things that I think is potentially causing problems. So I would recommend not adding that URL right now to the appointment section URL, only adding a valid appointment URL or scheduling app there at the moment. Okay.

Again, you can still link to it, guys. You can link to it from your GMB post. You can link to it from an anchor text link within your GMB website content. Okay? I’m sorry for you, Ted, but that’s the nature of the game. The good thing is at least you’ve got quite some longevity out of that anyways. You said it had been producing leads for you and all that. You know can do it again, right?

Marco: Yeah. I told my VAs not to change anything, to just keep doing what they were doing it and not to start anything new, by the way.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: We just kept going because I don’t like changing, I don’t like sending Google mixed signals. Interestingly enough, I had one suspended, and I hadn’t had one suspended yet I was wondering what all the ruckus was about, and I finally had one suspended. Then when we started talking about it, when I went back and talked to the VA, she uploaded a video which we had never done on that one account. So veering from what we’re doing, just by a video was enough to get the account suspended.

Bradley: That’s crazy.

Marco: Yeah. It’s really interesting what’s going on. If you do anything different than what you’ve been doing, you’re setting yourself up to be hit. They’re just sniping anyone, left and right. I mean, third on the match and you’re done.

Bradley: Yeah. By the way, that’s something else. We had our live event and that was really where I started developing the scaling processes so that we could build, build, build. That was the goal for … We had our live event in October and so we had a 12-week period or a 90-day sprint where were our goal was to hit 50 assets built and optimize. So that ended about three weeks ago and so the next 12 weeks was gonna be all about monetizing assets.

It just worked out for us that we had built all these and now because of what’s going on, the timing is, it just happened that it’s a good time for us to stay out of building new ones at the moment, work on off-page stuff to get the ones that we built that aren’t performing well yet. We can work on all the off-page stuff now to get those to start performing better, ranking better, producing better.

I am developing the processes right now currently for, well, obviously, as I shared with you guys just moments ago, I’m still developing some of the off-page strategies and processes for my team, but at the same time I’m developing the monetization so that outreach prospecting and sales process for monetizing these assets, and that’s my next 12-week goal, which like I said we’re in about week three now of developing those processes out, which will be shared in the Mastermind. I’m gonna give everybody exactly what I’ve been doing and show real road examples of how the stuff that I’m doing, what works, what doesn’t work, all of that, like I always do in the Mastermind.

So that’s something that we just got started on this week. Now the POFU Live event attendees, I have a weekly accountability meeting with them and we did that on Monday. If anybody’s here on the Hump Day Hangouts that was there on Monday or watched the replay, you can comment, if you don’t mind, on the page and let people know how that strategy is going.

Because it’s a very powerful strategy, using video email. We’ve got a training protocol video call lead-gen system that I’m going to be updating with all of this prospecting training and processes that I’m developing right now for outreach in prospecting in sales essentially monetizing our assets specific to GMB stuff. I’m going to be adding all of that training and updating it in the video lead-gen system. That’s going to be something that we will launch probably at the end of this 12-week sprint, which is about nine weeks from now.

Again, guys, there’s a lot of stuff going on. If you’ve got stuff that’s already built but not monetized yet, now’s a good time to work on pushing them to get them to produce better and also working on developing your prospecting strategy to get them monetized. Let the dust settle on building new assets at the moment and within a few weeks, guys, will have some new methods.

What Are Some Of Your Ranking Strategies in Pinterest?

Anyways, the next question, from Dean. Marco, it’s gonna be directed at you because I don’t have any idea about anything on Pinterest. I’ll read it for you. “Question for Hump Day Hangout 225. Have any of you guys tried ranking in Pinterest? Their PPC system seems expensive compared to Google but they are a good fit for my home and garden client. Thing is with nearly 2,000 pins of furniture products and with hashtag optimized descriptions, only a few seem to pop up in Pinterest search. Old pins that have been saved a few times or more, that hints to me that pin saved by people may be the biggest ranking factor in Pinterest. Can you shed some light? If that’s the case, I wonder if some spam accounts can save pins and manipulate it somewhat?”

Marco: All right. I’m sorry I’ve spent about two years in Pinterest figuring out the algorithm and a whole bunch of different things that what makes it go and I’m not willing to give that up for free.

Bradley: Okay, fair enough. We’re gonna move on. Sorry, Dean. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know a dick about Pinterest. I’ve never really done anything with Pinterest so I can’t help you anyways.

What Are The Reasons Why Verified GMBs Do Not Show Up In Google My Maps?

