#so if you want a short version; click the link in the intro and scroll down on that post until you reach the trigger warning in bold text

[heloflor]

I already mentioned it in this post but it’s very interesting to me how there are quite a few mentions in the Telltale games of both Sam and Max struggling with self-hate, regardless of the shitty execution of those ideas. And it’s also interesting how it’s expressed differently for both.

TRIGGER WARNING : mentions of depression, self-hate and suicidal thoughts

With Sam, it’s shown through him having some pretty heavy self-esteem issues, with the most obvious being his negative body image with Sam finding himself too fat.

Bit of a side note about that : I know it was said in the other post already but I’m really not a big fan of how they treated Sam being overweight. Pretty much every joke about it is about a character calling him fat/insulting his weight, and the fact that Sam struggles with his appearance only makes it worse by making those moments very mean-spirited.

And it’s even worse when you compare it to the cartoon. In it, it’s very obvious that Sam likes food but nobody points it out or mocks him for it. It’s just small moments like him stealing everything on the table in “Max Big’s Day”, the pasta joke in the Gator episode, him accepting a whole trail of food in the first episode etc. They managed to make Sam liking food a part of his personality without drawing attention to it in a negative light, which is pretty sweet. And while I would’ve loved for cartoon Sam to have the insecurities Telltale Sam has, I’m completely fine with him not having them if it means seeing a character liking food without it being the butt of the joke.

The worst thing about those jokes though has to be the fact that Sam isn’t even that fat. Yes he’s a bit overweight but, given he’s middle-aged, he’s “dad-shaped” more than anything else honestly. It’s completely normal for a man his age to look like that, and a lot of his weight are probably muscles anyways. If anything, instead of being so mocking, the other characters should focus more on the worrying amount of junk food he and Max eat and the long-term repercussions it can have on their health. Hell, we already know from “Poker Night 2” that Sam reached a stage where he’ll die if he doesn’t eat sugary food…

Ultimately, I’d say the only “fat jokes” that make me laugh in Telltale are the one with Sam holding his younger self at gunpoint and the one when the Superego insults him. And for the Superego one, that’s because 1. It comes out of fucking nowhere, 2. I love Sam’s reaction, especially his little insulted shoulders shrug, 3. The ego immediately apologizes afterwards. Idk, there’s just something comedic about this moment.

Btw I’m also fine with Sybil pointing out Sam’s weight in 305, since Sam is the one being an asshole by projecting his insecurities onto Sybil being “fat” due to her pregnancy, so Sybil has every right to call him out.

But overall, the only saving grace regarding the fat jokes in the trilogy is the fact that, not only is Sam one of the main and titular characters (and the one playable character !) instead of a “comic relief side-character” cliché like most overweight characters are, but Sam is also the smart one of the two, again going against the “fat character” cliché. Plus, Max has a bit of a stomach as well but never talks bad about his appearance, although this doesn't change the fact that the fat jokes about Sam are of bad taste.

On top of his body issues, Sam seems generally insecure ? I mean, in 304, there’s that thought Sam can have about how much more powerful Max is now and how he might not need a partner anymore. The way he villainizes Hugh Bliss in S1 and how much it looks like jealousy due to Max’s crush on Bliss could also be rooted in insecurity.

And thinking about it, maybe this could be one of the reasons why he’s so protective of Max (aside from caring about him of course) ? This is probably a stretch but what if Sam protecting Max makes him feel “useful” in some way ? I mean, he is a dog, so maybe he sees it as his duty to be there for Max and might be afraid of Max not finding him “useful” anymore ? (again going with his thought from 304)

Hell, going even further on the weird theory, given how close Sam seems to be to his grandmother, and given how Ruth is a pretty badass person, what if Sam was trying to sort-of walk in her steps ? Or maybe she told him stories about Sameth that made Sam wish to prove himself ? (again, that’s a veery long stretch)

As for Max, first off, it’s pretty funny to me how he has no body issues at all compared to Sam. Max has mentioned a few times that he finds his own body hot, the best example being 201 with him talking about his future self. And honestly, I don’t think Max finds himself unappealing nor is he trying to “overcompensate” by acting this way. He does seem to genuinely find himself attractive. After all, we are talking about a guy who walks around naked and flirts quite a lot. He also has a superego so…

But on a psychological level, Max is hinted to struggle a lot more. First of all, you have his “lazy” side from 106 when he gets blissed out. This side of him clearly seems depressed more than anything else.

There’s also something I saw someone else mention : the fact that the trilogy mentions once or twice that Max takes pills, with Sam taking care of the prescriptions. We’re never told what those pills are for, so maybe it’s for his depression ?

I guess I could also talk about how in the cartoon Max shuts down whenever he’s not with Sam like in “Max’s Big Day” or during the breakup flashback in the finale, same for the vr game with 1-2 lines hinting at his internal struggles. But this post is more about the Telltale trilogy, tough those instances are worth mentioning.

Then, there’s the Superego, a major part of Max’s brain that literally hates him and wants to kill him. Since he’s part of Max, doesn’t that mean Max shares those thoughts as well ?

Another thing about him : I’m part of the people who don’t think he truly wanted to save Max in the end. Maybe he was surprised by Max’s wish to save Sybil and her kid, but I do believe that the ego still intended to get Max killed and only used Sybil as an excuse to pretend a change of heart. In my eyes, the reason why he talked about saving him was because he was aware of the Maimtron coming in 4 minutes and wanted Sam to be safe, and he knew Sam would never leave unless he was persuaded that Max would be fine.

After all, if the Superego is part of Max, wouldn’t that mean he cares about Sam at least to some degree ? Overall, he doesn’t really insult Sam outside of the “well you’re fat” comment (tho he is pretty condescending + obviously all his insults against Max pisses Sam off) and even waves goodbye to him when the trio leaves.

(Tbh, I like to headcanon that, since he’s part of Max, the Superego has feelings for Sam but hates it because, being a Superego, he doesn’t want to care about anyone but himself. So he’s salty that Max’s feelings are forcing him to care about someone he wouldn’t give a shit otherwise while at the same time being unable to “turn off” those feelings)

All this to say that the Superego is part of Max and the thoughts he has are thoughts Max most likely has as well. So him committing suicide was likely something Max desired as well. It’s kinda interesting actually how the Superego wanted to go in an explosion of glory. While obviously he’s an ego so of course he wants people to notice him, the way he wants to die does sound like something Max would want for himself (not me wishing the Superego had some mannerisms/animations that are either similar or reminiscent of Max’s).

I’d also like to mention the whole “Alternate Max saying that he blew alternate Sam up” from 305’s ending. First of all the way he says it with a smile hints that he’s hiding his true feelings about the situation, unless that’s just how he reacts to incredibly distressing events, kinda like how nervous laughter is a thing. But in any case, it shows distress from him.

But more than that, I want you to think real hard on the implications of a suicidal person, who jokingly said in the past “when I die, I’m taking you with me Sam !”, finding himself in a position where the one he loves more than anything else has to be killed. How much do you wanna bet that alternate Max only accepted to blow Sam up because he very much intended to jump on Sam and die with him, only for Sam to shove him away at the last minute ?

Side note : I really like how you can read 305 with the lenses of trying to prevent someone from committing suicide. I mean : The fact that Max turns into a self-destructive person that also ends up hurting those who get close to him. The fact that the major characters spent a week trying to find a way to get inside Max’s head. The fact they eventually give up and start considering putting Max out of his misery. Sam refusing to give up on Max and doing anything he can to save him because Max is worth everything to him. The fact that the only hope to save Max is to change the Superego’s mind, aka making Max realize that he’s worth living. The fact that the robot toy, which is the main item needed to help Max, is collected by having Sam bring Max to different places to make him remember things, and all those memories are making Max smile, so one of the main ways to save Max is to remind him of happy times…

I don’t know if anybody who’s a lot more knowledgeable on the topic of depression ever made an essay about this case, but if so, I would love to have it linked because this stuff is incredibly fascinating to me !

Something else I’d like to mention, though we’re heavily getting into headcanon territory here : if Max hates himself, what does he hate about himself exactly ? Because looking at how “wild” Max is, plus the fact that he and Sam were bullied as kids, I can’t help but wonder if maybe Max considers himself a “freak” and kinda hates his urges and impulses and how he can’t control them even if he tries. And yes this is based on the disdain the Superego has for those parts of Max.

Then there are other small things that can spruce his self-hate, like Max often getting himself into trouble or having memory issues, to name a few. Again, what if Max also struggled with those ?

Which leads to another situation : Max hiding how he feels deep down about himself. Heck, remember how in 205 Max mentions that he’s allergic to dogs but never talks about it and just goes on without complaining ? What if Max internalized his self-hate in general ?

Tbh thinking about it a bit more, Max also struggles in regard to his height, and I think that’s actually the only thing Max is openly insecure about ? I mean, given all the “f*scists” comments and other small moments of frustration (him taking growth supplements in S2 and being sad Sam didn’t notice, or getting mad at Grandpa Stinky in 301), he doesn’t really hide it.

Yet another side note : Mentioning Max’s memory issues got me thinking about how terrifying it must have been for his older self when older Sam started getting dementia, making him panic over which things Sam forgot that he also did, on top of forcing him to step up and be the responsible one.

