In episode 202 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked why the team uses Google Tag Manager for redirects instead of normal 301 redirects in Local GMB Pro.
The exact question was:
Hey Guys question, in local GMB Pro you use the Google tag manager to redirect from the website to the GMB website. My question now.
Why not use a normal 301?
And where can i see how to create that code?
Greetings
In episode 202 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked if the team recommends buying Google accounts from bulkvpa.com for GMB listings.
The exact question was:
Hey guys i am planing to create massive GMB Listings for 1 Brand. And i am going to use different google accounts for each city. I think about buying accouns from bulkpva.com and registering all of the GMBs with those accounts. Do you guys reccomend doing that or do some GMB listings get deleted because of the fake accounts?
Adam: All right, we are live. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, Episode 207. We are live from Washington, DC, and hopefully Marco will be joining us, although it sounds like he may be on the way to, very shortly, having another child.
Bradley: I know what reports used to insult the Hangout.
Hernan: Yeah, c'mon.
Adam: So, well, before we get into announcements, we should go around and say “hello” to everybody, and just going to ask you each how the weather is and just let me know.
Hernan, just kidding. How’s it going man?
Hernan: Hey, guys. The weather is getting nicer in Argentina, so I’m told. I’m really excited to be here and I’m super, super happy.
Adam: Awesome. Chris, how you doing?
Chris: Yeah, good. [inaudible 00:00:40] this weekend.
Adam: Yeah?
Chris: And the weather was still nice and cozy and warm here.
Adam: Yeah, man. Awesome.
Bradley, how you doing?
Bradley: I’m happy to be here. We had a really good time at POFU LIVE. It was a lot of fun. We got to meet quite a few people and just had a really good weekend. It was our first one, but first live event [inaudible 00:00:59] really well. Get to hang out with my partners for a while, except Marco, for the rest of the week, which is kind of cool. You’ll only get to do this once a year. So, it’s kind of … It’s good timing for us whenever we get together and get to plan and to scheme out for the next year. So, just glad to be here.
Adam: Definitely, and Jay, a quick shout-out to my wife. Thank you. You can see all the beef jerky here. We got a bouquet of beef jerky just in time for Hump Day [inaudible 00:01:23].
Male: [inaudible 00:01:24]
Bradley: That’s nice.
Adam: Thank you. Let’s see. We got a lot of stuff we want to cover today, but I wanted to, as usual, say if you’re just starting out with Semantic Mastery … I know there’s actually a question about this. So, we’re going to get more in depth into this, but if you’re just starting out, the place to start is the Battle Plan, all right?
Hernan: Right out of this.
Adam: We got a physical one which you can get. You can also opt for just the digital version, but I think you should definitely check out the Battle Plan.
This right here is the place you want to start. Even if you’re going to hop into our Mastermind right away, we want everyone to have this. It’s a great blueprint for repeatable results. Then, I just mentioned the Mastermind. That’s where we want people to be. If you’re looking to actually start and to grow your agency, or you want … Sorry, you already have a digital agency and you want to grow that, you want to find ways to grow in scale, then that’s where you want to be.
Chris: Yeah, it’s more than just one page like [crosstalk 00:02:17]-
Adam: Oh, yes. [inaudible 00:02:19].
Chris: [crosstalk 00:02:18]
Adam: It’s many pages.
Chris: It’s more than one page.
Actually, how many pages is there [inaudible 00:02:27]. How many pages of [inaudible 00:02:29].
Adam: Let’s see, I’m getting word that there might be an echo. So, Hernan, could you try muting one of the … yep. [inaudible 00:02:38].
Hernan: [inaudible 00:02:40]
Bradley: It might be mine. It might be mine. Stand by.
Adam: All right. So, we’re going to keep going. If somebody can … I know there’s a delay on there. So, I’m going to keep rolling through, and you guys can let us know.
In case you didn’t hear all of that, basically, we’re happy to be here. Thank you for the beef jerky, Jenny. Grab the Battle Plan. It’s freaking awesome. Then, come join the Mastermind. So, that’s the really condensed version.
Male: [inaudible 00:03:04]
Bradley: Hey, guys, by the way, let us know if the echo has stopped. If not, we can still [crosstalk 00:03:07]-
Adam: Good to go. He just messaged me.
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:03:08] … It’s good to go now?
Adam: Yeah. So, it’s good to go.
Bradley: Okay, cool.
Adam: All right. So, other than that, let me check my announcements real quick. I’m used to doing this with the safety of two monitors here. Oh, so we’ve got the … Hopefully, you saw the email. If you didn’t, we want to tell everyone we’ve got to flash a 24-hour sale going on with syndication networks. We got those up. The ordering process has been improved, and it’s in mdyv.co. I’m going to drop the link along with the coupon code so you can save 30%, but that’s only going to be until … for, basically, the rest of today. Maybe tomorrow morning we might extend it since some people had some issues.
Other than that, we have got Episode 208 that’s coming up next week. For better or worse, we’re not going to be able to be together. That would’ve been really cool because 208 for us represents a four-year anniversary of doing Hump Day Hangout. So, four years of this.
Bradley: Four whole years. That’s crazy, and we only missed one weekend. It was a scheduled week that we took off.
Chris: You should join me in Florida.
Adam: [inaudible 00:04:03]. Yeah, just hope down real quick for Hump Day.
Bradley: Oh, it’s going to be on Halloween.
Hernan: [crosstalk 00:04:06]
Adam: Yes.
Bradley: So, make sure that you come dressed.
Adam: Yeah, please come dressed up, put in some pictures.
Hernan: Do I need to be dress up as well?
Adam: Yes [inaudible 00:04:15].
Bradley: No, you’re ugly enough. It’s cool.
Hernan: All right. Okay, cool.
Bradley: It’s cool.
Adam: But not only that, we’ve got some awesome prizes. I’m going to put the link on the page. We’re having a contest to see who’s going to win it. We’ve got a grand prize that’s got about five or $600 worth of prizes included in it. We’ve got a runner-up prize with several hundred dollars. Then, on top of that, if you just come live, we’re going to have a ton of stuff we’re going to be giving away. So, don’t want to miss that, and it’s more you share, the more chances you have to win, and we just want to get the word out, have a good time. I think we’ll probably go a little bit longer next week, right?
Bradley: Probably.
Male: [crosstalk 00:04:48]
Adam: Okay.
Bradley: Probably.
Adam: Cool. All right. Anything else you guys want to cover?
Chris: Yeah, I’m going to prepare some good questions for next week.
Hernan: [crosstalk 00:04:53]
Adam: Oh.
Bradley: Oh, yeah, and have your POFU coin, right?
Adam: Yeah, for real.
Male: Ooh, yeah.
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:05:00] do that, but with this is a memento that we gave to our … the members that came to POFU LIVE, which is … It’s a coin and it’s kind of just something to think of to always remind you of what’s your position of fuck you is, you’re POFU is. So, it’s always to remind the people that got them to keep something to remind them of what their plan is, what their business plan is, and why you grind so hard, why you put so much work and effort into the business and whatever you’re trying to build.
So, this is the coin that we gave out to every member of the LIVE event, but it doesn’t have to be this particular coin. It could be whatever you want it to be, but I would recommend that you have something like that that you keep as just a memento to remind yourself through periods of stress and discouragement, feeling like you failed at times. Those types of times are when it’s really good to have something to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, and that was kind of our way to create this little exclusive club of POFU coin holders, but again, it doesn’t have to be specifically that. It could be whatever it is that you want it to be. So, it’s something we would recommend for you guys to do as well.
Hernan: Yeah, and I would like to personally thank everyone that was there on the event. I think it was amazing. I think it was like before and after for Semantic Mastery, I would say. We’re already planning next year’s, so we’ll keep you guys posted about that. This was a great event. We had a bunch of good stuff. We had a bunch of good people coming, and-
Bradley: It was great.
Hernan: Yeah. So, thank you guys for coming. Thank you guys for attending. Thank you for all of you guys that made this all possible. If you’re interested in coming to next year’s event, there’s going to be information out there soon.
Bradley: That’s it.
Adam: Definitely.
Bradley: Greg [inaudible 00:06:46] posting on the page, and he was there. We just want to give him a special shout-out because Greg helps us out with some of our Facebook groups and stuff, and he came to the LIVE event, and he’s just always been a real trooper and somebody that we appreciate very much. So, again, thanks Greg for coming out. We certainly all appreciated getting a chance to meet you and you participating with the event and everything. So, thanks again.
