In episode 286 of Semantic Mastery’s Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked if one can use an English press release to a non-English site.
The exact question was:
Hi Guys: 1) Can we use a press release in english sites with english posts to a non-english site?
Posted by Paddy_Moogan
Over the years, I’ve often referred to our link building work as “campaigns”, which isn't wrong, but isn’t completely right, either. I think that as an industry we need to alter our mindset to focus on what link building should be: an ongoing, integrated, business-as-usual activity.
Link building processes that work for brands now and that will continue to work in the future need to sit closer to the rest of the business. This means tighter integration with other disciplines, or at the very least, acknowledgment that link building isn’t a siloed activity or dark art like it used to be.
In this post, I’d like to propose how we should think about link building and share some ways to make it more sustainable, efficient, and effective.
I want to start by being super clear on something, and I make no apologies for reiterating this throughout this post: Link building campaigns aren’t a bad thing. My core point is that they should be thought of as one piece of the puzzle — not something we should focus all of our time and attention on.
“Campaign”, in the context of link building or digital PR, implies a few things:
There is nothing wrong with these as such, but link building shouldn’t be thought about only in these ways. If link building is seen as a series of one-off activities, or about a specific thing and with a start and end point, it’s never going to be integrated into a business the way it should be. It will always sit around the edges of marketing activity and not benefit the bottom line as much as it could.
Even if you are reading this thinking that you’re okay because you have lots of campaigns lined up — maybe one a week, one a month, or one a quarter — the core problems still exist, but at a more zoomed-out level.
As digital marketers, we want link building to be:
Let me demonstrate the final point with the graph below, which is the monthly performance of an Aira client on a 6-8 week campaign schedule:
On the face of it, this looks pretty good. We built over 200 links in 12 months, and were ahead of target in terms of individual campaign objectives.
This graph is the reality of link building campaign execution. We were honest and up-front with clients about the results, and those peaks and dips are perfectly normal.
But it could (and should) be a lot better.
Let’s take a quick step back.
The uncomfortable truth for many link builders is that a business shouldn’t really need to worry about link building as an intentional, proactive activity. Instead, links should be a natural consequence of a fantastic product or service which is marketed and branded well.
However, companies in this position are the exception rather than the rule, which means that as link builders, we still have a job!
I’d argue that there are only a relatively small number of businesses that truly don’t need to worry about link building. Think of the likes of well-established and popular brands like Apple, McDonalds, Amazon and Coca-Cola. These companies truly are the exception, rather than the rule.
Trying to be an exception and aiming to reach the nirvana of never actively worrying about link building should absolutely be your goal. Putting efforts into areas such as product development, customer service, content strategy, and brand building will all pay dividends when it comes to link building. But they all take time and you need to generate organic traffic sooner rather than later in order to grow the business.
Link building, as part of your larger integrated and robust digital strategy can get you there quicker. I worry that businesses often leave money on the table by waiting for that nirvana to come. They may indeed get there, but could they have gotten there sooner?
The question then becomes, how do they move quicker toward that ideal state, and what does link building look like in the interim? Running campaigns can help for sure, but you’re not really building upward as quickly as you could be.
This is the crux of my worry and problem with running link building campaigns and allowing our strategies to lean on them too heavily:
When the campaigns stop, so will the links.
I know, I know — Aira launches campaigns all the time.
Yes, we have launched many, many link building campaigns at Aira over the years and have been nominated for campaign-specific awards for some of them. I’ve even written about them many times. Campaign-led link building has a very valuable part to play in the world of link building, but we need to reframe our thinking and move away from campaigns as the primary way to generate links to a business.
It’s not just about results. It’s about driving the right behaviors within businesses, too.
Putting link building in the corner of a one-off project or campaign-led activity is not going to encourage habitual link building. It will drive behaviors and thinking which you don’t really want, such as:
Working under these pressures is not going to make your life easy, nor are you going to do the best job you possibly can.
I worry that as an industry, we’ve become too focused on launching campaign after campaign and have gotten too far away from effecting change within organizations through our work.
As digital marketers, we are trying to influence behaviors. Ultimately, it’s about the behaviors of customers, but before that point it’s about influencing stakeholders — whether you’re an agency or in-house SEO, our first job is to get things done. In order to do that, link building needs to be thought of as a business-as-usual (BAU) activity. Campaigns have a place, but are part of a much, much bigger picture. Link building needs to get to the point where it’s not “special” to build links to a content piece, it’s just done. If we can get there, not only will we accelerate the businesses we work with toward link building nirvana, but we will add much, much more value to them in the meantime.
It is my firm belief that in order to mature as an industry, and specifically as an activity, link building needs to be understood much more than it currently is. It still suffers from the issues that plagued SEO for many years in the early days when it truly was a dark art and we were figuring it out as we went along.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve come a long way, especially since April 2012 (can you really believe it was over eight years ago?!) when link building began evolving into a content-led practice thanks in part to the Penguin update.
But we still have further to go.
We need to get out of the corner of “launching a campaign” and train our bosses and clients to ask questions like, “How can link building help here?” and “Is there a link building opportunity in this activity?”.
The best way I can explain this shift in thinking is to give you a real example of how we’ve done it at Aira. I can’t give you the exact client, but I can give you an overview of the journey we’ve been on with them, supporting an SEO team that is relentlessly committed to getting things done — the perfect partners for such an initiative.
I should also point out that this has never been easy. We are on this journey with a number of our clients, and some of them are barely into it. The examples here show what happens when you get it right — but it does take time, and the reality is that it may never happen for some businesses.
One campaign. That was it. One shot to get links and show the client what we could do.
We failed.
This was back in 2016. We were lucky in that the client trusted the process and understood why things had gone wrong on this occasion. So, they gave us another chance and this time did a great job.
From there, the project grew and grew to the point where we were launching scaled campaigns like clockwork and getting links consistently. All was well.
Then I was asked a question by someone on the client’s team:
“What’s the evolution of our link building?”
Whilst link building is never far from my mind, I didn’t have a mental model to answer this straight away with any conviction — particularly given what I knew about this client and their industry. I took some time to think about it and consolidate a bunch of observations and opinions I’d actually had for years, but never really made concrete.
Side note: It’s often hard to take a step back from the day-to-day of what you’re doing and think about the bigger picture or the future. It’s even more difficult when you’re growing a business and generally doing good work. It can be hard to justify “rocking the boat” when things are going well, but I’ve learned that you need to find time for this reflection. For me at that point in time, it took a direct question from my client to force me into that mindset.
I confirmed that our existing model of link building for them was something that was likely to continue working and adding value, but that it should NOT be our sole focus in the coming years.
Then, I explained what I’ve talked about in this post thus far.
I told them that our work wasn’t good enough, despite them being one of our happiest, most long-standing clients. We were getting hundreds of links a month, but we could do better.
Running campaign after campaign and getting links to each one would not be good enough in the future. Sure it works now, but what about in two years? Five?? Probably only partly.
We knew we needed to bridge the gap between different content types:
We’d only been focusing on the first one, pretty much in isolation. We’d come up with some relevant topic ideas, build them out and get links. Job done.
This wouldn’t be good enough a few years down the road, because link building would be taking place in a small pocket of a very large organization with limited integration.
It’s now been over a year since that conversation and guess what? Our campaigns are still working great, but we are evolving to do so much more.
If you haven’t taken a look at what else your business is doing and where link building can add value, this is the first step towards better integration, and thus better link building. By the time the conversation above happened, we’d already recognized the need to integrate with other teams within the client’s organization, so we had a head start.
With the help of the client’s SEO team, we started to discover other activities within the organization which we could add value to or leverage for greater wins:
All of these opportunities sowed the seeds for a new focus on the evolution of link building, and pushed us to move quicker into a few things including:
Just one year from that open and honest conversation, we have been able to show our value beyond launching campaign after campaign whilst still building links to the client’s content. This will hold value for years to come and mean that their reliance on campaigns will be reduced more and more over time.
We’re making good progress toward taking our reliance off campaigns and making it part of our strategy — not all of it. Yes, campaigns still drive the majority of links, but our strategy now includes some key changes:
Link building isn’t quite a BAU activity just yet for this client, but it’s not far off from becoming one. The practice is taken seriously, not just within the SEO team, but also within the wider marketing team. There is more awareness than there has ever been.
I want to share the framework which we’ve used to support and visualize the shift away from campaigns as our sole link building strategy.