And as another side note regarding Max being impulsive and having memory issues : can I just say how much I love how patient and accommodating Sam is about it ? I mean, we have several instances where we clearly see that he doesn’t mind having to repeat things for Max, like how he constantly reminds him he doesn’t like girls, the “I’m right here little buddy” from 104 that sounds more concerned than annoyed, or even the first dialogue with Grandpa Stinky in 301 with Sam giving exposition and, when called out on it, says he’s doing it for Max. It’s also pretty sweet when you consider how Sam loves going on and on about random stuff, so he probably doesn’t mind repeating things because it gives him an excuse to ramble.

Idk, I just find it very sweet how in general Sam absolutely ADORES Max just the way he is and doesn't mind having to help or accommodate him. And while he can get annoyed by a few things like Max’s violent tendencies, by the end of the day he wouldn’t want his bunny any other way. 💖 I also feel like this is the kind of positivity that Max needs, given how low he seems to think about himself…

Finally, something that is 100% headcanons but I still wanted to mention it : the fact that Telltale Max is explicitly gay and grew up in the 70s/80s. At least from my understanding of the characters, Sam and Max were born in the late-60s/early-70s, were teens in the late-70s/early-80s and are adults in the late-80s/early-90s when their adventures start.

This means that not only was Max bullied and excluded since he was a child due to being “weird” and “dangerous”, but it’s also likely that he started getting bullied as a teen for never showing interest in women. And don’t get me started on the can of worms we can open if we consider the real-life context of those times, more specifically the early 80s…

Speaking of bullying, my headcanon for the “Max forgetting he doesn’t like girls” joke is that, after being heavily bullied in high school, Max grew tired of this shit so he started pretending to like women, hence why every single time he talks about women it’s a sexual joke and is about several women instead of one, because he’s just trying to imitate what “chads” would say. And as an adult, he either keeps forgetting that he doesn’t have to pretend anymore, or making those jokes became a “reflex” of sorts since he started them as a form of self-defense.

This headcanon also works with what happened in 204 with Mama Bosco : basically, going to prom and pretending to flirt with girls made other boys react positively to Max, and Max realized that he enjoyed this feeling of belonging. So he grew up pretending to be a lady’s man, because as long as he showed interest in women in the most stereotypically heterosexual way, other boys his age would treat him more as a friend than a freak. Also in 205 the way he keeps mentioning how much he’s into Mama Bosco just sounds like he’s absolutely desperate to be viewed as straight, despite the fact that he flirts with Mr.Reaperphone (the karaoke machine) less than 5 minutes into the case.

All this to say that Max’s sexuality could also have led to a lot of self-hate at some point in his early life, although I feel like his relationship with Sam absolutely made those feelings much easier to deal with. The fact that he’s comfortable showing attraction to many men also could hint that he’s doing better on that front, even though the depression is still there, but for other reasons.

Annnd I have no idea how to conclude this aside from repeating what was said in the intro.

Yeah, this whole post is just some incoherent babbling about some half-developed thoughts. And given how old this franchise is, including the trilogy, for all I know this stuff was already debated about in the past and I’m just parroting stuff people already know. Still, I needed to get that out of my system so…

[mikegranich87]

Loupedeck Live is a compelling alternative to Elgato's Stream Deck

Life’s too short to drag a mouse more than three inches or remember elaborate keyboard combinations to get things done. This is 2021 and you can have a pretty, dedicated button for almost any task if you want. And if you partake in anything creative, or like to stream, there’s a very good chance that you do. Loupedeck makes control surfaces with many such buttons with a particular focus on creatives. Its latest model is the “Live” ($245) and it’s pitched almost squarely against Elgato’s popular Stream Deck ($150). Both have their own strengths, and I’ve been using them side by side for some time now. But which one have I been reaching for the most? And does the Loupedeck Live do enough to command almost a hundred more dollars?

First, we should go into what the Loupedeck Live actually is and why it might be useful. In short, it’s a PC or Mac control surface covered in configurable buttons and dials. The buttons have mini LCD displays on them so you can easily see what each does with either text, an icon or even a photo. Behind the scenes is a companion app, which is where you’ll customize what each button or dial does. Many popular applications are natively supported (Windows, MacOS, Photoshop, OBS and many more). But if the software you use supports keyboard shortcuts, you can control it with the Live.

So far, so Stream Deck? Well, kinda. The two are undeniably very similar, but there are some important differences. For one, the Stream Deck’s only input type is a button; Live has rotary dials too. This makes Loupedeck’s offering much more appealing for tasks like controlling volume, scrolling through a list or scrubbing a video and so on. But there are also some UI differences that give them both a very different workflow, too.

Hardware

James Trew / Engadget

Like Elgato, Loupedeck currently offers three different models. With the Stream Deck, the difference between versions is all about how many buttons there are (6, 15 and 32). The different Loupedecks are physically distinct and lend themselves to certain tasks. The Loupedeck CT, for example, has a girthy dial in the middle for those that work with video. The Loupedeck+ offers faders and transport controls and the Live is the smallest of the family with a focus on streaming and general creativity.

At a more superficial level, both the Stream Deck and the Live look pretty cool on your desk, which clearly is vitally important. Elgato decided to make its hardware with a fixed cable, whereas Loupedecks have a removable USB-C connection. I wouldn’t normally bother to mention this, but it’s worth noting as that means you can use your own (longer/shorter) lead to avoid cable spaghetti. You can also unplug it and use it to charge something else if needed. Minor, but helpful functionality if your workspace is littered with things that need topping off on the reg like mine is.

Clearly, one of the main advantages with the Live will be those rotary dials. If you work with audio or image editing at all, they are going to be much more useful than a plain ol’ button for many tasks. For example, I wanted to set up some controls for stereo panning in Ableton Live. On the Stream Deck I need to employ two buttons to get the setup I wanted: pan left one step / pan right one step and it takes a lot of presses to move from one extreme to the other. With the Live, I can simply assign it to one of the rotaries (clicking it will reset to center). From there, I can dial in the exact amount of panning I want in one deft movement.

That’s a very simple example, but if you imagine using the Live with something like Photoshop for adjusting Levels, you can see how having several rotaries might suddenly become incredibly useful.

Another practical difference between these two devices is the action on the buttons. On the Stream Deck, each one is like a clear Jolly Rancher with a bright display behind it. The buttons have a satisfying “click” to them and are easy to find without really looking. The Live, on the other hand, feels more like someone placed a divider over a touchscreen. That’s to say, the buttons don’t have any action/movement at all, instead delivering somewhat less satisfying vibrations to let you know you’ve pressed them.

Software

James Trew / Engadget

The real difference between these two, though, is the workflow. I had been using the Stream Deck for a couple of months before the Loupedeck Live. The Stream Deck is, at its core, a “launcher.” Assign a button to a task and it’ll do that task on demand. You can nest multiple tasks under folders to expand your options nearly endlessly, but the general interface remains fixed. So, if you wanted to control Ableton and Photoshop, for example, you might have a top-level button for each. That button would then link through to a subfolder of actions and/or more subfolders (one for editing, one for exporting actions and so on). These buttons remain fixed no matter what application you are using at a given moment.

With Loupedeck, it’s all about dynamic profiles. That’s to say, if I am working in Ableton, the Loupedeck will automatically switch to that profile and all the buttons and rotaries will change to whatever I have assigned them to for Ableton. If I then jump into Photoshop, all the controls will change to match that software, too. Or put another way, the Stream Deck is very “trigger” based (launch this, do this key command). The Loupedeck is more task-related, with pages, profiles and workspaces for whatever app is active. The net result is, once you have things customized to just how you want them, the Loupedeck Live is much more adaptive to your workflow as it “follows” you around and has more breadth of actions available at any one time. But at first, I was trying to make it simply launch things and found that harder than it was on a Stream Deck until I figured out how to work with it.

This “dynamic” mode can also be turned off if you prefer to keep the same controls available to you at any one time, but for that you can also assign set custom “workspaces” to any of the seven circular buttons along the bottom — so if you want your Photoshop profile to open with the app, but also have some basic system/trigger controls available, they can just be one button push away.

This approach definitely makes the Loupedeck feel more tightly integrated to whatever you’re doing “right now” rather than a nifty launcher, but it also takes a bit to get your head around how it wants to do things. At least in my experience. With the Stream Deck I was able to get under its skin in a day, I am still reading up on what the Live can do after some weeks, and need to keep reminding myself how to make certain changes. As a reverse example, launching an app is something Stream Deck was born to do. With a Loupedeck, you have to create a custom action and then assign that to a profile you can access at any time (i.e. a custom workspace) or add that action to various different profiles where you want it to be available.

Both do offer the option for macros/multi-actions and work in very similar ways in that regard. If, say, you want to create a shortcut to resize and then save an image, you can do so with either by creating a list of actions to be carried out in order. You can add a delay between each step and include text entry, keyboard shortcuts and running apps — all of which allows you to cook up some pretty clever “recipes.” Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to get things right, but once you do it can simplify otherwise fairly lengthy/mundane tasks.

James Trew / Engadget

Where the Stream Deck takes things a little further is with third-party plug-ins. These are usually more complex than tasks you create yourself (and require some programming to create). But thanks to Elgato’s active community, there are already quite a few on offer and the number is growing every day. Some of them are simple: I can have a dynamic weather widget displayed on one of the keys, others are more practical — I use one that switches my audio output between my headphones and my PC’s built-in speakers. Some of my colleagues speak highly of a Spotify controller and the Hue lights integration — both of which came from the Stream Deck community.