Jay Turner says, “Some of my service area business client’s verified GMBs do not show up in Google My Maps when searching for them in order to add their pin to a Google My Map. Why is that? Does adding KML file …? Again, it’s probably because it’s a GMB service area business. I don’t know that for sure because I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff. Is that something we can comment on? I know that’s kind of RYS stuff.

Marco: It is. If you hide the address you cannot expect to find it.

Bradley: Right.

Marco: Because all you’re going to pull up is a service area. So there’s no way to do that.

Bradley: Yeah. You could use the city center for that area. I mean, that’s something that you could do. But I don’t do a whole lot of My Map stuff still. I just never really did. I know we have RYS Academy training that talks about that stuff, Jay. So if you’re in there, that might be a good question for the RYS Facebook group. Okay.

Will. Let’s see. This is similar to the one that Olena asked, but I’ll read it real fast and we’ll move on. He says, “When using the GMB auto poster and writing a month’s worth of post, are you saying that we should manually post the first post in the sequence of these 30 posts then use the GMB auto poster software so that we can link to the first post and the subsequent posts in the Auto poster?”

Well, no. Again, it’s not about always linking to that first post, guys. Again, you post manually because it’s a way to kind of season the asset without automating stuff right off the bat. Okay? That’s it. That’s all. It’s just part of the optimization process for my team. It’s not about always linking to that one post, guys. The siloing is more about theming. It’s just like a website silo, guys. I think too many of you guys are trying to over complicate stuff, and I’m not picking on you, Will.

But if you understand website silo architecture, for YouTube silo architecture, which you can accomplish with playlists, it’s the exact same with GMB post silos. Again, it’s the same principle, guys. It’s no difference whatsoever. As long as you understand website silos and how to build those correctly and theme your silos correctly, you just repeat that same process in either YouTube or GMB. It’s the same process, right? Again, it shouldn’t be over complicated, guys.

If you don’t understand website silo architecture, go search our YouTube channel. I’ve got several videos on there that I’ve talked about. They’re several years old, but the strategy has not changed a bit. Right? It’s one of those things that are timeless, that will continue to work. You can also go search Bruce Clay. Just go search on Google Bruce Clay website silos and it’ll be the first link at the very top of Google search results and click on it. It’s an old article. I think it’s from 2009 or ‘10. Read it, it’s still valid and relevant today. Okay.

Next, Robert Nelson. He’s our new Mastermind member. Welcome, Robert. He says, “Hey guys, excited! Just signed up for the Mastermind around an hour ago. Looking forward to getting to know you guys better over the next few months.” Yeah. I hope you schedule a call with me through my calendar link I sent to you, Robert, via email. So I hope to talk to you next week.

Is It Okay To Use RSS Authority Sniper On PBNs?

He says, “My question is, I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authorities.” Oh, yeah. This is a great question, by the way, guys. This is a really good question. I’m gonna answer it. “I’m wondering if you think it’s a good idea to use RSS authority sniper on PBNs if it’s also been used to create feeds for the money site.” Okay. First of all, you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds. RSS authority sniper just finds feeds, okay? So you’re using RankFeedr to create the feeds.

“Which my PBNs are linking to.” He says, “I’m a bit worried about a footprint if the domain they use for RankFeedr feeds has links to my money sites as well as my PBNs. Do you think that’s an issue?” All right. What I would recommend is that you would create separate feeds to embed in your money sites. Okay. If you’re using PBNs, and I don’t know if you’re populating content, in other words, are you feeding content to your PBNs through RankFeedr, which I don’t recommend because that would look like crap, but you can embed the feed.

Again, I just talked about that in Syndication Academy on how to do that, guys, and the Mastermind, you guys all have access to that anyways, which means, Robert, you’ll have access to that too. Again, that was the most recent Syndication Academy update webinar. I talked about how to embed a feed. Okay. So using the RankFeedr feed to embed is super, it’s great, it’s fantastic.

So what I would recommend is that you can use RankFeedr feeds on your PBN as an embedded feed which will create co-citation, but do not include your money site links either static or RSS feeds as part the RankFeedr feed that’s on the money site-, or excuse me, the PBNs. Just use that to add local and topical relevancy to the actual PBN. Then you can still use traditional links within the content to link back to your money sites because the RankFeedr feeds that are embedded aren’t going to be having any of your content sources in the feed itself, which would be kind of a footprint, because now you’d have an embedded feed that has links to your content sources like your money content sources as well as contextual links from your traditional PBN links back to the same destination. Yeah, that would be in a footprint I would worry about.