We’ve been aware for a while that we need to ensure any link building work we do is topically relevant. We’d found ourselves defaulting to content which was campaign-led and focused on links, as opposed to content that can serve other purposes.
Link builders need to take a long, hard look at the topics we want our clients and businesses to be famous for, credible to talk about, and that resonate with their audience. Once you have these topics, you can start to plan your content execution. After that, you’ll start to see where link building fits in.
Contrast this with the approach of “we need links, let’s come up with some relevant content ideas to help do that.” This can work, but isn’t as effective.
To help clients shift their strategies, we put together the framework below. Here’s how it works:
Let’s imagine we sell products that help customers sleep better. We may come up with the following themes and topics:
Notice that “Campaigns” is only one format. We’re also acknowledging that topics and themes can not only lead to other forms of content (and links), but also that our KPIs may not always be just links.
If we put together a long-form content guide on the science of sleep, it may not get on the front page of the New York Times, but it may get a slow, steady stream of links and organic search traffic. This traffic could include potential customers for a sleep product.
Once you have a specific topic in mind, you can go deeper into that topic and start thinking about what content pieces you can create to truly demonstrate expertise and authority. This will differ by client and by topic, but it could look something like this:
In this case, the blue circles denote a topic + format which may be link-worthy. While the orange ones denote a valuable execution that aren’t as link-worthy, we may still want to create this content for longer-term link and traffic generation.
Link building campaigns still have huge amounts of value. But if that’s all you’re doing for clients, you’re leaving opportunities behind. Think bigger and beyond campaigns to see what else can be done to move you and your business closer to link building nirvana.
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In episode 286 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked about the best way to continue using the Battle Plan v3.
The exact question was:
I just recently read the Battleplan 3.0 that I got last year. I didn’t realize it wasn’t recommended to do a multi tier syndication network for a blog. Since I had already purchased it and had it connected, what is the best way to continue using it? Disconnect the tiers? Syndicate other content to the additional tiers? Should I just curate other content and post it to the 3 blogs of Tier 1 and they will syndicate out to the other tiers?
Posted by Domenica
Fractl has produced thousands of content marketing campaigns across every topic, and for the past seven years, we’ve been keeping track of each and every campaign in order to refine and improve the content we produce on behalf of our clients.
In my last post for Moz, I explained how to set realistic digital PR expectations for your content based on your niche. In this topic, I want to dive a little bit deeper into the data and share insights about how the source of your content can be just as important in determining how your content will perform.
In this analysis, I looked at 1,474 client content campaigns across six different data source categories:
It’s important to note that there are countless other data sources that we use for content campaigns every day at Fractl that are not mentioned in this article. In this analysis, each category has at least 20 campaigns, while some categories have several hundred campaigns.
It’s also important to note that averages were collected by excluding upper outliers. For campaigns that went “viral” and performed well above the norm, we excluded them in the calculation so as not to skew the averages higher.
In addition to sharing link and press averages, I will also be walking through how to produce pressworthy, sharable content from each data source and providing examples.
Across the entire sample of 1,474 campaigns, a project on average received 24 dofollow links and 89 press mentions in total.
A press mention is defined as any time the content campaign was mentioned on a publisher’s website.
There were some individual data source category averages that were on par with the sample average, while other categories deviated greatly from the sample average.
For almost any niche out there, you can bet there is a publicly available data set available for use. Some examples include data from the CDC, the U.S. Census, colleges and universities, the WHO, and the TSA. The opportunities really are endless when it comes to using publicly available data as a methodology for your content.
While free data sets can be a treasure trove of information for your content, keep in mind that they’re not always the simplest to work with. They do require a lot of analysis to make sense of the massive amount of information in them, and to make the insights digestible for your audience.
Take for example a campaign we produced for a client called Neighborhood Names. The data was free from the US Census, but in order to make any sense of it, our researchers had to use QGIS, Python, text-mining, and phrasemachine (a text analysis API) just to narrow it down to what we were looking for.
And what were we looking for? Looking at neighborhood names across America seems boring at first, until you realize that certain words correspond to wealth.
I was the outreach specialist for this project, and by using the wealth angle, I was able to secure two notable placements on CNBC as well as a press mention on MSN. The project quickly made its way around the internet after that, earning 76 dofollow links and 202 total press mentions by the end of our reporting period.
Unlike scouring the internet for free data, using a survey as a methodology can be more costly. That being said, there is one major advantage to using a survey to shape your content: you can find out anything you want.
While publicly available data will tell a story, it’s not always the story you want to tell, and that’s where surveys come in.
Of course, when it comes to surveys, anyone can create one without paying attention to research method best practices. That's one of the problems we need to address. With “fake news” in the forefront of everyone’s minds in 2020, building trust with journalists and editors is of the utmost importance.
As content creators, we have a responsibility to ensure that content is not only attention-grabbing and entertaining, but also accurate and informative.
Survey campaigns, in particular, require you to analyze responses through a rigorous methodological lens. When collecting data for surveys, be sure to pay close attention to ethical upholdance, data validity, and fair visual representations.
From my own personal experience, germ swab content campaigns are the most fun, and often, the most disturbing. Fractl did some research a while back about the emotions that make content go viral, and oftentimes, germ swab campaigns hit all of the right emotions in the viral equation.
Negative emotions like disgust are often evoked when reviewing the results of germ swab campaigns. Our study found that when negative emotions are paired with emotions like anticipation or surprise, they can still achieve viral success (internet viral, not germ viral). What is more surprising than finding out the airplane tray table is dirtier than a toilet seat?
Publishers around the world seemed to think the content was surprising, too. This campaign performed above the norm for a typical content campaign earning 38 dofollows and 195 total press mentions — and this was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participatory methods are campaigns that require active participation for the methodology. These are unique ideas — no two are alike. Some examples of campaigns that fall under the participatory methods category are when we had team members do a 30-day squat challenge, asked respondents to draw brand logos from memory, or when we literally drove from D.C. to NYC with a dash cam to record traffic violations.
These campaigns have a certain level of risk associated with them. They require a lot of upfront effort and planning without the promise of any return — and that’s scary for clients and for our team who put in tremendous effort to pull them off.
As you can see from the chart above, however, these ideas collectively performed right on par with other campaign types, and even better than survey methodologies for both the number of dofollow links and press mentions. In order to reap big benefits, it seems you need to be willing to take a big risk.
Social medIa as a data source is almost a no-brainer, right up there with survey methodologies and publicly available data sets. Unlike participatory methods campaigns, you don’t have to leave your computer in order to produce a campaign based on social media data.
Through our seven years of content creation, Fractl has produced campaigns based on data scrapes from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and more. From this experience, we know firsthand what kinds of social campaigns work and which ones fall flat.
The best thing about using social media as a source for content is that it can be applied to all verticals.
The biggest lesson we’ve learned from producing content based on social media data is that the methodology is typically subjective, so you need to keep the project lighthearted in nature in order to earn major coverage.
For example, we produced a campaign for a client in which we looked at Instagram posts with the hashtag #sexy and a geolocation. From this, we were able to glean the “sexiest” countries in the world as well as U.S. states.
While it would be impossible to learn what the actual sexiest places in the world were, (what does that even mean?) we were able to produce a fun campaign that used geo-bait to appeal to lighthearted publishers, like Glamour, E! Online, Women's Health, and Elite Daily.
Make sure that no matter the topic, whatever you produce contributes to an ongoing conversation. Statistics that don’t point to anything meaningful won’t be relevant for writers actually trying to add to the conversation.
Client data is often the most underappreciated data source for content marketers. You may be sitting on a wealth of actionable industry insights and not even know it.
You might think of internal data as only being useful for improving your internal processes at work, but it can also be valuable outside of your organization.
Unlike publicly available data, internal data is never-before-seen and 100% unique. Journalists eat this up because it means that you’re providing completely exclusive resources.
Think of this article, for example. This article is filled with data and insights that Fractl has gleaned after producing thousands of content marketing campaigns.
An added bonus of using internal data to craft your content is that, according to our analysis, it performs on par with surveys. Unlike surveys, though, it’s completely free.
No matter what methodology you’re using or vertical you’re creating content for, it’s important to realize that as content creators, we have an ethical and moral responsibility to create with an audience in mind.
With “fake news” on the forefront of everyone’s minds, building and maintaining trust with writers and editors is of the utmost importance.
