In episode 199 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked if the team encountered any legal problems when using the address of a virtual box or local resident for the GMB verification letter.
The exact question was:
Hey Semantic Bors!
Got Business related question.
Did you ever hear about legal Problems when using the adress of Virtual Box & or local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because arent you registering the Location for a “”””real”””” Business.
Greetings Dustin
“
In episode 199 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if the Semantic Mastery team knows an alternative plugin to Video Traffic X that auto-creates a video based on the content of a page or post.
The exact question was:
Hi Bradley. Please help me dude..
was using a tool a couple years ago called ‘Video Traffic X’.
I have the plugin from when i downloaded it in 2015. Installed ok, but it doesnt work.
the app,easypressor.com site no longer exists.
just wondering if you knew of an alternative plugin that will auto-create video based on the content cntained on page or post?
You can make all the tweaks and changes in the world, but how do you know they're the best choice for the site you're working on? Without data to support your hypotheses, it's hard to say. In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow explains a bit about what A/B testing for SEO entails and describes some of the surprising results he's seen that prove you can't always trust your instinct in our industry.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. My name is Will Critchlow. I'm the founder and CEO at Distilled. At Distilled, one of the things that we've been working on recently is building an SEO A/B testing platform. It's called the ODN, the Optimization Delivery Network. We're now deployed on a bunch of big sites, and we've been running these SEO A/B tests for a little while. I want to tell you about some of the surprising results that we've seen.
What is SEO A/B testing?
We're going to link to some resources that will show you more about what SEO A/B testing is. But very quickly, the general principle is that you take a site section, so a bunch of pages that have a similar structure and layout and template and so forth, and you split those pages into control and variant, so a group of A pages and a group of B pages.
Then you make the change that you're hypothesizing is going to make a difference just to one of those groups of pages, and you leave the other set unchanged. Then, using your analytics data, you build a forecast of what would have happened to the variant pages if you hadn't made any changes to them, and you compare what actually happens to the forecast. Out of that you get some statistical confidence intervals, and you get to say, yes, this is an uplift, or there was no difference, or no, this hurt the performance of your site.
This is data that we've never really had in SEO before, because this is very different to running a controlled experiment in a kind of lab environment or on a test domain. This is in the wild, on real, actual, live websites. So let's get to the material. The first surprising result I want to talk about is based off some of the most basic advice that you've ever seen.
Result #1: Targeting higher-volume keywords can actually result in traffic drops
I've stood on stage and given this advice. I have recommended this stuff to clients. Probably you have too. You know that process where you do some keyword research and you find that there's one particular way of searching for whatever it is that you offer that has more search volume than the way that you're talking about it on your website right now, so higher search volume for a particular way of phrasing?
You make the recommendation, "Let's talk about this stuff on our website the way that people are searching for it. Let's put this kind of phrasing in our title and elsewhere on our pages." I've made those recommendations. You've probably made those recommendations. They don't always work. We've seen a few times now actually of testing this kind of process and seeing what are actually dramatic drops.
We saw up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant. Various different reasons for this. Maybe you end up with a worse click-through rate from the search results. So maybe you rank where you used to, but get a worse click-through rate. Maybe you improve your ranking for the higher volume target term and you move up a little bit, but you move down for the other one and the new one is more competitive.
So yes, you've moved up a little bit, but you're still out of the running, and so it's a net loss. Or maybe you end up ranking for fewer variations of key phrases on these pages. However it happens, you can't be certain that just putting the higher-volume keyword phrasing on your pages is going to perform better. So that's surprising result number one. Surprising result number two is possibly not that surprising, but pretty important I think.
Result #2: 30–40% of common tech audit recommendations make no difference
So this is that we see as many as 30% or 40% of the common recommendations in a classic tech audit make no difference. You do all of this work auditing the website. You follow SEO best practices. You find a thing that, in theory, makes the website better. You go and make the change. You test it.
Nothing, flatlines. You get the same performance as the forecast, as if you had made no change. This is a big deal because it's making these kinds of recommendations that damages trust with engineers and product teams. You're constantly asking them to do stuff. They feel like it's pointless. They do all this stuff, and there's no difference. That is what burns authority with engineering teams too often.
This is one of the reasons why we built the platform is that we can then take our 20 recommendations and hypotheses, test them all, find the 5 or 6 that move the needle, only go to the engineering team to build those ones, and that builds so much trust and relationship over time, and they get to work on stuff that moves the needle on the product side.
So the big deal there is really be a bit skeptical about some of this stuff. The best practices, at the limit, probably make a difference. If everything else is equal and you make that one tiny, little tweak to the alt attribute or a particular image somewhere deep on the page, if everything else had been equal, maybe that would have made the difference.
But is it going to move you up in a competitive ranking environment? That's what we need to be skeptical about.
Result #3: Many lessons don't generalize
So surprising result number three is: How many lessons do not generalize? We've seen this broadly across different sections on the same website, even different industries. Some of this is about the competitive dynamics of the industry.
Some of it is probably just the complexity of the ranking algorithm these days. But we see this in particular with things like this. Who's seen SEO text on a category page? Those kind of you've got all of your products, and then somebody says, "You know what? We need 200 or 250 words that mention our key phrase a bunch of times down at the bottom of the page." Sometimes, helpfully, your engineers will even put this in an SEO-text div for you.
So we see this pretty often, and we've tested removing it. We said, "You know what? No users are looking at this. We know that overstuffing the keyword on the page can be a negative ranking signal. I wonder if we'll do better if we just cut that div." So we remove it, and the first time we did it, plus 6% result. This was a good thing.
The pages are better without it. They're now ranking better. We're getting better performance. So we say, "You know what? We've learnt this lesson. You should remove this really low-quality text from the bottom of your category pages." But then we tested it on another site, and we see there's a drop, a small one admittedly, but it was helping on these particular pages.
So I think what that's just telling us is we need to be testing these recommendations every time. We need to be trying to build testing into our core methodologies, and I think this trend is only going to increase and continue, because the more complex the ranking algorithms get, the more machine learning is baked into it and it's not as deterministic as it used to be, and the more competitive the markets get, so the narrower the gap between you and your competitors, the less stable all this stuff is, the smaller differences there will be, and the bigger opportunity there will be for something that works in one place to be null or negative in another.
So I hope I have inspired you to check out some SEO A/B testing. We're going to link to some of the resources that describe how you do it, how you can do it yourself, and how you can build a program around this as well as some other of our case studies and lessons that we've learnt. But I hope you enjoyed this journey on surprising results from SEO A/B tests.
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In episode 198 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked tips on how not to offend a referral client who has lots of influence but is ignorant of the cost of service.
The exact question was:
2. Best advice on how to close or at least not offend a referral client with LOTS of influence but unrealistic or just ignorant of cost of services i.e. I want to rank for every term google 1st position for HVAC in google. Go easy Marco ?? the referring party is a dear friend and I actually believe I can help him and am pitching Social ordeals to start.
The latest Wolfgang E-Commerce Report is now live. This study gives a comprehensive view of the state of digital marketing in retail and travel, allowing digital marketers to benchmark their 2018 performance and plan their 2019 strategy.
The study analyzes over 250 million website sessions and more than €500 million in online revenue. Google Analytics, new Facebook Analytics reports, and online surveys are used to glean insights.
Revenue volume correlations
One of the unique features of the study is its conversion correlation. All website metrics featured in the study are correlated with conversion success to reveal what the most successful websites do differently.
This year we've uncovered our strongest success correlation ever at 0.67! Just to give that figure context: normally, 0.2 is worth talking about and 0.3 is noteworthy. Not only is this correlation with success very strong, the insight itself is highly actionable and can become a pillar of your digital marketing strategy.
These are the top factors that correlated with revenue volume. You can see the other correlations in the full study.
Click to see a bigger version
Average pages per session (.37)
Average session length (.49)
Conversion rate by users (.41)
Number of sessions per user (.67)
Percentage of sessions from paid search (.25)
Average website engagement metrics
Number of sessions per user
Average pages per session
Average session duration
Bounce rate
Average page load time
Average server response time
Retail
1.58
6
3min 18sec
38.04%
6.84
1.02
Multi-channel
1.51
6
3min 17sec
35.27%
6.83
1.08
Online-only
1.52
5
3min 14sec
43.80%
6.84
0.89
Travel
1.57
3
2min 34sec
44.14%
6.76
0.94
Overall
1.58
5
3min 1sec
41.26%
6.80
0.97
Above are the average website engagement metrics. You can see the average number of sessions per user is very low at 1.5 over 12 months. Anything a digital marketer can do to get this to 2, to 3, and to 4 makes for about the best digital marketing they can do.