Adam: Thanks, Greg.
Chris: Thank you.
Hernan: Yes.
Chris: It was good meeting you in person.
Bradley: All right. So, can we get into questions?
Hernan: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, let’s do it.
Bradley: All right, we’ll stand by because I just lost the page.
Chris: So, if you didn’t make it to POFU LIVE this year, you better save up, and book your time and come next year.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, 100%.
Bradley: All right. Well, let’s get to it, then. Adam Moody has the first question. Well, you could’ve just ask me [crosstalk 00:07:34].
Male: [inaudible 00:07:34]
Adam: I got the inside track, man.
Bradley: All right. So, the first one was question from a viewer.
Well, that’s a good question. Typically, we don’t worry about the Web 2 posts being indexed because whether they get indexed or not, Google will likely crawl them and see them anyways. Sometimes, they will be indexed, but it’s not something I ever sweat or worry about trying to force the indexing of those posts, and the reason why is because if your website that you’re blogging from … So, that’s the one you’re essentially building links to through your syndicated posts. If it’s connected to Search Console, Google Search Console, and you go in and you take a look at the links to my site, you’ll see WordPress.com, and Tumbler, and Blogger, and all the bookmarking sites. You’ll see all the links pointing back to your site. Whether they’re in the index or not, it really makes no difference because Google’s telling you from Search Console that the links are indeed … They are in and they’re aware of them. So, that’s why I never worry about indexing. That’s why we didn’t spend a lot of time covering it.
There were some things that we did in the past that would automate, scraping those URLs from the Web 2 posts, and sending them to an indexer, but unfortunately, the plugins that did that stopped working, stopped being developed. They stopped supporting them, and we never found a really suitable alternative.
Now, that said, there is a training in the update section of Syndication Academy that talks about how you can use an applet to automatically extract the art, the Web 2 post URLs, and feed them into a Google Sheet, and then you can build links to a Google Sheet, which could be used like an indexing tool, and that’s been … That was covered in the Syndication Academy update webinars. Just go back through your webinar, update webinar archives, and you should be able to locate that.
If you’re insistent upon getting them to index … But again, your time, in my opinion, should be spent elsewhere because Google will crawl those sites, and they will recognize those links whether it indexes them or not. That’s all that matters is that Google sees them. Just to prove it, Hernan and we have tested no indexed PBNs in the past. Now, we don’t recommend … PBNs isn’t something we teach. Do they still work? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s not something we teach, but we have even tested no indexed PBNs, and they absolutely work.
As long as Google knows the link’s there, no index just means they don’t put it in their index. It doesn’t mean they’re not aware of the link and they’re not counting the link equity to it.
Hernan: Right. There were no index to follow PBNs. So, as long as you have that tied there no index to follow, some actually, some Web 2.0 websites, and social networks that we post out with Syndication Academy … They will have no index to follow.
Bradley: Medium is one of those unless you have a paid account?
Hernan: Yeah. They have no index to follow. So, you cannot index that, but that doesn’t mean that the links do not count. So, we do that for traffic purposes as well. You will see a lot of people coming through the RSS feed to the website, so that’s cool. But yeah, they definitely count towards the authority of the website.
Bradley: So, make sure we get this clip sent to the guy that asked that in support.
Adam: Yeah, definitely.
Bradley: All right.
Chris: Cool.
How Do You Take Advantage Of Using A 2014 Guest Post To A 2018 Press Release?
Yeah, absolutely. You should be building links to that. If they’re live and they’re good links, there’s no reason why you couldn’t. As far as how would you incorporate a sentence or how would you word a sentence to incorporate those links into a press release, well, that depends because I don’t know what the topic of your press release is going to be, but typically you don’t … I mean, don’t overthink it.
Typically, what I do, like for example, one of the things that I love to do now is take the media room URL, which is essentially like the organization page for the organization that I’m publishing a press release about, and I like to link to that company page because it’s like a blog roll, it’s like a media room. That’s what they’re calling it, especially on the Press Advantage platform. They have the media room, which it shows it’s got an NAP, which by the way, Jeremy, the developer at Press Advantage enabled GMB mapping beds now for the organization page directly below the NAP section, which is super powerful.
So, anyways, for each press release that gets published, it gets put right on that page, and it’s also got the eye frame for the website. That’s a super powerful page to link to. So, what I do within press releases themselves is say, “Stay up-to-date with all the whatever company’s news here,” and then I just link directly with the naked URL to the media room, right? That’s really powerful because now we’re building media-style links to a media room unlike a newsroom, but so to speak, for the organization. That’s super powerful.
Hernan: So, there will be … Sorry, Bradley.
Bradley: Go ahead.
Hernan: It will be kind of a hub which you can link to several other properties from that media room.
Bradley: Correct. It’s a hub.
Hernan: Okay.
Bradley: Correct. Yeah.
Hernan: Okay, okay.
Bradley: But my point is don’t overthink it. Just give a quick, simple call-to-action for why they should go click that link on a separate line, right? Just give it its own … just say whatever it is to your guest posts, like “learn more about” or “see how this company was featured on,” and then name the publication, and then put the link to that guest post. You see what I’m saying? You don’t have to overthink it. Just put a simple call-to-action as to why somebody should click on that link, and whether they click or not, you’re going to get the SEO benefit from the link, but you could generate some traffic to that property as well. Okay?
He says, “Any other ideas on how to best take advantage of that 2014 PR and guest post? Thanks.” No, I mean that’s basically it. Just link to it as far as I’m concerned. You might want to IFrame it into a blog post or something, which would be kind of cool if it’s a … IFrames are super powerful. We can’t get into too many tips and tricks here as to why they’re super powerful, but if you’ve got a really good PR, a press release published on a really good PR site, or a guest post on a real high authority site, it would make sense, especially if it’s got a live link back to your money site like you said it does. It would make sense to possibly IFrame that article, that page, excuse me, onto one of your asset pages, right? Then, do some nasty link building stuff with that, too. Okay?
How Do You Boost A Local Towing Site To Generate More Organic Calls?
Handy Expert: He says, “I currently have a towing sign in my local area generating about 70 to 80 qualified calls a month with great organic rankings, but average map rankings. I was still able to close a towing client at $750 a month.
Okay, that’s a great question. So, no. YouTube ads are likely not going to help you at all with towing stuff. It would be okay if you were running YouTube ads to help rank towing videos for search, but those are one of the types of keywords where people are going to directly to Google and search for a solution, like we just-
Adam: I need a tow [crosstalk 00:15:00].
Bradley: We need a tow truck, right? They’re not going to go to YouTube first. So, that’s why I’d say I would recommend just going straight to Google PPC. Yeah, you absolutely can use that to supplement. As far as you said you’re got a close a $750 a month, I don’t know what the towing cost per clicks are. I know that … I was just talking with these guys about it. Google Ads, search ads, are still a great way to generate leads. It’s absolutely a great way. It’s very, very targeted traffic if you know what you’re doing, and with a simple Alpha/Beta campaign structure, which is exactly how I run all my ad campaigns, it’s really simple to hone in on your very best keywords and set up exact match keywords to very, very targeted landing pages and just get incredible results.
You are going to spend some money, and it takes a little bit of time to dial the campaign in. I typically recommend that the first 30 days you’re going to waste some money. Typically, usually between the 31 and 60 days, you’re going to start dialing it in really good. Usually by the end of 60 days, I have a really well optimized campaign that just generates leads consistently.
Remember guys, with PPC, it should be more like a vending machine, not a slot machine. In other words, you should have a known quantity when you put a dollar in, I’m going to get a dollar fifty out, or if I put a dollar in, I’m going to get two dollars out instead of like a slot machine is where you just put money in and pull the handle and hope that you’re going to make some money. That’s how most people treat their PPC campaigns.
Okay. So, he’s showing towing keywords roughly-
Adam: Four to six bucks.
Bradley: Yeah, four to $6.
Hernan: That’s not bad.
Bradley: Yeah, that’s not bad at all. So-
Adam: Just depends what you’re getting on the back end.
Chris: [crosstalk 00:16:30] He gets paid per call?
Adam: No, he’s getting … It doesn’t sound like, but perhaps. Again, that depends. If you’re not getting paid for call, then you might not want to do this, but depending on what you’re looking for, but if you could say, “Hey, I can also offer you additional calls”-
Bradley: Well, I think what he’s saying is that for now, he’s got good organic rankings, he’s getting good calls, but he wants to improve his Maps rankings-
Chris: [inaudible 00:16:51]
Bradley: … and he wants to supplement the calls with PPC while he works on getting the Maps ranking up.