Plus, I would also have, if you’re going to be using RankFeedr to create co-citation feeds for your money site, those would be separate feeds. In other words, I’d have one RankFeeder feed that I would use is an embed on the PBN to just add geographic and topical relevancy to that PBN, then I would have separate RankFeedr feed where you would include your money side RSS feed, your GMB RSS feed if you’re doing it for local, you could also have your static items and all that so that you can create local and geographic co-citation relevance to your money site. Bt that would be separate and apart from what you’re using on your money site-, or excuse me, your PBN. Does that make sense?

Just keep that in mind, guys. Remember, with the top level subscription package, it’s like $47 a month, guys. It’s ridiculous. You can get up to 1,100 feeds. I would create two separate feeds in that case if you’re doing that, just like I said. Robert, we can talk about that in a little bit more on our call, if you want to go and do it a little bit deeper. Okay.

Also, you can post, by the way, Robert, the Mastermind Facebook group, we go real deep into discussions about anything that you want. So if you want to post that in there, we can comment on a little bit further, also on the mastermind webinar as we dig into that stuff, so you see over the shoulder training type stuff. Marco and I get real deep into that stuff all the time. We get into the weeds. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Greg, thanks for being here, man, as always.

Is There Some Type Of Google My Business Updates Going On?

Frankie says, “Hey guys, it’s my first time back,” what’s up, Frankie?, “since you moved off Google Plus. I would like to know if there is some type of Google My Business GMB updates going?” Yes, a lot. “There was a lot of talk about this in other groups. Is it all BS or GMB the same still?” No. They’re cracking down, which guys we’ve been talking about, we knew it was gonna happen, it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world. It just means that shit settles down, we’ll figure out the next method and we’ll produce training around it when it’s available, all right, once we figure it out. But glad to have you back, Frankie. Okay.

Jordan says, “Welcome back to WordPress sites, all GMBers.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say that yet. Maybe. We’ll see.

Marco: No. There’s still other ways that you can verify GMBs. All they’re trying to do is kill one loophole, but there’s quite a few others. The old stuff that we’ve always been preaching is still working. So no, I’m not planning on going back to WordPress sites anytime soon. If anything, I’ll just go back to G sites. Well, I never left G sites, right? Drive stacks and G sites.

Bradley: Yeah. Quit This House says, “Do we still get the bonus semantic webinar if we buy feed burner stuff today?” Yeah. Well, essentially, all I was gonna do was share some of my methods on how I’m using it and some of the results that I’ve gotten. Yeah, sure. I’m glad you mentioned that, by the way, because I almost forgot about it. So if you bought RankFeedr guys through us and you can prove it, then just reach out, what I’ll do is …

By the way, Adam, if you’re still, on can you do me a favor and make a note of this? Maybe in two weeks or three weeks something like that I’ll hold a kind of an update webinar for RankFeedr, and Mastermind will obviously be included, and maybe I’ll probably include Syndication Academy members too, because it’s precisely the method that I’ve shared in Syndication Academy, which is how to embed those feeds and create the feeds, and what I’m doing, and where I’m embedding them. I’ll even give you guys the process for, well, that’s only Mastermind members will get the process doc, guys. It has to be that way.

But I can share with you what I’m doing and the results that I’m getting specifically with those RankFeedr feeds and how to get really good results for local stuff. Okay. So, yeah, I will do just an update webinar and it’d probably be a short webinar. Again, the Mastermind, they’re going to get the process docs for this stuff too so that they can have their team do it as opposed to doing it on your own or developing the docs on your own.

But, yeah, that’s a good idea. I appreciate you reminding me about that. Absolutely, just reach out to us at support. We’ll create a small list on for people that we’ve known. Or just come join a Mastermind, you’ll get it anyways. Also, as I said, it might be part of the Syndication Academy update webinar is what I’ll do. It’s likely gonna be that too and we’ll just include the RankFeedr buyers into that also. Okay. It’s a good question though.

What URL Do I Use From The GMB Briefcase Auto Poster To Setup The RSS Authority Sniper?

Michael says, “Question about RSS authority sniper. What URL do I use from GMB briefcase auto poster to set up the sniper? Everyone I’ve tried got an error. Thanks.” I don’t know why that’s the case, Michael. Have you posted? You have to have GMB post or the RSS feed won’t register. It’s just like a WordPress site. If you try to add an RSS feed to IFTTT that contains no items, it won’t accept it. It will give you an error every time. So have you posted? If so, then what I …

By the way, inside the auto poster, guys, there’s an update RSS file button. You go to settings RSS feeds and that lists all of your locations that are connected to the auto poster or the briefcase, depending on where you’re at, and then it says, there’s a blue button off to the right column and it says copy URL or whatever. Well, that’s your RSS feed. If you’re having issues, just click that update RSS file button, it’s at the top of that column, it’s a yellow button, click that.