At Wolfgang Digital, we’ve been witnessing this phenomenon at a micro-level for some time now. Many of our most successful campaigns of late have been focused on presenting the user with an evolving message which matures with each interaction across multiple media touchpoints.
Is a social media engagement more valuable than a website visit?
What's the true value of a share?
What’s the average conversion rate for online-only vs multi-channel retailers?
What’s the average order value for a hotel vs. tour operator?
Video Transcript
Today I want to talk to you about the most important online consumer trend in 2018. The story starts in a client meeting about four years ago, and we were meeting with a travel client. We got into a discussion about bounce rate and its implication on conversion rate. The client was asking us, "could we optimize our search and social campaigns to reduce bounce rate?", which is a perfectly valid question.
But we were wondering: Will we lower the rate of conversions? Are all bounces bad? As a result of this meeting, we said, "You know, we need a really scientific answer to that question about any of the website engagement metrics or any of the website channels and their influence on conversion." Out of that conversation, our E-Commerce KPI Report was born. We're now four years into it. (See previous years on the Moz Blog: 2015, 2016, 2017.)
The metric with the strongest correlation to conversions: Number of sessions per user
We've just released the 2019 E-Commerce KPI Report, and we have a standout finding, probably the strongest correlation we've ever seen between a website engagement metric and a website conversion metric. This is beautiful because we're all always optimizing for conversion metrics. But if you can isolate the engagement metrics which deliver, which are the money-making metrics, then you can be much more intelligent about how you create digital marketing campaigns.
The strongest correlation we've ever seen in this study is number of sessions per user, and the metric simply tells us on average how many times did your users visit your website. What we're learning here is any digital marketing you can do which makes that number increase is going to dramatically increase your conversions, your revenue success.
Change the focus of your campaigns
It's a beautiful metric to plan campaigns with because it changes the focus. We're not looking for a campaign that's a one-click wonder campaign. We're not looking for a campaign that it's one message delivered multiple times to the same user. Much more so, we're trying to create a journey, multiple touchpoints which deliver a user from their initial interaction through the purchase funnel, right through to conversion.
Create an itinerary of touchpoints along the searcher's journey
1. Research via Google
Let me give you an example. We started this with a story about a travel company. I'm just back from a swimming holiday in the west of Ireland. So let's say I have a fictional travel company. We'll call them Wolfgang Wild Swimming. I'm going to be a person who's researching a swimming holiday. So I'm going to go to Google first, and I'm going to search for swimming holidays in Ireland.
2. E-book download via remarketing
I'm going to go to the Wolfgang Wild Swimming web page, where I'm going to read a little bit about their offering. In doing that, I'm going to enter their Facebook audience. The next time I go to Facebook, they're now remarketing to me, and they'll be encouraging me to download their e-book, which is a guide to the best swimming spots in the wild west of Ireland. I'm going to volunteer my email to them to get access to the book. Then I'm going to spend a bit more time consuming their content and reading their book.
3. Email about a local offline event
A week later, I get an email from them, and they're having an event in my area. They're going for a swim in Dublin, one of my local spots in The Forty Foot, for example. I'm saying, "Well, I was going to go for a swim this weekend anyway. I might as well go with this group." I go to the swim where I can meet the tour guides. I can meet people who have been on it before. I'm now really close to making a purchase.
4. YouTube video content consumed via remarketing
Again, a week later, they have my email address, so they're targeting me on YouTube with videos of previous holidays. Now I'm watching video content. All of a sudden, Wolfgang Wild Swimming comes up. I'm now watching a video of a previous holiday, and I'm recognizing the instructors and the participants in the previous holidays. I'm really, really close to pressing Purchase on a holiday here. I'm on the phone to my friend saying, "I found the one. Let's book this."
Each interaction moves the consumer closer to purchase
I hope what you're seeing there is with each interaction, the Google search, the Facebook ad which led to an e-book download, the offline event, back online to the YouTube video, with each interaction I'm getting closer to the purchase.
You can imagine the conversion rate and the return on ad spend on each interaction increasing as we go. This is a really powerful message for us as digital marketers. When we're planning a campaign, we think about ourselves as though we're in the travel business too, and we're actually creating an itinerary. We're simply trying to create an itinerary of touchpoints that guide a searcher through awareness, interest, right through to action and making that purchase.
I think it's not just our study that tells us this is the truth. A lot of the best-performing campaigns we've been running we've seen this anecdotally, that every extra touchpoint increases the conversion rate. Really powerful insight, really useful for digital marketers when planning campaigns. This is just one of the many insights from our E-Commerce KPI Report. If you found that interesting, I'd urge you to go read the full report today.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
In episode 198 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked about the best software to blur images to cover sensitive information.
The exact question was:
Good Day Gents,
Working on my POFU
1. Best software to blur images to cover sensitive info?
In episode 198 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked if it is possible to sell video lead generation services to remote clients even if one is not physically in the same locality as them.
The exact question was:
– In the VLS you said that it is better to target local clients in my area. But I leave outside the US and I want to target US clients because my area has shitty payments. I will need 30 clients to get some return. In the US I can lay down 5 clients and I have a business. Can I still go for that?
Bradley: Hey everybody. This is Bradley Benner. This is Semantic Mastery and Hump Day Hangouts for this episode, what, 202. Wow! This is the 19th of September 2018. We’ve only got two of my partners on with me today. I’ve got Chris and Marco. What’s up, Chris? How are you?
Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.
Bradley: Awesome. Anything going on that we should know about or anything special, or exciting, or any of that?
Chris: Well, POFU is coming out soon. Getting over to the states, at least I am soon. Nothing else going on in mind.
Bradley: Very cool. It looks like Adam is driving and hanging out again. Adam, can you hear me?
Adam: Sorry, I’m probably pretty scratchy. I just got on the ground in the nick of time. Just thought I’d pop on and say hi to everybody. I’m late to do the intro, but I wanted to see what you guys are up to today.
Bradley: Awesome.
Chris: Sweet.
Bradley: Pay attention to the road, man.
Adam: Yeah. This is nice. I’m not driving today.
Bradley: All right. Marco, what’s up, buddy?
Marco: What’s up, man? I’m good, working on MGYB, trying to get everything together in there for all of our members and followers so that they can have their services all in one place and done-for-you. Whatever they need, it will be available, it just takes time. Then, the other thing is, of course, working on the next-gen software, the not-having-anything-to-do-with-Google-ever-again software and still make tons of money. That’s what I’m on. So, yeah, I mean, this is like … I don’t know, I haven’t been this busy and geeked up about something in a very long time. But I think this is really going to be a killer.
Bradley: That’s awesome. Well, that’s great. Guys, just a couple things before we get started, some housekeeping things. Number one, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, there’s a couple things we recommend that you do, first, subscribe to our YouTube channel. The reason why is because we produce a ton of content, video content, a lot of training videos, stuff that comes out of the Hump Day Hangouts. We also chop up individual question and answers and repost those as individual video clips. By subscribing to our channel, you will get notified of update videos. Anything that we post publicly you’ll get notified of.
Also, you can check out our channel for any questions that you may have. For example, if you have questions about SEO or local marketing or content syndication or whatever, we have a knowledge base at support@semanticmastery.com. You could always go check our Frequently Asked Questions over there.
But our YouTube channel is really a wealth of information. We’ve been at this now for 202 episodes, almost an entire four years. We’ve got, literally, thousands of videos on our YouTube channel. So if you go to our channel, which is Youtube.com/semanticmastery and then click on the channel search function, you can actually search questions over there. Because we have timestamps in our videos and such, the search function works really well. You’ll typically get multiple answers from us around one question and you can just start going through them and listening to the answers because a lot of times we have answered the same question many times anyways. So, I highly recommend that you do that.
Also, we’ve got the POFU Live event, which is our first live event that we’re hosting coming up in October, October, I think 19th and 20th, or 20th and 21st. We would highly recommend that you come to that.
Guys, do any of you have the link that you can drop on the event page for that, or is it just Pofulive.com, I think? Pretty sure it’s just Pofulive, P-O-F-U live dot com, if you want to check that out. We have VIP tickets still, a couple of VIP ticket tickets left, guys. The price is gonna be going up. I don’t know when exactly. I think Adam told me, but I don’t remember. Let me see if I can find it. Does anybody know when Adam said we were supposed to …? Next Wednesday, got it. Okay.