Loupedeck offers a way to export (and thus share) profiles, but as far as I can tell right now, there’s no way to do anything more complex than what you can do with custom controls — if that were to change in the future that could really enhance the functionality considerably.

Beyond the hardware controls and the user interface, it’s worth mentioning that both the Live and the Stream Deck have native support for specific apps. “Native” means that the companion software already has a list of drop and drag controls for select apps. Elgato’s controller, unsurprisingly, has a strong focus on things like OBS/Streamlabs, Twitch and, of course, the company’s own game capture software and lights along with some social tools and audio/soundboard features (for intro music or effects).

The Loupedeck Live also offers native controls for OBS/Streamlabs (but not Twitch) but tends to skew toward things like After Effects, Audition, Premier Pro and so on. The list of native apps supported is actually quite extensive and many more (like Davinci or iZotope RX) are available to download. If streaming is your main thing, Elgato’s solution is affordable and definitely more streamlined for that. The Loupedeck, however, is going to be more useful for a lot of other things — it’ll help with streaming, but also help you design the logo for your channel.

So which?

At this point, you can probably guess what the wrap-up is. Elgato’s Stream Deck offers less functionality overall but that can be greatly expanded as the number of plugins continues to grow. But likewise, it’ll always be somewhat limited by its singular input method (buttons). The Loupedeck Live is much more ambitious, but with that, trades off some of the simplicity. If you were looking for something that can take care of simple tasks and skews toward gaming or podcasting, save yourself the $100 and go with a Stream Deck, but if you want something that can pick up the slack for multiple desktop apps and tools, you probably want to pat your pockets a little more for the Loupedeck Live.

from Mike Granich https://www.engadget.com/loupedeck-live-versus-the-stream-deck-170020781.html?src=rss

[ladystylestores]

HBO Max is live: $15/mo for a massive library, significant headaches

Like it or not, another subscription streaming service has entered the chat.

This one—HBO Max—debuts across the United States on Wednesday, and it comes from the combined AT&T-Time Warner media empire. After taking shape in 2018, the new “WarnerMedia” cluster of film and TV content has since put together a streaming library of exclusive content—particularly by yoinking content away from Netflix and other partners, in apparent defiance of AT&T’s antitrust pledge to US Congress.

WarnerMedia didn’t make the service available to Ars Technica ahead of the launch, so I jumped into the fray by claiming a free seven-day trial on launch day and picked through its first day’s content and interface. I did so to answer the following question: has WarnerMedia pulled off a service worthy of a $15/month fee?

Not necessarily.

They’re still running three services simultaneously

The easiest sales pitch is for anyone who already happily paid $15/mo for HBO Now as a standalone service. HBO Max kinda-sorta replaces HBO Now, because the former has all the same content as the latter. Pay the same, get more. If you thought HBO Now’s selection of HBO-specific series and films was worth its high price, you’re the luckiest potential user. And if you were using HBO Now on Android or iOS, its app has simply turned into HBO Max. Easy peasy.

That makes us wonder: why does HBO Now still exist? One reason is that existing set-top boxes and services support paid subscriptions to HBO Now, sometimes as a bundled package. Another reason is that some set-top boxes, particularly every single Roku and Amazon Fire TV device, currently work with HBO Now, but do not work with HBO Max.

Confusing things further, HBO Go also still exists, but this is a holdover attachment to cable-TV subscriptions that offer HBO Go as a perk. WarnerMedia had to produce the following video to try and explain things, and the result is unintentionally hilarious:

HBO Max vs. HBO Now vs. HBO Go… yes, WarnerMedia officially made this video.

And the question of whether you might get HBO Max for free with your existing cable or streaming services remains a bewildering mess. HBO Now continues to direct users to the older apps, in spite of HBO Max being advertised as an included option from providers like Charter, Verizon, Cox, and (unsurprisingly) AT&T and its subsidiaries.

There’s also the matter of WarnerMedia’s last-minute announcement of a lower-priced, ad-supported tier for the service. But how much will it cost, and when will it arrive? The industry giant isn’t saying yet beyond a vague “2021” window.

Not quite the theme park we’d hoped for

The opening splash screen.

Sidebar.

More sidebar.

On its first day of operation, HBO Max already has a “last chance” page of expiring content.

The opening page for any series has a massive sample screen.

You have to scroll quite a ways to pick through more episodes, though at least the season-skipping interface is nimble enough.

When watching videos on a desktop web browser, the interface largely resembles HBO Now, complete with the “rewind 15 seconds” button. You won’t find that convenient toggle on every platform, however.

Once you actually get into the service, HBO Max looks like it germinated from a different era, when the streaming universe hadn’t fractured into a zillion pieces. Its landing page looks as simple as “Netflix, but with our exclusives.”

Comparatively, Disney+ showed up late last year with smart ideas about how to crash the streaming-subscription party. The most brilliant is its first-impression divide into five major categories: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Opening Disney+ feels like walking up to a theme park, seeing five enticing gates, and knowing they’ll each have a ton of content behind them. (Of all the companies to get that right, this one makes sense.)

HBO Max can’t make up its mind about whether to hew to that archetype or to the massive-dump-of-content standard seen on the past decade of most other streaming services. The top of the interface is an unsurprising scroll of “featured” content, and this sees HBO Max puffing its chest about major exclusives: the ’90s NBC series Friends (duh, it’s still one of the world’s most popular TV series), some HBO Max exclusives, and some HBO-produced series. Below those are some “featured” scrolls of TV series and films, arguably based on popularity, then a clever “every Harry Potter film in order” block—again, a hugely popular streaming exclusive, so that’s good for HBO Max to highlight.

You’ll need to tap your remote six times (or more if you’ve built any “previously watched” and “my watchlist” libraries) to scroll down and reach the “HBO Max hubs.” These massive buttons resemble Disney+’s intro splash, and they do a better job attaching a personality to the service… but not by the same margin. Small buttons are assigned to DC (as in, DC Comics), Sesame Workshop, Turner Classic Movies, Studio Ghibli, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Crunchyroll, and Looney Tunes. “HBO” gets a stupidly oversized button.

Hub hopping

HBO Max’s hubs.

The 25 series in the Cartoon Network hub, as of launch.

HBO

The 9 series in the Adult Swim hub, as of launch.

HBO

A visit to the Sesame Street hub reveals a peculiar organizational issue: categories that link to entire episodes. Those “spoofs and parodies” are tucked into longer episodes, and HBO Max doesn’t use timestamps to let watchers skip directly to the relevant bits. It’s an unwieldy attempt to guide viewers.

HBO

I created a “child” account to see what the interface looks like for kids under 13. It’s harder for them to find “hubs,” and they are instead shoved into age-gated clumps of content.

HBO

Clicking on HBO takes you to a less polished, less neatly organized version of HBO Now. Pick the “series” tab, and it’s an alphabetical dump of a most every HBO series with zero additional narrowing. If you’re in the mood for “every HBO comedy series,” you’re out of luck; you’ll have to pick through every drama and thriller on your way to find beloved comedic fare like Mr. Show and Silicon Valley, let alone to figure out which series count in which category. Curiously, stand-up comedy gets a dedicated tab within the HBO-specific interface, yet the “series” tab also includes a bunch of separate stand-up comedy.

The only genre-specific tabs generate a massive list of content from every hub. The overlap between bright-and-cheery Cartoon Network content and HBO’s darkest comedies feels less than ideal. (If you’re wondering, you can easily set parental controls to make sure Adventure Time isn’t a few clicks away from Barry.)

Some of the other hubs lead to clearly incomplete collections. Adult Swim is the worst offender at only nine series in all, while the DC button is HBO Max’s weirdest stumble. It has a plethora of content, sure, but what about recent, buzzed-out series like the Harley Quinn animated series or ’90s classics like Batman: The Animated Series? Sadly, those aren’t here, because they’re exclusive to one of WarnerMedia’s other streaming-subscription services, DC Universe. So much for corporate synergy. (Confusingly, Doom Patrol, a series that debuted on DC Universe, does appear on HBO Max.)

I can’t complain about the Turner Classic Movies or Looney Tunes selections, on the other hand, which are monstrous. The former, which at launch sports a whopping 454 films, borrows liberally from the Criterion Collection—enough that you could cancel that collection’s subscription service for a few months while picking through its HBO Max redundancies. (Be aware that TCM counts some interesting films as “classics,” but we’re not about to argue about the “classic” designation of flicks like Police Academy or Godzilla Raids Again.) The latter, meanwhile, includes hundreds of original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts throughout the years—but, gosh, HBO Max. It’s a pain to pick through the shorts as arranged in “seasons,” as if they originally aired on TV in a certain sequence, and the service only launched with three “collections” of classic shorts. Families could’ve used a hand to pick through more of this content, perhaps with more character-specific playlists? Or collections dedicated to beloved directors like Chuck Jones or Tex Avery?

I’m not an anime diehard, so I can’t speak to the seemingly anemic selection in the Crunchyroll tab. But at least the Studio Ghibli collection has nearly every one of its acclaimed films. (The holdouts are Grave of the Fireflies and the studio’s co-production work on a Lupin the Third feature-length film.)