It’ll take a few seconds to reload. Once it read loads, all of your feeds will be updated and just check it then. Go check it in a Firefox browser. You’re gonna have to add, it’s called the RSSPreview Firefox add-on. RSSPreview is one word. Go open Firefox, go to Google and search RSSPreview Firefox add-on. It’ll be the first link at the time top of the search results. Click that, add it to your Firefox, enable it. That way you can start viewing HTML versions of an RSS feed in Firefox again. They disabled that a few months ago for whatever reason. The native RSS feed reader in Firefox is you have to create add the add-on now. Okay. But then just go check it.

If you have any other issues, contact support Shreepad, which is little support bubble is in the bottom right corner inside the briefcase or the post scheduler, he’s really, really good at replying to support requests, guys. If you have any issues, contact him. But I promise you, if you’ve got posts in there and you click the update RSS file button, it should work fine. Okay.

Should We Use SEO Ultimate Plugin Instead Of Yoast For The Battleplan Strategy?

John says, “Hey guys. I purchased the Battle Plan. Awesome. In the plan, it suggests using SEO ultimate plugin, but in the webinar Yoast seems to be the favorite.” Are we still linking to one of the older versions of the webinar, at that point maybe?

Hernan: Yep. Maybe we’re gonna be clipping and updating that really shortly. We have redirects over there.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. SEO ultimate is way better, guys. It doesn’t have a bunch of loaded code. Jeffrey Smith knows his guys, I’m telling you. It is hands-down the best SEO plugin and get the SEO ultimate plus. It’s inexpensive and gives you a ton of additional functionality. The version 2 of SEO ultimate plus is coming out very soon. It’s been in beta for the last couple months but it’s going to be awesome.

Marco: Yeah. Just a short comment, Yoast is foot fungus get SEO ultimate. Please do yourself a favor.

What Are Some Top On Page And Off Page GMB Tips?

Bradley: Greg Derebret says, “Top on-page GMB tip.” I would say just complete the profile and post regularly. That’s the best on-page tip I can give you. Just completely complete the profile with well-optimized everything. Not stick spammy, just well optimized, well written stuff, and post regularly. Best off-page? That’s to be determined. Right now probably some of the stuff that we teach on Local Lease Pro and some of the stuff that I’m talking about with RankFeedr and that kind of stuff, Greg. Again, we’ll talk about that in one of the closed groups.

Marco: I would say top on-page silo, silo, Gregg. You’re with Gregg. I mean, that’s hands down, I mean, now with Jeffrey, hands down. The top off-page? Press releases, stack them.

Bradley: Yeah. Although the press releases in and of themselves are not as effective as they used to be, even six months ago, unless you’re varying distribution networks consistently or you stack, you publish press releases consistently and regularly-

Marco: That’s why I mentioned stack the press releases.

Bradley: Yeah. I had super good results with the Local PR program method with just as little as two press releases. I was able to rank in 3-pack a year and a half ago or two years ago whenever we launched that training. Now I’m finding to get the same kind of a result I have to publish six or eight press releases to get the same kind of a result, unless I’m varying the distribution networks and stacking to where I’m using three or four different distribution networks where still a lot of them share the same type of footprint, in other words, they share a lot of the same distribution sites.

But if you get some more link diversity from other distribution networks, because they distribute to different sites, in other words, and get picked up by other sites. If you do that, if you have access to a lot of different press release distributions, then that’s that can help. Or you have to stack consistently and regularly if you’re using the same sort of network and make sure that you’re …

Again, I’m not giving away too much here, but as I talked about in the Mastermind last week, I think it was Muhammad’s question about that, there’s not a set formula for how to stack, guys. You just need to constantly be varying what you’re linking to for to different tier one types of properties. It’s something that you need to do and it just seems like it’s taking more press releases to accomplish same thing. And that’s to be expected, guys. Anytime something works really well in SEO, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to become less effective. Right?

So don’t say the press releases aren’t effective. I’m not saying that at all it’s just the strategy has evolved a bit. Right?

Marco: Just to add just a quick thought, Greg. You have access to Dedia. Reach out to him because if you link build to your press releases he knows exactly what to do.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: That’ll set it on fire. Now I’m giving away too much. Drop some traffic in there, Greg

Where Can We Get Backlinks For Videos?

Bradley: Yeah. Marco, the next question, when does link building gonna be available in MGYB?

Marco: It’s being added as we speak.