All VIP tickets will be gone next Wednesday. So if you guys were thinking about coming, I would highly recommend, if you’re interested in the VIP, which is gonna be an entire extra day with us. Really, essentially, we’re gonna have the VIP day before the start of the event and you’re gonna have direct access to us. It would be a much smaller group and we’re gonna do some fun stuff. We’re gonna … I can’t reveal what we’re doing just yet, but it’ll be kind of like a group environment. It’s more about just connecting, I mean, we could certainly talk business and methods and strategies and all that, that’s what it’s for, but it’s just to get us all together and to get to know each other and stuff.
So, the VIP is gonna be really good. There’s also some additional benefits, some additional time that we’re gonna spend with the VIP members. All of us, all my partners and I, to help you with your specific business, any issues or problems that you’re facing, hurdles, things like that.
I highly recommend you check it out. All prices are gonna be going up as well as the VIP tickets will be shut down as of Wednesday next week. Okay. Chris-
Chris: Well, I’m not sure what you’re going to talk about, but I’m gonna be dropping a couple bombs over there. So everybody who is at the event definitely will see a massive change in the business, obviously, it’s for the positive. So, be excited.
Bradley: Yeah. In fact, Marco, do you wanna comment on that for a minute while I put something up?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, I’m gonna be talking about … Yeah. If you don’t know what POFU is, if you’re not there, then it’s kind of nebulous. So, you need kind of like a road map. Yeah.
I don’t want to drop an F-bomb this early, but how in the world do I get to POFU? These people that are feeding you a whole bunch of garbage all over the web. It’s recycled garbage. It’s stuff that they take from somebody else and make it their own. They don’t even present the information correctly and it just confuses people. So, what I want to do is I want to get some of that confusion out of the way.
This is what you need to do and this is how you need to do it and that kind of thing. You know that when I get going, I’m very raw and I’m gonna try to offend as many people as possible. I hope you don’t have any delicate sensibilities if you’re coming. If you do, leave them at the fucking door, man.
Bradley: There you go. All right. I’m gonna add an image to the event page right now. This is what we’re calling the POFU ladder. Essentially, guys, this is really the goal that we’re … It’s gonna be on the event page now, if you guys refresh the page or it should pop up in a second. Essentially, it’s a five-step process: find a local niche and crush it, contact leads using our proven system, give them amazing local results fast using our methods that build your team of A players, and outsource, and scale it and take it to the next level.
It’s a five step process. That’s what we’re gonna be teaching. It’s all about learning how to turn your business into systems and processes that you can scale, get the hell out of your own way, stop being the bottleneck in your own business, and really start taking your business to the next level. That’s really what we’re gonna be doing.
Excuse me for a second, I got somebody calling me. Sorry, guys. All right. Okay.
That said, POFU Live, I don’t know if somebody dropped a link or not. It looks like you did, Marco, so thank you. The next thing is, guys, we had an amazing webinar on Monday with Press Advantage and Press Advantage 2.0. Jeremy [inaudible 00:08:04], one of the co-founders and owners of Press Advantage came on with me and we spent two and a half hours wrapping about Press Releases and how freaking incredible, which you guys should already be aware of that since we have local PR Pro, which was an entire training developed specifically for how to rank local properties or local assets using Press Releases.
When Jeremy came on with us on Monday and did this webinar, I wasn’t even aware of how amazing of an offer, and this is no bullshit, how amazing of an offer he gave us during the webinar. Again, I was completely blindsided by it. I couldn’t believe how amazing the offer was, in fact, afterwards I had a follow-up call with him on Tuesday, and I ended up purchasing the upgraded offer plus the OTO for that offer, the one-time offer for that for my own agency. We’re also getting one for Semantic Mastery, a separate account for Semantic Mastery.
Guys, I highly recommend that you take some time. Again, it’s a two and a half hour webinar. Even if you don’t want to purchase what the offer is at the end, which, if you’re using Press Releases, you’d be absolutely nuts not to purchase at the end. Regardless, you should at least watch the training because there’s a lot of really good training in there.
He’s been in the press release business for seven years. I’ve been using Press Releases for about that long, but not real heavily until about a year and a half ago. Now, Press Releases are my preferred off-page link building method and I use them all the damn time. Again, it was a very exciting webinar. Him and I had a lot to talk about and we bounced a lot of ideas off each other as far as what we’ve been doing in our businesses with Press Releases for results.
I would highly recommend you check that out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page but that was at semanticmastery.com/press-advantage. I’m gonna drop the link on the page and then we’re gonna move on.
Anything else, guys, before we get into questions?
Marco: Nope. I’m good.
Bradley: Okay.
Chris: Let’s do it.
Bradley: Let me make sure I got the right link before I do that. Stand by. Without our wonderful host Adam here, I’ve got to do it all. Let me just make sure that’s correct.
Chris: Cool.
Bradley: All right. I’m gonna drop this on the page and then I’ll grab the screen and we’ll get into it Press Advantage. Again, guys, go check it out while it’s still open. I think it’s gonna be open until Monday night next week, so you should have some time, but definitely go through it. Even if you’re not planning on buying, I highly recommend that you go through it, at least the training portion of it. All right?
Okay. I’m gonna grab the screen. We’re gonna get into questions.
Chris: Do you get the camera, man?
Bradley: Good. Good point. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. All right. Let’s get started.
What’s The Difference Between The Rocket Video Ranker And The Video Carpet Bomb?
Well, Rocket Video Ranker is a good tool. It’s also a spam tool, in my opinion, which Video Carpet Bomb is a spam method, there’s no doubt, I’m not trying to hide that at all. We’re using basically the same video file uploaded to multiple channels targeting variations of keywords, or the same keyword with different location modifiers, whatever.
The difference between Video Carpet Bomb, I’m 100% transparent with you guys, as always am, the tool that we use for that method or that process is Video Marketing Blitz suite of tools from Abbas Ravji. The specific tool within that suite is called Video Keyword Prospector. That’s what my VA uses. There’s a bit of a learning curve for that tool. It’s very, very powerful but it is a bit of a learning curve. It’s a bitch to set up because you have to generate a bunch of API keys, all this stuff, whatever.
My point is, it takes quite a bit of time to learn how to use it, but it’s a very powerful tool. What I like about Video Keyword Prospector and the Video Marketing Blitz tool or our Video Carpet Bomb method is that it uses multiple YouTube channels. It’s less likely for any one channel to get terminated because with Rocket Video Ranker, which is Bill Cousins’ tool, which also works and it works rather quickly, it takes the same video and uploads it to the same channel 30 times. At least the last time I used it, which has been several months now. That was the recommended maximum number of instances of the same video to the channel, is 30. Okay?
Obviously, guys, think about it, if you have the same video file, now there’s things that it does to make the video file unique so that it can be uploaded to the same channel 30 times. But if somebody comes across a channel and all 30 videos are the exact same video, according to us as we see it, the encoding may be different or whatever, YouTube might think they’re different, but we can tell that it’s all the same damn video, then typically that video or that channel can be reported for spam and it will be terminated.
I’ve also found that the Rocket Video Ranker channels sometimes, almost like they get sandboxed where they get D indexed or terminated but they don’t show up well. You have to search for the actual URL of the video for it to appear in search. If you search for the keywords of the title of the video, it doesn’t show up, or at least in the top 10 pages. I found that to happen often with those channels, they last for a short period of time.
They’re both churn and burn strategies, guys. Make no mistake about that. These are not long-term strategies. I mentioned on a previous Hump Day Hangout recently that the Video Carpet Bomb method is great as a churn and burn strategy and something that you can sell as a recurring service. In other words, every single month you rerun the campaign or you rerun the campaign with different set of keywords or different set of locations. You would charge on a recurring basis to rerun that campaign every month. Or to purchase it from us every month and just upsell it, or mark it up and sell it to your end-user.
The difference is, with Video Carpet Bomb, we upload a video file to multiple channels. So, any individual channel in our Video Carpet Bomb-, or service, excuse me, is gonna have a whole bunch of different kinds of videos uploaded to it. Because we have, say, 50 YouTube channels connected to that tool at any time, so if we upload a video and we’re targeting, let’s say, 100 keywords or keyword plus location combinations, we might only have that same video upload two times to any one channel. Does that make sense? Those other channels are also gonna have other videos from other campaigns that we’ve done. My point is, it’s a lot less likely for any one of those channels to get terminated.