Chris: I would run call-only ads.
Bradley: You could do call-only ads, too. They’re a little bit less expensive than clicks, direct clicks, but not much anymore I’ve found. But yeah, you could also try call-only ads. As far as that, play around with the budgeting. If you’re not … I don’t know how experienced you are with Google Ads, but I would suggest if you’re in a lead gen business, that you start getting some experience in that anyway.
So, maybe take $150 of that budget, which is essentially $5 a day in budget spending, and see what you can do with it. That might not even be enough. You might want to do 250 or $300, and I know that seems like a lot, even half, but just to do that for the first month or two so that you get some data coming in. You’ll learn all that you need to within about 60 days of how to optimize a PPC campaign for a towing company, right?
Hernan: Right.
Adam: Which is cool. He’s got a client paying him for it. I realize maybe he’s going to pay out of his pocket-
Bradley: Yeah, so now-
Adam: … but you’re not paying literally out of your pocket.
Bradley: Yeah. So, essentially your client’s covering your education. Hernan at the event … Somebody asked him, “What’s the best way to learn how to do Facebook ads?” Hernan said, “Spend some money.” In other words, go out and set up a Facebook ads campaign and play around in the platform, and spend some money. That’s what I’m going to tell you about PPC, the same thing. We have a training course called Local Kingpin. I saw another question on the page about it. We’re going to get to it, but it talks about how to do PPC Google Ads for lead generation and how to make it profitable. Again, the best way to learn is … Going through a course might help you to get kind of a jumpstart, but you’re still going to need to learn by spending money, not just playing.
Hernan: Yes, 100%. Also, each industry is different. So, maybe what applies to tow truck might not apply to some other industries. So, I think that’s a great point. The client is paying you to learn, so that’s great. You’re also, potentially, giving the client better results. So, in [inaudible 00:18:45] the PPC campaign. So, that’s even better because the guy will be happier, and you know that a happy client stays for longer. So, that’s pretty cool. That’s why we kind of usually recommend when you’re starting out, you can combine PPC and SEO so that you offset the way with SEO … You offset that with PPC and the guy’s stoked, and off you go.
Bradley: Yep. Okay. Let me go to the next one.
Adam: [inaudible 00:19:13]
Bradley: Premier Travel Services.
Adam: Also, I love these business names. It’s always funny to like “[inaudible 00:19:18] Business Services,” but then sometimes we find out who it is. If you tell us and it gets confusing, but it’s kind of funny. I’m like I always try to match the business to the person.
Is The Semantic Mastery Local Kingpin Training Still Relevant In 2018?
Bradley: Yeah. All right. So, this one says, “I plan to do some PPC training for local clients. Would you say that your Local Kingpin training is still relevant in 2018?” Yes, it absolutely is. The only difference is now is the interface has changed, the [inaudible 00:19:40] interface has changed. The content is absolutely still relevant. That Alpha/Beta campaign structure … nothing has changed, except, like I said, the interface has changed and Google is also implemented a lot of AI now so that they have a lot of different bidding strategies that weren’t available at the time, like enhanced cost-per-click and maximize with conversions.
Chris: Aww.
Hernan: Sorry.
Bradley: There’s all these different campaign stuff that can be added to the campaigns, but I still don’t implement any of those until I’ve set all of my campaigns up manually, and optimized them all manually first. Then, once I get them to where I think they’re optimized very well, then I will play around with some of the Google’s automated bidding strategies to see if it can beat mine. Typically, it will, but I always like to wait until I have the campaign fully optimized the way that I want it before I implement any of those.
So, just as an aside, we are going to up … or I’m going to update that training probably with a webinar at some point because I’m still doing a lot of PPC stuff, and that training needs to be updated slightly just because of the interface. I can talk a little bit more about the automated strategies because I’ve been doing a lot of PPC since that training was originally released. I’ve got some additional techniques and strategies that I would like to share. So, I will be updating that training probably sometime within the next couple of months. By New Year’s, maybe it’ll be ready, but that it is absolutely still relevant.
Scott’s up. What’s up, Scott?
Hernan: What’s up, Scott?
Bradley: He says … I think the last time we did this, Scott was there.
Adam: Yeah, Portland. Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah, Scott was there. That’s right.
Hernan: Oh, yeah, last year’s-
Bradley: In Portland, yeah.
Hernan: In Portland.
Bradley: So, what’s up, Scott? We miss having you here buddy.
Adam: You guys crashed my wedding.
Hernan: Oh, yeah, we did. That was fun.
What Are Your Thoughts On Gary Ilyes’ Statement That Google Does Not Read EXIF Data?
So, anyways, he says, “He did say they are considering reading the EXIF metadata in the future. This doesn’t seem to correlate with page rankings that have images with EXIF data. Do you have any news on this topic? Thanks so much.” Yeah, exactly. If Google says, “Don’t do it because it doesn’t work anyways,” that means do more of it. Does that make sense?
Hernan: Or at least-
Chris: [crosstalk 00:22:13] manipulating the search engine.
Bradley: Yeah, that’s right [inaudible 00:22:15] propaganda.
Hernan: Yeah, or at least test it. Test it. See if it works for you. We don’t recommend you following us to the letter. We don’t recommend you follow anyone to the letter.
Bradley: Or Google to the letter.
Hernan: Or Google to the letter for that matter. Go ahead and test it, and report back. That’s what we always recommend. Test.
Bradley: Yeah, and if you’ve tested and you know that the pages with images that have metadata ranked better than the pages that do not, you’ve already proven that Google was misleading you, or just wasn’t being-
Hernan: Fluffing.
Bradley: … wasn’t giving you the full truth, right?
Hernan: Yeah, and it happens when … It happens to me with Facebook, too, right? Facebook grab the whole … When you’re spending some type of money and we have that in the pipeline, by the way, for Semantic Mastery, they will just call you and try to advise you, but the reality is that those are big companies. They are big companies, and most people are on the front lines communicating with the media, communicating out there. They’re not developing the backend, which are the algorithms, how the stuff actually works. You can see that because there are discrepancies.
So, hey, they will go out and say something. Maybe by the time they go out and say something, something else has already changed. So, have that in mind. They’re a big, big companies composed with lot from a lot of people, and they have different points of views, I would say.
Bradley: Yeah. Not only that, but Scott, even if that were true, which I’m saying it’s not, but even if it were true, just think of if you’re saying he did say they are considering to read the EXIF data, well, that means all of the properties that you’ve optimized when they … if they finally decide to start reading the EXIF data, which they already are, but if they decided just tomorrow like “Okay, today’s the day we’re going to start reading EXIF metadata,” then all the pages you’ve optimized will be way better than everybody else.
Adam: Yeah. Scott already commented. So, he’s saying “I plan on continuing adding the EXIF data [crosstalk 00:24:06]-
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:24:06]
Hernan: Yeah, do that.
What Order Of Semantic Mastery Course Can You Recommend For Someone Doing Local SEO For Clients With Rank And Rent Style?
Adam: First of all, and I think Bradley is uniquely positioned to answer this question, but you belong in the Mastermind. There’s no better way to say that. If that’s what you’re doing, and that’s what you want to do, you belong in the Mastermind. You get either a lot of this content for free or severely discounted.
So, with that said, I’ll let Bradley kind of go with it.
Bradley: Well, he says, “I do local SEO for clients and rank and rent style to give you some context.” Then, yeah, there’s no better suggestion than for you to join the Semantic Mastery Mastermind because, as Adam said, both of those courses are, basically, you get those courses. We’re changing slightly how they’re being released and distributed, but you’ll get access to all of those courses and even the ones that have a higher ticket price then where we can just give them to you. You’ll get an insanely stupid discount even more so than our typical 30% discount under the new system that we’re going to be implementing.
So, my point is … just to answer everybody else, okay? The first recommendation is if you already have a business and you’re looking to grow that business and scale it, to increase revenue, that’s what the Mastermind is all about. The Mastermind is not, necessarily, just about SEO stuff. We do talk about advanced SEO training in there when needed: when people bring stuff up, they want us to pursue or to go more in depth, but it’s more about business training because there’s so much more to running a business than just knowing a skill. So, that’s essentially what the Mastermind is all about, in that we are going to be pushing a very specific path, too, of the training in which order you should take it.