All of the content you produce and promote must be assessed through a rigorous methodological lens to ensure that content is accurate and informative as well as eye-grabbing and entertaining.
Regardless of your methodology, if you don’t take the proper steps to make sure your data sources are accurate, you are contributing to the fake news epidemic.
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In episode 286 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked if the 400 keywords required in the SEO shield be available on the website or it could be related to its niche.
The exact question was:
Hello Everyone…I am planing to buy SEO shield so I came to know that I also have to submit the 400 keywords. So my question is: Should those 400 keywords be available on the website or It could be any keywords related to website niche? Thanks in advance..”
In episode 286 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked about some basic steps in building a new website.
The exact question was:
Hello, kings of SEO! Can you share some basic steps when building a new website? 1) Especially about what to do when the site ain’t ready to publish. Set it on Maintenance Mode on WordPress? How Google treat it and indexing it? There are a lot of changes on a new website in design and contact. How can you test it live and do some adjustments? 2) What’s the must-have steps on a new website, like setting up Google analytics, etc. It is a good idea to wait until the website is well optimized and after that connect to Google? Thanks!
In the 286th episode of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if the Curation Suite is still working.
The exact question was:
I have been trying to reach the Curation Suite help desk and Scott Scanlon but no-one is returning my requests. I watched Brad on one of their videos so I am reaching out to you. I was wondering if Curation Suite was still working? It sounds like a great product. I noticed their website hasn’t been posted to in a while. I submitted a support ticket to make sure the software is still available and being supported. Can you provide any information? Thank you for the help.”
Click on the video above to watch Episode 293 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
what’s going on everybody? Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 24th of June. It’s Episode 293, which comes to be 69 episodes after Episode 224. What do you say? Right 69 episodes so let’s go welcome her Nan here and which is going to do the proverbial roundabout because Mr. Adam is not here. I don’t know what he said. But hey, Bradley, how are you doing, man?
Good. Happy to be here. It’s hot as hell they are now right now though. It’s like, middle of summer and nasty but yeah, things are good. Besides that. Awesome,
Chris. How about you man?
Yeah, it seems pretty good here. Whereas nice no rain. It’s not as hot as we spread. Lee like evenings and stuff are still chilly and cold. Like seems a pretty lovely, awesome new Marco. Oh, date.
Do you see it? I’ve been telling you I know I’ve been joking for years about the weather in Costa Rica never really showed it because I don’t like to have a camera on my computer. I said this is my work. This is my workstation and I want to and I like to stay focused. But now I’m doing more video more stuff. So I decided that for a year straight I am going to show my camera every Wednesday on Hump Day hangouts so you guys can see for yourself. This is it. This is it. Somebody asked me I don’t get sick of this weather. Suck. No, don’t you guys get tired of that heat that oppressive humidity and just nasty heat her nan 810 sometime around where he lives and the coal. Mine is 10 don’t you guys see. Don’t you guys get sicker? That’s no up to your ears. I got this. I got this up to my ears.
There you go. Powerful, so
Okay, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to Hump Day Hangout. If you’re here for the first time welcome. This is Semantic Mastery crew we try to help you as much as possible with anything and everything that has to do with digital marketing, answering your questions, SEO, growing your digital agency, whatever it is, and this is free being free, you will keep on being free. So drop your questions here. And we will try to help you out as much as possible. Now, before we jump into the questions, a couple of things. The first one is that Fourth of July sale for both Semantic Mastery and MGB is coming and it’s usually I would say our second largest sale of the year followed only you know, the first place might be Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the second-largest cell of the year is Fourth of July. So if you’re into saving money, and if you’re into getting results for your clients, stay tuned. Make sure that you’re open next week’s emails because Guess is going to be pretty awesome. We’re going to be giving you guys some really cool discounts and stuff, it’s going to be pretty, pretty cool. Anything that you guys want to add to that.
We actually pulled people, right. And we asked them, what they wanted from us what they needed from us. And so our sale is going to be according to what people said they would want from us. So we do listen to you guys. We do try to give you as much as we can. That’s why we have been live free hours for what? Going on six years now. Yeah, don’t even air for six years. Think about it, and we’re here live every Wednesday, answering your questions. Just because right, we want to give back to the community. That was the original idea behind Hump Day Hangouts. And it stays. The idea behind Hump Day Hangouts, we’re giving back to the community that gives us so much that allows me to learn so much and allows me to tinker with Google as much as I do. So this is a thank you, from us to you, sir.
Alright, so that’s basically it. If you guys want to learn how to take your agency to the next level, go to 2xyouragency com that is the number two-letter X your agency com if you have a couple of clients, you want to take it to 10 clients, 15 clients, 20 clients, however many and then guess what, once you have that amount of clients, you don’t need to worry about fulfillment because we do it for you at mgyb.co. So you go to mgyb.co you go there, you get all of your fulfillment leads ready to go. So all you need to focus on is to build your team and grow your business. So I think that’s it, we should jump into questions right.
Before we go to the crisis, guys, go to our go to the YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. Right, help us out. We like helping you but help us grow by going and subscribing, getting those notifications so that you can stay abreast of what’s going on with Semantic Mastery heavy hitter club MGB and everything else around Semantic Mastery.
Yeah, subscribe so you don’t miss the Fourth of July sale. There you go.
All right. Well, we got a lot of questions already. So I want to jump right into it, though. Let me grab the screen.
Zoom will cooperate.
Okay, you guys are seeing my screen, correct?
Yes. All right.
Ah, I think I’m okay.
Yeah. All right. I’m just making sure I didn’t have any sensitive tabs open with clients. Nothing I need to worry about looks fairly decent. All right. We’re gonna start right off with this question from five days ago. He says I have subscribed to Access Wire for doing press release distribution for clients. Question one does press release distribution correlate with rankings in any way. And then question two is If yes, are there any best practices you tested? Yes. And yes, it does. Because here’s the thing and you know, we’ve got a relationship with Jeremy. One of the CO Owners of Press Advantage, which by the way, and very soon in the next couple of weeks to three weeks, something like that. We’re going to do another webinar with him and opening it up a special again, for people that want to have their own subscription accounts to Press Advantage, which is the same distribution service that we have available in MGYB. For anybody who’s doing a lot of volumes, I always suggest having your own Press Advantage subscription. There are other providers out there Accesswire being one of them. There’s many of them now, actually. And there is a big difference between the distribution networks like there are certain common there are certainly common distribution sites, they get used by almost all distribution services or by a fair of a vast majority of them. But they’re also depending on the relationships that are forged between the distribution company and the distribution partners are outlets right where they dependent, so that’s usually something that it’s a relationship that has to be built. And that’s why you know, yeah, yeah, it really does make a difference to have a good distribution service one that has, you know, selects good sites with good traffic, good metrics, that kind of stuff. Nothing real spammy. Here’s the problem. I don’t know necessarily about Accesswire. I have tested them in the past, but it’s been at least two years and I’ve only done like a couple of one-off press releases with them. I was always testing against Press Advantage. There are some really good ones out there Press Advantage being one of them.
Another one is Quantum Newswire, which this one of our mastermind members actually developed that it’s a really good service as well. But what you have to be careful about and again, I’m not speaking directly about Accesswire, because I don’t know haven’t tracked it in a few years, a couple of years, at least, is that some distribution services will pad their numbers or inflate their numbers with like WordPress sites and such. That they call distribution sites, but really they’re just republishing Press Releases what press releases are too but part of the benefit of press releases is that they get published on high traffic sites that are like media sites, right news sites. So just creating a WordPress site to republish press releases isn’t necessarily a good thing. In fact, it could even be toxic if those sites are really spammy sites. A lot of the media distribution sites that are distributed to that are part of an actual media network. They are typically high traffic high authority sites, so they typically don’t consider as spammy or toxic whereas a lot of the networks or distribution networks that I’ve tested a lot of the guys and I have got a lot of the reason why I’ve stuck with Press Advantage is that they’ve had a really good selection of sites is my point. And there that’s growing like Jeremy has been working on developing relationships with so Press Advantage has been dealing with developing relationships for you now with companies, in fact, I don’t know what I can reveal here, but some new ones are coming. And that’s part of the reason why and or already available. But anyway, that’s part of the reason why we’re going to have another webinar with him and then in the coming weeks, but that said, Yes, it does.