With video-, Rocket Video Ranker, excuse me, it’s one video 30 times to the same channel. It works well and it works well quickly, but what I found is they typically don’t last that long and, when the channel gets ghosted or sandboxed, it affects all of those same videos. All of the videos for that particular campaign. Whereas, with our Video Marketing Blitz, if any one of the channels gets terminated or goes to the sandbox, we still have all the other channels that have the videos up on them, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s about diversifying, guys, mitigating risk, limiting your exposure. Personally, I like the Video Carpet Bomb method better. There’s nothing wrong with Bill Cousins’ tool. We’ve promoted it, it is a good tool. It absolutely works. Just know that I personally chose to use the Video Keyword Prospector tool of Video Marketing Blitz as part of the Video Carpet Bomb for the tool that we use specifically for that reason that I just mentioned.
It was a good question, though, Douglas. Okay. But you can still accomplish the same thing using that tool. If you have it, use it. Just be aware that, typically, you’re gonna have to rerun those campaigns more often, you’re gonna have to have more disposable channels available because channels get sandboxed, seem to happen rather often. All right.
Do You Recommend Buying Google Accounts From Bulkvpa.com For GMB Listings?
Okay. I’ve got no problem doing that. In fact, that’s typically how I do stuff. When I’m registering my own GMBs, I will do that. I will use a phone verified, double phone verified accounts that I got from Bulk Pva, which is Metro Biz or whatever. I buy a lot of accounts from him. In fact, we were just talking about a bunch of YouTube accounts for our Video Carpet Bomb, the tool that we use for Video Carpet Bomb. That’s where we get all of our YouTube accounts, it’s the same provider. All right.
Here’s the thing about that, DA or Da. I’m not sure what to call you. What I recommend if you’re going to do that, first of all, this is assuming that you are going to be claiming and registering that Google My business verifies underneath these Gmail accounts. That means you’re gonna to be doing the actual registration of the GMBs and then verifying them, or you or your team, or whatever.
If you buy Done-For-You Google My Business for GMB verified services, which we now sell inside of MGYB, our store, then you don’t need any Gmail accounts because we actually produce that for you. You get that included with the GMB verification; a new Gmail account gets created and all that. I’m just telling you that. I’m assuming you’re gonna do it on your own. But I just want everybody to understand you don’t need to provide a Gmail account if you’re buying the verified GMB profiles from us. Okay?
That said, yes, you can use the Bulk VPA accounts. Here’s how you safeguard those accounts from termination. When you get them back from the provider, I highly recommend that you use something like Browseo or Ghost Browser and you add each individual Gmail account to its own profile or instance, its own browser instance. Browseo, you call that a profile, or a project, I think it is.
So now, each individual Gmail account now will have its own browsing history so you want to segregate or separate all of them. So that you’re not just, for example, using your Firefox browser, for example, to log into one account, set up a GMB, then log out, clear cache and cookies, and then log in again with another GMB or another Google account and do it all over again. Because that looks very suspicious and because those were purchased Gmail accounts, if you do anything suspicious with them especially initially, then they will get terminated or you’ll get locked out of them.
But if you log in for the first time, even from the same IP, you don’t even need proxies, guys, you can use the same IP but just have Browseo or Ghost Browser open, log into each Gmail account from a separate browsing instance, and don’t clear cache or cookies for that ever. Every time you log back into that account, it should be through the same browser profile in either Browseo or Ghost Browser or a comparable tool, because those browser profiles contain all the browsing history, all the websites that were visited, all that kind of stuff so it starts to build a profile, which is natural, that’s normal.
That’s what people in the real-world do, right? They don’t clear cache and cookies after ever browsing instance. All right. So, that’s number one, is make sure that you’re doing that so that you’re constantly accruing additional history and profile data for that particular account. All right. So, that’s number one.
Number two, changed the password. Because, not that Metro biz does this, but I know that when I bought accounts in the past, and maybe it’s not intentional, maybe it’s on accident, but I know that sometimes the accounts, if you don’t change the passwords, they will get resold. I’m not saying he does that. I’m just saying I bought enough accounts over the years that I know that one of the first things you need to do is change the password. Okay?
One other thing you can do is, if you have domain, like web mails accounts for just various domains that you have, is you can set up domain email accounts, web mail accounts through cPanel that you use as the recovery email for your Google Gmail accounts. If you’re buying Gmail accounts, you should have you should set up your own recovery email. When you first log in, change the password and change the recovery email. Okay?
That’s pretty much it. If you do those three things, then you should be able to use those purchased phone verified accounts absolutely fine for creating and claiming GMB profiles. Okay. Good question, though.
Jordan’s up. He says, “When you are all fired up for Hump Day Hangouts this afternoon but realize it’s only Tuesday.” Oh, that was yesterday. That’s funny. It’s funny.
Why Do You Use Google Tag Manager For 301 Redirects In Local GMB Pro?
Well, in Local GMB Pro, if you’re in Local GMB Pro, you have that code already. It’s just a simple meta refresh code and it’s already in the training-, the summary section of that lesson where I teach that, because it should be right in the right-hand sidebar. It’s a one-line piece of code, right? The reason why instead of using a straight 301 is because it’s a meta refresh. Because a meta refresh the page will load and then the bot will read the directive in the HTML header, and then redirect to the destination page. It’s kind of a way, like if you want …
For example, and specifically, and I’m not revealing anything here, Marco, so don’t worry. But specifically I talked about, if you’re going to be using a self-hosted website and you want to inject local business schema or structured data in the HTML header of the site, which is very powerful, then I want an HTM-, excuse me, a meta refresh as a redirect to the business site, the GMB website instead of just a straight 301. Because it gives the Googlebot the chance to read that json-ld structured data before it redirects to the destination page, which, in this case, was the GMB website.
That’s the only reason why. If you do a straight 301, it bypasses the redirect URL altogether and just goes direct to the GMB website. But with the meta refresh, it reads the head section, the HTML head section of the page before it redirects. That way it gives Googlebot the data from the structured data. That’s the only reason why I did that. If you’re not gonna be using a self-hosted website, you don’t even need to worry about it.
By the way, for all the GMB stuff that I’ve been sniping lately, I’m not even setting up self-hosted websites anymore, guys. I’m just using the GMB website because it’s free, it doesn’t require hosting, and it doesn’t require updating like WordPress does every other day. Okay.
Marco: Yeah. One last thing, you’re asking Local GMB Pro questions, if you have the course, then we have a Facebook group for questions like this where we can go more in-depth and just tell you exactly what it is that you need to do. Or just go into the training, if you have the training.
What Are Your Thoughts On The Temporary Benefits Of Press Releases On Site Rankings?
“Is this true? If so, what is the typical time period the Press Release remains alive before it is cleansed for the posted site? Thanks again, Gordon.” Gordon, it’s gonna depend. It’s gonna vary on each individual publication site. Even the individual publication sites, the time frames will vary from when they purged those from their records. Apparently, they say they don’t want to clutter up their databases, which is bullshit because the pages, they’re such small files, especially if they’re just text files, which they typically are, unless you include an image.
My point is, they do purge them. I’ll give you a perfect example. One of the distribution sites for almost all of the distribution networks that I published press releases through, Press Advantage being one of them, is NBC12.com. NBC12.com is the Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate. Okay. Or affiliate for NBC, right? I obviously do a lot of stuff with businesses in Virginia, so whenever I published a press release about a business in Virginia, typically, the NBC 12 version of it, that page, the press release published on the NBC 12 website ranks very well in Virginia. It makes sense.
Richmond is the capital of Virginia and this is the NBC affiliate station for Richmond. Obviously, from promoting Richmond, Virginia-, or excuse me, a Virginia business, the NBC 12 version or the press release published on NBC 12.com ranks very well. However, they purge. NBC 12 purges. Sometimes it at lasts three or four or five months. Other times it doesn’t even last three or four or five weeks. I know that to be 100% true because I was, literally, checking on one of the press releases. I’m doing, recording training videos for a product that we’re launching on October 1st. We’ll talk more about that next week, guys.
Anyways, I was doing some research on some of the press release stuff that I’ve been doing on. Literally, one of the press releases for my own agency, I published about my own agency, is less than three weeks old and on the NBC 12 site it’s throwing the 404 error now. So it varies. I have other press releases published on NBC 12 site that are now three or four months old and they’re still valid, they’re still there.