That’s something we’ve kind of failed to do in the past because all of our trainings are good. They each teach different things that could all be implemented into your business, but for somebody new coming in and they get hit with a fire hose of information, it’s like, “Okay, where do I start and which in which order, and blah blah blah?” So, we are really … We’re redesigning our Mastermind to kind of lay that path out.
So, I would suggest starting with Local Lease Pro, which we just recently launched. I don’t think we have it available for public sale just yet outside of the original promotion, but we will have that up shortly. Then, from there, it’s up to you, but the next logical step from Local Lease Pro would be Local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro, Local Kingpin, which is setting up the PPC ads for supplemental traffic. That’s also really good if you’re doing client work because you can get clients’ incident results using Google Ads.
Then, from there, Outsource Kingpin. Once you’ve got your services, your products and services in place where you’re able to generate results for clients, or if you’re doing lead gen, you’re able to get results for your lead gen assets. Then, we talk about the next thing is outsource and building your teams so that you can remove yourself from the process and still have your business operate and generate revenue. That’s where outsourcing comes in. So, we would recommend Outsource Kingpin at that time.
So, again, just to kind of boil this down to make it a shorter answer, join the Semantic Mastery Mastermind where this path will be laid out very clearly, and you will get access to the products in that specific order, which will help you to build your business. Each one of those products compounds on the next and helps you at the stage that we recommend, okay?
Chris: Speaking of which, the Local Lease Pro is actually available, but only in the Mastermind right now.
Bradley: Oh, that’s true. That’s true. We don’t even have a public sales page up for it yet.
Adam: Yeah. So, B&B Special Events, one, if you got any questions with people who are serious about joining the Mastermind, if you want, contact support, support@semanticmastery.com. We’ll hook you up. I’m happy to jump on a short call, or something like that, if you’re serious about, it or you just want to find out, or ever you guys “For real, what do I get?” Things like that. We’re happy to have a quick chat with you.
Bradley: Yep. Cool.
So, that was my … The best answer’s come join the Mastermind, but the next best answer is buy each and every one of our courses individually in the order that we tell you, which is the same order that you’re going to get in the Mastermind, but that adds up to be a hell of a lot more money than it would’ve cost you to just join the Mastermind.
Hernan: Plus the support and the community there.
Bradley: That’s correct.
Hernan: The bi-weekly webinars, the Bradley halls, and some of us go there, but the bi-weekly webinars and the Facebook group, like the community there is amazing. We saw it on POFU LIVE. A lot of people where from our Mastermind. They were part of our Mastermind; the community was there. So, yeah, it was pretty, pretty awesome.
So, not only you get … That’s the big point. Not only you get access to all of that training in a specific order at specific times, but you also get support and follow-up, which is, I think, at least for me … It’s a big deal because some courses you can buy them, you can apply them, and then maybe something comes up, right? Maybe some stuff didn’t work as expected or maybe you’re having different results. So, that’s why it’s always good to have a community of people that you can ask questions to and then you can get support out of.
Bradley: That’s it. Interesting side story real quick. POFU LIVE was awesome because we got to meet some people that have been a member of our Semantic Mastery Mastermind for years.
Adam: I’m giving a shout-out to Richie.
Bradley: Yeah, to Richie, to Greg.
Hernan: [inaudible 00:29:38]
Bradley: I’m sorry. I don’t remember Greg’s last name, but-
Adam: [inaudible 00:29:42]
Bradley: No, the other Greg. Anyways, sorry guys, but we had just an amazing event and had some people that came that had been in the Mastermind for years and kind of lurking in the background who don’t participate in the conversations as such, but they came, which was amazing because it was like people came to the event, and they introduced who they are. I’m going, “Okay, I don’t recognize the name,” and then, “I’ve been in the Mastermind for years.” I’m like “Okay, but I still don’t recognize the name.” “Oh, yeah, because I never comment on anything or ask any questions, but I’m always there absorbing information.”
It was awesome to hear that, and they were like “I’m quiet. I don’t want to get out there and talk and have conversations with people, but I know that it’s like one place that I can always go to get current information that’s not bullshit.” It was great to hear that.
Adam: That’s the best response you give. That was awesome.
Hernan: That’s cool, too. If you don’t feel like commenting, that’s cool, too. I would strongly suggest that you do because you get a lot of stuff. Then, there were some-
Adam: Or at least come meet us live so that we know who you are.
Hernan: Ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. There was some business opportunities like actual people making deals on the event and through the [crosstalk 00:30:50]-
Bradley: His name is Gary by the way, not Greg.
Adam: Oh.
Bradley: That’s what I meant to say, Gary, by the way.
Hernan: So, I think that’s pretty powerful, too, because businesses … Our business grew from a Mastermind, you know what I’m saying?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: There’s a gnat flying around, and I’m going to get it. I’m not going crazy I swear.
Should You Take Advantage Of Using The Auto Reschedule Post For Near Me Keywords In Citation Builder Pro?
That’s a great question, Jay. Actually, I just addressed this at POFU LIVE. I’m happy to share that here, though, guys because there is something that you can do to reduce expenses or reduce your overall time required for this because if you’re using the GMB auto poster, our auto poster, there is an option to reschedule a post or republish it.
So, for example, you have to do this. You can’t right now; I don’t think the functionality is available if you do bulk upload via CSV file, but if you do it manually where you schedule each post, you can go in. You can select the time and date for when it publishes, and then there’s another checkbox that says republish post. Then, if you enable that or check that box, it reveals a drop-down that will show you like how many … When would you like to republish? It says one day, every three days, every seven days, and then there’s one for every 30 days.
Excuse me. What I suggest doing is going through and scheduling out 30 posts, one post per day, or whatever your frequency of publishing is for the assets that you’re doing that for. Typically, for most of the stuff I do, I just published one post per day, seven days a week now. Because of the auto poster, it makes it simple. You schedule all those out. So, you schedule out 30 posts for 30 days, and then on each time you schedule a post, you add it to republish 30 days from that day. Does that make sense? So, on day one, you scheduled post one. On day 31, you schedule post one again. Does that make sense?
What’s great about that is you can have it automate it. All you have to do is schedule it one time, and it will automatically post and in the next month, it will just start that cycle over again. Now, I do recommend having probably … We just started this method myself, so I don’t have any data yet to determine whether we should absolutely change the posts or not, but what I would suggest is at least preparing for every 90 days or so swapping out the images and the posts slightly, varying the post text slightly, and then rescheduling.
So again, this is something you can train a VA to do. You can train a VA, set up a training video and process doc, showing them how to go in and schedule 30 posts. You could even train a VA to grab 30 images, or optimize 30 images with EXIF data and all that stuff, optimize them, upload them, schedule them out, and then click the reschedule/republish option, schedule them out for 30 days. Then, have a calendar reminder set up to every 90 days, they go back in, swap 30 images out or 30 posts out, for the next quarter, if that makes sense. That’s something that you can train a VA to do and you wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore and it would get done.
That’s a great question. Absolutely guys, if there’s a way that you can reduce costs for GMB posting … I pay some of my VAs, one in particular who does GMB posts for clients, I pay her per post. So, every post she publishes, she gets a certain amount for them. It’s $3.50 a post. That’s a lot. So, if you can figure out ways to reduce costs, you can do that. Now, for clients, I wouldn’t recommend doing the republishing stuff because you can charge them for unique content for per post, right? But for lead gen assets, I would absolutely recommend that you reduce your costs as possible. That’s a good question Jay.
How Do You Get Faster Results With A Video Carpet Bomb Style Campaign?
It’s a really good question. “With this setup, I can publish 1,000 videos easily over a small period of time. Which would you suggest to start getting some results fast? Thanks as always for Hump Day Hangouts.” Well, that’s up to you, Frankie. I would recommend if affiliate marketing is what you’re interested in, then go do affiliate marketing. If local marketing and lead generation is your thing as you have more of an interest in, then do that, but either way, choose one and stick with it until you monetize it.
Because my point is like if you are … I don’t know what your business goals are. I remember you’ve asked some other questions in the past, though, on Hump Day Hangouts, and I think your questions were more targeted about local marketing consulting, like as a video guy. If that’s the case, then I would recommend you avoid the affiliate route for now because all it’s going to do is distract you, and it’s going to slow you down from being able to perfect your specific video marketing method for lead generation or for rank and rent, or whatever it is, however you decide that you’re going to monetize it.