Bradley: Okay. So there you go. Because, Greg, you can contact Dedia directly or you can wait, it should be available any minute because it thought was gonna be available last week. So that answers the next question, we he says, “Where can we get backlinks for videos?” Guys, our best link builder, he’s been working with me for six years now I guess and he’s awesome. We’re gonna have that service available in MGYB and it should be like at any moment. Okay? So check back often.

Is It Safe To Autopost To Lead Gen GMB Nowadays?

Guys, I got to run in a minute so I’ll try to get through the next one very quickly. Grant. What’s up, Grant? He was one of the POFU Live attendees. He’s been working very closely with the group. It’s awesome to have you here. He says, “Is auto posting to lead-gen GMB safe currently? Yeah, it is. As far as I know. I haven’t had any issues with that whatsoever. I have not had a single property terminated or suspended from that. Now I can’t swear that that’s the case for everybody. I’m just telling you I have not had any issues whatsoever it’s making on-page changes that’s been causing problems. It’s depending on what kind of change it is too, because I’ve actually been manually going in and changing on a lot of different stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, guys, one thing I would not recommend doing is trying to add anything to the appointment URL section other than an actual bonafide genuine appointment app right now. That’s one thing that I see is triggering suspensions. Okay. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s a hunch of mine. I’ve heard that happen now from several different people. We lost six or seven assets just last week. But it’s the first six or seven out of like more than 10 times that we’ve built.

Again, I think a lot of it has to do with that one particular process. So my team’s not touching anything at the moment. I’m in their testing with different things right now. Something else is, and this is kind of using a manager account, I’ve talked about not doing that in the past, but I think using a manager account actually helps right now. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in and adding a manager account to an asset and making some slight changes and then removing the manager. Still I’ve not had anything suspended like right before my eyes anyways, if that makes sense.

Google Starts To Ask For GMB Location Validation With Tax Invoice Or Business License

Gregg says, “Google is starting to ask for GMB location validation with tax.” Yeah, that’s one of the things I had predicted I thought would happen. Gregg, I’ve said that before that that was my speculation on what was going to happen, is that they were gonna start requiring either corporate doc’s or proof of mail being facts or photos taken with company letterhead or like bank statements, all of that stuff that I’ve had to do in the past to have verified GMBs moved to different locations. That’s what I assumed and I had speculated would probably happen.

The plan you outlined in your POFU group to monetize your GMB locations is brilliant and simpler, easier, and is the best method I’ve seen from all your optimization methods I’ve seen over the years that will be high converting. That’s awesome, Gregg. Yeah. I’m gonna be doing a lot of training over that next few weeks on that.

Last call to win the free Semantic Mastery T-shirt. Okay. “Bradley, is there a new press release program coming down the road soon?” Yes, there is. I can’t really announce that just yet, but I’ve been testing something that’s really kind of disruptive. I wouldn’t say that lightly, but it’s really, really cool technology that one of our very own Mastermind members has been developing it. He’s one of the code developers behind it. I’ve been on several calls with him and it’s actually very disruptive what they’re doing. Something that no other service out there has that I think would be a great addition to what we’re already doing. Again, that’s something that we’ll be announcing here in the coming weeks.

All right. Guys, pick the best question and all that so we can wrap it up.

Marco: Alex. One of the very first questions was excellent.

Bradley: Where was that? Right there?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Yep, Alex. Okay. So Alex is the winner for what, either the Battle Plan or what? T-shirt?

Hernan: Battle Plan.

Marco: Yeah. We said Battle Plan I think.

Bradley: Okay. Well, somebody else is getting a T-shirt, aren’t they?

Adam: Yeah. We did a random number generator and saw who bought and who posted back. Ted, you are the winner so just send into support from your normal email. I think we’ve actually had some back and forth between me and you, so just shoot an email into support. We’ll get to that large shirt and next time I’m in Sacramento I’m gonna find you for a beer, man.

Bradley: Don’t lie. The reason why he won is because of the beer emoji. Guys, I hope you all were paying attention. The next time you want to win something just put a beer emoji in there.

Adam: Yeah. Be within an hour’s drive of me and offer a free beer. No. We used a random number generator. It worked out, man. So we’ll get you your shirt just send them to support that’s semanticmastery.com.

Bradley: Awesome. I hope everybody got a lot out of this. No Mastermind webinar tomorrow, but we got one next week on what I’m working on, which I’ll be sharing with you guys, with the POFU members, and I have started developing this week, which is the outreach program using video email specific to the GMB asset stuff. We’re going to be going through that. So guys pay attention. Oh, and I’ll share the RankFeedr process doc with you guys in the Mastermind too. So see you all next week. Thanks guys for hanging out.

Hernan: See you, guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 225 published first on your-t1-blog-url