So I don’t know what these publication sites do. I don’t know what criteria they used for purging. I don’t know if it’s time. I don’t know if it’s … Again, if the time varies, what triggers it to vary? What triggers it to be purged to sooner than later, that kind of stuff. I honestly have no idea. There’s absolute truth in the statement that you heard there from the expert who said that benefits of press releases don’t last very long.
So, what’s the solution? Continually publish press releases. This is a simple answer to that, guys. Just make it a regular thing right. Publish press releases regularly and consistently. We talked on the webinar, Jeremy says, “The sweet spot is publishing three press releases per month per business.” That’s the real sweet spot where he gets the most results. I threw my Local PR Pro method that I developed and I tested and really just started.
The whole Local PR Pro thing was born out of a test to disprove that press releases worked for local rankings. I set out to disprove that that they worked and I was proven wrong. They do work and they work freaking really well. Anyways, like I said, just continually publish.
With my method, I have found at least a minimum of two press releases. Typically, what I do with press releases is I published one every two weeks. So, two per month per business until I gained traction. Jeremy was talking about how his magic number is three per month per business. So, just play around with it, but the key is to continually publish anything that’s newsworthy.
Pretty much anything can be made newsworthy, guys. You got a new blog post? Write a PR about it, publish a PR about it. Got a new review? Publish a PR about it. Got a new special or new coupon, new discount, new product, new service? Publish a PR about it. New employee, a new award recognition, new sponsorship activity for local little league or something? Publish a press release about it.
My point is, there’s really no shortage of ways to tie press releases or news releases back to the business, and so the idea is to keep doing it. Okay. Again, those timeframes vary from when they purge. The goal is, and if you’ve ever been through Local PR Pro, there was specifically some update training about that, because we talked about press release stacking and how to essentially daisy chain our silo press releases together, and the key is to not link to press release sites in the silo or the chain, the stack, you don’t want to link to press releases that are going to be purged. If you do, you should set up redirect URLs and all kinds of stuff.
Again, all of that is covered in Local PR Pro. Gordon. if that’s a strategy you want to pursue, I highly recommend you check out that course. All right.
How Do You Change The Primary Phone Number In The GMB Listing Without Triggering A Google Re-verification?
Scott’s up. He says, “I’ve been moving a plumbing GMB up in the Maps listing and is now sitting at number four for some serious keywords. This account was set up using MGYB GMB account services. Very nice. Thanks much.” Okay. He’s talking about this was a plumbing listing that he set up and used our stores GMB verification services to purchase the GMB profile as opposed to doing it himself. Thank you, Scott. He says, “I now have a prospective client.” See, guys? It works. Scott’s doing exactly what we’re teaching: go out, secure a GMB profile in an area that you want to work in that you want to generate leads for business, and then target the business owner.
You back the service provider into the asset. You develop the asset first, get it ranked, get it producing leads, and then you back the service provider into it. It’s a much better way I found than trying to sell your marketing services to people. All right. Scott’s doing it. He’s in our Mastermind and he’s been getting training on that from inside the Mastermind and he’s following. taking action. That’s awesome, Scott. I’m definitely gonna plus one that.
He says, “I now have prospective client. My question is, how can I change the primary phone number for the GMB to a call tracking or other number without triggering at Google reverification? Thanks much.” Well, first of all, why would you need to change the primary phone number, Scott, to a call tracking number or other number without triggering the Google reverification? Why would you need to do that? If you purchased the GMB from us, you should have already, when you purchased it, purchased it with, you should have provided a tracking number when you purchased it. Does that make sense?
In other words, whenever I go to set up a GMB, guys, I go set up the virtual phone number first so that when I order the GMB from our store I have provided the phone number that’s going to be attached to that listing going forward. You don’t want to put a fake number in there because then, once you get the verified profile, it could possibly trigger reverification when you update that data.
That said, Scott, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I would go ahead and just update it because I have GMB listings that I’ve gone in and, literally, changed the business name or the business address, not the physical location, but the web address or the phone number and not have it retrigger or trigger reverification. If I’ve change the physical address, like the street address, if I change the physical location address, that triggers reverification. But I’ve been able to change the phone. I’m not saying it won’t trigger verification, it may; and if it does, you may be shit out of luck, which is why you should just order it with all the data right off the bat so that you don’t have to worry about it.
What I’m saying is I have changed business names, also web website URLs, also phone numbers and had all three of those not trigger reverification. It’s possible that it might, but it’s also possible that it won’t. Okay?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all?
Marco: Yeah. Once again, this belongs in the local … I know that Scott is in the Local GMB Pro Facebook group, so this question belongs there. We could guide him because this is actually really simple and there’s no reason for him to even worry about reverification if he does it right.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: Just come asking in the group and we’ll get to you, Scott.
Bradley: One other thing I want to mention, guys, is it’s a very powerful way to really kind of secure these assets to make them a lot less likely to get terminated. That’s to just set up a G suite account for that asset. In other words, tie a Google domain … In that case, you would need a domain, but that’s something simple that you could do, guys. You could even use like sub-domains and stuff if needed. My point is, if you set up a G suite account, then now you’re paying Google, it’s a way to validate that entity even further and it makes it more spam proof, so to speak, more slot proof.
Will IFTTT Triggers A Live Event And Syndicate It To A Network Ring?
Bradley: Yeah. Thanks, Hernan. When did you poke in?
Hernan: Sorry about that. But, yeah, I’ve been at being here for the last, I don’t know, 10 minutes maybe. Anyways, yeah, I think it does, actually. We’ve done that in conjunction with something like video powerhouse to kind of pre-prime a live event. You could create it, you could get it out there, and then when it comes live it actually holds so much more juice. It used to work really, really well. At some point Google equalized that a little bit, but it still works well at this point.
Bradley: I keep removing my plus one. Do you see that?
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: What the fuck? Frankie, I’m trying to plus one that, but Google won’t let me.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Anyways, Google doesn’t like what I was just talking about. All right. Yeah, that’s right. I do remember it absolutely will syndicate scheduled live events as long as they’re public, if you set them to public. If you set them to unlisted or private, it won’t. But if you set them to public, then, yes, it will syndicate them and then when you stream … and Hernan is right, what he had found, and I haven’t tested this now in at least probably two years, but what I had found was we would prime live events, like he said, where we would push them out across great big vast networks.
I had some syndication networks tied like multiple rings where I think we were publishing whenever we would upload a video or schedule a live event, it would literally syndicate out to like 800 and some-odd properties. That was a lot. Then, when we’d go stream the video, which could be a week later or whatever, because all those embed codes were out there, like when we went to stream it, it would just instantly rank on page one when we streamed it. Does that make sense?
Hernan: Yep.
Bradley: Scheduled live events would index but they wouldn’t necessarily rank well. But the moment that we would kick that, start the broadcast within seconds, boom, it would shoot right up. I think that’s because Google knows where all that code is. Embed code is out there and it sees it as all these places that that’s published, it must be a popular event that people are anticipating. So, when the event happens we’re gonna go ahead and rank it high. It might be a short temporary ranking boost, but it does work well.
Hernan: Yep. I used to do it for longtail keywords for local areas and it worked well. You had that big boost initially and then it would work down a little bit, maybe you would lose a couple spots. They would be rock solid on YouTube, top YouTube and top video, top as well, but yeah, that is something … Still Hump Day Hangouts are still being syndicated. There are tied to syndication networks on the Semantic Mastery channel, there’s some subsidiaries channel that we also pushed them. So, yeah, they carry a lot of juice and still maybe it’s not as … It wasn’t even funny. It’s a point where we discovered that it wasn’t even funny. You could run anything. But anyways, fun times.
Bradley: Yeah, it wasn’t … Marco just pointed this out the other day. Marco, remember that?
Marco: Yep.
Bradley: This guy in Virginia.
Marco: Virginia.
Bradley: Harry Jameson, you beat me out on that. Oh, it’s only because I’m in Culpeper and it knows my IP that it’s doing that. When we were testing the whole live stream stuff, Google Hangout stuff, look at that, December 9th, 2013. It was funny because this guy, Harry Jameson, I know he watches our show and everything, Hump Day Hangouts, and he comments occasionally. Harry, if you’re watching this, dude, what’s up, buddy?