Guys, we as Semantic Mastery as a group has struggled with not being able to focus or chasing too many different opportunities. So, that’s part of … that’s going to be a lot of our messaging going forward is we have decided to really focus in on what our core offer should be and our core service, right? We recommend you guys do the same, and even for our agent, like my own agency that I’m building into the same thing, I’ve reverted all the way back to just doing the kind of the lead gen model where we build the asset first, and then we find the service provider or the client.
Again, you’re going to see a common theme among all of our training going forward, and that is we’re going to tell you find one thing and don’t give up on that one thing until you’ve monetized it. Don’t start any other projects, don’t chase any new opportunities until you’ve mastered that one or at least got the one profitable to where it’s generating revenue and to where you can remove yourself from that process and it continues to generate revenue, right?
So, for example, even if you went after a lead gen … Let’s just say affiliate marketing with these videos, and you got it to where it was profitable, but you were running the campaigns. You were the one doing the research, finding the products that you’re going to promote, generating the key word list, creating the videos, uploading and running the video, probably marketing blitz or whatever tool it is that you’re running that campaign. You could do all that and end up having a profitable affiliate marketing business, and then say, “Okay, well now it’s profitable. Well, let me go ahead and move on to doing local lead gen with these videos as well.”
But unless you have process ties, you’re systematized, that with the affiliate and all the work that you’ve put in to make an affiliate campaign profitable, you shouldn’t even move on to that. In other words, even though if that might have money be producing positive revenue for you, until you removed yourself from the process and it still generates revenue for you, you shouldn’t move on to the next because otherwise you end up bogging yourself down to where, “Okay, now you’re doing all this work and now you got to do all this work to,” and at some point you’re going to reach a point of diminishing return and you’re going to not be able … You’re going to hit a capacity limit where you won’t be able to make any more money. If you would have been able to remove yourself from that first process that you made profitable when you were doing the work yourself, and still keep it profitable, now you’ve got revenue coming in so that you can devote all your time to the next process that you want to perfect.
Hernan: Yep, I do agree. I mean, we all go through this where we as a group … and then we had that exact same issue with the people that came to POFU LIVE event. The fact that they were making money, they were feeling that they were too distracted, and that’s completely fine. You’re definitely not alone in that regard.
Bradley: That’s correct.
Hernan: We’ve been there. Everyone goes through that because the reality is that we’re entrepreneurs. We want to fix stuff, and we see [inaudible 00:39:02] as an opportunity. So, I totally grew with Bradley. Building a successful business … Once the initial rush, or the initial high, wears off, it’s hard because of the fact that you need to keep at it even when you are not as excited with that project anymore, and then everything else seems so exciting to go ahead and tinker with, but I think that the key to success here and the key to actually building businesses that are really profitable is just what Bradley described. Go at it, whatever it takes you, make it profitable, remove yourself from the equation, and then go to the next thing.
Bradley: Go to your next opportunity.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: I mean guys, that’s the only way to do it. Even in my own business, I could have achieved so much more by this point in my marketing career if I would have focused and not chased every opportunity because I could have become super, super good at one thing, and then pulled myself out of the equation, like he said, out of the process, and have built a system that makes everything that I was doing complete. It gets done without me doing it. Then, I could have moved to the next opportunity and I would’ve had a much more successful business by this point had I done that.
We all go through that, and again, that’s why we really want to help other people to avoid that to where they can get their businesses profitable and get more of their time back at the same time and with less trial and error. Does that make sense?
Adam: If you do that, you could apply the eco method and as sooner place in your business, right?
Hernan: [crosstalk 00:40:30]
Adam: Oh, yeah.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: That’s an inside [crosstalk 00:40:34]-
Hernan: Yeah. We know that; we’re not going to-
Bradley: So, Frankie, my final answer to you would be either way, whether it’s affiliate marketing that you want to do or local marketing, either way will generate you money once you learn what it takes in that particular model. So, just select one and stick with that one is what I’m saying, okay? I can’t tell you which one’s better than the other. I’m partial to local, but affiliate marketing certainly works. So, it’s entirely up to you.
Hernan: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the good news, like they both work. You want to go with local, but with local you want to go ranking YouTube videos, you can do that. As long as you keep on doing what you’re doing, it will work, but you need to give it the time and the opportunity for it to work.
Adam: Greg said, “What’s up?” Then, after that it said the mics are going crazy. So, Greg just wanted to repeat, [Greg Jayburt 00:41:17], fantastic community manager of ours. If you’re in the groups, you see him. We were super happy to have him at POFU LIVE. So, thanks for being there, man.
Bradley: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:41:24]-
Chris: [crosstalk 00:41:25] good meeting you.
Bradley: We had to reiterate that because echo might’ve ruined it. So, Greg, we apologize, man. It was a good attempt to thank you.
What Are Your Thoughts On Press Cable?
All right, Dan is up. He says, “Any feedback on Press Cable, guys?” Let me start that one over. “Any feedback on Press Cable, guys? I have a few credits left there, but wondered if you know if they delete PRs or not in time. I was going to do a first PR there to save money, and then order the rest through your service. Also, is there any day of the week good to publish a PR, or is there a significant enough advantage for doing PR earlier in the week? I remember something to this effect.”
Okay. Dan, great questions. Number one, is Press Cable still good? Absolutely. Absolutely. Press Cable is still good. I still use Press Cable. I’ve got a subscription to that and I will maintain that as well because it is good.
One of the things I do really like about Press Cable now is one of their distribution sites is Newswire.net. I used to have a bunch of credits for Newswire.net and I used them all, and I canceled my subscription like a dummy many years ago. But Newswire.net is a really good site for press releases, too. I don’t use their distribution service anymore. Like I said, I don’t have credits anymore, but through Press Cable, that is one of their distribution points now. So, that’s one that will show up in Google news and that’s something that you can use. It doesn’t purge, so you can use that as a stack of PR in a PR stack. Okay?
So, yes. It’s still good. As far as do they delete or purge PRs, well, it’s not Press Cable that would delete or purge them. It’s their distribution partners, their sites. It’s up to the distribution sites whether they purge or not, not Press Cable. There’s the same problem with Press Advantage or any other distribution sites out there. Some of the Republic … the media sites or news sites will purge, and there’s nothing you can do about that. The idea is to, especially for a PR stack, is define the PRs that don’t get purged. Like I just said, Newswire.net is one of them. The Press Advantage: Anything published on Press Advantage doesn’t get purged and the Press Advantage company pages are great.
Also, for Press Cable, if they get picked up by Digital Journal, which they used to, but I think Newswire.net replaced Digital Journal, but Digital Journal doesn’t purge either, at least as far as I know because I’ve got some Digital Journal stuff that’s been around for years. So, I would check into that as well.
And Adam, since you’re getting up, would you mind getting me a beer?
Adam: Funny. I’m one step ahead of you.
Bradley: All right. Sweet. Thank you.
Adam: [crosstalk 00:43:49]
Bradley: That’s awesome.
Chris: I’m good.
Hernan: I’m good. Thank you.
Bradley: Okay. So, yeah, Press Cable is absolutely still good, and Dan, yeah. I’ve never recommended in the past keep … If you have a subscription or credits, don’t cancel it because even if you decide that you want to start using presses, press releases from us and MDYB, which is our distribution service is Press Advantage Service, which is fabulous by the way. Even if you decide that you want to use that, I recommend keeping multiple press distribution services available because diversity of links is important, okay? I like to add variety and diversity into mine, too. If you keep hitting the same press release distribution service over and over and over again, there will be a diminishing return for that as well, like to the same target URLs, I mean, if that makes sense.
Adam: Here you go.
Hernan: And then-
Bradley: Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers.
Adam: Cheers.
Male: [inaudible 00:44:39]
Hernan: Because Greg was saying something like … Let me grab this from him … was something that … Answering to Dan, he was saying, “I would do that in reverse. Spend a little money for a Press Advantage press release from Semantic Mastery, it will not purge, meaning it will be there for years and years from now, and you get a news media room as a pure hub. Then, use the Press Cable to link to it.”
Bradley: To link to that, correct.
I’m telling you the Press Advantage network is amazing. The organization pages are fabulous with now the mapping beds, especially the GMB mapping bed right under the NAP. It’s really a powerful … It’s got the eye frame built into it. It’s fabulous, guys. It really is. It’s an integral part of our process now.
Any Thoughts In Using Square Videos In YouTube And Facebook?