There is a correlation with rankings, because again if you’re not careful when you get you to distribute press releases to spammy sites, they can actually end up being toxic. So that’s there are a couple of things that you can do. If that’s the case, use the press releases to link back to your tier one entity assets as opposed to your money site directly. I saw there was another question from one of our members, Nathan Smith, I believe further down about using press releases to link directly to your money site. I do because of Press Advantage being a good distribution service. But again, if you’re not sure, or you haven’t tested and you don’t know what the distribution looks like yet, then I would recommend linking back to tier one entity assets instead of directly to your money site. So what are those right GMB maps, GMB website if you’re using if it’s for local, you could link to the SEO shield properties, which is what we recommend? So Google Drive Google Site Google Drive stack, you know the files and folders and Id page. You could link to your major social media, your syndication network properties, there’s a number of things that you any tier one entity asset, really. And so that’s what I would recommend just to be on the careful side if you’ve got a subscription Accesswire, publish a couple of press releases, linking back to tier one entity assets first, then look at the distribution reports and go through it with the fine-tooth comb and see if there’s anything in there that’s you know, particularly spammy if so then I would recommend, you know, looking for another service or just using it the way that I just mentioned. Okay. Does anybody want to comment on that?
No, I mean, yes to the question is yes, they are correlational. We do find that doing regular press releases, helps with rankings now whether it’s because of the links, because it was because of the distribution, just whatever it is. Now, I will say that whenever I run a press release, it does get hit with link building. I don’t just do a press release, and then nothing behind it. So whether it’s the link building to the press release or the press release itself, then we don’t know unless you run a like a separate test just press releases, I know you’ve done that. And press releases and label that’s something that I’m going to get into in here for free. At any rate, when you do them correctly when you stack them like it’s taught in local PR Pro, it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic for pushing the map into the three-pack, pushing those polls, boosting the post, and pushing from the post over to the website through the do follow link that you can get. Doing it all that way but you still pushing relevance and power over to the website. But you’re putting a buffer in between a buffer that will help your map rank anyway. And then when you stack those, and you build links to those, as you’re stacking them, right around the third, fourth or fifth press release in the stack, you see things just kind of take off. But if you do just one, it may or may not help, depending on the competition in that niche, but when you stack them, and you do the link building, you run those embed gigs and link building. It works really, really well. It’s probably a combination, right? Because we do talk to Jeremy on a regular basis, we ask for a lot of stuff that he does for us, right? Like the media, the page has developed over time because he’s out he actually asks us what we would like and we tell him and he does whatever he can, within reason, right? We can. We can’t get everything that we want. I’d love to but we can’t so And then the other part I forgot what the second part of that question was.
He said, If yes, are there any best practices you tested?
Local PR pro? Yeah.
Yeah. And in fact, as a kind of an add on to local PR Pro, which we made it public, so it’s available and that’s why I was pulling up on YouTube. It’s available publicly on our channel. If you just go search for YouTube, press release SEO or press release silo stalking or whatever, you’ll see it comes up or you can go directly to our channel. So YouTube youtube.com slash semantic mastery and use the channel search feature and just type in press releases SEO. And you’ll see this is the video we did about 11 months ago. It’s an hour long. It’s a webinar and update webinar that we did for our Marco and I did for MGB. But again, it’s just it’s publicly available, where we talk specifically about how the press release stacking kind of changed slightly it evolved right which is now we silo press releases the same way that we would silo blog posts or GMB posts are all of the above, right? So go check that out. It’s an hour-long, but it tells very specifically the strategy on how to silo press releases and stack them. And that’s where the magic happens. That’s what Marco was just talking about. You get four or five press releases into it, and you’ll start to see significant movement when we proved that over and over and over again. So that’s what I recommend. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that strategy when I get to the question that I saw Nathan post earlier. We’ll get to that here in a few minutes. Okay. There’s a good question though.
Alright, so the next question is from Benjamin or I’m sorry Ben jam. He says I followed your recommendation and purchase Jeffrey Smith. Seo Bootcamp. Okay. Yeah, I remember this. Remember you from last week. He says, I no longer have any questions about how to silo a website. That’s right because he’s the man when it comes to that stuff. He says his process for writing posts is more involved compared to curated posts though in order to create the top, though in order to create topical depth was about To start with creating curated posts for the content kingpin, now I’m wondering the best way to proceed. The SEO Bootcamp process uncovers the topical keywords for each silo, and the questions associated with them to use and writing seven to 900-word posts, hiring a writer to write researched and well-written articles sound expensive. And yes, it’s very much is when you hired a subject matter expert to write posts. It’s it can be very expensive, or even just a good writer might not even be a subject matter expert, they might go research to be able to write good posts, but that’s expensive to try to use curated posts. Is there something that is this something that can still be put in the hands of a writer in the Philippines for $10 a post or is it going to cost more? Okay? So my answer to that is, you know, Jeffrey has his method. I follow his on-page methods for siloing and things like that. Not 100 I don’t follow all of his methods because it’s a lot of work and we’ve been able to, you know, some of the methods that I use, I’m able to still achieve results. It really depends on what you want to do. I don’t typically go for those longer posts, what I, what I do is a curated post, my bloggers handle all that. That’s because I’ve got a couple of really good bloggers that I’ve trained over the years that do curate content curating, that are really, really, really good at it. And I’ve taught them some SEO tactics as well, so that they understand how to interlink properly, which tags to use, depending on the type of silo structure, we’re using all that kind of stuff. So I like to use curated posts, because it’s efficient, it’s less expensive, it’s easier for people that, you know, they don’t have to research it for every blog post. So it’s a lot more and a lot less expensive.
So, can you still use curated posts for topical depth? Yes. However, keep this in mind. You know, you can kind of make a hybrid out of the two, which is kind of what we do. You know, occasionally not all the times, but occasionally I’ll tell my blogger to go scrape all the questions, you know, the FA Q’s for a particular topic for the project that we’re working on. So where do you get those questions? Well, there’s a keyword scraper out there that you can use. I know there’s also you can just go to answer the public Comm. And you can type in some keywords and it will come back and show you commonly asked questions, you can go to Google and ask questions as if you were somebody looking for the product or service that you’re logging about, right? And ask questions as if you were inquiring about that product or service and then see what the accordion boxes are in Google search results with questions people also ask right? And each time you click one of the dropdowns to reveal that it’ll show the question but you to reveal the answer, which is just curated snippets of Q and A’s from other websites. That’s all that accordion box is. You can use those questions in your own content and a curator can still use those questions and in fact, think about this. The questions plus the answers are right there in the accordion meant, you know the accordion box In the Google search results, like I said, each time you click the drop-down menu or the drop-down arrow, it actually shows reveals more questions and answers. And so you can scrape those, and they actually give you the link to a snippet and then a link over to where that question is answered on, you know, on that particular site that there’s that they’re citing, right? That they’re attributing it to. So you can actually use that in your curated content. guys think about that. So it’s a very easy way to start adding FAQs or questions and answers to blog posts, that your, you know, your VA is publishing or whatever. And the curating content can be right there unless it’s a direct competitor, which I don’t ever recommend linking to a direct competitor. But a lot of the times they’re not direct competitors. And so you can actually take the copy the question and answer right from the Google search results. And paste that into a blog post. Make sure you cite the source of the answer, just like you would any other type of curated content. And there you go.
So again, you can go about it. Both ways. Jeffrey Smith has his own specific method. And he’s very, very good at being able to rank like crazy for some really difficult terms with little to no backlinks. Because of the way that he structures and does long depth content, you know, long, well researched long-form content for blog posts, because of the volume that we do that my, you know, my agency does, and my bloggers do I prefer the curated content. And it reads, well, it looks good and everything else. So again, it’s up to you how you want to do it. My method is to use a silo structure by linking the way that I’ve been taught by Jeffrey Smith and from Marco, my partner. But you know, again, I like because of the volume that we do, it would be too cumbersome for us to do. There’s long-form content all the time for posts and not to mention expensive as well. So it’s really a preference, you can get away with doing it. Either way or create kind of a hybrid of the two. Any comments on that?