Lack of 4K, lack of “skip opening credits”

Among the most boneheaded parts of the HBO Max rollout, however, is its utter lack of 4K content, let alone 4K combined with HDR. The same goes for Dolby Atmos surround sound. Why are these features missing? If history is any answer, the lack may be because HBO never built support for those standards in its other official apps.

That issue feels all the more glaring when HBO Max locks up films as exclusive content. If WarnerMedia wants new users to flock to its service instead of rivals’, guaranteeing 4K access to Wonder Woman, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and other 4K showstoppers would be a worthy, competitive move. But WarnerMedia has only suggested that 4K, HDR, and Atmos support are “on our roadmap,” which is as toothless a guarantee in the streaming-app landscape as they come.

On the other side of the resolution spectrum, HBO Max is careful not to aggressively crop older videos that were originally meant for 4:3 televisions. That’s great news for the video-ratio purists at Ars Technica. You don’t have to start an online petition to get the original, uncropped versions of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, folks.

Beyond those issues, HBO Max has a paltry selection of newly created, “only for Max” content: six short series, each three episodes or fewer. It’s unclear why the company even bothered with this selection, since it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the dozens of films and series with a shiny red N on Netflix or the same kind of content found on the likes of Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Video, and even NBC’s soft-launched Peacock.

All of the above is to say: there’s a mountain of content on HBO Max, and quite a bit of stuff that counts as both popular and critically acclaimed, but the service does an awful job laying out a mat for new users to discover it. The hub-based spread of content is a pain to pick through, and so many selections (biggies like Friends and Harry Potter, plus content from Turner TV stations like Conan) don’t appear in those hubs. And it’s missing quality-of-life features you might come to expect from a streaming service, including a “skip opening credits” toggle or a “rewind 15 seconds” button-tap. (The latter tap option only appears when using HBO Max on a desktop Web browser.)

Thankfully, the basic experience of queueing and watching things you search for works just fine, and again, this library is massive—and includes multiple bottomless wells of beloved libraries. But many of these, particularly Looney Tunes and Sesame Street, deserved better. Instead of virtually leading fans into a neatly organized theme park, HBO Max asks its users to crash through the glass door of a badly managed Blockbuster Video.

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that���s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 syndicated from https://medium.com/@SpanishFly

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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  Announcement

Adam: What? We want it? We're live. Yeah, thanks. I'm not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we're live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it's Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we're going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we're going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we're definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You've got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It's going to be a good one. And we'll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We'll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let's say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let's see, I'll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how's it going?

Bradley: I'm good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don't. I'm not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can't do it. I don't know how you guys do it. But so I'm so backed up. It's ridiculous. I've been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I'm just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don't know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we're going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you're not in the Facebook group, join it, I'll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you're subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you'll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it's a bummer you can't join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don't record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn't know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can't Yeah, don't let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You're back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I'm back in Florida I'm super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you're wrong to Get out of here just in time I'm still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I'm good man I'm actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven't smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it's gonna, you know, you can't get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that's awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you're just joining us and you're wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you're in the right place. We're going to dive into your questions. If you've got any questions about digital marketing, we're here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people's questions. But if you can't join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That's going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it's dealing with your on-page SEO whether it's dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that'll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I'm on my laptop, and I'm having a hard time scrolling while I'm looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don't use it enough or who are new and don't know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you've got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren't doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it's really important that people not only understand what's available, but why it's available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I'm going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you're interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn't make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn't make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It's tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I'll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let's do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we're good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn't work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it's been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it's actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it's pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that's the URL anyways, it'll you can buy the pro version, it's like 20 bucks, it's inexpensive, it's really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I'm doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I'm going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we'll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that's just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That's something else that you can do. I know that Marco's got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don't know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don't know if he still can. I'm not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you've got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there's a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that's the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that's my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I've even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I'm taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven't checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn't recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven't tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I'm thinking that Google won't like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you're going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you're going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it's called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn't recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you've got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you're using the same address and it's like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they're going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it's going to the same address but that A and B actually create we're creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you're going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It's going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I'd like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don't have this kind of experience what's your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What's your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you're putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That's typically how I've done it. I've only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He's as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don't have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I'm setting it up for a foreign language, it's pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he's working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it's relevant. So there's you'll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it's that way, then you're not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it's two things that you're targeting that are totally unrelated. And you're trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it's all about entities. And it's all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that's a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn't as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That's not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you're you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don't see any issue with that, because that's, that's pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cause any problem as Hernan said, You're like, I'm assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I'm just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you're going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I've used plugins, that's what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn't have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn't intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there's no doubt. So if you're going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you're probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don't know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can't have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it'll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you're serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don't want to use a separate domain because I don't want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon's up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it's going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you're right and local. It's nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it's going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that's fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that's a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you're trying to your top-level keywords that you're trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there's no reason that you can't still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You're just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it's going to be different if you're in mud lick Kentucky, or if you're going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it's just going to have it so it's any big city in the US, which is why it's so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you're targeting. Now if for example, as as we've seen in the land when we're doing that there's just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there's still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it's what's going to make it or break it, so to speak. It's how you're going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you're trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it's going to pull up everything that's related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we're targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don't work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it's really important to understand the market and what you're after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it's not really what's in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It's understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you're targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don't base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn't matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that's just an indication of how much work and efforts it's going to take to be able to get results for that. That's all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn't design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he's talking about, I'm assuming that what you mean is when he's talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we've been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you're in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that's within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it's a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that's what you're talking about, which again, I can only assume that that's what you're talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it's a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what's up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven't electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it's very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It's not that it can't be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We've done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it's it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I've got just quickly on us on a side I've got a pest control client. It's the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I'm talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they're not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she's been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we're going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you're still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we're going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I've created silos for them. There's, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we're in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there's a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn't about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they're physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it's just because of the relevancy that she's been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that's really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don't recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don't know what you'd be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it's actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you're going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you're that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you're centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it's that relationship where the centroid can be related and we've seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you're targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I've discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it's specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I'm not gonna share of course in here, because it's paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don't know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It's a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it's another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it's ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it's a way to get into the maps pack. I don't know if he's in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that's, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they've ranked in there with it, but it's an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there's nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don't even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you'll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it's a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that's just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I'll do is I'll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I'll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's really come a long way, guys, I can't say it's still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it's in my opinion if you haven't, I don't know. Again, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it's just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it's something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it's something that if you're not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul's up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I've only in all of my years now that I've been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I'm not saying that.

It can't happen. But I've only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I've been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I'm talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I've managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I'm saying. And I've only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I've got many, many of them out there that I've done that with and I've only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here's why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you've got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we're going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I've mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can't you just throw all that stuff out? It's junk mail, and they wouldn't do it because I'd say like, I'm gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There's nothing I need there and they said, doesn't matter. You either come get it or we're going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I've only had two that I've ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I'm actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I've closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that's it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It's ridiculous. And I just don't renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It's very unlikely that you're ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don't know because I haven't had to do it. Since Google's made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I've had to revert or I've had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don't know now because it's changed so much the GMB like how they're handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don't know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn't worry about it, though. It's highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that's the Nate that that's one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it's part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That's why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I'll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that's giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn't do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he's talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I'm relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I'd like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don't skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don't know somebody brought it to Google's attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there's a big GMB spam team right now that's been out there. That's just you know, their, that's their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it's very, I mean, it's easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I've not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn't done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I'm assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I'm assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I've noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that's much better. But if it's not been you know, if it's not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it's being it's being left for for review. I know for a fact that there's an issue with that we've heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee's home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it's a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I'd say a month ago, and it's still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there's just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it's pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What's that the map won't go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it's verified. Your pending verification if it's verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything's there, but it's just whatever change you know, I'm telling you that my the one that I'm talking about specifically.

It's been I've submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it's been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there's no maps listing. And so the GMB post won't show up in a knowledge panel because there's no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn't there. What I'm saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it's in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don't know I don't know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I've had in the past I've had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it's unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it's, if it's still in that pending status, it's not going to publish, which means you can't do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can't help you with that. You just have to wait. I don't know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we're almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It's not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they're only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn't bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there's really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that's, that's just ugly and nobody's going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don't mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don't do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that's what that's for that it's really for beginners. I mean, it's for beginners and it's just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it's a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn't matter. Okay, so haven't gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you're just doing GMB stuff like there's no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that's going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it's very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don't skip on parts don't just do 25% of it and contact us and say that's not working. doesn't work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There's It doesn't mean you're going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That's when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I've had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it's not going live both went live a week after I called that's a good idea. That's something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there's no other questions, guys. I'm good. I think we're gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let's do it. We're close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

[daynamartinez22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url https://ift.tt/1WMpNvB October 28, 2019 at 02:59PM Semantic Mastery https://ift.tt/2YeHIxM

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We're live. Yeah, thanks. I'm not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we're live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it's Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we're going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we're going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we're definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You've got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It's going to be a good one. And we'll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We'll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let's say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let's see, I'll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how's it going?