Hernan: Yeah. You can Brian. I would strongly, a 100%, recommend that you start using Square Videos on Facebook right away just because of the fact that Facebook is mostly mobile right now. At least most of the traffic that we get is mostly mobile.
Adam: Today I learned, right?
Hernan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A 100%. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:45:50]-
Adam: I mean, I know that traffic is, but Square.
Hernan: Yeah, Square versus like landscape videos, the way that YouTube is. Now, you can repurpose Square Videos for YouTube if you add the remaining content to the … You can add parts with content to the sites of the videos. So, you will make it landscape, 69 versus one to one. So, that is something that I would recommend, strongly recommend, for people who are going to Facebook and wanting to repurpose to YouTube. So, you can do that, which is square first, then landscape, or you can do the other way around, which is you get a landscape video, 69, and then you turn that into one one by adding content on the top or the bottom.
So, that is up to you. What I usually do is to grab a YouTube video, cut it, cut it in the middle, like this. So, you cut in the middle-
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:46:39]
Adam: [crosstalk 00:46:40]
Hernan: … so you have a one to one ratio, and you can use that for Facebook. That’s usually what I do because … that’s because I’m lazy.
Bradley: Damn. So, he’s not only drinking beer, he’s drinking scotch, too. Wow.
Hernan: It’s going to get interesting the last-
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:46:50]. The last 10 minutes of this Hangout are going to be nuts.
Hernan: Going to be nuts. So, hang in there.
Bradley: That was a good question, Brian.
Wayne Clayton, the master of memes. Did he post that [crosstalk 00:47:02]? He should’ve.
Adam: We’re not … Yeah, I was about to say we’re not skipping this. Wayne, if you’ve got it, please put it on. [crosstalk 00:47:06].
Bradley: If you got it, you got to post it. Also, the one that you did where you showed the … you put the image on Gemina’s phone, too, because that was amazing and Hernan holding beers. He made these great memes, guys, from POFU. It was awesome. Wayne always does. We missed you, Wayne, at the event. We really did.
Hernan: Yeah, man.
Chris: And I really loved the one where I balance the woman on my [crosstalk 00:47:27]-
Bradley: Yeah, yeah, and Chris-
Hernan: Keep on walking.
Adam: Yeah, Chris gets the cool one with the good looking woman in his hands.
Male: [crosstalk 00:47:32]
Bradley: And I’m in drag.
Chris: [inaudible 00:47:35]
Hernan: If you haven’t seen them by the way, if they’re are not there, they’re in the free Facebook group. So, sematicmastery.com/facebook will take you to the free Facebook group.
Bradley: They were great. They were great. Thank you, Wayne. We knew you … You have entirely too much time on your hand, which is really the problem.
Hernan: Which is … So, good job.
Bradley: Yeah, right. He been listening, apparently. Right.
That’s right. Good man.
How Long Before Google Knows The Loophole in GMB Lead Generation And What Should You Do With It?
Bradley: Really, really scale it. Yeah. Through, essentially, the Local Lease Pro method, but-
Adam: On steroids.
Bradley: Yeah, on steroids with process development, all that other stuff. It’s still not 100% complete, but it will be very, very soon. That’s so like our … The members of POFU LIVE that are going to participate with me … We’ve got a 90-day goal to build 50 GMB assets in the next 90 days. Then, by then, we’ll have the processes in place to where we double or [inaudible 00:49:05] work. We’ll have the processes and the virtual assistance in place to do the work for us.
So, within the next six months, my goal is to have anywhere between 200 to 250 GMB assets, which is huge. So, take advantage of that because once you have something like that, now think about even if they were to close that loophole. Let’s say that happens, and say, I didn’t even come close to my target goal and I hit 125. Well, I’ve got 100 and some odd GMB assets out there now that I can be using as leverage to contact and prospect for clients or service providers, but I could go back to … if that loophole gets entirely shut down, which it likely will at some point, then we will have already developed an asset that we can use as leverage for going back to the standard client model. Does that make sense?
Male: Yes.
Bradley: And so my point is again, guys, if you’ve been through any of the training … Bill, I don’t know if you’ve been through our training about this or not. That’s why I recommend you find one industry and you really scale building assets in that one very specific industry because now you will have all of this data and you’ll have all of these assets that are valuable to one particular industry. You can craft your sales message, all of your marketing materials, everything to that one very specific industry type or business type, and you’ll be able to scale much quicker that way. If you have to do all of that for each industry that you have, think about the enormity of the amount of work that you have to do.
Chris: [inaudible 00:50:28]
Bradley: All the sales copy and all the VSLs and all the emails are now … I mean, all of that. You have to duplicate everything you do for each new industry. That’s an enormous amount of work, so just stick with one, and become the go-to expert in that one particular industry, okay?
Hernan: You can use something like the Eagle Method for that [inaudible 00:50:47].
Bradley: That’s twice now. It’s twice now you’ve created that open loop. See. See how it all comes together.
Male: [crosstalk 00:50:53]
Chris: Yeah, I guess I missed out on [crosstalk 00:50:57].
Bradley: Yeah, I know.
Jordan Valor. Jordan, what’s up buddy? We missed you there, too, man.
Adam: Hey, man? Oh, man. Jordan, you remember that place we ate at in Texas? We found Funnel Hacking Live.
Jordan, that’s exactly right. I’m glad you said that, man, because if Marco were here, which he’s not because he had some, I don’t know, insignificant thing to attend to, like his wife having a baby-
Adam: Some sort of life event or something like that.
Bradley: If Marco were here, he would tell you local is relative to the observer, right? What is local? It’s relative to the observer.
Hernan: That’s [crosstalk 00:51:55].
Bradley: So, local could be hyper-local, like what we’re doing with the Local Lease Pro method, or local could be a specific city or a specific county, or it could be a state or it could be a region, or it could be a country or [inaudible 00:52:09]. So, really it just depends on what your particular business model is. Most of what we teach can be applied to whatever your location area is or location range is. Obviously, there’s some stuff that’s very specific to local, but for the most part, our [inaudible 00:52:24] will still look to that as well.
Hernan: Yeah, definitely.
Adam: Well, as an example just for the general public-
Bradley: Here’s another one.
Adam: … could you apply the Local Lease Pro method to somebody who wants to take over a state?
Bradley: Yes, absolutely you could.
Chris: Hell, yeah.
Bradley: Yeah, yeah.
Adam: Cool.
Bradley: In fact, the Local Lease Pro method is about hyper-local, but scaling it to a national basis. So, my point is like you go hyper-local, but you create a ton of assets that you could literally build on a national basis-
Adam: That’s pretty cool.
Bradley: … depending on how quickly you can do it before they close the loophole [crosstalk 00:52:53].
Hernan: Yeah, and speaking of SEO Ultimate Boot Camp, shout out to Jeffrey for being on the POFU LIVE event. That was awesome.
Adam: Jeffrey Smith, SEO design solutions, SEO Boot Camp-
Hernan: Yeah, Jeffrey Smith.
Adam: He joined us, gave a fucking killer presentation.
Bradley: Yeah. He’s bad ass, man. I really like Jeffery. He’s amazing. We’re so honored to have him.
Adam: Word on the street is that he might be there next year [inaudible 00:53:12], maybe.
Chris: Bradley got ears big like that when [inaudible 00:53:16].
Are There Any SEO Tips Using Video Thumbnails Posted To GMB?
Bradley: All right. So, Jim Greene’s up, and he says, “Random question: are there any SEO tips using video thumbnails posted to GMB?” Yeah, well here’s a better tip, Jim. Don’t just post the video thumbnail, post the video to GMB; upload it directly to GMB. So, instead of posting like a YouTube link in the post and then just using the video thumbnail, what I recommend is literally taking the video file and uploading it as the post itself. What we found recently was GMB posts, just image posts, get a certain amount of engagement depending on, obviously, what the industry is, the level of interest in the specific location that you’re marketing in, and all that. That will determine how many views like an image posts gets, right?
But for example, I’ve got a client that is in the preschool space. Let’s use this as an example. I’ve got a client that’s in the preschool space that we post image posts, GMB image posts, and within a week, they might get 150 to 250 views within seven days on that image post. Well, I just took one of their rep videos. I use David Sprague’s review commercials to generate reputation videos or review commercial videos or whatever for my clients once a month. So, I decided one day … We’re doing the video anyways, and so I said one day, “Hey, let me try this.” Then, I uploaded the actual video file to GMB posts and when I did, like within seven days … Typically, a GM image posts would only have between 150 to 250 views in seven days. It was well over 600 views in seven days. So, I was like, “Oh, man. I’m onto something here.”