Yeah, our keyword research gig in mgyb.co is based on the training that we’re talking about, where we go into all of the different tools that are available. And we pick up as many keywords relevant in the niche as possible, we get as many as possible, we go into all of these tools, we go into SEMrush, you don’t need a subscription to SEMRush. You don’t need it for Uber suggests you don’t need it for the answer of the public, you don’t need any of these because we give it to you. These questions will also pop up in answer the public we give you that and oh, and also the questions that are brought up and when we do the SEMrush research and every other resource, so you know that and you get it. It’s all categorized for you. We take care of all that so that you don’t have to, so that it when you get that back, you can hand that over to your writer, and then your writer is responsible for finding the content. Now, what Bradley said makes perfect sense because you take that keyword research And you can still build the topical relevance by inserting the proper keywords in the way that Jeffrey teaches it and interlinks. in that manner, nothing stops a good writer from curating and adding the topical keywords are relevant keywords and interlinking. Those, I mean, what’s to stop, I don’t understand why curation has to be so difficult. It’s the simplest thing in the world you go and you find here. Here’s a list of topical keywords that you have to add to this long-form 700 to 900 words, you’re going to work those in and then you’re going to interlink to other pages, or to another page, however, they choose to do it the tags also, but that’s the curator can do of it. You don’t have to have and I’m doing air quotes, original content. It’s original because it’s curated and listen to proper attribution simply means that you’re giving credit to the audience. Double source, nothing says that you have to link to the original source of the content. Remember when you were doing proper citation, the proper attribution when you were writing a paper in college, those of us who went before the internet, right? You used to cite the source in your paper, right? And you do annotation. Yeah. And you would cite it that way that that’s proper. And that’s fine. Look at the way that Wikipedia doesn’t know they do no, follow it. But sometimes it’s not necessary. They just cite the source. And you don’t even have to hyperlink it. It doesn’t have to be a hyperlink to be proper attribution because you’re giving credit. And if you’re not using the entire article, you’re using a part of the article, maybe a paragraph, which is which in most cases is the proper use of that paragraph because you are citing the source and giving proper attribution without having to add even a nofollow link. So it depends on how you approach this, I would totally approach it. And I do from that standpoint when I have the keywords in that niche, and you’ll find this.
I know, a lot of you guys are new at this, when you start getting heavy into entities, and you start using the Google’s natural language processor, and you start using some of the online tools like Tex razor, to refine your content, so that you get the most relevant content on that page. Well, you’ll get a list of words that you can use, and your writer has to be able to go in there and use those words in that content, so that you’re also working with the natural language processor, and what Googlebot is looking for as far as entities on that page. So everything has to be related. Everything has to be relevant, not just content for the sake of content and for the sake of keywords. It has to all make sense at both the unstructured data level, which is content, written content. And the structured data level which is the schema. Google wants LD plus JSON. So when all that matches, and then you hit that with the power that’s available through our SEO power shield, the thing that happened when you saw that guy in, in the Facebook in the free Facebook group, I think, where he got his dry site backlinks, he couldn’t believe the result. I can’t believe you guys control service this way. It’s not that we control service is that we know what the bot is looking for a Wi-Fi, the bot constantly. That’s it. And it doesn’t have to be complicated like it’s being made here. They’re not mutually exclusive. Let me finish with that.
So I just wanted to demonstrate what I was talking about. So I just went to Google one for you know, for Tree Service stuff, which I do most, a lot of. It’s like I just typed in a question How much does Tree Removal cost? Right? So here you go. Here are questions right here, people also ask. And if I click on any one of these, you’ll see that it also starts to reveal additional questions for each time I click, it adds Three, two, or three more, right? And so you can go right through here. Now, if we scroll down to the bottom of the page, it’s seeing my IP and knows that I’m in Culpepper, Virginia. So some of these may very well be most of these are likely not going to be competitors, but they possibly could be. But if you see right up the top here, it gives you some additional menus or items there. So I just clicked an ad, you know, to add California. And just because, again, you know, it doesn’t matter where we’re located. If you’re, if you’re just using it for topical relevancy, then I can click through here and start copying some of these questions and answers, the ones that are relevant, and pasting them into curated posts. Does that make sense? and cite the source. So again, just it’s just like you could copy this right here, just like you see it here. And then paste that into a blog post. There you go. And then just make sure you’re citing the original source. So again, that’s a way you can start working as questions and answers into posts that are curated. Because that’s a lot more. It’s very efficient. It’s really up to you how you want to structure your content production. I prefer the curated method just because that’s what my team has been doing since really since 2000. I used to write the posts or curate posts myself until I realized how time-consuming that was going to be. And then I basically created content kingpin and started training virtual assistants, which it wasn’t content kingpin at the time, it was training for virtual assistants, but then we turned it into a product because it works so well. So anyway, it was a great question, though. Thanks.
So the next one is from DC, SEO. He says, Hey, guys, no questions for me this week. I just want to issue an apology to MGYB for publicly questioning the keywords submitted for my shield. Okay, I remember this from a week or two ago. Anyways, he said it was totally my fault. I let my son watch what I was doing and how I work and because he saw that I was Using a couple of keyword tools, one of which happened to be keyword shitter, which I’m which almost never you normally use, he wanted to actually join in naturally as an 11-year-old, he took great interest in the name played around playing around with search terms I was using and I ended up uploading the wrong file. Oh, wow. So please accept my apologies. Apologies. One brain fart from me and everyone ended up with a headache. Well, no problem DC SEO and it’s a that’s big of you to come to say that on Hump Day Hangouts. So thank you. We appreciate that. Marco, do you want to comment on that?
No, thank you. Thank you. I mean, it’s really good that someone first called us out publicly. And I didn’t I really didn’t know what he was talking about. It really surprised me that we would do something like this and I did say that we take care of it. But when we went to look, this is what we ran up against. And thank you, DC for coming back in and straightening things out and letting everyone know that it wasn’t Mistake No, we do own up to our mistakes. By the way, it’s as if we don’t make mistakes. When we do, I just want everyone to know that that we make it right one way or the other.
Okay, so the next one says, Hey, guys, according to Google’s documentation, sameas schema support has been dropped around two years ago. Do you think they lied? and for what purpose? Yeah, Google lies all the time. Like, they’re pathological liars. Google also said that guest post links don’t work. Google also said that you know, building backlinks won’t work. Google also said, I mean, we could go down a long laundry list of things that Google usually when Google tells you something doesn’t work means do more of it. Guess Google lies to you all the time. Google lies to you. So yeah, that does mean that we could really move on to the next question. Marco, do you want to comment on that?
Yeah, I would just like to ask, like, how did they reference that same schema support has been dropped? Because we saw we see, and I see this all the time in the natural language processor, Google’s own schema tool, right, that analyzes entities on written content, that it references, same as schema. And so how I can support be dropped for sameAs schema? If NAP is using the sameAs schema makes absolutely no sense. It just shows you. I mean, I love the link to that. If you haven’t, just drop it in here or drop me a note in the free Facebook group. And I will take a look because I know and I can show that Google is using famous schema. Yeah, I’ve shown it by the way in heavy hitter club webinars. We’ve gone into the natural language processor. And we’ve shown how Google references entities through say that.
Yeah. And so I’m just going to finish reading the question. Yes, I still include sameas and sameas isn’t just for local business schema. It’s for an organization or corporation schema. So I use it all the time. And I absolutely use it. And I, you know, I always talk about the ones that use my main tier one entity assets, main social profiles. And then for local businesses, I always go look at whatever citations also or profiles or whatever show up for a business name search and Google Plus phone number. So I do whatever the business name is. And then also add the phone number in the same search query and hit, you know, search. And then I extract or pull all the URLs off the top two pages that show up in Google that are relevant to that business, which they should be when you do that type of the search. And I add those to sameas as well and it works. It works really well. So anyway, he says, I personally think they use reciprocal links for verification and possible ml as many social profile icons show up in the knowledge graph and search without any usage of sameas schema since the Yoast and other SEO plugins removed same as for that reason, do you think it is worth it to add that schema to the money site manually? Or to throw some plugin made from a Google’s not Google’s nonbeliever? Same as Meta Keywords? Yeah, again, I add schema, I’m even starting to use more of structured data for, you know, even like marking up blog posts and such. Because remember, structured data guys are code, it’s specifically talking to the bot. So there’s no reason not to use it in my opinion, you know, I still use my favorite tool for generating schema is this one. I’ve said this many times before, but you can just go to technicalSEO.com, and there are tools and they’ve got, you know, schema generator over on the left-hand sidebar. And this is what I use mainly, I even use Jeffrey Smith, SEO ultimate plugin or ultimate pro plugin on all the sites that I manage now, but I still use this tool right here to generate most of the structured data that we add to pages and posts and things like that because this is just what my team has been trained on. And there’s really no reason not to use it. So but there are I mean, anything that you can mark up with structured data you can so when it comes to sameas if you can squeeze it into an organizational corporation or local business schema, why not? You know, it’s not going to hurt. So and as Marco said it, yes, they still use it.