Bradley: I'm good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don't. I'm not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can't do it. I don't know how you guys do it. But so I'm so backed up. It's ridiculous. I've been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I'm just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don't know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we're going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you're not in the Facebook group, join it, I'll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you're subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you'll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it's a bummer you can't join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don't record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn't know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can't Yeah, don't let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You're back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I'm back in Florida I'm super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you're wrong to Get out of here just in time I'm still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I'm good man I'm actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven't smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it's gonna, you know, you can't get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that's awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you're just joining us and you're wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you're in the right place. We're going to dive into your questions. If you've got any questions about digital marketing, we're here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people's questions. But if you can't join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That's going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it's dealing with your on-page SEO whether it's dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that'll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I'm on my laptop, and I'm having a hard time scrolling while I'm looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don't use it enough or who are new and don't know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you've got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren't doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it's really important that people not only understand what's available, but why it's available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I'm going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you're interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn't make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn't make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It's tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I'll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let's do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we're good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn't work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it's been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it's actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it's pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that's the URL anyways, it'll you can buy the pro version, it's like 20 bucks, it's inexpensive, it's really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I'm doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I'm going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we'll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that's just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That's something else that you can do. I know that Marco's got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don't know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don't know if he still can. I'm not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you've got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there's a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that's the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that's my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I've even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I'm taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven't checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn't recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven't tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I'm thinking that Google won't like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you're going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you're going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it's called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn't recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you've got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you're using the same address and it's like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they're going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it's going to the same address but that A and B actually create we're creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you're going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It's going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I'd like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don't have this kind of experience what's your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What's your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you're putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That's typically how I've done it. I've only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He's as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don't have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I'm setting it up for a foreign language, it's pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he's working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it's relevant. So there's you'll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it's that way, then you're not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it's two things that you're targeting that are totally unrelated. And you're trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it's all about entities. And it's all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that's a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn't as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That's not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you're you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don't see any issue with that, because that's, that's pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cause any problem as Hernan said, You're like, I'm assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I'm just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you're going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I've used plugins, that's what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn't have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn't intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there's no doubt. So if you're going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you're probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don't know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can't have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it'll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you're serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don't want to use a separate domain because I don't want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon's up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it's going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you're right and local. It's nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it's going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that's fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that's a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you're trying to your top-level keywords that you're trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there's no reason that you can't still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You're just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it's going to be different if you're in mud lick Kentucky, or if you're going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it's just going to have it so it's any big city in the US, which is why it's so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you're targeting. Now if for example, as as we've seen in the land when we're doing that there's just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there's still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it's what's going to make it or break it, so to speak. It's how you're going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you're trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it's going to pull up everything that's related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we're targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don't work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it's really important to understand the market and what you're after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it's not really what's in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It's understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you're targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don't base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn't matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that's just an indication of how much work and efforts it's going to take to be able to get results for that. That's all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn't design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he's talking about, I'm assuming that what you mean is when he's talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we've been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you're in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that's within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it's a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that's what you're talking about, which again, I can only assume that that's what you're talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it's a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what's up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven't electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it's very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It's not that it can't be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We've done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it's it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I've got just quickly on us on a side I've got a pest control client. It's the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I'm talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they're not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she's been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we're going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you're still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we're going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I've created silos for them. There's, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we're in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there's a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn't about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they're physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it's just because of the relevancy that she's been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that's really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don't recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don't know what you'd be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it's actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you're going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you're that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you're centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it's that relationship where the centroid can be related and we've seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you're targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I've discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it's specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I'm not gonna share of course in here, because it's paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don't know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It's a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it's another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it's ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it's a way to get into the maps pack. I don't know if he's in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that's, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they've ranked in there with it, but it's an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there's nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don't even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you'll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it's a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that's just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I'll do is I'll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I'll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's really come a long way, guys, I can't say it's still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it's in my opinion if you haven't, I don't know. Again, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it's just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it's something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it's something that if you're not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul's up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I've only in all of my years now that I've been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I'm not saying that.

It can't happen. But I've only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I've been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I'm talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I've managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I'm saying. And I've only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I've got many, many of them out there that I've done that with and I've only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here's why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you've got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we're going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I've mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can't you just throw all that stuff out? It's junk mail, and they wouldn't do it because I'd say like, I'm gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There's nothing I need there and they said, doesn't matter. You either come get it or we're going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I've only had two that I've ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I'm actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I've closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that's it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It's ridiculous. And I just don't renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It's very unlikely that you're ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don't know because I haven't had to do it. Since Google's made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I've had to revert or I've had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don't know now because it's changed so much the GMB like how they're handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don't know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn't worry about it, though. It's highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that's the Nate that that's one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it's part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That's why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I'll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that's giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn't do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he's talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I'm relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I'd like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don't skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don't know somebody brought it to Google's attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there's a big GMB spam team right now that's been out there. That's just you know, their, that's their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it's very, I mean, it's easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I've not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn't done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I'm assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I'm assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I've noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that's much better. But if it's not been you know, if it's not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it's being it's being left for for review. I know for a fact that there's an issue with that we've heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee's home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it's a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I'd say a month ago, and it's still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there's just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it's pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What's that the map won't go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it's verified. Your pending verification if it's verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything's there, but it's just whatever change you know, I'm telling you that my the one that I'm talking about specifically.

It's been I've submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it's been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there's no maps listing. And so the GMB post won't show up in a knowledge panel because there's no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn't there. What I'm saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it's in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don't know I don't know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I've had in the past I've had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it's unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it's, if it's still in that pending status, it's not going to publish, which means you can't do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can't help you with that. You just have to wait. I don't know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we're almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It's not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they're only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn't bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there's really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that's, that's just ugly and nobody's going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don't mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don't do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that's what that's for that it's really for beginners. I mean, it's for beginners and it's just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it's a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn't matter. Okay, so haven't gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you're just doing GMB stuff like there's no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that's going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it's very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don't skip on parts don't just do 25% of it and contact us and say that's not working. doesn't work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There's It doesn't mean you're going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That's when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I've had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it's not going live both went live a week after I called that's a good idea. That's something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there's no other questions, guys. I'm good. I think we're gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let's do it. We're close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

[funface2]

10 Quotes From Community That Are Still Hilarious Today – Screen Rant

During its run, Community was one of the most consistently funny shows on television. It featured an incredibly versatile and talented cast including Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, Danny Pudi, and more. Though it never picked up big ratings, Community managed to make it to six seasons but fans know we’re still waiting for the movie.

There are a lot of shows, especially comedies, that don’t stand the test of time. You go back to watch old episodes and it just isn’t as funny. With Community, that isn’t the case. The series is still just as clever and amusing as ever. Listed below you’ll find 10 quotes that remain just as hilarious today as they were when they originally aired.

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10 “Is There Any Room In This Pocket For A Little Spare Chang?”

Ben Chang is often the main antagonist on Community. He began the show as their insane Spanish teacher. Chang would give them ridiculous amounts of work, tests that made no sense and played mind games with them. His qualifications as a teacher were false and he was fired at the end of season one but returned as a student the following year.

RELATED: Community: 10 Best Holiday Episodes, Ranked

Despite the way he treated the study group, he wanted nothing more in season two than to join them. In the premiere, “Anthropology 101,” his offer was posed as the question listed above. It marked one of the first times that Chang used his name as a pun and that would become a recurring theme throughout the rest of the series.

9 “It’s Like God Spilled A Person”

Season two’s “Intro to Political Science” centered around Greendale electing a student body president when word broke that Joe Biden was visiting the school. Annie wanted to win to better the school, while Jeff was blocking her path in an attempt to mock her idealism.

Most of the episode took place at the debate. Along with Jeff and Annie, candidates included Vicki, Pierce, Leonard, Magnitude, Starburns, and Garrett. Troy and Abed hosted a television portion of the debate and ran down information about each candidate. When they got to Garrett, they read his profile and everything he was allergic too. Garrett was such a mess that Troy used this quote to perfectly describe him.

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8 “Look At His Shadow!”

One of the most fun episodes during a stellar third season was “Contemporary Impressionists.” Each member of the study group was brought in to play lookalikes of celebrities. That included Shirley as Oprah as well as Britta and Troy as both versions of Michael Jackson. Jeff was brought in to portray Ryan Seacrest.

The problem was that Jeff’s new anti-anxiety medication failed to keep his ego in check and his narcissism grew out of control. When he began wearing shades, Dean Pelton spotted Jeff and lost his cool. He convulsed on the floor because of how handsome Jeff looked. As he twitched on the floor, he screamed that even Jeff’s shadow looked good.

7 “Pop Pop”

This one isn’t a one time only quote. This was the catchphrase of Magnitude. We first meet him in season two during a Valentine’s Day party thrown by Jeff. Magnitude was a guest who was introduced as a “one-man party.” He entered the room and proceeded to shout, “Pop pop!”

RELATED: Cool Cool Cool: The 10 Best High-Concept Episodes Of Community, Ranked

Magnitude started as just a random Greendale student but he soon grew into a consistent character. He appeared across several seasons and always brought the laughs. Shouting his catchphrase combined with his “raise the roof” gesture made him a fun and likable guy. Whenever he said this, it was funny and a welcome boost to any episode.