It was funny because we were testing one of the live event blaster tools or whatever, I don’t remember the name of it, it was one of many guys that does this. But yeah, I was just doing a test and I just decided to test this keyword. I saw that there was a guy that had already been targeting the coolest guy in Virginia, it was this dude Harry Jameson. So, I just did a quick test and that’s this 50-second video, middle December’s cold as balls, I’ll never forget. I did it and I said in the video, I was just like, “I’m just testing this SEO method. I guess now I’m the coolest guy in Virginia. Sorry, Harry, you’re not the coolest guy anymore,” or whatever, something like that. You can watch the video. But it was funny because it was like … and there, look, via hangouts, it’s one of the websites it’s syndicated to.
Anyways, it was a matter of hours and I got pinged on YouTube from Harry and he was like, “Dude,” whatever. It was funny, we ended up having a conversation and he’s kind of been following us ever since. He comes and participates and asking questions occasionally. So, it’s really cool. It was really fun and I thought that was funny. He’s a really good sport about it, so anyways.
Marco: By the way, video number four, that’s Dr. Gary.
Bradley: That’s Gary Kirwan, yeah.
Hernan: There you go.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: Before you go on to the next question, I think Hernan has an announcement, don’t you? You were a little bit late and I think you dropped a link.
Hernan: Oh, yeah. I think there are some keyword research that you guys can get. We are making a really, really small release of that. There’s only five available, according to Adam. So, the link is there. Sorry about that, you guys are right, I was late. But the link is on the event page. You can get a keyword research run for you because we’re testing some stuff and there’s only five available. So, all you need to do, once you order that, you need to contact support@semanticmaster.com with your keyword and the marketplace that you want us researched.
Marco: Yeah. We don’t want people to give us the keywords. What we want to know is what niche you’re after and we’ll give you everything under the sun that you could possibly get under that niche. If you go through this purchase link, before we actually set it live and it’s permanent in MGYB, it’s actually half price right, now just about. There’s only five, get it, and we’ll do all the research for you for whatever niche you want to go after.
Bradley: Guys, it’s insane. I mean you’re talking about hours and hours worth of keyword research that you’re gonna get back in one Excel file or Google sheet. It’s amazing.
Should You Use An Article Or A Review Schema Markup For The Pages Of A Site That Are Mostly Reviews Of Brands?
That’s a question I really don’t have an answer for, Greg, because I’m not sure. I would almost wonder couldn’t you mark the article up and the review, like both? I don’t know if you can do that or not. Maybe Marco has a better answer. What I’m saying is, if the article is about reviewing a company, then couldn’t it have both an article markup and a review markup, because if it’s doing both of those things, right?
Marco: Yeah. I don’t really have an answer on this either. But intuition tells me, I mean, this is from all the that we’ve done that, you could do both. I think you could do a whole lot of stuff with schema. I’m sorry that Rob isn’t here because Rob really gets deep into schema and he’s done just multiple things with schema on the same page. I don’t see you running into any problems if you add article schema along with your reviews. They’re two different things. You could have two different things on the same page. You could have video and so you can mark that up. You can have just other things, offer, for example, you mark that up. For example, question and answer, you can mark that up. So, one doesn’t exclude the other, in my opinion.
Bradley: Right. That’s the point, I think, Greg, that we’ve talked about schema spam and you can get structured data spam. I’ve gotten them before in search console warnings or penalties for structured data spam. It happens if you are, for example, adding review data-, or excuse me, review schema to a page just to get the stars to show up in search results when there’s not really any review there. So, that can get you into trouble.
Or if you excessively mark up a page or multiple pages, or whatever, you can get a structured data spam penalty for that too. If you’re doing, in my opinion … Again, I don’t have the definitive answer for you, Greg. I’m just saying I found that, if it’s logical, then it’s very unlikely that you’re going to get a spam penalty for that. Again, I don’t do enough with reviews structured data. I don’t do a whole lot of markup other than local business markup, guys. I probably should learn that, but I just don’t. I just really stick to just the local business and organization markup.
I’m saying, if you can do article markup and review markup because the article is about a review of a company, then I would do both. That’s not spammy, in my opinion, although, again, I’m not a 100% sure. Sorry I didn’t have a better answer for you.
Do You Have Recommended Affiliate Networks For Water Damage Market?
Oh, we’re almost done. Sweet. We’re almost out of time, guys. If you’ve got any questions post them because otherwise we can wrap up a few minutes early. Coupon Code Promo codes, he says, “I have a lead gen property in the water damage market starting to gain traction in one location, verified GMB was purchased through MGYB. Great work, guys.” See, guys, this shit works. Thanks. I appreciate that.
Okay. I’m gonna tell you that you can use pay-per-call exchange networks, for example, Ring Partner. I know they have water damage, water damage restoration and fire damage, you know water and fire restoration services inside of Ring Partner, Ringpartner.com is one of them. Just go do a search for pay-per-call exchange networks or pay-per-call networks on Google and you can find some of those. If you hate client work, that’s one way to do it.
Just know that you’re gonna significantly reduce your income from those assets because the conversion rates suck really bad for those pay-per-call networks. I know because I’ve done a whole lot of work in those area, with those before guys doing like mass page generator sites. I’ve also done call-only ads from Google Ads to those, and all kinds of stuff. I’ve always had just really shitty results with monetizing those leads because the threshold is so high for it to be a qualified lead.
My point is, with water damage or fire damage restoration, if you use a pay-per-call exchange network, so in other words, you redirect the phone calls from there to the phone number that they provide you and now that goes to an automated phone tree. So, somebody calls and the phone tree picks up and it puts them through a series of press 1, press 2 type shit. People get irritated with that stuff nowadays, guys, if you hadn’t recognized it. I mean, doesn’t it irritate you when you call something and you got to push 16 freaking buttons to finally get to talk to somebody? I mean, it irritates the out of me and it does most other people now too. So, a lot of people end up hanging up and calling the next person in Google, to the next company that has a live body answering the phone as opposed to some stupid phone tree. Right?
I’m not saying all the Ring Partner offers are like that, some of them might have live operators. I’m just saying for every 10 calls that I would generate, I’d be lucky to get two conversions and that’s actually a really high conversion rate. For every 50 calls I would generate, I’d be lucky to get you know two to five conversions. I’m not kidding. I’ve tried it multiple times. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but my point is, it’s not a very good way to monetize those leads. But if it’s something that you’re trying to do while you’re working on, like to fill in the gap while you’re working on a prospecting and sales process, then I would absolutely do that. Okay.
Just go look for pay-per-call exchange networks or pay-per-call networks. Do that right on Google and just start going through them and apply to them. Some of them will show you. As a publisher, that’s what you would be a publisher. There’s publishers and advertisers. You would be the publisher, advertisers would be the businesses that are buying the leads. Right?
Some of the networks will show you which type of advertisers or advertiser categories they have so that you know what you got to work with. I know Ring Partner absolutely has, or at least they used to, I haven’t been inside Ring Partner in at least six months, but they used to have water and fire restoration advertisers in there. Okay.
What’s The Maximum Number Of SameAs Listings To A Homepage Organization Markup?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, you could add same as. I haven’t run into a limit. I just keep it to, like 15 to 20, that we use, that we know to be the most powerful. Those are the ones that I use. But you can mix them up. You can mix it up. I mean, this is a test in the making where you can just try 10, try 15, try 20 and see which one is going to get you the best results. It could vary by niche. I mean, we don’t know because of the nature of Google. But I mean, you could just go ahead and this is something that can be tested. Just like you said, you will try doing both. I mean, that’s the best thing to do. I’m pretty sure that it’s going to work because one does not conflict with the other.
Bradley: Yeah. Let me just point out, since we got a couple extra minutes here, how to find what I consider to be the best to use for same as stuff. Obviously, guys, your same as properties, you should be listing all of your top-level social media properties, like the big ones, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, and LinkedIn, if you have it guys. That’s a no-brainer. Whatever your top, if it’s for a local business, obviously, any top-level citations.
Well, how do you determine what your top-level citations are? The easiest way to do it is to do a Google search for the company name, plus one of the other NAP data points, so name, address, phone number. So if you search for company name plus phone, or company name plus address, or address plus phone, whatever, I typically search company name and phone. Now that’s gonna show you all of the, basically, citations where your company name and phone number is listed. So, whatever shows up on page one and two of Google for a company name plus phone number search that’s typically what I would collect out. Whatever shows up as far as citations and then any other published properties that have name, address, phone number published on them. I just put those into a spreadsheet or a notepad file and then use those as my same as.