Okay, Mohammad is up, he says, Hey, guys, there’s this car dealer asking me for SEO services in a city where I always work with a dealer. How should I handle this? I don’t know, trying to rank two businesses in the same niche in the same city as possible, both practically and morally? How would I rank both? Am I wrong? Do I turn them away? How would you respond to the inquiring client in this case? That’s a good question. You know, I’ve had that issue only occur a couple of times. Typically, I won’t, because it does create a kind of conflict even for me. So typically, I won’t do it unless I am transparent about that. If that makes sense, and say well, let’s see. You know, I’ve already got a client in this city. So yes, I can do SEO for you, I can’t guarantee you that I’m going to, you know that you know, I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to push you above them, I will do equally as good for both of you. That’s the only way I could see addressing it. I’ve turned work away though, because of that being an issue for me. So that’s just, you know, my opinion. I know, others probably have other opinions as well. But the only way that I would do it is if that was disclosed, and they were made aware of it. And if they were ever agreed to it, it can proceed moving forward with you, then so be it. It’s out in the open, there’s nothing to hide and there’s no moral or ethical, you know, problem there if that makes sense. But any opinions from you guys, how do you guys handle that stuff?
Yeah, I only take one client per niche person. Like I can’t, because there’s only one number one and my focus is entirely on making that one client. Number one, I cannot make two people number one. Someone is going to end up number two and not happy. Even when they knew ahead of time that you already had a client, they will be unhappy. I would say find someone who’s really good Mohammed, recommend that person, and get a finder’s fee. That’s how I handle it. Sometimes I just hand them off to our mastermind members. Hey here, go close this guy. He’s hot. But I can’t take the lead. I can’t. So to me that this is a matter of ethics. First of all right? If you don’t tell the guy, then you can only make one person number one, even when you do, someone’s going to be unhappy. To avoid that headache. And here’s the funny thing.
I still have one of them as a client, but one of my first really good clients was a roofer and he was an identical he had an identical twin brother, who also owned a roofing contracting company. So there were two roofing contractors, identical twins. They lived in you know neighboring or adjacent counties, but they had the same service area. And it was funny as hell because I met the one guy and signed him on as a client. And within I don’t know, two or three months he, you know, was bragging about me to his brother and his brother hired me his brand, but it was funny because when his brother contacted me, you know, he said, Yeah, my twin brother told me to contact you because you can, you know, you’re good at SEO and blah, blah, blah. And it was funny as hell because they were, you know, it was 100% transparent. They both knew that they were using me for you know, for SEO, they hired me for SEO, but it was a fun relationship with them. Because every time one of them would move above the other one, I’d get a call from the one that got knocked down. He’d be like, why do you like him better than me, you know, and it was actually a lot of fun. One of the brothers ended up running into some financial issues at some point and he canceled services with me about a year ago really. And I still do some things for him, but it’s he’s not on a monthly reading. Like the other client is, but it was just it was a really fun kind of relationship dynamic between theme and those two identical twin brothers. But that’s unique in that they were identical twin brothers and they weren’t really, I mean, they were competing, but it was in a friendly way, versus like to, you know, businesses that don’t know each other. So that’s why I said the only way that I could see doing it would be if it was if you were transparent upfront and just said that you’re going to work on both of them equally. And but as Marco said, somebody is always going to resent where they are. Whoever is not on top is going to always have resentment. So I agree, I would just turn it away.
The next question is from Eric. He says, Hello, I’m interested in purchasing your syndication networks from my YouTube channel. I’ve watched the course SEO syndication network from Bradley Benner and I just wasn’t sure what would be more beneficial for YouTube channel, the single Tier, or the multi-tier. Okay, that’s a good question. Also, can you give me an idea of what results I could possibly have for my youtube channel using your syndication network? I know it will help with my search. results on Google, but will it help with my actual YouTube rankings?
And yes, Okay, so the first part of that question is what will work better for the YouTube channel a single Tier or multi-tier network? I always preferred using multi-tier networks for YouTube channels YouTube video for YouTube SEO best basically. Here’s the thing though, guys, like just having one multi-tiered network is not going to I mean, it could I don’t know what niche you’re in or what keywords or difficulty level of you know, what type of competition you’re facing or anything else. What really works well is to create the multi Tier or build you know, or purchase the multi-tiered network, and then powered upright and by the way, with YouTube guys, you can keep adding networks, right, you can keep adding tier one networks, multi-tiered networks, you can use the same channel to continue triggering. We never recommend that for blogs for blog syndication, but for YouTube syndication Honest to God, you could, you could put 15 multi-tiered or two-tiered syndication network. To one channel, you could go way beyond that it’s unlimited. And you will get better results the more you have. However, it’s not just the syndication network that provides the results. It’s also powering it up. So that’s link building, you can do embed, embed gigs as well to the syndication network properties, or link building to the syndication network properties. That way you can power them up so that each time you upload a video and it syndicates out across the network, that they’re, you know, being syndicated to profiles that have been built up with a lot of inbound links if that makes sense. So, it really depends on what your budget is and how aggressive you want to be. But you know, start in my opinion, my recommendation would be to start with one syndication one multi-tiered syndication network, start seeding that network with content from your YouTube channel. So in other words, start syndicating content from your YouTube channel. Also, look into YouTube SEO. Sorry, YouTube Silo Academy. I think we still sell that.
We don’t know what we sell we suck at the market. Yeah, I don’t know if that product still up or not, but it should be and if not, it’s in one of our bonus sites. For sure. It’s like a $7 product or at least it was, but YouTube dot silo Academy. It’s like I said, it teaches you how to silo YouTube channels with playlists. So that’s very important to so what I’m getting at is start seeding that first network with content, then you can start building links to that network go to what I would recommend and see what type of results you’re getting. If you need more than you can either continue to power up the existing network because it now seasoned it’s a little bit more aged, you started to build authority to it through link building. And you can always add on additional networks as needed. So you can add an on another single, single Tier or multi-tiered network and then keep adding up and then subsequently start powering those up as well. So, again, I always prefer it for YouTube, like when I was doing a shit ton of YouTube SEO, which I don’t so much anymore because I do a lot of YouTube ads, so Google ads for YouTube. But when I was doing a lot of YouTube SEO that I would usually start off with three or four multi-tiered networks for any new YouTube channel project that I was working on, because I just liked having that massive amount of power right off the bat. Okay.
Can you give me an idea of what results I could possibly have for my youtube channel using syndication networks? Well, again, it’s an SEO tactic more than anything. But engagement is super important for ranking YouTube videos more so on YouTube than in Google, but also in Google as well. YouTube’s algorithm is more about engagement than it is Seo signals. Google is still very much, you know, it’s still heavily weighted towards SEO signals. So it depends on where you’re really trying to rank. If whatever your videos are, if the type of content is more suited for YouTube rankings, then I would recommend that you buy engagement signals, which means traffic from Google again. using YouTube ads, we have a training course on how to do that specifically to, because that’s going to help you to rank in YouTube way better. So it depends on what you’re where you’re trying to rank. Is it Google, or is it YouTube? Or is it both? If it’s both, then syndication networks, backlinks embeds, that’s what’s going to work for the SEO side of things, right. So ranking in Google, if you want to rank on YouTube, SEO signals have play a part there’s no question, but also engagement signals are weighted heavily on YouTube. And you can buy engagement signals from Google. Don’t buy fake views from other you know, from YouTube view providers don’t do that. Don’t buy fake comments, and fake likes, and all that shit. Google’s algo, or YouTube’s algorithms got really good at figuring that stuff out. Just go buy traffic from a relevant audience source inside of Google ads. It’s very, very inexpensive. And those engagement signals will help it to rank in YouTube. Okay. Could it help my videos to go viral with YouTube? Thank you for you. Well, now, I mean, it could if remember If you rank at the top of search results, going viral typically aren’t from a search result, though, right? going viral is from people sharing it. So if you’ve got good video content, that’s what’s going to make it go viral. You know, typically, I mean, again, I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it’s that typically content goes viral because people see it, they, they start sharing it, and that one person shares it to one person that shares it to three people, those three people shared three people in there There goes, right. So But yeah, I mean, again, I would recommend buying engagement signals if that’s the case, which when I say that, I mean using YouTube ads to buy traffic. Okay. All right.