Very similar to Facebook, guys. I mean, it makes sense. Facebook, when you post a regular image post in a Facebook group, or excuse me, on a Facebook page, you only get about 5% reach to whatever the number of followers of that page are. So, for example, an image post will only get 5%. Of the thousand members, you’re going to get 50 people that might actually be exposed to that image post, but if you do like a Facebook Live video, then you’ll get 30% reach to the same audience, right? I think Google’s applying the same thing is they’re pushing the videos more because they get more engagement, so you’ll see a bit more views.
So, there you go, Jim. You upload the video instead of just the image, okay?
Hernan: Yep.
Bradley: Frankie says, “Wow, that spoke right to the heart. Thank you, Bradley, and all you guys.” You’re welcome, Frankie.
Hernan: [inaudible 00:55:42] Frankie.
Bradley: That’s awesome. Thank you man.
What Is The Difference Between GMB Pro And GMB Optimization?
Adam: I’m just wondering is there some other service out there?
Bradley: I don’t know.
Hernan: Probably.
Bradley: [crosstalk 00:56:28]
Adam: Anyway [inaudible 00:56:29] … Who was it that asked that? Was it Brian? So Brian, since we’ve still got a few minutes left, if there’s some other product or something out there, let us know. If you can clarify, maybe we can answer better.
Bradley: Wayne put that meme in there. That’s awesome.
Okay, Greg’s up. He says, “[inaudible 00:56:45] I would do that in reverse, but a little money for Press Advantage press release from SL.”
Male: [inaudible 00:56:50]
Bradley: Okay. Yeah, he already talked about that. Thank you, Greg. That’s good advice by the way. In Wayne’s meme, it’s amazing. Thanks, Wayne.
Okay. Paul says, “They have already started closing the loopholes. Google has started turnover in that department inside the …” Well, that’s possible, Paul. But you know, guys, we’ll find a work-around. Don’t we always?
Hernan: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:57:15].
Chris: As far as I know, it’s still working.
Bradley: Hammer time. Look at that, all those memes. Thanks, Wayne.
Chris: There you go.
Bradley: That’s awesome.
How Do You Change No Follow Links To Do Follow In Press Release?
Brian says, “Anyone tried changing nofollow links to dofollow links and press releases by editing an HTML view?” Brian, it’s funny you mention that because that was a hack that I used to do at Newswire.net because you could publish the … you could save … So, you’d go in and you put all your text and your links into the press release, and then you would save it as a draft, and then you would submit for publishing, which would go to the editors for review. But when you saved for draft or submit for publishing, it would change all of the links to nofollow.
So, what I would do is always go save as drafts, and then before hitting submit for publishing, I would go into the HTML view and edit the nofollow tag out. Then, I would submit for publishing before hitting save for draft again, and it would send it with the nofollow tag removed and they would publish it that way. It was a hack I didn’t tell anybody about because I didn’t want them closing that loophole at Newswire.net. I just spilled the beans now because I don’t know if that’s still available, and I don’t have any credits left.
Male: Go for it.
Bradley: But as far as like Press Advantage, I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t know about Press Cable either because, typically, you … Again, in either Press Advantage or Press Cable, I don’t see an HTML view. There’s not a way for me to edit the text. It’s just the [inaudible 00:58:42] editor. So, they insert the nofollow links. There’s not much you can do about it. But Brian, if you’re on a platform where you do, yeah, try it. See what you can do. See if you can edit it out. That’s a good thing to do.
Adam: Our POFU video’s going to be released, especially, to Mastermind members. That’s-
Male: [inaudible 00:59:02]
Adam: That’s TBD.
Male: [crosstalk 00:59:04]
Hernan: Yeah, that’s TBD. Yeah, we definitely recorded them. So, we have them. We’re going to be adding them. They’re going to be out for attendees.
Bradley: Yes.
Hernan: Not sure what’s going up next.
Bradley: Yeah, because the Mastermind members are going to get the process training for the Local Lease Pro scaling method once the POFU LIVE members and I get through our 90-day challenge. We’re going through a build group together where most of the members are going to be joining me for the next 90 days, and our goal is to hit 50 GMB assets, built and optimized by the end of 90 days. If we can do it, then they’re going to help me to refine the process training and all that, too. Then, that’s when I’m going to release it to you guys.
I know I’ve mentioned that I was going to try to release it between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s likely going to be … Well, 90 days is going to be beyond that, but it’s worth the wait. I’d rather give it to you guys in a more polished form than in its raw form. Obviously, though, Mastermind members, if anybody really wants it in its more raw form, reach out to me and I’ll work something out with you, okay?
Hernan: Cool.
Adam: You heard that, reach out to Bradley directly.
Bradley: What’s that?
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Through support [crosstalk 01:00:05].
Male: [crosstalk 01:00:05]
Bradley: No, Mastermind members can contact me in the group at anytime, at anytime.
Adam: Bradley loves Facebook, so it’s the best place to [inaudible 01:00:14].
Hernan: Yeah, we can. Can we put Bradley’s phone number right here on the event page?
Bradley: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.
Adam: That was good and it’s not because [crosstalk 01:00:22].
Bradley: [crosstalk 01:00:22]
Adam: During the Hump Day Hangouts, but I remember the very first … just want to share this fun tidbit with people. The very first draft of emails that we had as an autoresponder, like “Thank you for joining Semantic Mastery,” … This is like four years ago now. Hernan included Bradley’s phone number.
Hernan: Oh, I did. Oh, man, sorry. That was there for quite a bit, actually, for maybe a year, something, and you were getting these calls [crosstalk 01:00:45]-
Adam: The crazy part is how many people don’t call today, but anyways, don’t call Bradley.
Chris: You mean the 976 number?
Adam: Yes.
Chris: That’s so funny.
Adam: Hold on. We need to go register it.
Hernan: Sorry man. Sorry.
Bradley: All right guys. Well, I think we’re going to wrap it up. We’ve got lots of beer to drink, and apparently lots of beef jerky to eat.
The debate is over and the results are clear: the best way to improve domain authority is to generate large numbers of earned links from high-authority publishers.
Getting these links is not possible via:
Link exchanges
Buying links
Private Blog Networks, or PBNs
Comment links
Paid native content or sponsored posts
Any other method you may have encountered
There is no shortcut. The only way to earn these links is by creating content that is so interesting, relevant, and newsworthy to a publisher’s audience that the publisher will want to write about that content themselves.
Success, then, is predicated on doing three things extremely well:
Developing newsworthy content (typically meaning that content is data-driven)
Understanding who to pitch for the best opportunity at success and natural syndication
Writing and sending pitches effectively
We’ve covered point 1 and point 3 on other Moz posts. Today, we are going to do a deep dive into point 2 and investigate methods for understanding and choosing the best possible places to pitch your content. Specifically, we will reveal the hidden news syndication networks that can mean the difference between generating less than a handful or thousands of links from your data-driven content.
Understanding News Syndication Networks
Not all news publishers are the same. Some publishers behave as hubs, or influencers, generating the stories and content that is then “picked up” and written about by other publishers covering the same or similar beats.
Some of the top hubs should be obvious to anyone: CNN, The New York Times, BBC, or Reuters, for instance. Their size, brand authority, and ability to break news make them go-to sources for the origination of news and some of the most common places journalists and writers from other publications go to for story ideas. If your content gets picked up by any of these sites, it’s almost certain that you will enjoy widespread syndication of your story to nearly everywhere that could be interested without any intervention on your part.
Unfortunately, outside of the biggest players, it’s often unclear which other sites also enjoy “Hub Status,” acting as a source for much of the news writing that happens around any specific topic or beat.
At Fractl, our experience pitching top publishers has given us a deep intuition of which domains are likely to be our best bet for the syndication potential of content we create on behalf of our clients, but we wanted to go a step further and put data to the question. Which publishers really act as the biggest hubs of content distribution?
To get a better handle on this question, we took a look at the link networks of the top 400 most trafficked American publishers online. We then utilized Gephi, a powerful network visualization tool to make sense of this massive web of links. Below is a visualization of that network.
Before explaining further, let’s detail how the visualization works:
Each colored circle is called a node. A node represents one publisher/website
Node size is related to Domain Authority. The larger the node, the more domain authority it has.
The lines between the nodes are called edges, and represent the links between each publisher.