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6 “Don’t Eat The Crab Dip”

Troy Barnes is often the supplier for many of the funniest moments in Community history. Sometimes, it’s just his struggle to be as cool as he wants to be that makes him hilarious. During season one’s “The Politics of Human Sexuality,” Greendale throws an STD awareness fair that opens an opportunity for Troy to nail a joke.

Pierce revealed that he was bringing an escort to the fair and Troy realized there was a joke there. As the study group conversed for the next minute or so, we caught glimpses of Troy with a pen and paper cramming to get the line just right. He finally does and his delivery of the line is fantastic.

5 “I Hope He Transfers To Hell”

Throughout season one, there were a handful of times where Shirley mentioned that she had a friend named Gary. Though we never see Gary, it becomes clear that the rest of the study group doesn’t like him. Britta called him boring and a buzzkill. When Britta feels that way about someone, you know they’re bad.

At the end of the season, Greendale threw a transfer dance to celebrate the students moving on to new schools. Shirley noted that Gary was transferring and the entire study group was glad to hear it. While most of the responses were, “Good” or “Finally,” it was Troy’s that ended things with a bang. “I hope he transfers to hell” was just a vicious, yet hilarious line.

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4 “How ‘Bout I Pound You Like A Boy. That Didn’t Come Out Right”

For many, this was one of the earliest comedic home runs for the show. It was a simple setup and could’ve just been a throwaway moment but it worked too well. In the third ever episode, “Introduction to Film,” the study group were talking at the table when Troy sneezed.

RELATED: Community: 5 Best Friendships (& 5 Worst)

Everyone stopped what they were doing to comment on the unusually high-pitched sneeze. Jeff flat out said Troy sneezed like a girl. In an attempt to sound tough, Troy responded by threatening to pound Jeff like a boy, before quickly realizing that sentence didn’t sound the way he wanted it to.

3 “My Whole Brain Is Crying”

It should come as no surprise that this is yet another Troy Barnes quote. In the episode “Accounting for Lawyers,” Jeff abandoned the study group to get back in with the lawyers he used to work with. The study group followed him to one of their parties when they discovered the former colleague who got Jeff disbarred.

While at the party, Troy and Abed searched for evidence of this but were caught in the act by a janitor. Suddenly, Annie popped up behind him and knocked him out with chloroform. The three began to panic, with Troy hilariously prancing around and screaming this quote. Again, it was a case of Donald Glover showing off his impeccable comedic timing.

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2 “I’ll Make Your Ass Sense”

Though Shirley Bennett wasn’t always the biggest source of comedy, she could shift from a sweet tone of voice to a menacing one in an instant. It led to plenty of great moments. Another consistent trait of Shirley’s was her insecurity about her age. In “Cooperative Calligraphy,” one of the series’ best episodes, Shirley got offended when Britta called her Mother Hen.

Shirley argued that she and Britta were almost the same age, to which Britta responded that it would only be the case if time was linear. “I’ll make your ass linear,” was Shirley’s comeback. When Britta said that didn’t make any sense, Shirley brought out that menacing tone for a quick, “I’ll make your ass sense.”

1 “You’re The Opposite Of Batman”

Of course the funniest Community quote comes courtesy of Troy Barnes. In the season three premiere, “Biology 101,” Britta introduced Abed to a new show that he quickly became attached to. However, it only lasted a few episodes. Britta knew this ahead of time but still let Abed watch the show. When the characters all died, Abed was broken.

Troy, always ready to defend his best friend, was quick to pounce on Britta for setting Abed up for failure. He went on a short rant calling Britta the worst. “You are human tennis elbow. You are a pizza burn on the roof of the world’s mouth. You are the opposite of Batman.” He said Britta was the human equivalent of two terrible things and the opposite of one of the coolest. Ouch.

NEXT: Community: The 10 Best Moments Of Troy and Abed’s Friendship

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The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional

Tech folklore has it that the landing page was born in late 2003, when Microsoft created the concept in response to poor online sales of Office. Realising that the buying process had to be smoother and more direct, the IT giant created a separate mini-site designed specifically for buying its flagship product. Whilst the campaign undoubtedly worked for Microsoft—we’re still stuck with Office, after all—it’s hard to believe nobody had tried the concept before, so basic is the marketing principle behind it. Surely, people had been using single, direct sales pages before 2003, even if that was their entire web presence? Either way, catchy, compelling landing pages that convert clicks into contracts are still a must-have for any online business. The problem is that, like any marketing concept, landing pages are in a constant evolutionary race with consumers. Fifteen years after Microsoft’s breakthrough, only the slickest, most original designers are winning. Many landing pages have become formulaic, and for the average business the traditional landing page may no longer be a suitable approach.

The Early Years

In the years following Microsoft’s discovery, landing pages proliferated. And in the true style of the early Internet, they were messy, shouty affairs. Often several different brash sales pitches competed for prominence with the obligatory glowing testimonials, all on a white background. That started to change in 2009, a year in which the landing page seemingly graduated and became professionalised. Almost overnight, a series of specialist companies sprang up and started to offer recognisably modern design. Messages became shorter, funny even. The background turned from white to hues of blue, and the photos came into focus. Along with these visual improvements, the marketing concept was refined too. By running sites in parallel—known as A/B testing—designers literally got a scientific answer as to what worked best.

The ‘Rules’ of Writing a Landing Page

There is a lot of advice available online regarding the writing of compelling, high-converting landing pages. It comes from experienced marketeers and it has worked very well in the past. Certain elements of this advice effectively serve to define what we understand as a landing page today: A catchy headline; a punchy intro directly addressing a core customer need or desire; and a concise ‘call to action’. Lance Jones, of Copy Hackers, recommends writing a landing page from the bottom up. He says: Start with the goal. The call to action. The thing you want visitors to a landing page to do. Then, work backward from your button, writing only copy that will convince people to click that button. Nothing else makes it on the page. Nothing. The ‘CTA’ is perhaps the defining characteristic of the pure landing page. While some marketeers still advise including testimonials, and telling customers exactly how you will solve their problem, others have stripped things back to the very basics: the initial page is primarily just a ‘buy’ button or an email field, even if a little bit more info is available by scrolling. Microsoft themselves have evolved towards this approach.

Short and Simple Sells

While popping a ‘buy’ button in front of the customer straight off is visually appealing, that simplicity of approach is only possible when people already know what the product is. Big companies with enough branding behind them are just providing a gateway to the product: Smaller businesses can attempt this by running social media or advertising campaigns that sell on specific points. The landing pages these campaigns point to can, in theory, be highly simplified because the selling points have already been addressed. Businesses offering relatively complex and high value services will struggle to sell directly through a conventional, simple landing page., however. Their options, in the modern era, are to go for a simple first screen that then scrolls to further information set out in a visual, reassuring and intuitive way, like this Australian business finance firm; or to target something less than a full sale.

The Squeeze Page

If all you want is an initial contact or an email address from a customer, you don’t need to go for a hard sell. In this example, a no-obligation opportunity to interact leads the customer into a mini-site. What marketeers call a funnel, these simple ‘squeeze pages’ have become a sub-category of the landing page.

The concept of a squeeze page is to keep things very simple, because all you want is an initial contact or, more usually, an email address. In order to do this, businesses offer a free downloadable guide; a trial version; or a no-obligation consultation, for example. For a squeeze page to work, is has to be clear that what is being offered is free.

Linking to a Search

There is one further approach for more complex services, and that is to simply start the customer’s search for them. Airlines and online booking companies do this: imagine how Hotels.com will load on your screen if you search for ”Paris hotels” and then click on the company’s ad.

The Landing Page Links Debate

Most landing pages have links—84% of them, if you believe the latest count, which seems reasonable. But a series of A/B tests by HubSpot, using their own landing pages, suggested that at best links made no difference and at worst they were an unwelcome distraction: when it came to free trials and demos, the versions without links performed 16% and 28% better in terms of conversions, respectively. Tests by other companies have shown even bigger jumps in conversion rate when all links are removed. But these tests have no way of accounting for cautious potential customers who want to browse your site a little before they commit to buying—because these potential big spenders would eventually contact you via a different page, or perhaps by a phone call. Unsurprisingly therefore, the inclusion or otherwise of links—even to your own homepage, remains a hotly contested topic for landing page experts. Online marketer Neil Patel suggests that the only clickable link on a landing page should be your call to action, and possibly a link to more information for those who are undecided: Forget about links to everything else…all they do is clutter up the page and increase the likelihood that your visitors will abandon your landing page without converting.

Pages Must Fit the Business

What seems clear is that as landing pages have evolved, they have become more varied. Despite ruthless live testing, no secret formula has emerged. Indeed, several different approaches have thrived in response to the many and varied businesses that use them. Karla Cook, writing for Hubspot this year, said: Best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well—it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower-quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher-quality submissions. If you’re an online business that can offer something immediate, therefore, landing pages work and you want to keep them simple. It seems brutal, but the statistics suggest that, if you can offer a free trial, a demo version, or if you basic product is basically free, then all you need is a catchy page that looks good, loads quickly and is highly functional and intuitive. If you’re in a more complex sector and you want this, it’s even worth creating a freebie—usually an e-book or guide—as a way of collecting email addresses with this approach. On the other hand, if you provide complex products and are essentially hoping that customers will call your expert advisers—or you, if you’re a small business—and discuss their needs in more depth, you’ll want them to be able to check you out in full. Arguably, what you will then build is not a true landing page. But if it is designed to meet specific traffic, then the basic rules are still applicable. Neil Patel sums it up: Your copy should be clear and concise. It should be persuasive, too. Landing pages are not the place to show off your creativity, unless that creativity is clear, concise, and persuasive. Leave the creative turns-of-phrase for your blog. Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

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The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional

Tech folklore has it that the landing page was born in late 2003, when Microsoft created the concept in response to poor online sales of Office. Realising that the buying process had to be smoother and more direct, the IT giant created a separate mini-site designed specifically for buying its flagship product.