He says, DC SEO says I lied about not having a question. I’m assuming the RYS expansion is the extension needed to target other key search terms? And it’s added to my SEO showed? Yes, you got it. Also, what’s the best way to approach an e-commerce site with no physical address with regards to the shield? That’s a question for you Marco.
You know, need a physical address. Unless this is a local project, and if it’s eCommerce, it shouldn’t be hyperlocal, you’re looking for something that’s national, or global. I’ve always said the approaches if you’re local, it’s local. It’s brand plus a keyword, plus location or brand plus location, press keyword, however you want to do that. That’s how you brand you relate everything to your brand and to the location where your brand is. If it’s not, then it’s brand plus keyword Association. That’s the only difference. And so how you approach that is you build that your brand, that’s your entity. So let’s put it this way. A physical address is part of a local entity, but it’s not necessarily a part of a global entity unless you want to set the corporate headquarters somewhere to give it just a little bit more validity. Right. Amazon has a corporate headquarters. So Apple says Google, whatever. Yeah, and you know exactly where those are. So if you want to kind of fake it till you make it You would do something like that you can set a post office box with a street address as your corporate address, nothing stops you from doing that. Nothing stops you from faking the address, although eventually, you’ll have to clean that up and imagine having to go back in and having to clean up that that fake address. That’s a mess in and of itself. But just for this purpose, you can go and get an SEO shield and an expansion stack without a physical address. There you go.
Alright, Olaf sub says, Is there any automated way to get the links of a newly syndicated post to send them in for link building? What do I have to get them manually from each platform? Yeah. Okay. That’s a great question. You know, yes, you can set up like Zapier, or if you go set up a Zapier, for example, where you submit the RSS feeds of the blog properties and your syndication networks that will feed the new post URL into a Google Sheet. Right, Think about that. So now you’ve got one Google sheet. In fact, you could even set different tabs, right? So on the sheet, right, so you can so that the Google g sheet, you can set different sheets or tabs, whatever you want to call them on that sheet and use that same sheet for, you know, blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, and I’m just using those three because those are the three main blogs that we use within the syndication networks. So my point is, you can take the blogger RSS URL, create a zap in Zapier, where that’s the trigger any new post write any new feed item, then push that new Feed URL or excuse me, that post URL into a Google Sheet and the first tab in the sheet being blogger, the second one being Tumblr, the third one being WordPress, if you needed to separate them for whatever reason, you could do it that way. And now you’ve got you, you know, spreadsheet, excuse me with the links. You can even have the post titles pushed through, you know, you can pick and choose which data you want to push from the RSS feed into the sheet. But now you’ve got a Google Sheet that you can use to very quickly extract URLs that to paste in for link building. purposes, you could even make that, you know, you could even link build to the Google Sheet for that matter. So there’s a ton of things that you can do with that with Zapier. So yes, you can absolutely automate that. Okay, it’s a great question, by the way.
BB’s up what’s up, BB. He says, Hey, guys, what do you Why do you want for the RSS, of the other authority channels to be changed frequently when submitting the super feed? I’m not sure I understand that question. I really don’t understand that question. If you can clarify that. I’ll come back. I’ll try to answer the second part unless it’s dependent on the first he says number two because there is a minimum of text length of 300 words in each page post submitted. I wonder if words inside a blockquote tag, which is basically words from another site will be considered or counted in articles texts like yes. If it’s it’s text on the page, it’s counted as you know, it’s still counted as text. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a blockquote or not, it’s still counted. It’s still adding relevancy to the page via text.
So yeah, if you were taking, like a screenshot of text and inserting the screenshot, then maybe no, but Google can even read images now from what I understand. So it might even count towards that. Maybe not text length, but the relevancy anyway. So my point is, yeah, if you’re adding text and block quotes is not going to make any difference. It’s still adding to the article’s text link. This is what content kingpin relies on to simplify the question, let’s say an article has 250 words. And if adding a quote with 50 words will account for 300 words in the article, yes, yes, it will. And don’t get caught up in Article length. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest anything less than 300. But again, with curated post guys, you shouldn’t have a problem being able to create you know, 565 to 600 words 1000 word posts, because it’s, you know, you can curate several pieces of content into one article, right one curated posts, and in all that you have to do or your blogger curator, right, which is what I call blogger. Now, all they have to do is, you know, an opening paragraph, which could be a sentence or two really just explaining what the idea of the post is going to be, then curated content to support the idea of the post with just a little snippet of commentary, right, so the author of the post, the publisher of the post, creating a little bit of adding a little bit of content in between the curated pieces within the content, and then a conclusion, which could just be a sentence, which is typically a call to action, right? And that’s your opportunity to link to an internal page on the site. That makes sense. So again, you can make longer-form content, which I recommend using curated content, where you really only have to write you know, a couple or your blogger only has to really write a couple of hundred words, and you end up with a long-form long form post that makes sense. So it’s about adding relevancy using other people’s content. That’s the point. That’s the whole point of curating content, guys.
Alright, Fit'z up. Good day, gents. Thanks for this forum to get real-world answers that work. You’re welcome, Fitz. As always he says I have a client that wants to know what to do with the side business website. The market has atrophied because of COVID but he expects the market to come back. How can he mothball his site to weather these times but not lose rankings and have to work twice as hard when things bounce back? How would he sell the leads? How would he sell the leads to some online platforms that would benefit from customers like his but they are in different markets? I’m not sure about the second part of that question. As far as how to mothball his site, I like that term. You know, in SEO, one of the best things that you can do because typically once something ranks and you know using that method, it sticks for years and years and years. We’re running out of time, but I could show the Virginia SEO agency, g site that that keyword still ranking some of the other keywords dropped a couple of spots, it took five years for them to move it all down at all. But I specifically targeted Virginia SEO agency with that particular keyword in one press release blast a few weeks ago when I noticed that the G site for you know for for for those different terms that I usually use as an example started to slip a little bit after five years are not budging. So I targeted Virginia SEO agency with an anchor text link with that keyword Virginia SEO agency with press releases and it brought that keyword back to number one. So that’s what I’m saying is if you use the SEO shield, you’ve powered up that site, it’s ranking well the entity is strong I’m sure Marco will comment on this, then it takes a lot to move it guys. So that’s what I would do. I can’t really answer the second part of your question because I’m not sure what you mean.
But Marco, do you want to take a stab at that?
Yeah, I don’t understand that second part there. How could he sell the leads to an online platform that would benefit from customers like is but in a different market? I mean, you can sell it online. platforms that handle different leads from different niches right? There are those ring partner being one of them, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’re not gonna get paid much but at least someone will be handling those leads and potentially make money leaving something in mothballs and untouched if everyone else so this is where all things being equal if everyone else is leaving there’s mothballed and untouched, that there’s a reason for his website rankings to move. But if there’s someone actively engaging the niche, then it’s likely that you will drop I mean, it took five years for Virginia SEO agency to drop but that was getting other signals that we’re getting people to come in. So this is this was ranking it was ranked number one it was getting people to come in and contact Bradley they did actually fill out the contact form. That’s a very important signal and it would get these on a steady on a stage. basis. Now what people have done is like the people like clutch SEO and a few others. They’ve also been at this and they’ve been at this really hard and they’ve been coming at this keyword for years for you to try to take Bradley. Bradley hasn’t been doing any work to it notice. None. And these guys are just 14. So it just goes to show that if you mothball it, eventually, activity, relevance trust, and authority is going to come in and take over and the activity part of it is going to take you down because there is none. With your project. That’s the only thing I would warn against. But definitely do everything else that’s available to you and stick it there as hard as possible. It gets mothballed. Fine. The people are still coming in and you’re selling the leads. I mean that that’s all that you can do. Right. I don’t see anything else that I can recommend regarding this.
Yeah, I was just looking to see if that I did one press release. I don’t know three weeks ago now maybe a month ago. Now spend a plate to push that and I use that Virginia SEO agency has keyword anchor I wouldn’t recommend doing that to a money site guys, but this was to a G site. So all the press releases got published had Virginia SEO anchor text link pointing back to the G site. And that pushed it boom right back up to number one. And that that press release isn’t even showing in the news, you know, Google News anymore. So that’s interesting, but it’s still pushing that keyword back to number one with one press release. So yeah, but and again, as Marco said I hadn’t touched that in five years hadn’t done a damn thing to it and that’s honest to God’s truth. And then it started to slip a few weeks ago finally after five years and I pushed that one keyword backup with one press release, believe it or not, again, that’s a Google site, I wouldn’t recommend doing that to your money site.