There’s a couple other really … I was gonna demonstrate, but I really don’t need to because I’m pretty sure you guys are all smart enough to figure that out. Just seriously, just go grab your company name or the company name that you’re promoting and then use the phone number, for example, and just do a search for that. Then, just go through the top two pages, collect all the links out of there.
Couple other big ones would be, obviously, if you’ve got a Google site from a drive stack, you could use that as same as. If you’ve got add ID pages, I know there’s an add ID page section for local schema, but I’d still put that as a separate URL and the same as. Some other ones that would be good would be, if you have a news page or pressroom, something that we talked about on Monday with the Press Advantage webinar. That’s one of the key features of Press Advantage that I love, is that they give you like a newsroom page, which is essentially like a blog index page or a press release index page for all the press releases published for that particular organization or company. That’s a really, really good one because there’s a very powerful citation on that page. Drive stack files, right? Think about that. If it’s in your main drive stack folder, you could put that in there.
I mean, there’s just a number of things that you could do to put in there, guys. Think about what are the most powerful properties within your most powerful branded properties and you want to put those in there too. Okay.
How Much Do You Charge For Four GMB Posts A Week For A Dentist Or Chiropractor Business?
Paul says … I saw Rob commented. By the way, thanks, Rob. I didn’t know you were here or we would have brought you on today. Paul says, “What are you guys charging to post for GMB posts a week for a dentist or chiropractor?” Well, I don’t deal with those type of clients. It’s gonna very. I can tell you what my standard pricing is, guys. My minimum charge is $300 a month for GMB posting and right now that’s roughly 20 posts per month. It varies a little bit, but usually, when I’m pitching that, it’s five posts per week times 4 weeks, so it’s 20 posts per month for $300. That’s what I do.
Again, everybody can charge whatever they’re comfortable with, whatever you can get from your type of clients. I’m just telling you my … What I charge is $300. If I’m doing GMB plus citations, I charge $500 a month, and that’s for the same 420 post per month but then that’s also including citation building. But I do just GMB posts alone for $300 now. If it’s a business that wants to be more aggressive I will offer upgraded you know upsell packages where we might do seven posts per week, which would be one every day, or we might do 10 posts per week, which would be two posts per day, five days per week. You know what I mean? It just depends on what the customer wants or what the client wants and how aggressive they want to be.
It also depends on the competition level for that particular business. Obviously, before I promote or pitch a prospect on any of the services, I typically do some sort of audit or analysis of their property. Competition now is to determine what it’s gonna take. Obviously, if it’s a very competitive area, I’m going to suggest much higher volume of posting. So it might be that we you know three posts per day seven days a week, which would be twenty one post per month-, per week, excuse me, or what 84 posts per month, essentially, and so that would be a much higher price. I would be charging somewhere around you know 600, 700 hours a month for that.
Marco: It also depends on whether your client, which most of them don’t, but whether your client provides the images.
Bradley: Correct.
Marco: Because if you have to go and grab the images and and do all of the work for the images, man, that’s a pain in the ass. So you need to charge extra. If they just refuse to … Even if they agree, make sure it’s clear that, “If you do not provide me image, then I’m going to have to charge you for providing the images.
Bradley: Yeah. For $300 a month for the 20 that we do, we actually provide the images. I encourage the business owners, for example, I’ve got several clients now that we’re doing GMB stuff for, and so what I do is I set up a Google photos album, a shared photo album, and then I share it with them and then they can share it with all. For example, you guys know I deal with mainly contractors so a lot of the contracting companies have you know multiple technicians or whatever. Then, they share that Google photos folder with their technicians or whatever, whoever is also going to be contributing photos, and so now we’ve got one community Google photos album that all the photos go into.
My VA that does all the GMB postings she has access to those folders as well. So each time she goes to schedule posts for the week for that client she just opens the Google photos folder. She just selects images right from there. For the first couple months that I was doing this, I couldn’t get any of my clients to provide me photos. But now I’ve got almost all of them providing me photos. It just took two months of me griping and bitching at them and nagging at them to get them to finally come on board and start providing me photos. But I’d say 80% of them now are actually contributing photos to the Google photos folder often. Okay.
Good questions today, guys. We’re gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the mastermind, we’re gonna be talking about the product launch that’s coming up on October 1st for local lease pro. That’s the name of it. or I’m gonna be talking about the GMB sniping method a little bit more tomorrow. So, you guys can make it be there, otherwise we’ll see everybody next week. Thanks for being here. Thanks, guys.
Marco: I have a final question. If you guys are not in the Mastermind yet, why the not?
Hernan: It’s actually a good question, Marco.
Bradley: Yeah. That is a good question. We had a support request come in from somebody that I guess joined recently. I’m not gonna call them out by name, if you’re watching the webinar now guys, whoever you are, you know who you are. There’s nothing you said that was wrong or bad. I’m not calling you out. What I’m saying is it was brought to our attention through support that they had made a comment about being in the Mastermind and then thinking that they were being up sold stuff. Guys, in the Mastermind, we don’t try to upsell you anything.
For example, when you’re in the Mastermind you get all of our products that weren’t co-collaborated on from others outside of Semantic Mastery. So for example local GMB Prom we had co-collaborators. Rob Beale was part of that. He helped us develop that product. So that’s not something that you’re gonna get for free when you join the Mastermind, because it’s a higher price ticket than the 300 dollars and because Rob has to get paid for each sale. He has to get a portion of that. RYS Academy and RYS Academy Reloaded, same thing. But everything else that we have you can get inside of the Mastermind.
For example, if you join the Mastermind today, then this month you’re going to get access to the Mastermind and you’ll get one of the additional products that we have, and in the next month, you get another product unlocked. For example, we have stuff like outsource kingpin or content kingpin, we have Local Lease Pro, which is coming out October 1st, we’ve got local PR Pro, which is I think an 800 dollar course or whatever. But you can get that as a Mastermind member for $0 other than your Mastermind membership fee, but you just have to wait. Each month you get a new product unlocked.
So, I think that the support requests that came in he was saying like I feel like I’m being up sold, blah blah blah. No, guys, we rarely do affiliate promotion webinars. We do only when the product is superb, we’ve vetted it, it’s something we use in our own businesses. For example, we did the product promotion with Eric Christopher for the G hypnosis protocol, a couple of weeks ago because it’s something that I’ve been intimately involved with and it’s something that I use and it freaking works.
We did the Press Advantage webinar this Monday because it works. I’ve been using press advantage for four years since they launched. So it’s absolutely something we use. So if you’re in the Mastermind and you attend any of our promotional webinars, it’s only because we have your best interest in heart. Obviously, yes, we’re gonna make some money if we promote it, but we don’t promote just anything, guys, and you should know that by now right. We only promote stuff that we actually use or that can benefit your business.
Lastly, like I said, as far as our own products, if it’s under $300, you get it for free. You don’t get it all at once. we have to drip them out or else it’s not fair. Right? Somebody comes and joins the Mastermind and they get all the back products all in the first month where other members that have been with us for two years have been paying for two years to get those products. Does that make sense? When you come join us you’ll get access to the Mastermind, all the archives, all that stuff, and then you’ll get one of the main products, and then each month thereafter, you get another product unlocked.
So, that’s how it works. Maybe we haven’t been real clear about that for new members and such, but I think we’re gonna nail that down a bit in our October corporate meetings so that we can be much more clear about that in the future.
Hernan, do you want to comment on that at all before we wrap it up?
Hernan: You’re completely right, Bradley. I mean, we are known for vetting harder than anyone else, the products, and we really have your best interests in mind. I mean, it’s up to you if you whether want to invest in your business and or not, but um I would suggest that you join. If you want to see, I would say if you want to see some of the power of the Mastermind in action and live, you should definitely come to POFU Live as well. So yeah.
Bradley: All right, guys. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all either tomorrow or next week. Thanks guys.
– How do you contact clients / talk to them? Skype call? WhatsApp? What is the best approach? How most of the clients you have talked with, liked to being contacted? I live outside the US and talking to a lot of clients will give me a huge phone bill
In the 198th episode of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked how the team signs clients for rank and rent video services.
The exact question was:
– How do you sign clients? do you use a signature online software?