Whilst the campaign undoubtedly worked for Microsoft—we’re still stuck with Office, after all—it’s hard to believe nobody had tried the concept before, so basic is the marketing principle behind it. Surely, people had been using single, direct sales pages before 2003, even if that was their entire web presence?

Either way, catchy, compelling landing pages that convert clicks into contracts are still a must-have for any online business. The problem is that, like any marketing concept, landing pages are in a constant evolutionary race with consumers. Fifteen years after Microsoft’s breakthrough, only the slickest, most original designers are winning. Many landing pages have become formulaic, and for the average business the traditional landing page may no longer be a suitable approach.

The Early Years

In the years following Microsoft’s discovery, landing pages proliferated. And in the true style of the early Internet, they were messy, shouty affairs. Often several different brash sales pitches competed for prominence with the obligatory glowing testimonials, all on a white background.

That started to change in 2009, a year in which the landing page seemingly graduated and became professionalised. Almost overnight, a series of specialist companies sprang up and started to offer recognisably modern design. Messages became shorter, funny even. The background turned from white to hues of blue, and the photos came into focus.

Along with these visual improvements, the marketing concept was refined too. By running sites in parallel—known as A/B testing—designers literally got a scientific answer as to what worked best.

The ‘Rules’ of Writing a Landing Page

There is a lot of advice available online regarding the writing of compelling, high-converting landing pages. It comes from experienced marketeers and it has worked very well in the past. Certain elements of this advice effectively serve to define what we understand as a landing page today: A catchy headline; a punchy intro directly addressing a core customer need or desire; and a concise ‘call to action’.

Lance Jones, of Copy Hackers, recommends writing a landing page from the bottom up. He says:

Start with the goal. The call to action. The thing you want visitors to a landing page to do. Then, work backward from your button, writing only copy that will convince people to click that button. Nothing else makes it on the page. Nothing.

The ‘CTA’ is perhaps the defining characteristic of the pure landing page. While some marketeers still advise including testimonials, and telling customers exactly how you will solve their problem, others have stripped things back to the very basics: the initial page is primarily just a ‘buy’ button or an email field, even if a little bit more info is available by scrolling. Microsoft themselves have evolved towards this approach.

Short and Simple Sells

While popping a ‘buy’ button in front of the customer straight off is visually appealing, that simplicity of approach is only possible when people already know what the product is. Big companies with enough branding behind them are just providing a gateway to the product: Smaller businesses can attempt this by running social media or advertising campaigns that sell on specific points. The landing pages these campaigns point to can, in theory, be highly simplified because the selling points have already been addressed.

Businesses offering relatively complex and high value services will struggle to sell directly through a conventional, simple landing page., however. Their options, in the modern era, are to go for a simple first screen that then scrolls to further information set out in a visual, reassuring and intuitive way, like this Australian business finance firm; or to target something less than a full sale.

The Squeeze Page

If all you want is an initial contact or an email address from a customer, you don’t need to go for a hard sell. In this example, a no-obligation opportunity to interact leads the customer into a mini-site. What marketeers call a funnel, these simple ‘squeeze pages’ have become a sub-category of the landing page.

The concept of a squeeze page is to keep things very simple, because all you want is an initial contact or, more usually, an email address. In order to do this, businesses offer a free downloadable guide; a trial version; or a no-obligation consultation, for example. For a squeeze page to work, is has to be clear that what is being offered is free.

Linking to a Search

There is one further approach for more complex services, and that is to simply start the customer’s search for them. Airlines and online booking companies do this: imagine how Hotels.com will load on your screen if you search for ”Paris hotels” and then click on the company’s ad.

The Landing Page Links Debate

Most landing pages have links—84% of them, if you believe the latest count, which seems reasonable.

But a series of A/B tests by HubSpot, using their own landing pages, suggested that at best links made no difference and at worst they were an unwelcome distraction: when it came to free trials and demos, the versions without links performed 16% and 28% better in terms of conversions, respectively.

Tests by other companies have shown even bigger jumps in conversion rate when all links are removed. But these tests have no way of accounting for cautious potential customers who want to browse your site a little before they commit to buying—because these potential big spenders would eventually contact you via a different page, or perhaps by a phone call.

Unsurprisingly therefore, the inclusion or otherwise of links—even to your own homepage, remains a hotly contested topic for landing page experts. Online marketer Neil Patel suggests that the only clickable link on a landing page should be your call to action, and possibly a link to more information for those who are undecided:

Forget about links to everything else…all they do is clutter up the page and increase the likelihood that your visitors will abandon your landing page without converting.

Pages Must Fit the Business

What seems clear is that as landing pages have evolved, they have become more varied. Despite ruthless live testing, no secret formula has emerged. Indeed, several different approaches have thrived in response to the many and varied businesses that use them.

Karla Cook, writing for Hubspot this year, said:

Best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well—it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower-quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher-quality submissions.

If you’re an online business that can offer something immediate, therefore, landing pages work and you want to keep them simple. It seems brutal, but the statistics suggest that, if you can offer a free trial, a demo version, or if you basic product is basically free, then all you need is a catchy page that looks good, loads quickly and is highly functional and intuitive.

If you’re in a more complex sector and you want this, it’s even worth creating a freebie—usually an e-book or guide—as a way of collecting email addresses with this approach.

On the other hand, if you provide complex products and are essentially hoping that customers will call your expert advisers—or you, if you’re a small business—and discuss their needs in more depth, you’ll want them to be able to check you out in full. Arguably, what you will then build is not a true landing page. But if it is designed to meet specific traffic, then the basic rules are still applicable.

Neil Patel sums it up:

Your copy should be clear and concise. It should be persuasive, too. Landing pages are not the place to show off your creativity, unless that creativity is clear, concise, and persuasive. Leave the creative turns-of-phrase for your blog.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

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The post The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional

Tech folklore has it that the landing page was born in late 2003, when Microsoft created the concept in response to poor online sales of Office. Realising that the buying process had to be smoother and more direct, the IT giant created a separate mini-site designed specifically for buying its flagship product.

Whilst the campaign undoubtedly worked for Microsoft—we’re still stuck with Office, after all—it’s hard to believe nobody had tried the concept before, so basic is the marketing principle behind it. Surely, people had been using single, direct sales pages before 2003, even if that was their entire web presence?

Either way, catchy, compelling landing pages that convert clicks into contracts are still a must-have for any online business. The problem is that, like any marketing concept, landing pages are in a constant evolutionary race with consumers. Fifteen years after Microsoft’s breakthrough, only the slickest, most original designers are winning. Many landing pages have become formulaic, and for the average business the traditional landing page may no longer be a suitable approach.

The Early Years

In the years following Microsoft’s discovery, landing pages proliferated. And in the true style of the early Internet, they were messy, shouty affairs. Often several different brash sales pitches competed for prominence with the obligatory glowing testimonials, all on a white background.

That started to change in 2009, a year in which the landing page seemingly graduated and became professionalised. Almost overnight, a series of specialist companies sprang up and started to offer recognisably modern design. Messages became shorter, funny even. The background turned from white to hues of blue, and the photos came into focus.

Along with these visual improvements, the marketing concept was refined too. By running sites in parallel—known as A/B testing—designers literally got a scientific answer as to what worked best.

The ‘Rules’ of Writing a Landing Page

There is a lot of advice available online regarding the writing of compelling, high-converting landing pages. It comes from experienced marketeers and it has worked very well in the past. Certain elements of this advice effectively serve to define what we understand as a landing page today: A catchy headline; a punchy intro directly addressing a core customer need or desire; and a concise ‘call to action’.

Lance Jones, of Copy Hackers, recommends writing a landing page from the bottom up. He says:

Start with the goal. The call to action. The thing you want visitors to a landing page to do. Then, work backward from your button, writing only copy that will convince people to click that button. Nothing else makes it on the page. Nothing.

The ‘CTA’ is perhaps the defining characteristic of the pure landing page. While some marketeers still advise including testimonials, and telling customers exactly how you will solve their problem, others have stripped things back to the very basics: the initial page is primarily just a ‘buy’ button or an email field, even if a little bit more info is available by scrolling. Microsoft themselves have evolved towards this approach.

Short and Simple Sells

While popping a ‘buy’ button in front of the customer straight off is visually appealing, that simplicity of approach is only possible when people already know what the product is. Big companies with enough branding behind them are just providing a gateway to the product: Smaller businesses can attempt this by running social media or advertising campaigns that sell on specific points. The landing pages these campaigns point to can, in theory, be highly simplified because the selling points have already been addressed.