Without it at work. When Bradley and I talked about this, I told him do it do a PR stack. And and and go after the terms like Virginia SEO, SEO, Virginia, and push it all backup. Don’t just do one. Yeah, we haven’t accounted for that. Let’s get a Press advantage to push it up or get ready to build links to it.
Yeah, no, I do it. It doesn’t work. What would you do that?
Alright, so I got a couple more questions I’d like to get through these next three really quick because and we’ve only got a few minutes left but two of them are really related to press release stuff that we’ve been talking about a lot today for some reason, and whatever you want to try whatever you do, don’t click on that bottom link.
Okay. Yeah, you’re gonna see my fat face.
That’s two Bradley’s ago.
Yeah, that was a long time ago, man. A lot bigger than anyways, go that you guys have a good laugh from that.
Anyways, Nathan says do you link to money site page posts that you’re trying to rank on every press release? You do? Do you ever link to the same money site page post, you’re trying to rank more than once? Yeah, but typically, again, if you go back to what I was talking about earlier, and go watch this webinar that we did. It’s on our YouTube channel, guys. It’s free. Go watch Press Release SEO and PR stacking, just go search for it, you’ll find it. Watch that. Okay, because that is the method that I use, which we’ll say is a perfect segue into the question down hereby to Shar, he says Bradley, you may have answered this post, but just make sure it’s okay to point multiple press releases at your blog on the money site. For example, if I write four blog posts every month, can I do a press release for each blog post that is also linking to that blog post? I’m worried at what point does it become spammy? That is exactly what I’m talking about. Okay, so remember guys, with the syndication networks, the strategy that we talked about is content marketing from your blog, right? That so you publish content that’s the route and within, you know, place it within silos, so you publish posts within silos, and then your internal linking within every single post supporting article that you’re going to publish within a silo. You’re going to be linking back up to your top of silo right your silo landing page, or daisy-chaining to the next, the previous post in your in the silo, whatever. However, your internal Linking within your silo. The point is, you’re probably publishing a press release with an internal link to what you’re trying to rank on your site. Right. So it’s an inter it’s an internal page or post on your site that you’re trying to rank. So each post that you publish is going to contain a link to that, then that’s going to syndicate out across your syndication network. Okay. Then I publish. Again, my blog is not like some of my clients get, you know, three posts per week, but they’re only paying for one press release per week. So one of those blog posts per week, we’ll get a public press release that is essentially promoting or highlighting showcasing the blog, one of the blog posts. Does that make sense? And the press release links to the blog post. So the blog post URL, does that make sense? So my point is, you’re pushing power from the press releases to the blog post. The blog post contains the link back up to the page that I’m trying to rank so you’re pushing juice in from the press releases to a blog post, which is one press release. That’s published for one blog post. So the next time you publish a blog post, it’s a different URL. It’s a different deep link on your site that you’re linking to from the press release. Do I sometimes link to the same page perhaps with more than one press release?
Yeah, but not often, because I like the deep linking strategy that I just described. And again, it’s, you can see exactly what I’m talking about in that webinar there. And that just tends to work really well again, because guys, think about this. If you’re siloing blog posts together. You can also publish a GMB post if it’s for a local project that is linking to the blog post right and just grab a snippet of content from your blog post and use that as the text for your GMB posts use the same featured image, right so you’re mirroring your blog post silo structure in your GMB posts. Then you do the same thing with press releases, publish a press release for every blog post, or for as many as you can afford. That makes sense, however aggressive you want to be. And the press release writers are going to write about the blog post, they’re going to link to the blog post if that’s the target URL you provide. I also like to usually provide another tier-one entity asset URL. But you can also remember you can, you can tear that. My point is guys think about this. If you’re stacking, you’re doing a silo linking and stacking your content and your silos on your blog. You can mirror that in your GMB posts. You can also mirror that in press releases, right. So if you’re linking from the press release to the blog post that the press releases highlighting, you can also link back to the previous press release and that same silo again, that’s a press release silo. So you’re mirroring the same sort of structure in your blog. GMB, by the way, you don’t have to have a GMB. I’m just saying for doing local, you can also do it there. You should also do it there and also in your press releases. So that way, you’re not hammering the same URL over and over and over again, you’re hammering the same URL over and over and over again from your blog with an internal link, which I would recommend varying the types of links within your blog post write different keywords. ads, naked URLs, all that kind of stuff. But you’re pushing links into different parts of your site through the press releases and or the GMB posts. And then you’re siloing those press releases as well. Does that make sense? Okay, guys get that again, just go watch this webinar. And it will make perfect sense to you. And it’s super, super powerful guys. And that’s a free webinar.
Okay. And if everything is linked correctly, and the way that it’s supposed to juice is going to flow anyway. And that’s the one thing that I know Nathan is in our mastermind. So he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Everything is interlinked the way that it’s supposed to, to accrue PageRank to accrue ranking score, that you don’t need to insert, press releases or any other type of link building into the same page time after time after time. You can build it in other places, and everything from that link building will benefit everything in that stream will benefit from it if you’ve done it the way that you’re taught. And if you Go and do it your way that’s up to you, but we teach you the right way.
Alright, so the last one, it’s five o'clock, so I got to wrap it up guys, but I want to answer Jonathan’s cuz I kind of skipped over it. Jonathan says image SEO question. I have a search query. I have a search query that has a first and last name with the only SERP feature being an image carousel. How would you go about getting the images you want to show in the carousel? Thank you. Okay, well, I’ve been able to comment, first of all, optimize the images. So alt text, meta metadata, and stuff that you can optimize the images that you want. Also, make sure that you can build links to images, guys think about that. There’s a number of ways that you can do that. So you can build links directly to your images. Now, I wouldn’t buy spam links to like the image URL hosted on your money site. But if you can publish that same image in one of your entity assets, and then hammer that, you know, image file URL on that in one of your entity assets, with backlinks that’ll help it to rank as well. And I’m sure Marco has got a few tricks to help you with that too.
No, no, it’s not trick tricks. We just see it from the SEO shield. Because we’re mirroring everything we’re including the same images. When that gets links into it, it powers everything up. Land solutions network has a bunch of its own images in the image carousel. When you look at the brand. We do a brand search for Nat solutions that were good has it the image carousel, it has the video carousel doing it and if there’s a cheap GMB, adding images in the GMB will benefit, right from the link building everything else that you do to the GMB if you’re stacking your posts the way that you’re supposed to. If you’re interlinking, the post the way that it’s that is taught in local GMB Pro, then all of that is going to benefit from everything that you do. The whole point is that you do it correctly from the start. So you’re not cutting off the link juice at any point in the process.
And here’s what one trick, and then we’re gonna wrap it up guys, we can close it down. But if you’re using press releases, we’ve talked a lot about press releases today. So I feel like it’s only fitting that I bring this up. Again, through mygb, it’s going to be distributed through Press Advantage, you’re going to it’s going to be first published on the Press Advantage domain through the organization page that will set up for if you don’t already have it if you have your own subscription, and you’ll know what I’m talking about, you get an organization page, publish a press release, include an image in the press release, because that’s super powerful in itself, press release images often will rank in those image carousels, okay, because they’re republished on so many media sites, make sure that the file name is optimized when you upload it to breast advantage or give it submit it to us. Then if you have your own Press Advantage subscription, you can add your own image, you know, all tags to it, which again, you can squeeze keywords like the name, in this case, the first and last name, that kind of stuff. Then once it’s been published, if you look at the HTML code of the press release that’s been published on the Press Advantage domain. You get the image file URL. Now you can take that and you can hammer that with backlinks. And that’ll help that to rank in the carousel I know because I’ve done it. So anyway, you can also, by the way, if it’s if it was for a local project, you can do something similar with images that are hosted on Yelp, for example, you can hammer and also Google Google Maps. If you upload images to a Google Maps profile, GMB profile when you go to view that in maps, you can extract the URL of that image from the address bar of your browser, and you can hammer that with links and that will help that to rank as well. So I think I gave away a lot there. Alright. Thanks, everybody for being here. We’ll see you guys next week. Thanks, Marco for sticking around.
Bye, everyone.