The strength of the edges/links corresponds to the total number of links from one publisher to another. The more links from one publisher to another, the stronger the edge, and the more “pull” exerted between those two nodes toward each other.
You can think of the visualization almost like an epic game of tug of war, where nodes with similar link networks end up clustering near each other.
The colors of the nodes are determined by a “Modularity” algorithm that looks at the overall similarity of link networks, comparing all nodes to each other. Nodes with the same color exhibit the most similarity. The modularity algorithm implemented in Gephi looks for the nodes that are more densely connected together than to the rest of the network
Once visualized, important takeaways that can be realized include the following:
The most “central” nodes, or the ones appearing near the center of the graph, are the ones that enjoy links from the widest variety of sites. Naturally, the big boys like Reuters, CNN and the NYTimes are located at the center, with large volumes of links incoming from all over.
Tight clusters are publishers that link to each other very often, which creates a strong attractive force and keeps them close together. Publishers like these are often either owned by the same parent company or have built-in automatic link syndication relationships. A good example is the Gawker Network (at the 10PM position). The closeness of nodes in this network is the result of heavy interlinking and story syndication, along with the effects of site-wide links shared between them. A similar cluster appears at the 7PM position with the major NBC-owned publishers (NBC.com, MSNBC.com, Today.com, etc.). Nearby, we also see large NBC-owned regional publishers, indicating heavy story syndication also to these regional owned properties.
Non-obvious similarities between the publishers can also be gleaned. For instance, notice how FoxNews.com and TMZ.com are very closely grouped, sharing very similar link profiles and also linking to each other extensively. Another interesting cluster to note is the Buzzfeed/Vice cluster. Notice their centrality lies somewhere between serious news and lifestyle, with linkages extending out into both.
Sites that cover similar themes/beats are often located close to each other in the visualization. We can see top-tier lifestyle publishers clustered around the 1PM position. News publishers clustered near other news publishers with similar political leanings. Notice the closeness of Politico, Salon, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Similarly, notice the proximity of Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and BizPacReview. These relationships hint at hidden biases and relationships in how these publishers pick up each other’s stories.
A More Global Perspective
Last year, a fascinating project by Kalev Leetaru at Forbes looked at the dynamics Google News publishers in the US and around the world. The project leveraged GDelt’s massive news article dataset, and visualized the network with Gephi, similarly to the above network discussed in the previous paragraph.
This visualization differs in that the link network was built looking only at in-context links, whereas the visualization featured in the previous paragraph looked at all links. This is perhaps an even more accurate view of news syndication networks because it better parses out site-wide links, navigation links, and other non-context links that impact the graph. Additionally, this graph was generated using more than 121 million articles from nearly every country in the world, containing almost three-quarters of a billion individual links. It represents one of the most accurate pictures of the dynamics of the global news landscape ever assembled.
Edge weights were determined by the total number of links from each node to each other node. The more links, the stronger the edge. Node sizes were calculated using Pagerank in this case instead of Domain Authority, though they are similar metrics.
Using this visualization, Mr. Leetaru was able to infer some incredibly interesting and potentially powerful relationships that have implications for anyone who pitches mainstream publishers. Some of the most important include:
In the center of the graph, we see a very large cluster. This cluster can be thought of as essentially the “Global Media Core,” as Mr. Leetaru puts it. Green nodes represent American outlets. This, as with the previous example, shows the frequency with which these primary news outlets interlink and cover each other’s stories, as well as how much less frequently they cite sources from smaller publications or local and regional outlets.
Interestingly, CNN seems to play a unique role in the dissemination to local and regional news. Note the many links from CNN to the blue cluster on the far right. Mr. Leetaru speculates this could be the result of other major outlets like the NYTimes and the Washington Post using paywalls. This point is important for anyone who pitches content. Paywalls should be something taken into consideration, as they could potentially significantly reduce syndication elsewhere.
The NPR cluster is another fascinating one, suggesting that there is heavy interlinking between NPR-related stories and also between NPR and the Washington Post and NYTimes. Getting a pickup on NPR’s main site could result in syndication to many of its affiliates. NYTimes or Washington Post pickups could also have a similar effect due to this interlinking.
For those looking for international syndication, there are some other interesting standouts. Sites like NYYibada.com cover news in the US. They are involved with Chinese language publications, but also have versions in other languages, including English. Sites like this might not seem to be good pitch targets, but could likely be pitched successfully given their coverage of many of the same stories as US-based English language publications.
The blue and pink clusters at the bottom of the graph are outlets from the Russian and Ukrainian press, respectively. You will notice that while the vast majority of their linking is self-contained, there seem to be three bridges to international press, specifically via the BBC, Reuters, and AP. This suggests getting pickups at these outlets could result in much broader international syndication, at least in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Additionally, the overall lack of deep interlinking between publications of different languages suggests that it is quite difficult to get English stories picked up internationally.
Sites like ZDnet.com have foreign language counterparts, and often translate their stories for their international properties. Sites like these offer unique opportunities for link syndication into mostly isolated islands of foreign publications that would be difficult to reach otherwise.
I would encourage readers to explore this interactive more. Isolating individual publications can give deep insight into what syndication potential might be possible for any story covered. Of course, many factors impact how a story spreads through these networks. As a general rule, the broader the syndication network, the more opportunities that exist.
Link Syndication in Practice
Over our 6 years in business, Fractl has executed more than 1,500 content marketing campaigns, promoted using high-touch, one-to-one outreach to major publications. Below are two views of content syndication we have seen as a result of our content production and promotion work.
Let’s first look just at a single campaign.
Recently, Fractl scored a big win for our client Signs.com with our “Branded in Memory” campaign, which was a fun and visual look at how well people remember brand logos. We had the crowd attempt to recreate well-known brand logos from memory, and completed data analysis to understand more deeply which brands seem to have the best overall recall.
As a result of strategic pitching, the high public appeal, and the overall "coolness" factor of the project, it was picked up widely by many mainstream publications, and enjoyed extensive syndication.
Here is what that syndication looked like in network graph form over time:
If you are interested in seeing and exploring the full graph, you can access the interactive by clicking on the gif above, or clicking here. As with previous examples, node size is related to domain authority.
A few important things to note:
The orange cluster of nodes surrounding the central node are links directly to the landing page on Signs.com.
Several pickups resulted in nodes (publications) that themselves generated many numbers of links pointing at the story they wrote about the Signs.com project. The blue cluster at the 8PM position is a great example. In this case it was a pickup from BoredPanda.com.
Nodes that do not link to Signs.com are secondary syndications. They pass link value through the node that links to Signs.com, and represent an opportunity for link reclamation. Fractl follows up on all of these opportunities in an attempt to turn these secondary syndications into do-follow links pointing directly at our client’s domain.
An animated view gives an interesting insight into the pace of link accumulation both to the primary story on Signs.com, but also to the nodes that garnered their own secondary syndications. The GIF represents a full year of pickups. As we found in my previous Moz post examining link acquisition over time, roughly 50% of the links were acquired in the first month, and the other 50% over the next 11 months.
Now, let’s take a look at what syndication networks look like when aggregated across roughly 3 months worth of Fractl client campaigns (not fully comprehensive):
If you are interested in exploring this in more depth, click here or the above image for the interactive. As with previous examples, node size is related to domain authority.
A few important things to note:
The brown cluster near the center labeled “placements” are links pointing back directly to the landing pages on our clients’ sites. Many/most of these links were the result of pitches to writers and editors at those publications, and not as a result of natural syndication.
We can see many major hubs with their own attached orbits of linking nodes. At 9PM, we see entrepreneur.com, at 12PM we see CNBC.com, 10PM we see USAToday, etc.
Publications with large numbers of linking nodes surrounding them are examples of prime pitching targets, given how syndications link back to stories on those publications appear in this aggregate view.
Putting it All Together
New data tools are enabling the ability to more deeply understand how the universe of news publications and the larger "blogosphere" operate dynamically. Network visualization tools in particular can be put to use to yield otherwise impossible insights about the relationships between publications and how content is distributed and syndicated through these networks.
The best part is that creating visualizations with your own data is very straightforward. For instance, the link graphs of Fractl content examples, along with the first overarching view of news networks, was built using backlink exports from SEMrush. Additionally, third party resources such as Gdelt offer tools and datasets that are virtually unexplored, providing opportunity for deep understanding that can convey significant advantages for those looking to optimize their content promotion and syndication process.
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