Businesses offering relatively complex and high value services will struggle to sell directly through a conventional, simple landing page., however. Their options, in the modern era, are to go for a simple first screen that then scrolls to further information set out in a visual, reassuring and intuitive way, like this Australian business finance firm; or to target something less than a full sale.

The Squeeze Page

If all you want is an initial contact or an email address from a customer, you don’t need to go for a hard sell. In this example, a no-obligation opportunity to interact leads the customer into a mini-site. What marketeers call a funnel, these simple ‘squeeze pages’ have become a sub-category of the landing page.

The concept of a squeeze page is to keep things very simple, because all you want is an initial contact or, more usually, an email address. In order to do this, businesses offer a free downloadable guide; a trial version; or a no-obligation consultation, for example. For a squeeze page to work, is has to be clear that what is being offered is free.

Linking to a Search

There is one further approach for more complex services, and that is to simply start the customer’s search for them. Airlines and online booking companies do this: imagine how Hotels.com will load on your screen if you search for ”Paris hotels” and then click on the company’s ad.

The Landing Page Links Debate

Most landing pages have links—84% of them, if you believe the latest count, which seems reasonable.

But a series of A/B tests by HubSpot, using their own landing pages, suggested that at best links made no difference and at worst they were an unwelcome distraction: when it came to free trials and demos, the versions without links performed 16% and 28% better in terms of conversions, respectively.

Tests by other companies have shown even bigger jumps in conversion rate when all links are removed. But these tests have no way of accounting for cautious potential customers who want to browse your site a little before they commit to buying—because these potential big spenders would eventually contact you via a different page, or perhaps by a phone call.

Unsurprisingly therefore, the inclusion or otherwise of links—even to your own homepage, remains a hotly contested topic for landing page experts. Online marketer Neil Patel suggests that the only clickable link on a landing page should be your call to action, and possibly a link to more information for those who are undecided:

Forget about links to everything else…all they do is clutter up the page and increase the likelihood that your visitors will abandon your landing page without converting.

Pages Must Fit the Business

What seems clear is that as landing pages have evolved, they have become more varied. Despite ruthless live testing, no secret formula has emerged. Indeed, several different approaches have thrived in response to the many and varied businesses that use them.

Karla Cook, writing for Hubspot this year, said:

Best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well—it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower-quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher-quality submissions.

If you’re an online business that can offer something immediate, therefore, landing pages work and you want to keep them simple. It seems brutal, but the statistics suggest that, if you can offer a free trial, a demo version, or if you basic product is basically free, then all you need is a catchy page that looks good, loads quickly and is highly functional and intuitive.

If you’re in a more complex sector and you want this, it’s even worth creating a freebie—usually an e-book or guide—as a way of collecting email addresses with this approach.

On the other hand, if you provide complex products and are essentially hoping that customers will call your expert advisers—or you, if you’re a small business—and discuss their needs in more depth, you’ll want them to be able to check you out in full. Arguably, what you will then build is not a true landing page. But if it is designed to meet specific traffic, then the basic rules are still applicable.

Neil Patel sums it up:

Your copy should be clear and concise. It should be persuasive, too. Landing pages are not the place to show off your creativity, unless that creativity is clear, concise, and persuasive. Leave the creative turns-of-phrase for your blog.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;} .alignleft {float:left;} p.showcase {clear:both;} body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;} The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional published first on https://medium.com/@koresol

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The Landing Page at 15: Grown Up and Professional

Tech folklore has it that the landing page was born in late 2003, when Microsoft created the concept in response to poor online sales of Office. Realising that the buying process had to be smoother and more direct, the IT giant created a separate mini-site designed specifically for buying its flagship product.

Whilst the campaign undoubtedly worked for Microsoft—we’re still stuck with Office, after all—it’s hard to believe nobody had tried the concept before, so basic is the marketing principle behind it. Surely, people had been using single, direct sales pages before 2003, even if that was their entire web presence?

Either way, catchy, compelling landing pages that convert clicks into contracts are still a must-have for any online business. The problem is that, like any marketing concept, landing pages are in a constant evolutionary race with consumers. Fifteen years after Microsoft’s breakthrough, only the slickest, most original designers are winning. Many landing pages have become formulaic, and for the average business the traditional landing page may no longer be a suitable approach.

The Early Years

In the years following Microsoft’s discovery, landing pages proliferated. And in the true style of the early Internet, they were messy, shouty affairs. Often several different brash sales pitches competed for prominence with the obligatory glowing testimonials, all on a white background.

That started to change in 2009, a year in which the landing page seemingly graduated and became professionalised. Almost overnight, a series of specialist companies sprang up and started to offer recognisably modern design. Messages became shorter, funny even. The background turned from white to hues of blue, and the photos came into focus.

Along with these visual improvements, the marketing concept was refined too. By running sites in parallel—known as A/B testing—designers literally got a scientific answer as to what worked best.

The ‘Rules’ of Writing a Landing Page

There is a lot of advice available online regarding the writing of compelling, high-converting landing pages. It comes from experienced marketeers and it has worked very well in the past. Certain elements of this advice effectively serve to define what we understand as a landing page today: A catchy headline; a punchy intro directly addressing a core customer need or desire; and a concise ‘call to action’.

Lance Jones, of Copy Hackers, recommends writing a landing page from the bottom up. He says:

Start with the goal. The call to action. The thing you want visitors to a landing page to do. Then, work backward from your button, writing only copy that will convince people to click that button. Nothing else makes it on the page. Nothing.

The ‘CTA’ is perhaps the defining characteristic of the pure landing page. While some marketeers still advise including testimonials, and telling customers exactly how you will solve their problem, others have stripped things back to the very basics: the initial page is primarily just a ‘buy’ button or an email field, even if a little bit more info is available by scrolling. Microsoft themselves have evolved towards this approach.

Short and Simple Sells

While popping a ‘buy’ button in front of the customer straight off is visually appealing, that simplicity of approach is only possible when people already know what the product is. Big companies with enough branding behind them are just providing a gateway to the product: Smaller businesses can attempt this by running social media or advertising campaigns that sell on specific points. The landing pages these campaigns point to can, in theory, be highly simplified because the selling points have already been addressed.

Businesses offering relatively complex and high value services will struggle to sell directly through a conventional, simple landing page., however. Their options, in the modern era, are to go for a simple first screen that then scrolls to further information set out in a visual, reassuring and intuitive way, like this Australian business finance firm; or to target something less than a full sale.

The Squeeze Page

If all you want is an initial contact or an email address from a customer, you don’t need to go for a hard sell. In this example, a no-obligation opportunity to interact leads the customer into a mini-site. What marketeers call a funnel, these simple ‘squeeze pages’ have become a sub-category of the landing page.

The concept of a squeeze page is to keep things very simple, because all you want is an initial contact or, more usually, an email address. In order to do this, businesses offer a free downloadable guide; a trial version; or a no-obligation consultation, for example. For a squeeze page to work, is has to be clear that what is being offered is free.

Linking to a Search

There is one further approach for more complex services, and that is to simply start the customer’s search for them. Airlines and online booking companies do this: imagine how Hotels.com will load on your screen if you search for ”Paris hotels” and then click on the company’s ad.

The Landing Page Links Debate

Most landing pages have links—84% of them, if you believe the latest count, which seems reasonable.

But a series of A/B tests by HubSpot, using their own landing pages, suggested that at best links made no difference and at worst they were an unwelcome distraction: when it came to free trials and demos, the versions without links performed 16% and 28% better in terms of conversions, respectively.

Tests by other companies have shown even bigger jumps in conversion rate when all links are removed. But these tests have no way of accounting for cautious potential customers who want to browse your site a little before they commit to buying—because these potential big spenders would eventually contact you via a different page, or perhaps by a phone call.

Unsurprisingly therefore, the inclusion or otherwise of links—even to your own homepage, remains a hotly contested topic for landing page experts. Online marketer Neil Patel suggests that the only clickable link on a landing page should be your call to action, and possibly a link to more information for those who are undecided:

Forget about links to everything else…all they do is clutter up the page and increase the likelihood that your visitors will abandon your landing page without converting.

Pages Must Fit the Business

What seems clear is that as landing pages have evolved, they have become more varied. Despite ruthless live testing, no secret formula has emerged. Indeed, several different approaches have thrived in response to the many and varied businesses that use them.

Karla Cook, writing for Hubspot this year, said:

Best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well—it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower-quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher-quality submissions.

If you’re an online business that can offer something immediate, therefore, landing pages work and you want to keep them simple. It seems brutal, but the statistics suggest that, if you can offer a free trial, a demo version, or if you basic product is basically free, then all you need is a catchy page that looks good, loads quickly and is highly functional and intuitive.

If you’re in a more complex sector and you want this, it’s even worth creating a freebie—usually an e-book or guide—as a way of collecting email addresses with this approach.

On the other hand, if you provide complex products and are essentially hoping that customers will call your expert advisers—or you, if you’re a small business—and discuss their needs in more depth, you’ll want them to be able to check you out in full. Arguably, what you will then build is not a true landing page. But if it is designed to meet specific traffic, then the basic rules are still applicable.

Neil Patel sums it up:

Your copy should be clear and concise. It should be persuasive, too. Landing pages are not the place to show off your creativity, unless that creativity is clear, concise, and persuasive. Leave the creative turns-of-phrase for your blog.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

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