Are your clients your allies in SEO, or are they passive spectators? Could they even be inadvertently working against you? A better understanding of expectations, goals, and strategy by everyone involved can improve your client relations, provide extra clarity, and reduce the number of times you're asked to "just SEO a site." In today's Whiteboard Friday, Kameron Jenkins outlines tactics you should know for getting clients and bosses excited about the SEO journey, as well as the risks involved in passivity.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. I am Kameron Jenkins, and I'm the SEO Wordsmith here at Moz. Today I'm going to be talking with you about how to turn your clients from spectators, passive spectators to someone who is proactively interested and an ally in your SEO journey.
So if you've ever heard someone come to you, maybe it's a client or maybe you're in-house and this is your boss saying this, and they say, "Just SEO my site," then this is definitely for you. A lot of times it can be really hard as an SEO to work on a site if you really aren't familiar with the business, what that client is doing, what they're all about, what their goals are. So I'm going to share with you some tactics for getting your clients and your boss excited about SEO and excited about the work that you're doing and some risks that can happen when you don't do that.
Tactics
So let's dive right in. All right, first we're going to talk about tactics.
1. Share news
The first tactic is to share news. In the SEO industry, things are changing all the time, so it's actually a really great tactic to keep yourself informed, but also to share that news with the client. So here's an example. Google My Business is now experimenting with a new video format for their post feature. So one thing that you can do is say, "Hey, client, I hear that Google is experimenting with this new format. They're using videos now. Would you like to try it?"
So that's really cool because it shows them that you're on top of things. It shows them that you're the expert and you're keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry. It also tells them that they're going to be a part of this new, cutting-edge technology, and that can get them really, really excited about the SEO work you're doing. So make sure to share news. I think that can be really, really valuable.
2. Outline your work
The next tip is to outline your work. This one seems really simple, but there is so much to say for telling a client what you're going to do, doing it, and then telling them that you did it. It's amazing what can happen when you just communicate with a client more. There have been plenty of situations where maybe I did less tangible work for a client one week, but because I talk to them more, they were more inclined to be happy with me and excited about the work I was doing.
It's also cool because when you tell a client ahead of time what you're going to do, it gives them time to get excited about, "Ooh, I can't wait to see what he or she is going to do next." So that's a really good tip for getting your clients excited about SEO.
3. Report results
Another thing is to report on your results. So, as SEOs, it can be really easy to say, hey, I added this page or I fixed these things or I updated this.
But if we detach it from the actual results, it doesn't really matter how much a client likes you or how much your boss likes you, there's always a risk that they could pull the plug on SEO because they just don't see the value that's coming from it. So that's an unfortunate reality, but there are tons of ways that you can show the value of SEO. One example is, "Hey, client, remember that page that we identified that was ranking on page two. We improved it. We made all of those updates we talked about, and now it's ranking on page one. So that's really exciting. We're seeing a lot of new traffic come from it.I'm wondering, are you seeing new calls, new leads, an uptick in any of those things as a result of that?"
So that's really good because it shows them what you did, the results from that, and then it kind of connects it to, "Hey, are you seeing any revenue, are you seeing new clients, new customers," things like that. So they're more inclined to see that what you're doing is making a real, tangible impact on actual revenue and their actual business goals.
4. Acknowledge and guide their ideas
This one is really, really important. It can be hard sometimes to marry best practices and customer service. So what I mean by that is there's one end of the pendulum where you are really focused on best practices. This is right. This is wrong. I know my SEO stuff. So when a client comes to you and they say, "Hey, can we try this?" and you go, "No, that's not best practices,"it can kind of shut them down. It doesn't get them involved in the SEO process. In fact, it just kind of makes them recoil and maybe they don't want to talk to you, and that's the exact opposite of what we want here. On the other end of that spectrum though, you have clients who say, "Hey, I really want to try this.I saw this article. I'm interested in this thing. Can you do it for my website?"
Maybe it's not the greatest idea SEO-wise. You're the SEO expert, and you see that and you go, "Mm, that's actually kind of scary. I don't think I want to do that." But because you're so focused on pleasing your client, you maybe do it anyway. So that's the opposite of what we want as well. We want to have a "no, but" mentality. So an example of that could be your client emails in and says, "Hey, I want to try this new thing."
You go, "Hey, I really like where your head is at. I like that you're thinking about things this way. I'm so glad you shared this with me. I tried this related thing before, and I think that would be actually a really good idea to employ on your website." So kind of shifting the conversation, but still bringing them along with you for that journey and guiding them to the correct conclusions. So that's another way to get them invested without shying them away from the SEO process.
Risks
So now that we've talked about those tactics, we're going to move on to the risks. These are things that could happen if you don't get your clients excited and invested in the SEO journey.
1. SEO becomes a checklist
When you don't know your client well enough to know what they're doing in the real world, what they're all about, the risk becomes you have to kind of just do site health stuff, so fiddling with meta tags, maybe you're changing some paragraphs around, maybe you're changing H1s, fixing 404s, things like that, things that are just objectively, "I can make this change, and I know it's good for site health."
But it's not proactive. It's not actually doing any SEO strategies. It's just cleanup work. If you just focus on cleanup work, that's really not an SEO strategy. That's just making sure your site isn't broken. As we all know, you need so much more than that to make sure that your client's site is ranking. So that's a risk.
If you don't know your clients, if they're not talking to you, or they're not excited about SEO, then really all you're left to do is fiddle with kind of technical stuff. As good as that can be to do, our jobs are way more fun than that. So communicate with your clients. Get them on board so that you can do proactive stuff and not just fiddling with little stuff.
2. SEO conflicts with business goals
So another risk is that SEO can conflict with business goals.
So say that you're an SEO. Your client is not talking to you. They're not really excited about stuff that you're doing. But you decide to move forward with proactive strategies anyway. So say I'm an SEO, and I identify this keyword. My client has this keyword. This is a related keyword. It can bring in a lot of good traffic. I've identified this good opportunity. All of the pages that are ranking on page one, they're not even that good. I could totally do better. So I'm going to proactively go, I'm going to build this page of content and put it on my client's site. Then what happens when they see that page of content and they go, "We don't even do that. We don't offer that product. We don't offer that service."
Oops. So that's really bad. What can happen is that, yes, you're being proactive, and that's great. But if you don't actually know what your client is doing, because they're not communicating with you, they're not really excited, you risk misaligning with their business goals and misrepresenting them. So that's a definite risk.
3. You miss out on PR opportunities
Another thing, you miss out on PR opportunities. So again, if your client is not talking to you, they're not excited enough to share what they're doing in the real world with you, you miss out on news like, "Hey, we're sponsoring this event,"or, "Hey, I was the featured expert on last night's news."
Those are all really, really good things that SEOs look for. We crave that information. We can totally use that to capitalize on it for SEO value. If we're not getting that from our clients, then we miss out on all those really, really cool PR opportunities. So a definite risk. We want those PR opportunities. We want to be able to use them.
4. Client controls the conversation
Next up, client controls the conversation. That's a definite risk that can happen. So if a client is not talking to you, a reason could be they don't really trust you yet. When they don't trust you, they tend to start to dictate. So maybe our client emails in.
A good example of this is, "Hey, add these 10 backlinks to my website." Or, "Hey, I need these five pages, and I need them now." Maybe they're not even actually bad suggestions. It's just the fact that the client is asking you to do that. So this is kind of tricky, because you want to communicate with your client. It's good that they're emailing in, but they're the ones at that point that are dictating the strategy. Whereas they should be communicating their vision, so hey, as a business owner, as a website owner, "This is my vision. This is my goal, and this is what I want."
As the SEO professional, you're receiving that information and taking it and making it into an SEO strategy that can actually be really, really beneficial for the client. So there's a huge difference between just being a task monkey and kind of transforming their vision into an SEO strategy that can really, really work for them. So that's a definite risk that can happen.
Excitement + partnership = better SEO campaigns
There's a lot of different things that can happen. These are just some examples of tactics that you can use and risks. If you have any examples of things that have worked for you in the past, I would love to hear about them. It's really good to information share. Success stories where maybe you got your client or your boss really bought into SEO, more so than just, "Hey, I'm spending money on it."
But, "Hey, I'm your partner in this. I'm your ally, and I'm going to give you all the information because I know that it's going to be mutually beneficial for us." So at the end here, excitement, partner, better SEO campaigns. This is going to be I believe a recipe for success to get your clients and your boss on board. Thanks again so much for watching this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and come back next week for another one.
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